The Battlefield Where the Girls Say I Love you

home: and i can't feel my legs.

2008-12-31T01:50:00.004-05:00

it's not typically a healthy sign when, after three weeks of non-blogging, a girl gets online to do just that at 2 o'clock in the morning. it tends to imply she's emotionally distressed or, worse, intoxicated. i am neither of these things, or at least not the latter.

thing is, i just stepped out of the car after sixteen hours of travel. sixteen hours of travel in the greater parts of alabama and mississippi, and with my parents of all things.

christmas was just fine, in that it held a great deal of upsides: stan getz records and days spent reading roberto bolano (i know. still can't do the enn-yay) and octavio paz. lots of writing (finally). lots of cajun food. that dirt devil vaccuum i've always wanted. little morgan making everyone megaphones out of sticker-covered empty toilet paper rolls. so that we can call out if we need her. my mother, at a holiday party, even tried pawning me off on a gorgeous man who does fascinating work with refugees in iraq.

"i can't live in bagdad, mom."
"mame," she said, irritated. "writers can write wherever."

this from a woman who doesn't sleep if i'm driving the hour home from asheville after dark.

however, traveling and gambling and spending days-plural with your parents in the french quarter has its challenges:

i lost eight dollars at the slots, spent a whole lot of hours writing a syllabus and scratching it and writing a new one. and there's the issue of my adorable sister, who, even without us, is always with us (via cell phone, etc.).

my parents fight over things like paprika and the french pronunciation of street names: well, charles, if you're not CAPABLE of handling the paprika and i know it's SPELLED chartres, but everyone SAYS charter.

it comes off sounding like, "why is the carpet all wet, todd?" "i don't KNOW, margot."

but, the reason i have you all here is the matter of books on tape. books on tape for a total of thirty-two hours of driving:

the david sedaris was fun, mainly due to his reading the part of brother paul (aka the rooster), which is genius. and kinsley amis' lucky jim reminds me why i like that sort of character-driven british humor.

the whole dick francis thing is another matter entirely. british: yes. but divisive as the sweet valley high series, and it's clear no one taught this man the beauty of simple he-said she-said dialogue.

and i quote:

" 'i did not throw the lemon fizz steeple chase,' hughes roared excitedly."

"and then hughes turned to stare the facts of life in the face."

" 'i did no such thing!' firth exploded excitedly."

"roberta blinked her eyes and reconsidered. she spoke more evenly now."

"hughes rounded his burnt-orange lotus around the bend."

people forever exploding or reconsidering. this. for six hours. plus more meal stops at o'charley's than i'd like to admit. and hannah is driving home from new york as we speak. which means more stories. and soon.

merry merry.

i'll tell you what: a post in two parts.

2008-12-08T20:58:00.004-05:00

there's the what i want to blog about and also the what i think you people will find interesting. hannah's not experiencing this problem and i'll tell you why. she doesn't care about you or us anymore. i know i'm not supposed to say this. to assure you we'll both, in our own ways, always be a major part of your life. well, here's the thing: i love you more and you can forget her packing the cooler of capri suns and orange slices for your soccer games. FORGET IT.

I. so, my mother called last week, said: mame. i was up, sitting on the bathroom floor, thinking about you from the hours of 1:57 am to 4. and i think you seem unhappy. but there are two things i think might help that: hosting a holiday party and investing in new carpeting for your living room.

me: uh huh.

mom: you know, because you're the type of person who needs something to look forward to.

you know. as opposed to the person who needs only the guillotine looming somewhere in the foreground.

and this is the part i can't do justice: the very next day i pulled up at my parents' home. to catch up. only, my nephew was dancing on the piano bench, a metronome beat wildly in the background, and my niece greeted me by screaming, "I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOU NAKED." then, my father chugged scotch so as to not have a heart attack. the couch cushions lay everywhere outside of the couch. then, each family member began screaming "ideas" for my party.

molly: girl, you've got to try this chipped beef dip the ladies from north baptist introduced me to.
(seriously. i have no idea where she came from.)

dad: jesus christ. whatever you do, no vegetables and ranch.

molly: have you thought about vegetables and ranch?

mom: what about stencils???? (pulls out file that houses every invitation she's ever made).

luke: WHERE ARE MY BOOTS? WHERE ARE MY BOOTS? WHERE ARE MY BOOTS?

II. anyway, what i want to blog about is waitressing. again. for a few years (say, oh, 2002-2007) i hated waiting on tables. the two things that drove me are the two things that drive any waiter/artist/actor/writer: money. money and material, material, material. ("something for your poetry, no?")

well, on the one hand: yes. when the family from three towns over drove in last week at 9:oo on a tuesday with their seven year-old, i couldn't wait to serve them. per usual, the mother asked little elizabeth if she remembered me from last time. and, like last time, elizabeth glared and gave one firm shake of the head. actually, this is precisely why i like elizabeth. she gives me a look that forever says, "i've had a full day of horseback, watercolor, tai kwan do, and tutoring. why the hell should i remember her?" only, an hour later i came out of the kitchen and elizabeth was standing by the computers and linens, tapping one of her black patent galoshes on the floor. "oh, there you are, mamie," she said in the same mock relief my sister uses when i'm twenty seconds late for our movie date. "looks like i'm going to need the charred arracherra, medium rare. our chicken just came, and i hate it. hate it hate it hate it."

on the other hand: no. i've had a problem lately, particularly with my male clients (i know. out of context that sounds slightly ashley dupre-ish, which is actually fitting, considering.). how i long for the days when my older men pretended they couldn't read the small font of the menu so that i had to stand there and recite it, word for word. or the men who flirted with me before realizing my father was an old racquetball/gin/college buddy.

at least those men are interesting. their stories, their demeanor. material? yes. nearly always. but now, now it's gotten so cheap and predictable. i will say this only once: not every waitress is in the market for a rich man to make them the best stay-at-home second, third, or fourth wife they've ever had. (okay, maybe on my worst, worst day). also, also, if i am not interested in you it does not mean that i am a) married or b) a lesbian. i may just not like you, even though this leaves you dumbfounded. what with all you have to offer. and the very little i have going on for me. i know, i know. it just DOESN'T. ADD. UP. because sometimes, at the end of the day, i could really go for a conversation about stock options and garage renovation.

okay. i'm done bitching. until beyonce writes some other stupid song or another man offers me the world, the world the size of a tether ball.

yellow ledbetter would be my status update, were my status update a song.

2008-12-01T22:19:00.003-05:00

they say life happens while you're not looking. they say this and other ridiculous things. truth is, while no one is looking at hannah, she's busy chirping along and hanging stars and bells from her four-poster bed. she's doing that and watching boats leave from the channel just below her balcony. she is, probably, also wearing a smoking jacket and line-editing an early copy of a marilynne robinson book. and growing her own hyacinths and fig trees, right there in her little apartment. and playing a game of scrabble with her significant other, a game of scrabble where words like archdruid and, i don't know, el sol poniente baila come out of nowhere famously. sentences count. kennings count. "whale-road!" she's exclaiming to herself.

see. we're like some constellation no one's found yet, the twins who can only occupy totally opposing spaces. i hate working in binaries, but...

meanwhile, i'm eating plates of meat i can't name. and then, after that, plates of ham. then, excusing myself to go look at the meat room. my old self would not know what to do with this self. it's as if i've never seen forrest gump before. i'm screaming "jenny!" at the television and sobbing like it's the mid-nineties. just this afternoon, i heard livingston taylor's "get out of bed," which is a song my father used to wake my mother up with, back when they had speakers for end tables...and began wailing. you might recall, hannah warned of this. these "emotions" returning after years of neglect. plus, i'm really cold. wherever i go. i'm like the mess of a woman in those degas paintings with all that red hair, just waiting to be bathed.

and then, the only thing that can hold my attention: susan lucci's malibu pilates chair. i've watched the infomercial six times. it's the only thing i believe will help. so much cardio, so much defining of the legs. right there in your living room.

so, this is the state of things, and it's not pretty. if you've naively wished we'd blog, i hope to have shoved that wish squarely off the side of a bridge. or into the highway. or under a dune buggy.

whodoyouwhodoyouwhodoyou...

2008-11-17T16:10:00.000-05:00

this afternoon, i challenged my students to nominate the best song of the past five years...the reason being that i'm pretty sure it's justin t-lakes' "sexyback." i once got into an argument with a man at a dinner party who posited that "the district sleeps alone" is the best song of the 21st century. the man wasn't to be trusted; he didn't like donald hall. only, later i sort of agreed.

unfortunately, my students are 74 year-olds disguised as kids. while they were born in--wait for it--1992, they love old school music. they still speak of hip-hop in tupac/west biggie/east terminology. they're old school. one even requested a yo yo ma song. you know. the cellist. but just when i thought they were perfect, just when i had opened up the panel to "best song of all time," just when they threw out U2's "bloody sunday" and "come fly with me" and "eleonor rigby" and flaming lips' "the wand," a young woman said:

who is joni mitchell?

who is joni mitchell. i nearly fainted.

anyway, this is a call for submissions. best song of the 21st century. anything KORN doesn't count. just like charles bukowski doesn't count when i say "pick any poet you want."

stay-at-home single mother of none meets the adorable tyrant, jr.

2008-11-13T17:15:00.002-05:00

"people who don't drink cannot be trusted."
-my mother, in nearly every conversation we have about people who don't drink,
including my sister

"it's not that you're making one wreath, mamie, it's that you're making another."
-hannah abrams, in our conversation where she delicately concludes that
i'm changing.

and so, against the interest of family and those closest to me, i put down the wine (and the gran ma...kidding) a few weeks ago. give or take several splits. i wasn't worried about codependency issues, or weight, or money, or any of that. i just thought it seemed nice to go non-drinker on your ass.

nice, as it turns out, but awfully quiet. i read. books. and reviews of books. and reviews that counter last week's review of the lowell/bishop correspondence. they just won't let up with those two. crying, i've found, while reading reviews ("i seem to spend my life missing you," lowell wrote to bishop) is a bit like crying during trailers. or commercials that, say, house postal service songs or advertise the next episode of extreme makeover: home edition. and i work out. a lot. and i've reignited this strange passion for modern american poetry, which i thought my students would love. turns out, though, i'm just scaring the bejesus out of them...running around all sweaty-pitted and yelling about the presence of food in prufrock. why toast and tea? why, then, the peach???

hannah's bound to out me sooner or later about the biggest change, so here it is:

i've been crafting. as in, going to a.c. moore late at night, when all the other adorable baptist ladies are buying stencils. and staying for an hour and more.

it started with one autumnal wreath, and from that i've built a world-- glass-painted ornaments, crackle-painted picture frames, monogrammed stationery.

wednesday, the phone rang as i roamed the aisles.

me: yes.

molly: have you finished mom and dad's christmas presents?

(she has been asking this since july. demanding money and product and results since the close of summer.)

me: i didn't know where you wanted me to get the gift certificates.

molly: jesus, mamie. you don't have to wait around for me to tell you what to do all the time.

me: since when.

molly: more importantly, mom's birthday's tomorrow, and i can't buy her a pedicure. i've got her that for the past four years.*

me: i'm going to make her something.

then, and this is the best part, it was as if molly was watching a camera of me in a.c. moore. i reached up to touch the twig base for a wreath and she said:

what? are you going to make them a christmas wreath or something?

before erupting into laughter.

*if you read this blog, you'll notice we are constantly in a state of buying gifts for our mother. or regretting the gifts we've bought for our mother. or reprinting the serial numbers for socks and cocktail napkins she's requested.

space break.

finally, bill e-mailed something very interesting today:

http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/2008/11/08/Obama_spotted_carrying_poetry_book/UPI-80471226166886/

seems our president-elect--wait for it--has been READING POETRY. walcott's noteable book, no less. the story reads like a gossip piece. as if all this poetry business might lead to a grainy tape involving paris hilton and joe francis.

our pockets pulled inside out:

2008-11-10T22:30:00.002-05:00

i know. october 24th. it's pathetic. so much so that erica has been using my own tactics against us, as in texting: BLOG! MOOOOOOOVE! which is flattering, in the way a stalker outside your window holding a lock of your own hair is flattering. let's just say, hannah has been smittenly climbing trees and tucking flowers behind her ears. that is, on the days she's not wearing a fedora. there's no telling, really. and i've been soberly watching bad kevin spacey movies and writing about the OBVIOUS associations between gold finches and clark county, nevada in 1965. so, it may not surprise you that i offer only the cheap manipulation, the hey-look-over-there as it were, of a mix compilation:
autumn

how kid rock and sarah palin are standing up to the empathetic, fair, humanitarian left:

2008-10-24T07:09:00.003-04:00

i love going to the movies. the cherry coke. the camaraderie of strangers experiencing the same thing. the "dirt off your shoulders" cell phone ring just as the protagonist is dying. above all else, i enjoy the previews. as in, i didn't have to actually see nights in rodanthe, as it turns out. crying through the trailer was enough.

which is why i was alarmed when, sitting with hannah in the dark, kid rock began screaming, "i'm a WARRIOR!!!" at the audience. something about the national guard* and, inexplicably, nascar. it's all a blur, now, but what i remember is this: a soccer ball kicked by a middle eastern kid into an oncoming tank, a white soldier saving the ball and returning it to the kid (note overt symbol of ball as democracy), dale earnhart jr. winning some race, and kid rock on a dimly lit stage. it was just awful. and about as carefully woven as this blog.

in a recent interview with NBC, palin was asked if she considered herself a feminist. she responded as follows: "you know, i don't like labels, bryan. which i think is what people don't like about me." to be fair, in a september 30 interview with katie couric, she said she was a feminist. for the sake of this post, i needn't trip off on a tangent about how curious it is that she told a woman she was a feminist and a man she was not...also, i think it's adorable that she thinks we don't like her because we don't "get" her. yeah, she's slippery, that one.

it has been my understanding that any half-witted person living today is, in fact, a feminist. if you subscribe to the belief that women truly hold equal rights as men, should hold equal rights, then you're a feminist. i don't think sojourner truth and the other embattled women from three different waves of feminism in america would appreciate the timid, eyelash-batting withdrawal from such a term.

* i am pro-military, pro-national guard. i am offended by the misrepresentation of these institutions, not the institutions themselves.

**Hi, it's Hannah stowing away on Mamie's post. But I just found the Warrior lyrics, transcribed by some idiot savant who can't spell, but turns mistakes into gold--i.e. "Engage and Destory."

WARRIOR

YEAHHHHHH
So Dont Tell Me Who's Wrong And Right When Liberty Starts Slipping Away
And If You Aint Gonna Fight Get Out Of The Away
Cuz Freedom Is So Free When You Breathe Red White And Blue I'm Given All Of Myself Cuz Thats What I Do

And They Call Me Warrior
They Call Me Loalty
They Call Me Ready To provide Relief N Help I Wherever You Need Me To Be
I'm an American Warrior
Citizen Soldier
I'm an American Warrior
Citizen Soldier
Ahhhhh Yeahhhhh

Citizen Solider

I'd Never Leave Another Behind I Will Never Except Defeat I'm A Solider In War Civilian In Peace Cuz Freedom Is So Free When You Breathe Red White N Blue I'm Given All Of Myself How Bout You

And They Call Me Warrior
They Call Me Loyalty
And They Call Me Ready To Deploy, Engage And Destory, Wherever You Need Me To Be

I'm An American Warrior Citizen Solider
I'm An American Warrior Citizen Solider

Warrior Citizen Solider
Warrior Citizen Solider

Ohhhhhhh Yeahhhhhh

how could they get together? they were like two people who couldn't get together.

2008-10-21T13:14:00.006-04:00

I’m obsessed with this place, Mamie said.

I mean, I’d never seen her this happy. Her big, blue eyes were all glittery and psychotic, and her body was perched on the very tippy edge of the white, plastic, and therefore Swedish chair. She was shaking from the high-voltage combo of old school hip-hop and sparkling. In the background, a thirty-seven year old woman was dancing with herself. We both know her and, not so long ago, this woman was rude to me.

Mamie spots her, crooks a finger at me. I lean in for her to whisper, I will fuck her up. I know it sounds redneck, but. Fuck. Her. Up. If she so much as looks at you the wrong way.

Clearly, this is what I need in a relationship, because my wayward heart swelled to bursting.

It was the pinnacle of our night since, before then, we’d gone everywhere else and hated it in a way that had us walking in and out without sitting. We were completely happy, and then we saw him coming. That’s the problem with being stationary, this guy will inevitably walk up to you. He looked fairly normal, even though he sat down beside us and said in one breath: Nice boots, look at those boots, did y’all plan on wearing those boots together.

It only got worse.

He told us he was there by himself and had premeditated the boots comment in order to come over and talk to us: Sometimes, you got to go out solo, and then you need a line you know. When you’re on your own. Without your friends. Sometimes, you and your friends need a little space.

Jesus, I thought. Poor bastard.

It came out, by which I mean it was completely unsolicited, that he lived in Snead’s Ferry-(God, said Mamie later, it sounds like a place where evil wizards live)—and also worked as a volunteer firefighter.

What else do you do, I asked.

Excuse me?

In addition to being a volunteer firefighter.

Oh, nothing.

And it’s beyond me how this came up, but suddenly he was talking about South Africa. I’ve been there, I piped up annoyingly. But you’d think it would have thrown him off from this track.

One rand is about seven dollars, you know.

(See, this is not even remotely true.)

So when I was there, I was buying beers for, like, two dollars! And then I’d tip. And they all thought I was like some rockstar.

Like a rockstar, I repeated like a moron.

Yeah. Just like, everyone was looking to see who I was. This bigshot American dude. I mean, some of them, they probably hadn’t ever seen an American before. The chicks were all looking at me.

(Americans in Capetown? Unlikely.)

Then he left as all we were capable of doing was grinning at each other. Mamie's little shoulders were doing that incessant and adorable hiphop lift thing. It was weird, Mamie said later, like he couldn’t decide which one of us he was hitting on. To simplify everything, he drifted up to a girl momentarily alone, poor thing. That guy, I told Mame, was almost as bad as the guys who started to chant Obama at the bar because you had an Obama sticker on your clutch.

Then we went to Slice and everything was predictable. Mame fell asleep in her pizza and I thought I lost my wallet. Cue me trying to get into Odessa after close, while Mamie slept in the car, where my wallet was sitting on the front floorboard.

decorum, etc.

2008-10-15T09:57:00.002-04:00

neither hannah nor myself is much of a prude. by which i mean we both are when it comes to certain matters...in our own, shy, repressed ways. yesterday she sent me a poem by brenda shaughnessy that she likes very much. only, in the first line lay the phrase, "unf*cked, ever-f*cked." and i sort of recoiled. i feel like swearing in a poem is not unlike yelling in a poem, and then i conjure up all sorts of bad thoughts that form an awful marriage between anne sexton and performance poetry. like, i'm still mortified by my twenty year-old self who, upon realizing i was allowed to swear in class, began doing so whenever possible. keep in mind: i was a religion major.

it doesn't help that i am religious, which is another battle altogether. i'm often reminded of this short poem by czeslaw milosz:

if there is no god

if there is no god,
not everything is permitted to man.
he is still his brother's keeper
and he is not permitted to sadden his brother
by saying there is no god.

but it's beautiful, the ways we can be empathetic while disagreeing. i mean, at our best we can be empathetic. while disagreeing.

then hannah sent me this hayden carruth (who, unfortunately, passed away last month) poem. i find the camaraderie of it beautiful. it is, i assume, for d. levertov?

letter to denise

remember when you put on that wig
from the grab bag and then looked at yourself
in the mirror and laughed, and we laughed together?
it was a transformation, glamorous flowing tresses.
who knows if you might not have like to wear
that wig permanently, but of course you
wouldn't. remember when you told me how
you meditated, looking at a stone until
you knew the soul of the stone? inwardly i
scoffed, being the backwoods pragmatic yankee
that i was, yet i knew what you meant. i
called it love. no magic was needed. and we
loved each other too, not in the way of
romance but in the way of two poets loving
a stone, and world that the stone signified.
remember when we had that argument over
pee and piss in your poem about a bear?
"bears don't pee, they piss," i said. but you were
adamant. "my bears pee." and that was that.
then you moved away, across the continent,
and sometimes for a year i didn't see you.
we phoned and wrote, we kept in touch. and then
you moved again, much farther away, i don't
know where. no word from you now at all. but
i am faithful, my dear denise. and i still
love the stone, and, yes, i know its soul.

dear blog:

2008-10-14T09:36:00.004-04:00

you are the child we have stayed together for. while hannah sits cross-armed on the balcony watching kayakers turn themselves in circles on the sound, i am waving my arms in front of your face and gifting you with thoughtless, easy things. and, while i would take this opportunity to post a playlist, seems i've only been listening to three albums this month: jenny lewis' acid tongue, langhorne slim's restless, and (obviously) T.I.'s papertrail. i just don't see how i could make that cohesive.
only, hannah and i are fine. we're not splitting up. i'm visiting this thursday for beers and dinner and sparkling wine and ping-pong and nick and norah's infinite playlist and walks on the beach at sunset. so, blog, perhaps you are the affair we can't quite move past. something like that.

what i will do in this post is shamelessly promote two books:

I. as you all know, george and i have taught alongside each other for 43 years (move on. he's the only one who's supposed to get that joke). he hates the blog, which doesn't stop him from reading it. when especially bored, he likes to make fun of me in his work (please check out the latest kenyon review, wherein a ten year-old named may-may is portrayed as a spoiled brat who's always hungry and trails behind all the other kids, drinking coffee). he even does so in his new book, pep talks, warnings & screeds:

number 30: if at all possible, take a poetry-writing class or two. please don't hang out with poets a bunch--this is a vast generalization here, but what the heck--because inevitably one of them will say, "poetry is so hard!" or "i worked twenty minutes today on a quatrain!" or "do you want some room for cream in your coffee?" or "i can't stand poets who rhyme" or "i love poets who rhyme" or "we have a special today on bran muffins."

daniel wallace (author of big fish) illustrates the book. anyway, it's pure awesome.

II. i thought i was done with this whole crying in the classroom business. i did it once out of pure frustration two years ago when i didn't know quite what i was doing and the students didn't seem much to care anyhow. but last week, i cried for a much more embarrassing reason. we were reading galway kinnell's strong is your hold and i read the first poem aloud. in the middle i just got all choked up and proceeded to try to stop crying by explaining myself and, inexplicably, snapping my fingers. anyway, you can imagine: i looked nuts, and couldn't stop repeating, "it's just so beautiful. it's just so beautiful."

the stone table

here on the hill behind the house,
we sit with our feet up on the edge
of the eight-by-ten stone slab
that was once the floor of the cow pass
that the cows used, getting from one pasture
to the other without setting a hoof
on the dirt road lying between them.

from here we can see the blackberry thicket,
the maple sapling the moose slashed
with his cutting teeth, turning it
scarlet too early, the bluebird boxes
flown from now, the one tree left
of the ancient orchard popped out
all over with saffron and rosy,
subacid pie apples, smaller crabs grafted
with scions of old varieties, freedom,
sops-of-wine, wolf river, and trees
we put in ourselves, dotted with red lumps.

we speak in whispers: fifty feet away,
under a red spruce, a yearling bear
lolls on its belly eating clover.
abruptly it sits up. did i touch my wine glass
to the table, setting it humming?
the bear peers about with the bleary undressedness
of old people who have mislaid their eyeglasses.
it ups its muzzle and sniffs. it fixes us,
whirls, and plunges into the woods--
a few cracklings and shatterings, and all is still.

as often happens, we find ourselves
thinking similar thoughts, this time of a friend
who lives to the south of that row of peaks
burnt yellow in the sunset. about now,
he will be paying his daily visit to her grave,
reading by heart the words, cut into black granite,
that she had written for him, when they
both thought he would die first:
I BELIEVE IN THE MIRACLES OF ART BUT WHAT
PRODIGY WILL KEEP YOU SAFE BESIDE ME.
or is he back by now, in his half-empty house,
talking in ink to a piece of paper?

i, who so often used to wish to float free
of earth, now with all my being want to stay,
to climb with you on other evenings to this stone,
maybe finding a bear, or a coyote, like
the one who, at dusk, a week ago, passed
in his scissorish gait ten feet from where we sat--
this earth we attach ourselves to so fiercely,
like scions of sheffield seek-no-furthers
grafted for our lifetimes into paradise root-stock.

the battles we choose

2008-10-08T09:34:00.002-04:00

directly quoted from the new york times:

the latest conflict between lebanon and israel is about food: a lebanese trade group is accusing israel of falsely taking credit for traditional middle eastern dishes like hummus. fadi abboud, president of the lebanese industrialists association, said on tuesday that his group planned to sue israel to stop it from marketing hummus and other regional dishes as israeli. "it is not enough they are stealing our land," mr. abboud said. "they are also stealing our civilization and our cuisine." he said his group would also seek to claim baba ghanouj and tabbouleh as lebanon's own.

also:

what, to me, was more infuriating than the debate stage set-up (it looked like the phil donahue show) were the number of voters (in the audience, at bowling green) who claimed to be undecided. who the hell, at this point, is undecided? i don't care if you want to marry mccain and have his babies; at least you're on board with something. who, on october 8th, is saying to themselves: my gosh. it's just so hard...like apples and apples. some kid, poor bastard, actually said, "fundamentally, they're no different." yep. couldn't differentiate between 'em in a line-up.

looks like this ain't your first rodeo.

2008-10-06T10:03:00.002-04:00

let's start with this: just like in the movies, our in-laws are coming/have come between us. since hannah's mother has arrived (SIX days ago), we've talked three times. for the average friends without codependency issues, this might be normal. for us, it's roughly fifteen conversations short. and, if you enjoy hannah's blog posts more than mine (which, with any sense, you do), you'll note that she hasn't posted since donna martin graduated. doesn't look like she's planning to either, kids.

i should preface this post (i know. you thought the hannah stuff was preface enough) by saying that, at work on saturday, i looked precious. i washed my hair and put on make-up and and wore earrings and did everything i could to detract from the annie lennox outfit we wear. so, when a really nice gentleman winked at me a la sarah palin and said, "looks like this ain't your first rodeo," i had no idea how to take it. at first i thought it meant the same as been-around-the-block and i felt like that fifty year-old woman named cookie who runs the after-hours bar here in greenville. i physically recoiled...although, looking back, i believe he meant i appeared to know what i was doing.

also, the hostesses i--on a daily basis--refrain from beating have been giving all the bachelorette parties to me. all of them. which hardly makes sense. we have the sexy colombian guy, the funny bartender, and the hot waiter. twenty intoxicated girls don't exactly want me, a woman, waiting on them. and they keep being, like, nineteen years old and bedecked in feather boas. it's totally creepy. and the photographs they ask of you! it's like, "okay, we're going to do a silly and a serious." i guarantee, friends who in the future might be at my bachelorette party, i'll never use the word "silly." or make you wear things you wouldn't normally. there will be no flirtinis, no cakes shaped like boy parts. no straws with obscene accoutrements. and, absolutely, no decorated wine glasses.

oh, and, not to worry about the whole hannah thing. she'll be back, begging, soon enough. they always do.

we have exactly half of our life in common.

2008-10-01T12:36:00.002-04:00

our mothers are coming today.

which seems like the very same thing, only hannah's mom has flown from saipan to japan to california to minnesota, stopping there to golf with her boyfriend for two weeks, and is flying to raleigh today. where hannah will meet her with carriage.

my mother takes a similar route, if by similar you mean I-85 south thirty miles. and if you also mean grabbing my father by the shirt collar and bringing him also.

...space break.

i wrote that part of the blog before my parents came early and unannouced, carrying with them a gift bag of: twelve magazines, clinique facial wash, contact cases (i'm serious), and several eye shadows my mother doesn't want. my mother actually thought that, at 27, i keep my contacts in petrie dishes.

hannah's mother likes danielle steel paperbacks, long walks on the beach, and slot machines. my mother likes to clean your baseboards and watch catherine zeta jones movies.

i said to han, "i'm cleaning because my mom's coming. are you?" she said, "yeah, if you mean by cleaning that i got all my meds refilled."

that being said, we might be on back order for a few days. you see why. we'll give you exactly what we have left these next weeks.

xo

mamie: would like to step off the bridge that is monday.

2008-09-29T21:58:00.004-04:00

the reocurring nightmare goes something like this: i am a waitress at a crab shack and the eighteen-top of elderly people has just demanded i split up their check in all these weird ways. which wouldn't be so bad if the two-top i can't get to weren't jimmy fallon and tina fey. also, because i'm a poet, the dream relies on constant and variation. so, while the above information stays the same, what differs is which of my parents brings in his or her mistress/lover. then one of them, most of the time my mother, is yelling to me, "it was all a sham! it was all a sham!" meanwhile, jimmy and tina are mercilessly berating me from their table.

until two days ago, i have often thought that this is what my personal slice of hell might be like. but then, THEN, my life became a sequel to that michael douglas film, falling down. the following section is going to work like bullet points, because if i crafted it any differently, it might allow me to go spiraling into a dark, dark, place resembling narnia. with voices.

first, paul newman died. then it took me twelve minutes to get a veggie burger at burger king. they offered me an apple turnover as an apology. i feel burger king is forever offering apple pastries as peacemakers. then sarah palin said something to katie couric that resembled miss south carolina's pride-inducing response. and i quote, "that's why i say i like every american i'm speaking with i'm ill about this position we've been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out." then something about an umbrella. then my mother called, asking what leftover issues of bon apetit/real simple/garden and gun/vogue i'd like her to keep for me. so i wouldn't have to spend any money on my own. then she called back and said, "would travel and leisure be like salt in the wound?" then citi group bought wachovia. let's just say, if any of you boys are looking to take my dowry, get to steppin'. then my phone broke, began yelling ERROR each time i dialed hannah's number. and my students, my beautiful students, want me to revise their sestinas...which i'm pretty sure you can't really tweak. and paul newman remained dead. and i saw that nights in rodanthe alone and ugly-cried like claire danes for hours. then there wasn't any gas in our city. and the house rejected the bailout BEFORE GOING ON HOLIDAY TILL THURSDAY...it's like bush and a round of golf during and after katrina. then i knew it was bad when my mother used the words "motherf*ckers" and "constituents" in the same sentence.

and finally, finally, i waited on a business dinner this evening. i hate those, begin feeling like one of those stuffy french servers who no one likes anyway. and if you do, it's in the same way you like those people in london who stand rod straight in funny hats. and they began ordering stuff that wasn't on the menu. it was like twelve of hannah's dads (who orders on a yellow legal pad so he doesn't have to speak to the help). and, little do they know, when they pull shit like that (excuse me) chef basically burns my arm with the lit end of a cigarette.

customer service: part deux

2008-09-26T08:35:00.003-04:00

alltel called and texted me all day long yesterday, yelling HIGH USAGE over and over. which makes little sense, seeing as how i'm relatively boring and talk only to a handful of people every day: my family, maybe george or scott, hannah, bo, and my two friends who are both named adrienne.

keep in mind, also, i've had the same alltel account for five years.

after awhile, i ducked into the parking garage pre-shift to call customer service. after providing for them my cell, social, address, other possible contact numbers, and the maiden name of my first pet, claire said:

"it seems your bill is right around 350$ this month."
me: that's odd, claire, seeing as how it's never been more than 127$. ever.
claire: well, we see you've been a valued customer since 2006.
me: 2003!!! 2003, claire!!!
claire: apparently, there have been QUITE a few calls to some 910 number...

from there, it began to make sense. hannah decided, about a month ago, that she HAD to have the new iphone. necessary. and why shouldn't she? what TEACHER doesn't need a touch-screen, weather-controlled alien for a phone? and so, of course, she left alltel for greener pastures. (both of us, you might recall, have been escorted out of alltel in our past, gangster lives.)

but still, she's supposed to be a member of my circle. i know this to be true because when j.r. or r.j. or whatever the cute guy's name is asked me to write down five numbers i call most often, i could think only of hannah's. embarrassing, really, to not recall a single other telephone number.

what happened after that between claire and me is none of your business. what i will say is that i hung up on claire while she was talking and she, in turn, DISRUPTED MY SERVICE. my bill is never late. nothing. she just disconnected my service for personal reasons. which is dirty and i'm sure a bit illegal. fortunately, i'm already turning into one of those curmudgeons who threatens to sue over anything.

this is all to give a warm thank you to hannah, who has now placed even my telephone on a champagne budget.

race for the cure

2008-09-24T09:27:00.003-04:00

when i was six, my mom's best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. it is difficult to describe here the sort of relationship we had with one another. to say that she raised my sister and me would do my own mother a great disservice. they lived next door to us (in not one but two different neighborhoods). if my sister hogged the shower, it was not at all unusual for me to run next door in a towel and hop into theirs. she had two boys--my brothers from another mother--and a passionate relationship with her husband.

while connie was supposed to survive only a matter of months, she lived six years. a full, well-traveled, well-loved six years. but if those years were a blessing--and of course they were--they were also extremely difficult. i spent a lot of time trying to impress her in those final years, but also trying to stay out of her way. her final months were spent with a tank of oxygen attached to her and while, at the time, we joked about the clink-clink awkwardness of the tank over deck or porch planks, the injustice of it all seemed rank. even to a twelve year-old.

that final autumn, connie and i sat at the foot of her staircase and watched hundreds of ladybugs attempt to invade the windows and doorframes. perhaps they don't do this where you're from. but i wondered, then, why the tiny and beautiful bugs would go to all that trouble only to die right there on the inside sill. i must have, stupidly, said that aloud at some point to connie. and when she died, she left for me a tiny ladybug pen.

i say all this because, no doubt and unfortunately, you too have a similar story. and while this grief has shaped my life, and her illness as much as her spirit also shaped my life, it is a shame that we own such stories, and by the thousands.

susan g. komen's race for the cure is being held in greenville this saturday, september 27th. if you live in wilmington (i think), the race is october 17th. if you can't run a 5k or if you don't want to wear pink, then you're a f-ing pansy in my book. please give in any way that you can--if not with money, than with your time. please contact me directly for more information (my friend julia's even hosting a raffle!). mamiemorgan@gmail.com

da beers

2008-09-22T10:58:00.004-04:00

about a year ago, as my friend matt o. and i finished our beers at a local irish pub, he took one last look around the room (at the group of girls who had taken off their shoes, were throwing darts various places other than the dart board, and were, mostly, bedecked in very few clothes) and said, sadly, "i don't wanna meet a girl at connolly's. i want to meet a girl at whole foods."

it brought to mind the various inorganic ways in which we go about meeting people. this is not to equate "inorganic" with "ineffective." my cousin met his very cool wife on match.com. i've had many friends of both sexes seek out a partner at church/temple, coffee shops, gallery openings, the gym, concerts, etc. but the thing is, history repeats itself. i know with a level of confidence that if i walked into the blue post in wilmington, smiley's guitar bar in greenville, or starbucks on pleasantburg drive at 8 am, i could predict roughly (i.e. exactly) who i'd run into. i'm a person of routine. the hot contractor who's forever in front of me at starbuck's orders a red eye. richard, the guy who runs beside me at the gym, is a crime reporter who likes to have an amstel light after working out. it's as predictable as those articles in glamour which tell you that men like to return home to a woman wearing only a men's oversized shirt. (why IS that? why are people always saying that?)

so it's rare--at least in my daily life--to actually bump into an interesting stranger. which is just what happened, i swear to god, at whole foods on friday afternoon.

i'd picked up hibiscus sorbet to take for my sister's birthday and was standing in front of the beer cooler, panicked. on the one hand, i'm thankful that whole foods doesn't carry that shitty, lime flavored beer my sister's always requesting. but it's ALL she drinks. so i didn't know, beerwise, where to turn.

"let me know if you need help." daniel, a whole foods rep in funky glasses, said from behind me.

"oh, i'm good," i said, taken off guard. this daniel person was cute in the telling way. as in, i know by looking at him he likes tom waits and also thinks palin should be shot with one of her own rifles.

only, five minutes later i was still standing there, picking up six-packs of beer and putting them back.

daniel: do you want to sit down and taste some beers?

seriously. i tasted everything these stone people out in san diego brew. we talked about the insurgence of low gravity beer, how i hate chocolate stouts, etc.

i will probably never go out with this daniel person, which is absolutely beside the point. he's smokin' hot in the dorky way i require. he helped me shop for molly (thomas creek dockside pilsner). he said he liked my ring. and the meeting, itself, was unplanned, not something i devised or could control. which made me feel a little light in the chest all the way to spartanburg...

to the men we've been kissing: you're middle-aged; get it together.

2008-09-17T18:10:00.006-04:00

mame: ...and you have to be working really hard to be a bad kisser with me, because i'm so good at it.
me: what do you mean he was a bad kisser?
mame: he was acting all into it--
me: too much face.
mame:--exactly, but he wasn't all into it.
me: oh. OH.

beyond weird. and too much face? i mean come ON. sicksicksick. i had to speak the following sentence to mamie a few months back: "He was a slurpy kisser." sorry, gross, but are you kidding me. right then, i could have run to greenville, picked up mamie, and kept running with her to a prettier land where there are no men kissing like horses.

recently, cnn published the following: Bad kissers have little chance of getting to second base. In a study published recently in the scientific journal "Evolutionary Psychology," 59 percent of men and 66 percent of women said they've been in the position of being attracted to someone -- until they kissed the person. **please note that men are more likely to just keep right on going

and also, it's not supposed to be an assault, the kissing. fergodsakes, CALM DOWN. there's a level of intensity that's just weird. i actually made a face during one of these kisses (w/ someone i immediately stopped knowing). a get-me-the-hell-outta-here face. because in that moment, i was so wildly uncomfortable, i'd rather have been in some sort of mandatory five hour business meeting at 8am on a sunday.

you can bet your ass brian williams doesn't kiss like that. fucking hottie.

wack arnolds

2008-09-17T00:34:00.004-04:00

autumn, boys

she says she's blogging today, and that's the thing with relationships. sometimes you just have to trust in the power of...trust. (sorry. we both hate when people talk like this, so i'm just trying to mortify her into coming one step closer to the computer). in all seriousness, our priorities have gotten the better of us. like, hannah's got all these crazy ideas about the book being more important than the blog. on my end, busy at school. busy at the restaurant. and busy with family. (p.s. there are few things i will actually fight for. that being said, to the people who are making my mother's life harder at work: i'll ruin you.) also, my friends like to have babies all at the same time...so there has been a hell of a lot of cooking as well. "oh, and there's sarah palin." which is what my mother keeps tacking onto the end of stories. and i'm like, "what does that have to do with anything?" and she says, "nothing. it's just awful." also, hannah won't stop singing "we're on the bridge to nowhere" to the tune of talking heads' "we're on the road to nowhere."

two moments with my insightful niece:

2008-09-07T17:46:00.005-04:00

today, the family trekked to our mountain house for my dad's birthday. after lunch, morgan hauled me up to the top so she could play on the zip line. she spends several minutes pulling a chair to it and hoisting herself up while i, i lay purposeless in the grass, all but chewing it:

me: need help?

morgan: whatever.

me: painfully stupid silence

morgan: you know, mame, if the world were smart, we'd have no cars and lots of string to zip around the world on.

last week, morgan begins what i think is a knock-knock joke:

morgan: hey, what's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull?

me: what?
morgan: nothing. that lady's stupid.

this is after my sister astutely said, "i mean, she ran what, exactly? alaska? i mean, i could govern alaska. it's hardly a state. they're, like, nine people up there."

a few catastrophies...

2008-09-04T14:39:00.004-04:00

it's the straw that's breaking me after having done been broken by that palin nightmare and ike, the abusive husband hurricane. i mean, it's call-the-lawyers-we-are-SO-over time.

i'm stammer-typing. it's just awful, and there is no defense for her. she does not NEED to work in these, no matter what she tells you. and today, she used the word cute.

but, at least one of us has kept her head in the midst of these disasters. while mame was handing over her soul to those ridiculous clog families, i spent my rent and someone else's on these... loeffler randall's prettiest creation. i read them fairytales before bed.

i am not the only woman who loves johnny.

2008-09-02T23:59:00.006-04:00

johnny has been my mechanic since 1996, when i bought my first honda civic. johnny has been loyal, even when i've pulled up with friends wearing lip liner and blaring that old bone thugz album. here's the deal. johnny, who is eleven years my senior, "yes ma'am's" me. johnny asks about my family.

when i arrive at the shop and there are 7 acres filled with sleepy, waiting, broken fords, johnny says, "busy? i ain't busy." johnny has a mustache, and he doesn't wear it ironically. nor does he wear it with a band of horses t-shirt and skinny jeans. johnny invented the mustache. johnny, who wouldn't laugh at anybody, would keel over at the sight of the seventies version of burt reynolds. he'd wonder what all that puttin'-on-airs was about.

and, when i drove the forty minutes from my house to his shop, with a bulb out in the dash, he did not make me feel stupid when he leaned in and, simply, flipped on the light switch.

johnny is probably a republican and i don't care. even though i always show up unannounced and in work out clothes (prepared to jog for miles while he works), johnny asks each visit if i need a ride somewhere until he fixes the car. "into town," he says. i can't remember the last time anyone else said "into town."

the suit at subaru whose arms were too short for his body told me it'd be a little over a grand. 650$ of that would be for a "major tune-up."
listen, major tune-ups are for city folk. i've never heard of anyone actually getting those things. well, i think my friend katie does, but she's a little too together by anyone's standards.

johnny laughed when i told him about the tune-up. he did the same work for half the money and even changed out my front right tire. "i couldn't bear to think of you drivin' on that thing."

"is it weird that i love johnny the mechanic," i say to my mom. she looks at me as if i've said the most naive thing in the world. "mame, we all love johnny." had this been a film, hundreds of women might have stood up in some otherwise abandoned high school gymnasium.

and perhaps i appreciate it so much in the face of those guys from million dollar listing. or because, sometimes, i miss that particular southern man. i couldn't bear to think of you drivin' on that thing. where have they gone? perhaps we've scared them off...with our abrasive jokes and standoffish demeanor that caves only sometimes, and perhaps not often enough at all. if we have we're screwed. totally screwed...

sisterhood of the traveling pant suits and other world news:

2008-08-27T23:46:00.002-04:00

just a few things, dears:

*it has been brought to my attention that the barnes and noble on woodruff road carries as many books of poetry as they do specialty bibles.

*my students asked what, exactly, a sestina was today. to which i yelled, "the most tyrannical form there is!" then, because i'm not malleable in any way, and because i noticed how delighted they were BY sestinas, i said, "we'll write one tomorrow." then, "they're six six line stanzas, followed by a tercet called the tornada." then it gets complicated. the end words from each line are used in the following stanzas...apparently at random. 123456, 615243.... and all i could think--and this is humiliating because i'm not sixteen and i'm their teacher--is "area codes" by ludacris: 916, 415, 704...

*perhaps you've heard the next brilliant thing they're doing with beer: low gravity. LOW GRAVITY? like, 2 and 3 percent alcohol. okay, i don't condone drinking for intoxicating purposes. but, why would i want to drink 12 highly caloric beers with next to nothing by way of relaxation?

*finally: my last table tonight was a cute couple younger than myself. i recognized them immediately, as they sat in front of me at vicky christina barcelona. only, i said this to them, as in, "weren't you guys at the sunday matinee..." and i immediately felt totally bananas. they sort of stared cross-eyed at me the rest of the night.

oh, and to the furman girls who left me 11% tonight. i'd totally forgotten about the north face jacket paired with stilettos look. and that you talked about facebook your entire dinner and not ironically was like a slice of hell. thanks for coming out.

it's not that we haven't been blogging:

2008-08-26T00:27:00.004-04:00

it's just that we haven't. hannah's been polishing her book, which is the most pleasant way i know of saying she's been sweating and consuming numerous french presses each morning. i, most certainly, have not been taking myself on dates to p.f chang's. to see vicky christina barcelona. scarf shopping. pleading to my defiant outback. falling into platonic love with the line cook who saves all the chicken and dumplings, pours them into quart containers, and labels them "mamie's school lunch." also, i have not been flipping between the convention and john cusack's serendipity. and, we've been reading our students' work. i've been conjuring up strange situations wherein the other first graders are mean to morgan. and i, of course, wreak havoc upon their lives. finally, because we're so busy, we absolutely have not been watching jon and heather make edamame on dooce.com. but, but, there's this:

in lieu of blogging

An open letter to Haris (“that’s spelled with one r”) at Progress Energy:

2008-08-18T22:44:00.002-04:00

I can’t say I wasn’t surprised to see the disconnect letter on my door. It’s a good thing it was neon pink so no one else could miss it either. That way, if it pulled loose of the masking tape your people used, one of my wealthy and retired and judgmental neighbors could have pointed it out to me at the next cocktail hour.

The reason, Haris, I was surprised was because I set up an automatic bank draft with Jenny back in July. After speaking to two other supervisors, they passed me to you—I was a little tired by then, my phone was dying, and I had been sitting naked on the kitchen tile for coolness. I remember when you asked me to go over the problem again, anxiously saying, “But I’m losing light.” And then I walked into my vacuum cleaner.

You said you’d also had “quite a day,” so let’s go over your greatest hits:

Haris: I’m not saying you didn’t call. I can see here that you did. But someone must have misinformed you, because we didn’t receive your payment. That’s why your power is shut off.

Me: Oh well, the thought did occur to me. But then I rejected that out of hand because I thought it far more likely that it was a prank. Pulled off by Progress Energy and Jackass.

Haris: Ma’am, there’s no need for sarcasm. And you would have received a final notice letter.

Me: I didn’t. I have not received a single paper bill since I moved in. I’ve told Progress this in other, possibly imaginary, conversations.

Haris: Is your address 807 Wrightsville Beach, NC 28480.

Me: You are one fifth right.

Haris: If you had given us the right address—

Me: IF?? IF??? At what point, Haris, do you think I set out to deceive you about my address. Because it wasn’t when Progress told me a few months back that I had to be mistaken—there was an 1107, a 605, and a 1008, but certainly there was no unit 807. I had to come up with a very compelling case to get you guys to believe there were more than 3 units in this building. In this 11 storey building.

Haris: …. Ma’am, I understand what you’re saying.

Me: That’s good.

Haris: But even if you’re right about everything, I can’t waive the fee. I don’t know if you set up a bank draft with her because she forgot to make notes on your account.

Me: I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you because my brain just exploded.

Haris: …

Me: Sorry. I’m sorry. Listen, I’ll take it up with your supervisor tomorrow, but what if he tells me our conversation never took place. Then what. You guys could just keep deleting everything.

Haris (superb timing): Ma’am, I’m really having trouble hearing you. Are you there?

Me, panicking: Canwejustgetthepowerturnedon PLEASE. What time can someone be here?

Haris: Unfortunately, we are not in communication with the service vehicles.

Me: You are not in communication with the services vehicles. You don’t communicate with them. So, Progress has no contact information for them, no phone number?

Haris: No, we don’t have that information.

REALLY Haris?? What were you going to do?? Send a fucking letter? Get the town crier? Smoke signals? Cup and string? Fine. I’m sending my next payment to you via a Harry Potter owl.

hannah hates when i do this, which is precisely why i'm forging on...

2008-08-17T21:51:00.002-04:00

mostly, our phone conversations go something like this:

hannah calls, singing: in a big country dreams stay with you. like a lover's voice...

me: what is that. what are you doing.

hannah (yelling): "in a big country!" by big country! best 80's song ever!

me: i love anderson cooper.

hannah (sigh): i love anderson cooper.

me: i want to be porochista khakpour (novelist, sons and other flammable objects).

hannah (who's misunderstood): five hundred sheep in darfur? what does that mean?

me: no no no. the novelist.

hannah: no one would speak to you with a name like that.

me: everyone speaks to her.

seriously, that bad. sometimes, though, we read to each other. which is when the earnest, bleeding heart writer comes out in us both.

so, i thought i'd post the louise gluck poem we both love...and will preface only by saying:

once, in grad school, a very dear professor said to me, "i wish only you'd think in more conceptual terms." i only now realize he meant, "i only wish at times you were smarter." we had been reading "hard books," and i had been churning out "simple" work. the work of a storyteller.

but that's the thing with gluck--her brilliance, her strange clairvoyance, it's all tempered by such a frank voice. love her. love her. and so, one of the poems we read aloud:

the destination

we had only a few days, but they were very long,
the light changed constantly.
a few days, spread out over several years,
over the course of a decade.

and each meeting charged with a sense of exactness,
as though we had traveled, separately,
some great distance; as though there had been,
through all the years of wandering,
a destination, after all.
not a place, but a body, a voice.

a few days. intensity
that was never permitted to develop
into tolerance or sluggish affection.

and i believed for many years this was a great marvel;
in my mind, i returned to those days repeatedly,
convinced they were the center of my amorous life.

the days were very long, like the days now.
and the intervals, the separations, exalted,
suffused with a kind of passionate joy that seemed, somehow,
to extend those days, to be inseparable from them.
so that a few hours could take up a lifetime.

a few hours, a world that neither unfolded nor diminished,
that could, at any point, be entered again--

so that long after the end i could return to it without difficulty,
i could live almost completely in imagination.

must be: 72% scott avett, 11% devendra banhart, 9% paul newman, 7% nadal, 1% ellen degeneres...

2008-08-13T13:29:00.011-04:00

...and, you know, dashes of tim o'brien, t.i., robert f. kennedy, tim gunn, rick bragg, bob weir, and john stewart.

listen, yesterday, my mother accused me of enjoying waitressing. as in, she cut me off mid restaurant-tale (she's been listening to these best/worst customer stories since i entered the tenth grade) and said, "you like it."

me: no i don't. you know i need the extra cash.

her: no. you don't. you have two other perfectly respectable jobs. you do it because you like it.

i felt like someone had caught me wearing only a feather boa and dancing to the jonas brothers.

but, truth is, i do "like it," i suppose. if made to choose, i'd obviously lock myself and my brilliant students up in our classroom...but people amaze me. i never know who i'm going to meet. this might mean some idiot who calls me sugar and asks me repeatedly about nursin' school. more likely than not, though, my customers are warm and smart. in fact, the statistics are staggering: so many less cads than you'd imagine.

point is (jesus. i did it again. the whole preface-is-longer-than-story thing), lately, i've been waiting on the best couples ever. we're talking 80 year-old's named ellen and paul who drink mojitos ("so this is that drink our kids been telling us about") and kiss at the table, young couples who give each other fist-daps a la the obamas. i had a guy last night in a white suit try to swivel his wine glass that held a taste of cotes du rhone. somehow--probably nerves--it went everywhere: on his face, his coat. and the girl he was with just leaned over and took his hand, laughing.

but the best, THE BEST, was the blind date from match.com.

i swear to god. bruce and terry. she (terry) was twenty minutes late, which, bruce and I initially took as a bad sign. (listen, you tell your waitress anything when you're nervous and already half plowed.)

but then she showed. and they had a THREE HOUR DINNER. and on the way out, he put his arm around her. later, much later, when i was taking off my apron and walking out to the car, i saw them standing in the parking lot still. talking.

what i'm saying is: we give men a hard time. if you've even glanced at memememespace, you've seen that annoying pie chart where the girl has plugged a photo of herself (i.e. bleeding heart/ego) into some site and they've delegated her aesthetic scoring: 73% jessica alba, 2% gwyneth paltrow, 18% sigourney weaver, 7% raven simone.

must cook, we say. must work, must love nature, must have strong calf muscles, must tolerate project runway, must love hannah as well, must enjoy all of the same books we do, must love his mother, must not love his mother too much, must pay for us, must not order for us, must drive a truck but not one of those big scary ones, must enjoy any blues musician signed by fat possum records, must like small chests and big booties...

but we understand y'all do it too: must look like/cook like giada, must love to surf, must be a good girl, must also have a touch of jenna jameson, must speak 6 languages...

and we can do it, too, because at the end of the day karma's going to kick all our asses. hannah's going to end up with a republican who enjoys portraiture and traveling as far as the rolling hills of kentucky. my guy's bound to be a personal trainer who thinks poetry's for sissies but enjoys building instruments from wood he's imported himself. and that's the beauty of it.

p.s. no more boy stuff. after this, only posts about things that matter. like pineapple express and how the U.S. fared in badminton.

But I want exactly both.

2008-08-07T15:01:00.001-04:00

Someone who loves Hart Crane, but who isn’t all, Baby, I’m so depressed, I’m gonna do a swan dive off that there freight ship boiling over the Atlantic.

A man who plants tulips and whips up an Osso Buco would be swell, long as he wasn’t also striding around the house in topsiders and croakies, pausing to check the laptop for stock activity. Make the crepe, but try not to shift uncomfortably when I say I haven’t paid off my student loans yet.

And I hate being tricked most of all. Hypothetically: you could get the most lyrical guy in the world and then in the middle of that hypothetical makeout session, you might hypothetically murmur (worried he’s not into it), Is this right? to yourself and hypothetically he might go, Nah dude, it’s cool. Nah dude, it’s cool??? No. Nonono. Dude, it is most certainly not cool.

Let me put it this way. What if you were nearly thirty and padded to the kitchen of a house at 3 am only to trip over a pile of videogames? Tripped because you were busy wondering if that could possibly be a Scarface poster scotch-taped to the wall. Well, if this did happen to you, I can tell you exactly what would be next. You would get in your car and drive home at 500 mph and look at stock activity.

It’s gotten to the point now, where there are two equally likely outcomes to a guy staying over: He could either go running out right after with his shoes in his hands, or he could still be there for lunch the next day. Somewhere between there is what we’re missing.

We’re either with guys who are worried about the cleanliness of the floorboards in their BMWs or who are giving their friends mullets at midnight.

Listen. We don’t need you to call on your way home. But be together enough to call sooner than three whole weeks later wondering what’s up, but not asking us to do anything. You’d think that because Mamie and I are asked out on average fifty times a week (what?), our odds would be better, but fergodsakes. Wait that long and we just think you’re assholes. And if we do forgive you and you do suggest we go out again, then you should know it’s not because we want to watch you watch tow-in surfing at a burger joint for a few hours.

Finally: I’m turning twenty-nine. Don’t rush me.

we don't like adult swim. we do not enjoy papa john's.

2008-08-05T13:57:00.002-04:00

okay, hannah and i had (until now) an unspoken rule: we can talk about boys, but only peripherally. not only do we have no interest in emulating carrie bradshaw, most of the time other aspects of our lives are far, far more interesting (if only to us). also, while many of the men are not calling, a very small part of our spirit earnestly believes they are reading the blog. which is why we can't mention them.

but it's just so rich a topic. and we're single...and, somehow, we both have a clearer insight into the male psyche (or our own) when we're not dating. a male.

i am twenty-seven years old. hannah is approaching one of those pivotal birthdays this coming winter. and here's the deal: we're finding that, at this age, we're straddling two hemispheres. there are the men who go paddling on the weekend, who wear ties most days, who have 401 K's and dogs named sanford. these are often the men who call, promptly after meeting you, for real dates and possibly discussions of impending children. then, there are the other men. to those, i must finally admit:

i don't want to sit on the same side of the booth at elizabeth's pizza so we can watch that 70's show. nor do i care to learn how to make chicken wings. on the topic of wingeries (actually what they're called): i don't want to eat at one ever. specifically, i don't want to eat at one with bunches of televisions immediately before going to a movie. no, no, no. please don't drag me outta bed to referee your wrestling contest with your other thirty year-old friends.

here's the deal: we don't like the mellow mushroom. or television shows involving other grown people caught on video crashing their bikes. or their segues. and i, at least, hate drugs. you should know that.

we're finally admitting it after ten years: we will never be the cool girlfriend who gets along with anyone, no matter how heinous. we have opinions. about you and other things. we will play darts and pool and drink beer and shower and occasionally wear make-up. we will say thank you. however, we will not allow bongs on our coffee tables. or your feet.

nobody does it better. by carly simon. morgan family theme song:

2008-08-04T14:40:00.003-04:00

frankly, i have little to say to you people. that being said, i'm sick of looking at the tirade below. i don't take it back. am just feeling more butterflies and orchids this week.

now, if my mother knew how to work a digital camera (or an alarm clock, for that matter) i might have famously good pictures to accompany this post. perhaps a season from now...

my family borrowed a truck and went to the IKEA in atlanta yesterday. we left at ten and got there at--wait for it--3:15, a mere three hours behind schedule. this is, of course, because we stopped for lunch at murphy's in the virginia highlands. now, i despise atlanta. but if you could get me a house in the highlands and a table at murphy's every sunday: i'm there.

we had a lot of wine at lunch. pinot gris. chardonnay. sauvignon blanc. we hit up more varietals than anyone should in one sitting. we fell in love with randy, our hungover waiter who said too much. as in, "i realize it's taken me ages to get to you guys. from now on, i will be speedy. probably." we watched the poor woman at the bar reading the kiterunner get hit on, like, 8 times. why do men think women sitting at a bar READING want company? we don't.

so, when we got lost on the way to said swedish store, my mother muttered, "at least we're absolutely sure we won't wind up in germany." i have no idea what this means.

IKEA itself is not something i'm ready to talk about holistically. overwhelming. so many desks. and honeybuns. and small people running about unattended.

my father fell asleep in three different makes of rattan chair. and when he said, "where do we get a cart to fill up?" i said, "i think they bring it to our car."

i think they bring it to our car. nothing has ever been farther from the truth. and after hauling boxes of shelves and chaise into our truck, we had to leave my beloved orange poang chair behind.

it was hell. and when i tried to photograph my father, he shooed away the camera much like the person in the limo who hasn't got the final rose after the producers tell her to look into the lens and say how it feels to be rejected. or janice dickinson just before she lashes out at some innocent person.

on the way home, i sat in my mother's lap with my feet on the dash. whenever a cop came up from behind, my father yelled "LAW" and i ducked. we sang "devils and dusk," rufus & chaka khan's "tell me something good" and louis armstrong until i fell asleep. then we bribed my next door neighbor with sierra nevada anniversary beer to help me bring it all in.

finally, after crying through the freedom writers (not a particularly good movie, but still), i tried to put together my left-arm chaise...which turned out to be a right-arm.

audacity watch and other famous republican ideas:

2008-07-31T10:37:00.005-04:00

each quarter my father, a staunch democrat, receives a letter in the mail from the republican national committee inquiring about his membership renewal. it makes him crazy. it would make me something more than that. perhaps the spawn of mel gibson and courtney love crazy.

it is not that i don't like republicans. it's that i can't stand them. i can think of only one passionate republican i care for, and it's my friend chad who escorted me to poetry readings at the local women's college while we were in school. he has half a brain and likes to fight, two things i respect.

in case there are right-wingers who actually read this blog (though i can't imagine they'd stick around for too long): i am a relatively moderate person who refrains from wearing clothes made out of recycled seat belts. i do not live in a tree, nor do i plan to chain myself to one in the near future. i read both the local paper and the times each morning and watch CNN during a daily four-mile run (when i'm not watching 106 & park). i am not a nit-wit who wants some sort of ghandi for president. i want barack obama. and now.

so, on the front page of the times this morning:

on wednesday alone, the mccain campaign released a new advertisement suggesting--and not in a good way--that mr. obama was a celebrity along the lines of britney spears and paris hilton. republicans tried to portray obama as a candidate who believed that the race was all about him...the republican national committee began an anti-obama web site called (WAIT FOR IT...) "audacity watch," a play on the title of mr. obama's book "the audacity of hope."

the republicans (how can i phrase this...) have lost their flipping heads. audacity? AUDACITY? first of all, of COURSE he's arrogant. of COURSE he thinks the race is about him. he's running for the role as PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. that's like saying kids on reality shows are self-involved. stunning insight, right-wingers. also, ALSO, when i think of audacity i think of countries who enter entire other countries uninvited. i think of old, wealthy white men who like to control the reproductive rights of poor, hispanic women. i think of a man hitting a golf ball into the window of someone else's home while an american city--one that represents culture, color, music, and individuality--goes under water.

the democratic party is deeply flawed. agreed. but it is a party that is oiled by a humanitarian enthusiasm, a sense of compassion. when i was a kid, my parents always ignored this one couple in church. i never knew why, when they were so friendly to others. finally, my mother said,

"once, we had a huge dinner party in the big dining room. that man said the N word at the table and your father walked over and physically removed him from our home. he hasn't spoken to him in twenty years."

that is the sort of integrity our country needs to pull us out of the embarrassing spot we're in.

give me one reason to think hell isn't a place filled with elizabeth hasselbacks, pat robertsons, and dick cheney.

these are a few of my favorite things...

2008-07-29T22:39:00.003-04:00

not to worry. i'm not about to take up skirt-hemming or pic-a-nic basket-packing.

however. i don't teach for three weeks, and i'm back from a whirl wind of seeing the people i love and drinking good wine and catching up.

so...the next phase:

for someone who likes to go out a lot, i've discovered that i don't like to go out a lot. and so, in lieu of this, i've been charting what truly makes me happy. in the smallish ways.

1. tomatoes with salt and pepper. they don't even need to be sliced. i'll just pour s &p into the bite marks. "she would take a diced up tomato from the garden, a big, red thing, not those fake, pink things that new yorkers eat and don't know no better..." -rick bragg

2. ice cubes in my white wine.

i'm done caring about what it looks like, how the ice is surely knocking out any fragrance of limestone and gooseberry. don't care. like it cold. kiss it.

3. my mother's face. i saw it today, before she went under for an outpatient surgery, innocent and nervous. no one is luckier than me. i don't suspect it. i know it. and it's none of your business why.

4. yard sales. blue glass bottles that only hold a sprig of a flower.

5. i took up painting today, and i'll tell you why. i need a painting in the bedroom and my favorite artist, page, is very expensive (as well she should be). so, i started to save, but thought better of it. i got the canvas and paints from AC moore, an easel from my parents. we shall see. as long as it's abstract no one can tell me, "it doesn't LOOK LIKE a swan."

6. this video. alas. the marriage between barack and lil wayne. thank you, will, the student i was never lucky enough to have:

all over but the shoutin'

2008-07-28T23:24:00.004-04:00

one of the various perks to being single (assuming, of course, you are both single and an absolute nerd), is getting to read yourself to sleep.

now, i know some settled-in couples who read on their respective sides of the bed (my parents). prerequisites include but are not limited to: the both of you READ (less common than you'd think) and you've been together a long time. if you read together before bed AND you're a new couple, i have my concerns. aren't there OTHER things you should be doing to get to know one another? now, i'm not talking about what you think i'm talking about. except that, of course, i am. but also: movies, beers on the porch, various nighttime events you pretend to enjoy so that the other person will love you...

sure, any jennifer aniston romantic comedy involving cotton camis and boxers will tell you otherwise. mr. big and carrie might have you think couples sit beside each other, nestled in a gazillion thread count sheets, reading voltaire aloud to each other. not the case, in my experience. not at all the case.

i am only halfway through rick bragg's all over but the shoutin' and it is my favorite book. hell, it could end with marge simpson jumping rope for all i care, and it would still be my favorite book.

this, from only the PROLOGUE, people:

this is not an important book. it is only the story of a strong woman, a tortured man, and three sons who lived hemmed in by thin cotton and ragged history in northeastern alabama, in a time when blacks and whites found reason to hate each other and a whole lot of people could not stand themselves. anyone could tell it, anyone with a daddy who let his finer nature slip away from him during an icebound war in korea, who allowed the devil inside to come grinnin' out every time a sip of whiskey trickled in, who finally just abandoned his young wife and sons to the pity of their kin and to the well-meaning neighbors who came bearing boxes of throw away clothes.

you can read this, alone, and cry diane-keaton-style-a la-something's-gotta-give (as hannah would say). you can read this, alone, with a shot glass of cheap yellow tail sparkling by your bed, the same shot glass with white daisies on it your grandmother from new orleans left for you. and there's no one around to bug you about it besides yourself. and god, of course, who's probably elsewhere anyway, watching obama's berlin speech over and over again. on youtube.

Mamie keeps yelling, Blog! at me.

2008-07-27T14:12:00.002-04:00

Which is tricky, because I’ve been writing something else. And we all know how well I multi-task. Sometimes, I have to tell people on the phone, Sorry I trailed off just then, I had to put down this book.

Besides that, there is nothing terribly exciting happening right now. Unless you count my father making up social security numbers for the kids. I needed the numbers for my taxes.

These are not the right numbers, I told him. I spent hours on the phone with the IRS and Social Security Administration. These numbers don’t belong to them.

I was afraid of that, my father said.

The kids have been calling to prove that I didn’t make them up. Kan told me not to cry because we’re not just best friends, but best sisters. And then Aaron recited ‘i carry your heart with me’ by ee cummings. Seriously.

Meanwhile, I’m spending my time in coffee shops, where the women beside me are saying things like, She’s just got so fat. Or alternately, My yard boy’s name is Clemente. He has clippers. He has trouble understanding things, so you need to speak loudly. But Clemente has clippers.

What else. Something embarrassing usually works. When I walked into the theatre with Mamie, I somehow fell under a seat and couldn’t extricate myself. I kept partially getting up, only to fall down under the seat again. It went on like that for ages. Also, Ledger was brilliant. It was heartbreaking to watch him, but he was brilliant in that movie.

massaging the miser:

2008-07-22T14:02:00.004-04:00

so, until this morning i had forgotten about the credit i have at a local day spa. the reason i have credit is that, about two seasons ago, i went in on a whim for a half hour massage. the massage was excellent. it also lasted about 17 minutes.

now, while in "real" life i'm no walk in the park, as a spa client i'm pretty low maintenance. i mean, you put me in a robe and give me a glass of sparkling and trail mix...after that you've really got to try to make me mad. (examples include but are not limited to: waxing my eyebrows so thin that i look like a gangsta, putting the steam all up in my grill during a facial, cutting cuticles).

so, it took me a full day to call management and say, "look. 17 minutes. not okay."

i jogged past the place today, stopped, turned, went in, made massage appointment for thirty minutes later.

"do you want a male or female," she asked.

okay, back story: when i was nineteen, a male massage therapist assaulted me in charleston. not kidding. will refrain from going into detail. and, ever since, i've only gone to gays and girls. inexplicably, though, today i said:

"a man. a manmanman."

no idea why i said it. okay, perhaps some foggy clue...

anyway, chet was nice and tall and attractive and named chet. here's the thing, though. he spent--i'm not kidding--twenty minutes on my face.

as in, my chin and stuff.

then, an inordinate amount of time laboring away at my clavicle, my heels, an elbow.

meanwhile, i spent a large amount of time sunday straddling the bathtub and painting my CEILING, so this obscure little part of body called the BACK was left killing me.

and, as we all know, i was so angry sunday that i ran four miles listening only to "a milli." so my legs weren't great either.

anyway: weird. weirdweirdweird.

mamie morgan: a day/study/post in status updates

2008-07-18T00:16:00.004-04:00

hopes she can get it out of her system now so she can worry about other, less egocentric things.

is ordering a diet coke, lemonade, and water from chick-fil-a.

agrees that calvino is a wizard, but is having trouble with him all the same.

wonders if hannah's phone died, or if she's just hung up on her.

doesn't know how to define "whimsical" for a student who has never heard that word before.

is frustrated by the waitress at wild wings who says to her, after handing over the bill, "you'll notice i didn't charge you for your soda." mamie morgan thinks this takes the beauty out of gift giving.

misses sally.

is confused: why chicken wings? today of all days? after five years of going without...

is excited about her niece's fine arts day camp showcase. wonders what a six year-old will be showcasing.

would like to have dinner with tori, dean, liam, and stella.

doesn't believe there's fat in french press coffee, like blake has said.

stares at the domino magazine, not sure that she could pull off painting a room navy.

is the biggest boss that you've seen thus far.

dances in the wait station to "get silly" with a coworker.

is running to a milli, by l'il wayne.

is dissatisfied by hogue chenin blanc.

wishes the foreign businessmen would have left her more than 12%.

feels like her car is taunting: i know you are, but what am i?

thinks mama mia! is going to be awesome. or god awful.

loves the vanity fair young hollywood addition. wishes she were 18. and kristen stewart.

feels uncomfortable about status updates. and how often to post them. wonders if it's come to this.

is nail-biting and checking the mail each day for fennelly's the unmentionables.

thinks anchor steam isn't all it's cracked up to be.

misses morgan j. and karaoke.

can't get paz out of her head. ever. can never conclude who "the blindfolded equilibrist who dances on the tightrope of a smile" is.

can't sleep. wishes to be on hannah's balcony. wishes her rebates would come in the mail. reads the country between us again. scrubs the bathroom.

work.

2008-07-17T08:36:00.003-04:00

talking about book projects is as dangerous as talking about, oh i don't know, the story behind your tattoos. that being said:

i've been trying to map how a collection of essays about "work" could become some sort of scrapbooked memoir. you know: bartending at sixteen. running a trainwreck of a day spa. seven days at victoria's secret. teaching. but the idea of work. work and collaboration. (for example: morgan became my friend because she was my boss at said day spa.)

so, i took myself out to dinner with a copy of labor days, an anthology of fiction about work that was put together by david gates. anyway, the bartender asks what i'm doing. i tell her. she says:

did you see rachel ray yesterday?

me: of course not.

her: 52 JOBS IN 52 WEEKS!!!

she's yelling this. i swear. so i googled, and it turns out some guy named sean aiken spent a year working a different job every week...due to the fact that he doesn't know what he wants to "do" with his life. all the proceeds go to charity.

http://www.oneweekjob.com/

this is a cool, proactive idea. this is also why i hate rich people:

when i walked into my parents' house the other day, my mom was sitting on the couch with every single issue of garden & gun magazine. ("god. it sounds like an intervention," hannah said.)

mom says, "you should intern at garden & gun for six months. just say, 'you don't have to pay me. just give me a job.'"

me, fuming: "mom, if i had fifty thousand dollars in savings, i'd intern for a whole year. but i don't have the funds to get my foot in the door, as it were."

you don't have to pay me. just give me a job.

you know. for the experience.

annie, annie, annie, my annie: part deux

2008-07-15T22:55:00.002-04:00

okay, i get it now.

not so much a "nevermind" but a turning over of my soul to her.

it happened sometime during the twenty-second tango (XXII. HOMO LUDENS):

The husband swallows his ouzo and waits for its slow hot snow inside him.
Mozart
(so his wife told him at lunch)
scored his Horn Concerto

in four different colors of ink: a man at play.
A husband whose wife knows just enough history to keep him going...

i don't like her, per se. but there's something so stunning about her ability. or something about her ability to be stunning...

anne carson is making me crazy.

2008-07-14T09:55:00.006-04:00

on the way to my parents' house yesterday, i stopped by the book store to see what was happening between A-Rod and madonna. keep in mind, i'd been reading carson's the beauty of the husband all morning. sentences like:

"his immortal horses swathed in pandemonium" or "her lady shadow mounted the stairs ahead of her experimentally." don't get me started.

and by that i mean, i already have. for years, my friends have hounded me to read the genre-bending tango writer. my brother-from-another-mother, john (a poet out of portland), has been onto her for years. unless that was annie prioux. or dillard...

that she uses keats as some sort of thematic thread is terrifying. all of her binaries (woman as victim vs. utterly deplorable man) to his negative capability...i just don't see how it works.

don't get me wrong, she very nearly seduces me with lines like, "ray grinned his beautiful wicked grin like a skirt flying up." and hannah says if i haven't read plainwater, "there's no point in having this conversation."

so, anyway, mid hi brow/low brow shift yesterday, i run into one of my strongest students from two years ago. in his hand: calvino and a chinese dictionary.

it very nearly made me run head long toward proust.

what trumps even madonna's affairs in the world of meaningless gossip is the relationship between jessie and deanna. i.e. the bachelorette.

i love it. as far as the low brow goes: my second year in wilmington, morgan (j. not niece) and i developed a "drinking" game. i put it in quotes because many mondays we chugged sprite. anyway, any time a girl said, "the right reasons" we drank. you can see...

so, my main questions are:

1. why am i supposed to love carson?
2. what does deanna pappas do for a living? seriously. it doesn't say anywhere.

in my way alone don't leaves me

2008-07-13T10:45:00.002-04:00

that was the content of my text to mamie on the night of the 4th. except it was all spaced out, so alone was actually alone on the screen.

we were both surprised to find it there in her phone the next day. heads cocked to the side. obviously i meant: on my way to you but only because you need me; i am magnificently independent otherwise.

and mamie, that picture had to come down. are you kidding me. i was peeking around you (because you were on my lap) with this totally oily look that was all: 'psssst... i am a creep, but you know you want to hang out with me. in bed." so, no. any other picture is fine.

reason number 1, 437 to love my sister:

2008-07-11T09:23:00.003-04:00

molly just called, during my morning class. so i step out into the hall and answer, sure that one of these days the call will be about someone being in a hospital (knock on anything even resembling wood).

she says, "hey. i'm in the depths of wal-mart. trying to figure out the FLIPPING difference between starbucks breakfast blend and house blend. i mean, what the hell?"

me: uh, i don't know. i mean, breakfast blend sounds better...

her: i am irate. did you see the morning show yesterday? they were talking about how to "cut corners" while the economy's down. only, they didn't interview, you know, NORMAL people. they talked to these rich couples who were like, 'we're getting up five minutes earlier to brew our own coffee. it's hard, but we're doing it. and my husband's learned how to wash HIS OWN car.' i mean, can you believe it, mame? then, the woman's all like, FIGURED OUT how to cook. me? i've cut about all the corners you can. and years ago.

it's not you. it's hannah.

2008-07-09T09:18:00.003-04:00

here's the thing: she's trying to finish the book. thus, empty promises abound. "i'll blog tonight," she says. "i'll post in the morning," she says. next thing we know, she'll NEVER finish the deck i'm having her build out back. she'll come home mysterious, equipped with new hobbies and hair product. even now, to me, she is only a woman in a white coat on the other side of the ocean. (who did i steal that from...miranda july?)

meanwhile, i'm fielding questions from fourteen year-olds. or, equally maddening answers.

"why write poetry instead of fiction?" i ask.

"because poetry's tons easier," one girl says, earnestly.

my only warning is: if she doesn't blog soon, i'll have to resort to playlists.

love, us. (almost forgot the comma)

2008-07-04T17:29:00.003-04:00

we don't just have matching luggage, watches, jewelery, bathing suits... today, we read to each other by the pool while full-grown men played leap-frog in the water and pounded Michelob Ultras.

so, our gift to you. because we'll post degrading night out pics later but right now we're just trying to break your heart with this, from neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Merwin trans):

Tonight I can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think I do not have her. To feel like I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting so long.

Because through the nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and thse the last verses that I write for her.

ta dahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

2008-07-03T08:57:00.002-04:00

in the spirit of america day, i'm heading to wilmington...blazing past on the border, whiteville, whatever's in my path.

if you can believe it, hannah and i have only seen each other once in ten months...and that was for fourteen hours.

strange. judging by our blog tone, it seems we live together in an attic of an old farmhouse in one of the dakotas. without heat or air or episodes of house and the bachelorette on at every turn. the truth, friends, is far different.

and, i'm just going to say it. while we talk on the phone four to eight times a day (seriously), we always get really awkward the first hour or so we're together. like, we can't quite look at each other. it's like the worst long distance romance, without all that awkward i-haven't-seen-you-in-a-month-do-i-still-know-how-to-do-this intimacy stuff.

best part: NEW PICTURES!!!

something's better than nothing. i suppose...

2008-06-30T15:16:00.003-04:00

an old guy just tipped me with a mood ring. it's on my first finger. a gleaming, electric, cobalt blue. i feel like i'm in a cheesy dolphin painting.

more this evening. we promise.

Dear Mamie:

2008-06-24T10:02:00.001-04:00

This day, you were born. And because of this, I owe you a love letter. I just stared at my screen for a full twenty minutes, drumming my fingertips on the table.

This guy just walked in, and I was all, “I hope he drinks his coffee here because I’d way rather stare openly at him than write this post.” Then I realized that we know him, and that you declared him hot a full five years ago. And I felt a combination of guilt and annoyance. Damn you, and your presence everywhere.

This past weekend should have been spent in Greenville and in case I didn’t make it clear by sobbing, I have never regretted more being so far away. As in, I wish I could have been there in person last night to have heard your sister say to you, “Oh my god, in that knit dress I can totally see your ass cheeks moving. Separately.”

Instead, I ran into someone who remarked that he’d never have a chance with a girl like you. And then he asked me out.

This is not the best train of thought to generate my more tender (gross, sorry) feelings for you. But I know how you love for me to talk about you, so. This past year has been, in many ways, a train wreck for both of us. But it’s the truth that I would never have made it, had you not distracted me with your shouts and abuse. Hard to curl up in a ball and deny the world, if someone calls you at 7am to say sweet nothings like, “You’re pathetic. You’re the worst friend ever.” Or to panic about isolation if, as you’re talking about it, your best friend just hangs up on you. None of this will, or should, make sense to anyone else, but you know the way to my heart: abuse and inconsistency. And of course the fact that behind it all beats the biggest and most generous heart. Am typing v. fast now to get this over with. You make me laugh when I’m pretty sure jumping is the best idea. That’s it. That’s all you get.

Love,
Hannah
PS. WE HAVE MATCHING LUGGAGE.

exhibits A and B

2008-06-23T21:57:00.002-04:00

exhibit A:

out of all our lipstick lesbian olan mills shots, this one is the best. shot in my childhood best friend anne-elizabeth's new nursery.

let's just say: as kids, anne-elizabeth drove to tryon each morning at 5 am to shovel shit to earn money for a horse. she's been known to spit tobacco. once, i caught her getting out of her F-350 at a gas station in NC...preparing to buy dorals, boiled peanuts, and a jelly doughnut.

which is why the nursery is so funny. pink and beige walls. pink UGG boots. a glass tear drop chandelier. twenty plus smocked dresses and monogrammed booties for a baby that will not be born until august...

most importantly, i learned this at the baby shower: BUMBO!!!!!!
bumbos are baby coozies. not coozies for the bottle. an ACTUAL coozie that you sit your baby in. like a bean bag chair. the little person just sort of conforms to the shape. it even comes in a shade called "lilac."

exhibit B:

my mother's been keeping a very large birthday present for me in my sister's old bedroom at home. which has made me crazy with curiosity. a bike? a chaise lounge?

well, they all came to my place tonight....

it's an ironing board. a very NICE ironing board. and, as my nephew unwrapped my birthday presents as i sipped gruner veltliner, we unraveled something else. they bought me a very NICE michael kors piece of luggage.

only, i told hannah this tonight and discovered...she has the very same one. so, this post is quite cyclical, actually. we will be the cutest matching lipstick lesbian couple on our flight to...

PORTLAND!

tell me about it, morgy.

2008-06-23T00:10:00.003-04:00

needless to say, my older sister's karma is that she gave birth to me. me on girlpowerdivanessandwit steroids. so, the above is a physical representation of how morgan feels today. she's sick. it hurts in her "throat and the middle of my brain." which must suck. also, she wants to color but will only color along the right hand side of the notepad. she's even, apparently, inheriting my OCD.

my own house is making me stupid, the adult form of sick. i can't work here. am only able to watch the secret diary of a call girl and the soup. my greatest ambitions here are to unload the dish washer and frame my seamus heaney print. but i must critique the thirty-four poems my students gave to me friday. by tomorrow.

so i go out for a drive. and there's no better time than the four-dollars-a-tank present. only, in the outback, i have two emotional temperatures warring with one another: one begs to blare l'il wayne's "lollipop" and M.I.A's "paper planes" (thanks to the seniors who exposed me to it). the other is listening to "if it's the beaches," by the avett brothers, and crycrycrying.

finally, i settle on the sushi bar. for a glass of red wine (to which i am allergic) and some edamame. my eyes cross after working on four poems. it feels like i've crossed out the word "abyss" 800 times. i turn to the outlining of a nonfiction piece i'm forever outlining and not writing.

the jacked up bartender says:

"you know what's cool about you?"

it's rhetorical, and yet i look at him, annoyed.

"everyone else seems to come here to rock out hard."

i stare at him, trying to keep my eyes open. the men beside me take shots of "gran mon."

"but you, you come to relax. it's SO WEIRD."

in the background: a singer-songwriter covering matchbox twenty...

ahem.

2008-06-19T09:30:00.002-04:00

a prelude: hannah is somewhere rolling her eyes.

so, earlier in the week the boyfriend made mention of cooking dinner. something to the effect of, "you're off wednesday night? i'm off wednesday night. maybe i'll cook." i mean, it was that casual. as in, we might stay in. just as easily, we might go out and play darts.

i should have known. there were clues that dinner wouldn't be chicken and rice. one: he's a chef. but two: as i stepped out of the house at 6:15 for a faculty reading, he was coming in...with about a thousand shopping bags for just as many grocers. and, inexplicably, sake.

when i got home he said, "perfect timing. i'm just about to plate the first course." seriously.

the menu:

I. heirloom and melon salad, served with fresh goat cheese, mixed greens, sunflower seeds, and a lemon thyme vinaigrette

II. tuna, served rare, rolled in sesame seeds. over cabbage, garlic and shallot slaw. topped with honsemheji* mushrooms

III. seared rack of lamb, served with a vegetable hash

IV. strawberry mochi (kinda like ice cream) topped with peaches and cream

and i, i contributed a bag of ice.

*i asked bo--no lie--eleven times what kind of mushrooms they were. then, i woke him up this morning at 6:45 (when i was walking out the door) and asked him again. then, i just sort of stared at him sleeping. not in a creepy way. as in, this motherf*cker gets to sleep for FOUR more hours. which made me want to punch him in the stomach.

what light

2008-06-17T13:42:00.004-04:00

*click on individual pics to blow them up

in equally divine matters: i'm heading to greenville this weekend to celebrate mamie's bday with her. i can't wait to be there already, with her falling sideways into rose bushes... because right now, she's doing that micro-managing thing she's always talking about her mother doing. except, she's totally oblivious to doing it.

mame: i don't micro-manage.

me: you just told me when to come, as in what hour i needed to leave wilmington. i'm going to blog about how micro-managing you are.

mame: just as long as you open with...

me: i can't hear you because i just hung up.

earlier that day...

me, upon hearing the bloop-bleep sound of a fancy car: what's that noise? did a car just honk at you?

her, from her outback: no, it's me. see, my car's just like me. it thinks it's a lamborghini.

yeah. and there was this one time i may have slept with a bookmark they signed.

2008-06-17T00:49:00.004-04:00

about a half hour ago, i woke to alarms coming from one condo over. kate, my neighbor, had fallen asleep with black beans and rice on the stove. sweet kid, but she's clearly going to kill us all before it's over.
so other than a glass of hibiscus tea and octavio paz, watching avett videos on youtube is the only thing that makes me feel sleepy and safe. (what? the boyfriend's out having a man date with seven of his friends.)
so, here 'tis: your monthly avett fix.
i choose this one not because scotty avett is shirtless and smirking in parts. frankly, i resent those allegations. clearly, my motivation is the artistic tension created by pitting the domesticity (cereal?! seth avett, god of concord, eats cereal?) against the rootless life of the road. obviously, that is my motivation...

OHGOD OHGOD. FREAKING OUT...

2008-06-16T15:55:00.007-04:00

AOL HAS BEEN CHARGING (DRAFTING!!!! FROM!!! MY!!! ACCOUNT!!) ME $25.90 FOR AN UNAUTHORIZED ACCOUNT FOR....

THREE YEARS. THREE. YEARS. $932.40.

The bank account is one that I have in reserve, i.e. not my primary accounts, and so I somehow missed that these amounts were drafting. And they were posting, not as AOL, but as TWX*. And and and, get this: an attempt had been made to hack into that account before that, and so it had fifty different security measures in place. Apparently, not enough.

And now, AOL needs 3-6 months to 'investigate' before they consider refunding those charges. I had to fight to speak with a manager ('he'll just tell you the same thing') and he, in turn, said I should call another department. What's their number? Oh, they don't actually take PHONE CALLS, but they do have a fax number, and their response time is estimated at 4-6 weeks by post.

The account screen name, ironically, is cancel1120.

Unfortunately, I know the truth: which is that even I, a person who is beyond determined and merciless in these situations, will not be able to expedite this process. It took me 45 MINUTES to get a live person on the line.

A few years ago, Sprint double-billed me for 6 months and refused for another year and a half to compensate me for those charges, offering minutes instead. I was routinely hung up on, and once actually thrown out of their store after asking (politely!) for a manager.

I'm ill-suited to this aspect of our modern world. And am afraid I will be bewildered and outraged and spluttering every time it happens. Here's what I predict: in 12-16 months, IF I spend countless frustrated hours taking down names and printing off statements and making phone calls and being put on hold... nothing will happen. So, because in these instances I actually cease being human and become bulldog, I will pursue it for another 2 yrs, and finally get a quarter of it back ('We are prepared to settle for 3 months of charges') and buy myself a bottle of lithium because by then I'll be insane.

sybil: a post in four letters/voices

2008-06-14T11:21:00.006-04:00

I. to the jerk who was mean to morgan at cheerleading camp:

listen, kid. i don't know who you are and she won't tell me. but something happened in that gymnasium between 8 am and noon and i want to know what it was. she didn't speak the rest of the day but claimed nothing was wrong. which one of you stole her cheer? i know, of course, what the impetus was: you're all threatened by her outpouring of spirit. no six year-old has mastered the creepy smile, the rod-straight arms above the head in a V, the way my morgan has.

listen: i will mess you up. in case you didn't know this, kid, i lack the filter that makes adults sympathetic toward little people. man to man. and if you think for a second you can hide out the rest of this month in your carpool leader's highlander, you are sorely mistaken.

II. to the ford taurus with that damned bumper sticker, "i love my wife."

i don't believe you. seriously, guy, if you need an i-love-my-wife sticker...i'm convinced you're spending a great deal of time not loving her. and, i imagine, loving a great deal of graham evangelists instead. cancel the dinner reservations when she's tired. take the kids, for once, to chic-fil-a so she can, you know, breathe. SHOW DON'T TELL. or, OR, she's done this. SHE put the sticker on your ford. in which case: GET OUT. GET OUT NOW.

III. to my way2save account at wachovia.

i don't say this a lot, but: i love you. i love everything about you. i love that when my tab is $3.47 at starbucks, you charge me $4.47 and call it a day...thus shoving a WHOLE LIVE DOLLAR into my savings account. i have saved 24 dollars in ten days. it feels like playing the slots. i check that shit hourly. and, frankly, while i know this has to be some sort of bank scam: i don't know how to quit you.

IV. to table 24, last monday.

call off the wedding. seriously. when you sat down and ordered wine ("she'd love a glass with a bit of sweetness, and i'm down for a heavy cab") i fell in love. after all, you people were and are goodlooking. you were polite and funny and knew wine. i wanted to, you know, hang out at marble slab on our off day. but then, THEN, the weird stuff started to happen. you began fighting about the impending wedding. loudly. as in, "JEFF DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT IF HE SITS BESIDE BETSY AT THE REHEARSAL DINNER." and then crystal left the table THREE times. and you, guy, called for her to "sit the f down" while diners ate around you.

but that's not so weird. what's totally psychotic is when i approached (because I HAVE TO. i'm you're waitress) and said, "how are we doing over here," you guys said, in unison, without a trace of irony, "we're awesome. just relaxing. babe, you wanna stay for another glass?" "whatever you want, honey."

creepy. getouttathere. now.

it wasn't a dream it was a flood:

2008-06-08T22:32:00.004-04:00

if you have ever picked up an old Nehi bottle buried in a ditch
for two cents and poured the muddy water and seen a tadpole
beating his tail on the new hot mix asphalt that the prisoners
was made to lay down just the other day that stuff still crawling over the weeds
and all and you see that tadpole like the black rag of a flag
flapping on a dead mast then you know what i mean you know
what people will do to one another
-frank stanford, the battlefield

strange, i think, that we've named our sarcastic, often glib, blog after frank stanford's battlefield where the moon says i love you. to be fair, hannah and i are blubbering, emotional idiots much of the time. true nerds, to the core, who will argue a book's arc, its intentions, its character development...to the death. but rarely does that part of ourselves come to light on the blog. and for good reason, you ninnies.

this morning i woke and put on the dress i wore yesterday and the day before yesterday. i went to a local coffee shop and proceeded to devour the battlefield. i cried on and off at the outdoor table for three solid hours. it didn't help that they played josh ritter's "girl in the war," seemingly, on repeat.

at brown, in 1983, c.d. wright (stanford's lover and estate supervisor...following his suicide?) staged an all night reading. students took fifteen minute intervals to read from the 400 page poem that lacks any punctuation. this included undregrads, but also michael ondaatje, alan dugan, and forrest gander. people camped. the reading began at sundown and lasted until 10 the next morning.

i must say this is what led me, first, to tears. the sheer desire for poetry and for the communion of poetry. how foreign this seems to me, and distantly familiar.

tomorrow morning hannah is taking the children to new york, where they will then fly westward, until they wind up in the east. i am beginning a pedagogy class in the morning where i am to teach fifty year-olds how to write poetry. it is ridiculous, this life, and strange, and beautiful. and so, if we often forget to say so, we feel these things to the dams of ourselves, which is why we often choose to laugh instead.

because none of you know what you want
follow me
because i'm not going anywhere...
-frank stanford

Last Days (and how we're choosing to spend them)

2008-06-05T21:53:00.009-04:00

We knew we were in Myrtle Beach when Eric spied some massive dude wearing a shirt that said “This is Bush & Cheney Country 04.” Which made me think of that awful movie The Langoliers (based on Stephen King's book), only the whole country is stuck in a time-warp, and in nothing so pleasant as an airport.

The kids, thankfully, were completely oblivious to anything less than magical. Like, oh I don’t know, the shirtless daddy felons pushing strollers along. A woman coughed, spat, took another drag off her cigarette. Kan said: “It’s just like Disneyland, except this is BETTER because here there is AN AQUARIUM.” (Flash forward ten years to her sense of utter betrayal because I did not correct this.)

We went to an IMAX film called Dolphins & Whales, narrated by Darryl Hannah… from Splash. The movie was the emotional equivalent of a bad acid trip. It’s good and it’s lovely… until it’s THE DEATH OF ALL HAPPY THOUGHTS. It was organized into vignettes with silent-movie-esque titles and descriptions; each would begin with Darryl Hannah whispering things like, “Looking into the eye of the Blue Whale is like looking into the soul of god” and close with, “But we’re killing it. It will soon be extinct. How many are left? Not many! Our grandchildren will never see it. And it’s YOUR FAULT. DO SOMETHING. NEVERMIND, THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO.” I almost started weeping because my life has ultimately led to the rapidly shrinking manatee population off the coast of Florida. Only three hundred are left! Aaron was gripping my hand and alternately muttering, “wow” and “oh no… oh no.” My happiest moment was when he leaned forward to pet the fluke of a whale, only to pat a man's bald spot in the next row. At the end of the movie, someone who sounded suspiciously like Sting, bemoaned the loss of the dolphins and whales in a specially written song.

I will not go into what took us to Planet Hollywood. Maybe because there were no rational steps, but only the exhausted aftermath of a Day with Children. Let’s just say that it was a blur and suddenly I was in a shabby room with life-sized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle statues and faded red carpet. The waitress gave us an orientation on our way to the table—“to the right, you have your ladies’ room, to the left you have the gift shop…”

At the table, Eric said, “Do you want to leave?” And I remember viciously saying, “YESYESYESYES.” And him going, “Really?” And the waiter walking up to take our order. It was like eating dinner in a Lou Reed song. There were crack addicts and tourists. There was a naked Jeff Goldblum hanging in a glass case above us. At the next table, a fat little girl was screaming, “MOMMA, STOP STEALIN MY FREAKIN FRIES!!” Charmed, I’m sure.

*The kids, by the way, are flying with me to New York Monday, so I can put them on a plane to Hawaii the next. There's no telling how badly I'll handle this in public. Am envisioning a dignified quiet on my end, but it's like how you envision break-ups to be (you know, the visions in which you're so stoic that people comment suspiciously on your self-reliance and pride). Only to find yourself swimming vats of bourbon and finally washing up at a bar to shout drunkenly at the crowd in the middle of your karaoke rendition of Free Bird.

i think i speak for both of us

2008-06-03T23:30:00.003-04:00

when i say that we are happy to scratch the move to ontario. obama for president!

so, uh... two guys are sitting in a bar: the crowd warmer

2008-06-02T22:25:00.003-04:00

because that is what i am. the crowd warmer. mamie calls & tells me to blog already. i can't, i tell her. i'm waiting on pictures of the naked jeff golblume from planet hollywood.

but, i say, i could totally blog abt you and bo and how it's making me sick.

long pause. yeah, she says. i mean, anything will be better than nothing. (IN OTHER WORDS: you couldn't really HURT the blog by writing something, and if you do, i'll fix it later)

here's the go: bo has resoled her boots, given her flowers, taken her to brunch. she has done nothing. maybe she's made him her zuchini and sour cream dish. today, bo asked for her house keys and instructed her to leave for a few hours.

oh jesus, i interrupt. i don't think i want to hear the rest.

oh, don't worry, it's not so romantic or anything. he just brought over a pressure washer and did my patio, put sealant down, and trimmed the hedges.

yeah, that's not romantic at all. HE ONLY DID EVERYTHING FOR HER, EVERY BIT OF MANUAL LABOR, SO SHE WOULD NEVER HAVE TO LIFT A FINGER.

i have been designated the following tasks in relationships: weeding, hedge-trimming, mowing, raking, painting, trash. occasionally i have been chastised for getting spray paint on the lawn which i had just weeded and raked.

goodnight, chicago!

built ford tough: the movie

2008-06-01T14:43:00.003-04:00

hannah, eric, and the children are at the ripley's museum in myrtle beach. really, we could just end the post right there.

but we won't. and, due to her absence and obvious dark fall into insanity, you've got me. who loves you, baby...

so, it's so odd, really, that the boyfriend and i just had the conversation about women's fashion and the male interpretation of it. this, spawned by my brand-spanking-new gladiator sandals.

i come home from work and he's craig-listing VINTAGE VESPAS. okay, yes: maybe in milan or siena these will do. but, my ex-football player/wrestler on a VINTAGE VESPA.

anyway, he says, "we could have matching ones. we could joust." then, without skipping a beat, he motions to my feet. "you've already got the shoes."

so, it has been brought to my attention that men do not like/don't understand:

*the capri pant (hey. i don't blame you on this one.)
*skinny jeans
*the loops in the shoulders of our dresses/blouses that keeps them on hangers. "no," i said to the boyfriend, "they're not supposed to CONNECT TO THE BRA."

anyway, long story even more long-winded, we meet at a swanky restaurant downtown for brunch this morning. i am wearing a black wrap dress and espadrilles. he, in all of his charm, is at the foot of the staircase in khaki shorts (the ones with SO MANY POCKETS), new balances, and a worn blue t-shirt that says "BUILT FORD TOUGH."

i shit you not. now, aside from initial mortification, this only makes me like him more. when i hissed, "jesus christ. this is a nice restaurant," he said, "not all the time."

not all the time? what the hell does that mean? keep in mind, he's the sous chef at an equally swanky restaurant. it's not like he doesn't know.

anyway, i've been fending off this sex and the city premiere stuff for three days. and i'm tired. and weak. so i'm going. it's going to be awful. I KNOW THIS. and what's worse, i'm going to be sober. no female-pack-of-trendy-wolves, even, could make me drink a cosmo.

oh yeah. a question for the boys: what else do you dislike in women's fashion? i'm just curious.

p.s. george bush spoke at the local college's commencement yesterday. thankfully, there were protests galore and many professors stood in protest. he said--GET THIS--he thinks america should work to build A CULTURE OF RESPONSIBILITY. george-i-level-entire-peoples-and-still-don't-understand-what-all-the-hoop-la's-about-bush. that's rich.

people don't dance no more; all they do is this: the interview

2008-05-28T22:48:00.003-04:00

well, this whole interview thing was bound to come to a screeching halt. here, hannah wants to post the second course...yadda, yadda, yadda. but, i think there should be increments. i mean, this isn't--suddenly--rachel ray and moesha.

so i said, stupidly, "songs."

love songs. break-up songs. dance songs.

this is, by far, one of the dumber blogging decisions i've made.

best dance song ever?

AT THE SAME TIME:

me: people don't dance no more. all they do is this. or, i'm a hustler baby. i just want you to know. it ain't where i been, but where i'm 'bout to go...

hannah: gershwin? "summertime," maybe? are we talking a fox trot or what?

later, i call her to talk break-up songs.

me: IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY! IT CAN'T BE THAT BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD. sheryl crow. obvi.

hannah (crying): ohmygod. "passing afternoon." iron and wine. saddest song. or warren zevon's--

me: warren g?

hannah: NNNNOOOOOOO! zevon. "keep me in your heart for awhile."

So, you're there with Hart Crane and Tim Gunn--What do you serve?: The Interview

2008-05-27T19:12:00.002-04:00

First course.

*Upon hearing what Mamie was recommending, I faintly recall saying something transparently competitive, like, “Ahhh, I see we’re both doing cold.” And then we pulled each other’s hair and shouted over Marlborough Sauvignon Blancs.

Mamie: okay, my favorite drinks and recipes are cheap and easy, so:

gazpacho:

2 medium size cucumbers
1 bunch shallots
2 whole tomatoes
1 medium size green pepper
2 cloves garlic
1 tp chopped parsley
2 small cans tomato juice
2 cups beef bouillon (or veg broth)
1 Tb vinegar
2 tps worcestershire sauce
1/2 tp tabasco

1. finely chop and combine veg, etc.

2. put in bowl and add everything else.

3. chill and serve. (serves 4)

i'd serve with a pilsner or glass (bottle) of chenin blanc.

MAY I SUGGEST:

thomas creek dockside pilsner (if you're so lucky as to live in the upstate, sc)
ken forrester chenin blanc (my friend and wine guru, danny baker, swears by this one: dry, full-bodied, herb-tinged, south african, and cheap cheap cheap)
______________________________________________________________________________________

Hannah: I’m doing complicated and expensive. (Not really. But in reaction to.)

The Handsomest Drowned Scallop Ceviche:

* 1 1/2 lb large sea scallops (I’m imagining this to be 20-25), remove weird ligament thing
* 3 tablespoons evoo
* salt/pepper
* 1 navel orange (can use kumquats instead)
* 2 tbspns fresh lime juice
* 2 cups seedless cucumber, thinly sliced, cored, etc
* couple tablespoons thinly sliced shallot
* ½ cup cilantro
*** if you’re feeling particularly sexy, as I often do (ahem), add any of the following: jalapenos, mango, papaya, pineapple, chives, EXCESSIVE AMOUNTS OF CILANTRO AS IT IS THE AWESOMEST HERB!!!!

Toss scallops with 1 tablespoon oil, salt & pepper then grill (using skewers if on a big electric or charcoal grill… if, like me, you have no such equipment, just use your grill pan). OR you can do what you’re supposed to do, which is make sure your scallops are v. good and eat raw.

While scallops cool, cut peel, including pith, from orange then cut segments free. You need a quarter cup. Stir in everything else, serve chilled.

Go with a Domaine Ostertag Gewurztraminer. Maybe a 2006. I think they have it at the Wine Sampler? If not, Pious will suggest something.

shake ya ass, watch yaself: the interview

2008-05-26T20:22:00.003-04:00

my question: what twelve people, dead or alive, would you have to dinner?

mamie:

geoffery chaucer
michelle obama
elford chapman morgan (my father's father, whom i've never met)
hart crane
sisyphus
ellen degeneres
winston churchill
scott avett
ralph ellison
elizabeth bishop
david sedaris
drew barrymore
jay-z
meryl streep

hannah:

marquez
calvino
johnny depp
humphrey bogart
my paternal grandfather
truman capote
robert downey jr.
sean penn
marilynne robinson
john stewart
matt laur
tom cruise
lauren bacall

i think we've both kept in mind "dinner party." it's not that we wouldn't want amy winehouse, jesus, eudora welty, james wright, and gertrude stein there...but who would look after them?

also, neither of us could think of a single woman we'd ever met or loved. it was this weird freeze. and then, for some reason, salma hayak came blazing back into our memory at the same time...

oh, and it turned out to be thirteen. alternate officers and what have you.

hannah: what subject, other than literature/writing (oh, because THAT we've mastered), would you profoundly like to know?

hannah: didn't we both think of astronomy? and then you backed out in favor of home ec or something? because astronomy made you panic? i might stick to astronomy. no, i want languages. or music. physics. no, definitely astronomy.

mamie: asshole. i wanted home ec because i can't clean a piece of monkfish or sew a dress hem. anyway, i say pre-colonial history. the story before the tyrant's story. fo sho.

let the adulation begin: the interview

2008-05-25T17:54:00.003-04:00

* dunno what mamie's on about. you love this.

mamie, on her question, which follows: while i realize this is my question, i hate "best" and "worst." i have a student who (seriously) has a panic attack when asked to choose one thing--favorite poet, city, what have you. if you know my mother, though, you know this is a particularly apt dilemma.

what is the best advice your mother ever gave you?

a. never wear shoes when hosting your own party.
b. there's gotta be heat. everything else, at some point, will go to hell. (she said this to a much younger me when i confessed i'd only kissed my boyfriend of 4 months 3 times. right now, to be fair, she and my father are in the outdoor shower at my beach house while we're all in here, pretending nothing out of the ordinary is happening.)
c. make your own money. do something you love that no one can take away from you.
d. if you put all the scraps on a pretty plate and cut all the ugly ends off, you've got a melange. not leftovers.
e. don't try to find a dessert better than champagne. you won't.
f. if you have fifty dollars to your name, spend it on great skin care.

hannah: had to go swimming into the dark and murky past for this one. to clarify, this is my dad's advice, not the words of a rebellious teen picking his nose in an alleyway, or of Blaine, the snooty white-clad character in Sixteen Candles, or of someone who is wealthy and wields some sort of terrible power. thought i'd blocked it all out, but now, thanks to mame, it comes rushing back...

a. cocaine will ruin your nose.
b. never cut corners at the grocery store.
c. if there's not a sign that says you can't, then you can.
d. always carry business cards. yes, even if you are twelve.
e. if there's a law, there's a loophole. find it.
f. don't sign anything without your attorney. yes, even if you are twelve.
g. look like you're meant to be there.

what junk you got in your trunk?

hannah: already regretting this one. i just moved. plus kids. so. sidewalk chalk and stencils, muddy pink ballet flats in a girl's size 13, one small pot, a bag of tennis balls (special! they never get flat), a file folder of letters, the title to mink island (which we all believe to have sunk in the intracoastal a few decades ago), zoloft, and a bottle of concannon.

mamie: aside from the obvious (and, by the way, f off...i just went out to my car and actually looked): a copy of wuthering heights on CD (read by freda dowie, with the help of ken drury), two tampons, a belk credit card bill from 2005 (i cancelled that account two christmases ago), a bottle of torrontes, a signed widespread panic poster that's been ripped in half, and a quilt my aunt minnie made...in case i'm ever camping/picnicking unexpectedly?

we know you don't care: the interview

2008-05-24T15:06:00.003-04:00

we are fully aware that you could care less about our opinions regarding politics, our affinity for chaise lounges or day beds (me, the former; her, the latter), obsessions, tastes, regrets, and emotional temperatures. there are entire teams of you, to be sure, who read our blog for precisely the same reasons we read yours: to laugh. at you. and judge.

which is fine. whatever gets you through the night, as it were.

but we've crafted something genius, if only genius to us. we plan to interview each other every day. we each think of one question and ask it. again, fully aware of the ego at hand. fully aware that we already know each other too well. that any more knowledge of the other might drive us off opposing cliffs.*

mine: what is the best cure for a hangover?

hannah: i guess if i know a hangover might be possible, i will drink water before bed, take four aleve. perhaps sleeping aid also to, you know, prolong the sleep. and, that next day: fried food (it will make you feel worse, but that's later), maybe swiss cheese and rosemary triscuits (there's something addictive to the triscuit). and the fetal position. the air conditioning set at fifty. a television marathon of sorts. lost. antm. any maraton will do. finally: make sure your phone is lost under a pillow or behind furniture, so you don't have to listen to mamie's shrill voice yelling for you to go on a run.

mamie: one crystal light on-the-go lemonade mixed with iced water. and a three mile run. preferably listening to: the pixies' "where is my mind?" and justin t-lakes' "sexyback."

hers: what is the most expensive thing you've bought in the last two months? price and description.

mamie: i hate this question. you just want me to look bad.

hannah: no. i want both of us to look bad.

mamie: i hate this question. it's masochistic and stupid, like all my hundreds of mix CD's with no labels. also, OUR APARTMENTS is the obvious answer. but fine. a trina turk paisley tunic. $232. wait! 20% off. so...$186.

hannah: a white casey day bed. $550. whatever. i was going to be funny, but my answer has been chased away by your bitterness and censure.

*in the future, questions are bound to carry emotional and intellectual weight. you know, we're just treading lightly is all.

p.s. hannah has a soul.

2008-05-21T11:37:00.002-04:00

i warned her about this p.s. i love you movie. i said, "that's the one, that's the one where i cried through the whole thing. then after. only to then yell at then-boyfriend, who did not cry, maybe you've never been devastated!!!!!!!!"

so she got what was coming to her, which we'll get to shortly.

i stayed up half the night reading my seniors' final portfolios and woke early to finish them. midway through a particularly strong student's, a certain swell-of-pride thing happened. and i started sobbing. at starbucks. at seven in the morning. so i call her, i say,

oh my god. i'm bawling. i'm just so proud of them.

her: jesus. you're pathetic. get it together.

me: i can't help it. they're just so good. and to be a part of that. and they're leaving.

her: i'm so embarrassed for you. get outta there. go some place where people can't see you. or hear you.

me: i gottagotoclass.

her: good. i'm going to watch p.s. i love you.

me: just you wait. in two hours this whole scenario is going to be flipped.

her: whatever. i'm going to show you just how heartless i am.

two hours later, the phone rings.

her (a blubbering mess): it's. just. so. sad.

me: what?

her: all of it. life. the fact that there are no jerry's in this world. that hilary swank could go on living in that beautiful place with all those beautiful clothes and not have a job or anything.

two hours later:

her: hey. i'm looking out my window and there are these kayakers in a cove. i can't tell if they're stranded or if they're happy being there. whatever. what are you doing?

what annoys me other than hannah: a post in 5 tangos

2008-05-15T23:00:00.004-04:00

1. the bumper sticker on the back of this F-6,750 truck, or whatever they're called: a man without a knife isn't much of a man at all. his W sticker doesn't so much bother me, seeing as how i am now immune to them.

2. portion control a and b:

a) my trainer (merry like the christmas, you might remember her) decided i should also see a nutritionist. nutritionist suggests i bring snacks to work! ones that might fulfill me in lieu of, you know, slabs of mahon cheese on chibatta bread. CRAISONS! she says. AND SMALL ZIP-LOCS FILLED WITH CASHEWS! PERHAPS SOME RAW CARROTS!!! this, before she tells me i can't drink diet coke. as some of you know, my fear of commitment is coupled with a total lack of respect for authority. i immediately drive at top speed to a jack-in-the-box for a jumbo soda.

b) the new wine bar that i love, in spite of the twenty dollar glass of wine, has a wonderful atmosphere. great view. fabulous range of wines (averaging in price 7-10 dollars...not the 18-46 you might expect). only, their food is miniature. like it should be in morgan's dollhouse.

reminds me of that sedaris essay where their meal in all comes to be about 3 ounces. when the server suggests dessert, sedaris sarcastically rubs his belly, says, "i just couldn't."

3. okay, fine. hannah. she's such a woman. she demands you react to her in a way she deems suitable. so today she says, "i have a garbage chute in my new place." keep in mind, while she's bestowing the good word, i'm opening my mail: the new box of checks with some incorrect address, a rejection letter from a shitty journal. i say, "really?" and she actually yells, "REACT!!! REACT, WOMAN!"

4. status updates on social networks. i feel inclined to partake in them and yet, does the pubic really care that you: just ate a hardee's biscuit, are mad at your girlfriend, are sore from running 6 miles, wish h. clinton would. just. stop (although, i rather like that one), or are SO EXCITED ABOUT THE WEEKEND. question mark.

5. george. he's quit smoking. i'm so nervous about this. i come into work in a dress today and he yells, "is it picture day?" the last time i wore a skirt he asked if i was a) applying for another job that day or b) hoping to see george clooney.

Chardonnay lifestyle, champagne budget

2008-05-14T19:51:00.001-04:00

When I waited tables, my strategy was simple: get the least busy section, actively resent any customers that found their way to the third floor balcony, demonstrate that resentment with not so subtle implications that their dress was ridiculous and their children insufferable, and finally to hide in the kitchen eating as much blue cheese dressing on crackers as possible.

On the other hand.

Her: I can’t talk, I’m going into work.
Me: Liar! It’s only 4.
Her: I know. I decided to start going in earlier now that I can.
Me: Oh dude, did someone find out you don’t have to teach so late?
Her: No. I just feel like I should go in earlier now that I can.

You, like me, are annoyed, incredulous, miffed. Go. In. Earlier. It’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard. I try to make excuses for her. Figure it must be the money, even if they do only make a buck fifty an hour without tips. But I figure it must be that, especially since when I talked to Mamie in the middle of the afternoon the other day and asked what she was doing, she said: “Putting money in my piggy bank.” If it’s money for that damn piggy bank, then I’m worried.

But it’s not. “Are you being, like, responsible?” I try dubiously. This is a topic that makes me supremely uncomfortable.

Her, exasperated: God. No. It’s just I’m a real bitch to everyone. And I don’t want them to be able to say, Yeah, but Mamie comes in thirty minutes later.

Me: So, you just want to feel justified in being mean as hell to everyone?

Her: YES! Gotta go.

Me: You’re crazy. I bet you’re the one, at the end of the night, that has to find out what everyone else has made.

And here, she sort of loses it. Partly, I think, because I’ve slowed her down, cost her three precious minutes of her life which must be lived atfullspeed. And partly because she’s sick. Some sort of weird competitive disorder which extends to EVERYTHING.

Her—a series of seeming nonsequiters at top volume: Of course!!! ALWAYS win! If not, I throw a tantrum!! And then, I make excuses!! Get the hundred dollar bottle of wine!!!

Okay, so this type of thing still throws me for a loop, even though it shouldn’t. Before I knew her better, I generally thought of Mamie as a high-roller who was mortified by the mere insinuation that money had to be made, who shied away from any aspect of the dollar except the spending of it.

The other night, she asked a sommelier to serve her a glass of his preference. His preference turned out to be a twenty dollar chard. Despite the fact that she hates chardonnay, it was a TWENTY DOLLAR GLASS. She tipped him eight, while recoiling inside.

See, but I almost forgive him. There was a time, I would have thought Mamie, upon receiving the bill, would have looked at the charge and nodded to herself: yes, that is adequate.

Her, still screaming: Out of the last twenty nights—STOP LAUGHING! LISTEN TO ME—out of the last twenty nights, my sales were higher NINETEEN times out of the TWENTY!! I HAVE TO GO!!

summertiiiiiiime!!!! and the living is easy

2008-05-13T13:24:00.001-04:00

happy adorable tyrant's day!

2008-05-11T16:13:00.010-04:00

before my mother came to visit a few weeks back, i did all the scrubbing, polishing, and folding
i don't normally do. as we walked up the stairs, i said, "excuse the baseboards. i know the baseboards need some work."

"mame, you overestimate me. i'd never have noticed."

only, when i turn around, she's straightening a lamp shade. then a painting.

we were going to dinner, so i stayed upstairs to change. when i came down, magazines had been fanned on my 4 dollar coffee table: bon apetit, gourmet, budget travel, real simple.

the irony is that i can't find my box labeled "silverware, pots and pans" and am too cheap to go get new cookery...am convinced i'm going to find them somewhere.

***

yesterday, i asked what she wanted to do for mother's day. because i am her spawn, this sort of question makes her panic (fear of commitment, fear of commitment).

"mamie, dear, i want to do exactly what i want to do tomorrow. i don't want a timeline. i won't be pressured. if i even hear the word schedule... i want to clean the porch and work in the garden. and i don't want any gifts. absolutely nothing. except a bottle of veuve clicquot and lobsters shipped from maine. and you're welcome to come by."

absolutely nothing. except a bottle of veuve clicquot and lobsters shipped from maine.

there is a scene in when harry met sally when harry says, "there are two types of women. low-maintenance and high maintenance."

"what kind am i?" sally asks.

"you're the worst kind. you're high-maintenance, but you think you're low-maintenance."

***

when i called my sister this morning to wish her a happy mother's day (and also to confirm she'd be home when i delivered the gift-wrapped 6-pack of mich ultra lime cactus) she answered the phone as she always does: slightly annoyed and, apparently, barely clinging to life.

"hello," she says. "what."

"hey. what are you doing?"

"well, i was lying on the couch watching indiana jones. until you called and i had to get up." she sighs.

"you're such a joy," i say. "i don't tell you enough."

"whatever," she says. "are you coming over or not?"

daisy chains

2008-05-09T11:10:00.003-04:00

in the park down the street, with our aunt and uncle. aaron picked flowers, kan made daisy chains. we had a picnic under an oak. it's not like this every day, but when it happens, it's perfect.

do the jane fonda!

2008-05-06T22:27:00.001-04:00

with our friends joel and alison

field tripping: dacusville

2008-05-04T23:51:00.006-04:00

this is the possible jacket shot for when g. singleton and i put out our self help book.
the senior cook-out. moe's. reminded me of a babysitter's club meeting. i, while not in the picture, am clearly claudia. and celeste is kristy. and cody is stacey. obvi. and somewhere, in another room, jessica and elizabeth and lila are pulling their hair into ponytails somewhere in sweet valley.
while some of you might have been playing badminton in dacusville beside a yellow school bus at 6 pm on sunday, i doubt it. suckers.
ash. me.
s'mores. these took about an hour, considering we had no coat hangers and the kids were sort of shoving their own limbs into the fire.

2008-05-03T13:36:00.002-04:00

i would have given my favorite asics, one nephew, the laptop, a first edition of absalom, absalom! and my trip to napa with hannah to have been on this bus.

i know, i know. enough with the numbers.

2008-05-02T12:21:00.004-04:00

I. i don't know how hannah takes her coffee. similar to runaway bride, how no one truly knows julia roberts' egg preference. scrambled with one man, poached with another. meanwhile, hannah can repeat with annoyed clarity what i drink when it's cold out (tall, nonfat, one splenda toffee nut latte) and when it's warm (tall no-whip caramel frappacino, affagato style).

so, just now, while we're on the phone, she orders a large no room organic coffee. i never knew. similar to that if you like pina coladas song, when the couple tries to cheat on each other...with each other. and how surprised!!! they are to discover that the other is not into yoga!

to further highlight my self-absorption in this relationship:

i call hannah no less than five times in an hour last week. finally, she picks up.

"thank god you called," i say in relief. without a trace of irony...had genuinely forgotten it had been me who called.*

II. last night, i leave work to go meet undergrad for a drink at an irish pub. i must preface by saying that he is the sweetest person in the whole wide world. as in, finds a gold display plate (which, oddly, reminds me of the awakening and all of that damned talk about calling cards) at the goodwill, takes it to work and cleans and polishes it and gives it to me. as in, i notice my (ahem, jessica simpson) cowboy boots in the back of his car. "why are my boots in here," i say. "i was going to get them resoled," he says.

*to be fair, hannah is no walk in the park. she frequently points out how undeserving i am of such treatment.

anyway, i pull into the parking lot and my phone rings.

"hello," undergrad whispers.

"hey. where are you? why are you whispering?" i ask.

"i'm in the bushes behind the sun trust building," he hisses. "saw you pull up. i'll be there in a minute."

turns out, he and his chef-friends had tied a halibut carcass to a friend's bumper and were waiting for said friend to leave work and find it. somehow this also involved video footage and a car chase.

i'm dead serious.

hannah's like, "it's as if you date both an episode of top chef and jackass.

III. in the movie of hannah and me that no one with any sense would watch, i'm thinking minnie driver could play abrams.

baller.

2008-04-28T13:54:00.003-04:00

so, no matter that not one goal was scored yesterday. morgan's pretty much the most ballin'ous soccer player on the bumblebee team. nay, in the league.

averaged out, we make precisely one normal person

2008-04-21T14:27:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, my neighbor knocked on the door and told me she had the perfect solution to my apartment search. At exactly this time, in an alternate universe, Mamie was draping herself in oversized gold chains before going out dancing.

I’m having to move out of my place, because I don’t want a roommate. When my neighbor said she had an idea, I thought that idea would have hardwood floors and river views. Predictably, what the idea actually had was an 86 year old woman. “It was Mother’s idea,” the neighbor told me, “and it’s just a stroke of genius. You would be perfect roommates.”

Mamie ate dinner out on Sunday and was so confused about who secretly paid for her tab that she had to sweepingly thank six men before walking out. Me, I’m listening to my neighbor tell me Mother’s young at heart, likes to go out to eat, and rarely dresses. “But that’s okay, I told Mother you weren’t a social snob.”

Mamie and her boyfriend are getting tattoos together. Hers will be a tiger lily.

Mother doesn’t mind if I have a boyfriend, he just can’t be a live-in boyfriend. “He can stay the night,” my neighbor assured me, “I mean, you’re young and pretty, we don’t expect you to be a nun.” I must not have said anything, because she waited and went on, “I KNOW you’re not a nun.” Oh my god.

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s Mamie: one million, Hannah: one grandmother.

we have so much in common that doesn't matter.

2008-04-14T20:44:00.004-04:00

more. i know. more.

1. hannah just realized i haven't read tim o'brien's the things they carried. not even the short story that bears the same name. it sent her into a total tail spin. i seriously think she's pacing right now, wondering how she should best handle the situation.

on the phone she says, "i guess i should take the wine out of the freezer," to which i respond with, "WE'RE TOTALLY THE SAME PERSON!" because i, too, left a bottle of whitehaven in the freezer overnight.

then, i say, "undergrad promised to get a haircut today, but when i came home he hadn't and was, instead, wearing a baseball uniform." backstory: he's growing his hair out and, as hannah put it, the back's partying harder than the front. and he used to have this cool faux hawk thing. no matter.

so i say, "i mean, i like him just the way he is."

hannah: you don't mean that, do you?

me: yeah. like the line from bridget jones.

hannah: oh, i don't feel that way about anyone. like you, i wish you would be kinder and more generous to me with your money.

2. my students had prom this weekend. so today, they tell me that one received a 1300 dollar laptop as a DOOR PRIZE. or something like that. then they say, "and so-and-so got a wii. and a zoom. and a stereo." i have no idea why they received booty for dancing to M.I.A. and being great kids in general. but then, then someone says, "and two people got GPS systems." okay, these kids don't drive. it's a BOARDING SCHOOL, people.

i tell hannah this a she says, calmly, "it's like when l'il bow wow bought all those cars when he was, like, twelve." which is something i would say.

3. okay, so i read this joyce carol oates story a few years back about a woman who becomes pregnant with twins by different fathers. hannah and i have been arguing about this for days: it's not possible for that to actually happen, right?

4. also, also tonight at the gym i left the treadmill to go make an appointment at the front desk. i left my JACKET on the TV screen/monitor thing, my towel on the arm, and my earphones in some nook. when i returned, a man had begun walking on the treadmill. hadn't touched a thing. just saw the jacket, etc. and proceeded to hop on. when i passive agressively went to remove the jacket, he HELPED me retrieve the other stuff. so i passive aggressively moved all of it to the treadmill right next to his and settled in for 106 & park.

i wore heels to a pig picking and other stories from the weekend.

2008-04-14T15:26:00.004-04:00

a few things:

1. the people with whom i enjoy talking on the phone most have small children. that, or they're 8 months pregnant. which means, of course, our conversations are mainly between the mother (surrogate or otherwise) and the child. i say, "oh my god, hannah. we're still unpacking, and i just found a copy of sally's thesis and photographs from college wherein i'm wearing too much make-up and always holding a coors light dooce-dooce." to which she says, "stop trying to get your brother in trouble. he can play all by himself if he wants. put down the potted plant and go to your room."

then, i call molly and say, "it just sucks that we have this nice ceiling fan/light that's remote controlled and the last tenants didn't leave the controller, so i can't turn it on or off." to which she says, "gavin left me here with the kids all day while he went to play baseball and i just realized he has both carseats and, thus, we can't leave the house for twelve hours."

2. hannah's teetering on the edge, by which i mean she's had a frustrating few days. let's just say, aaron managed to break her car window. oh, and she doesn't really sleep at all. i worked the two busiest days ever at the restaurant, where the hostesses (bless their vacant hearts) began seating 20 people in my section a half hour before opening, while i was still in a sundress and sandals, polishing silverware. then an entire table spoke to me as if i were a dog. as in, "good girl! you're such a good girl!" in these weird voices. then i yelled at a foodrunner i'd never met before, tried to give cash to the underappreciated dishwashers (who thought i wanted something in return). finally, when it was calm again, a coworker began talking about how nice her husband is, how he washes her car and runs her baths. and i said, "yeah, undergrad is so great that sometimes i look at him and think, why are you so nice to me?" to this, another waitress said, "well there is this book called, why men love bitches."

so anyway, hannah and i have been answering the phone by saying "thank you" instead of "hello." we've been treating each other carefully and with empathetic responses, much in the same way you'd help an elderly woman cross the street.

3. morgan had her first soccer game saturday. i was sure she'd be less than awesome, what with her awkward run and, well, the gene pool. when i lived in charleston, the ex coached 5 and 6 year-old coed club soccer, and i always related best to the one pudgy girl who sort of drifted off the field whenever she felt like it. as in, she'd run her little butt off for, oh, 2 minutes before strutting over to see what kind of flower bloomed in the grass by the parking lot.

i was fully prepared to console morgan...but she's a phenom. it's the weirdest thing. she scored the only two goals for her team. and, with little people, it's only 3 on 3...which somehow hikes up the stakes. forget chuck klosterman's essay in sex, drugs and cocoa puffs:

the truth is that most children don't love soccer; they just hate the alternatives. for 60 percent of adolescents in a fourth grade classroom, sports are a humiliation waiting to happen...this is why soccer seems like a respite from all that mortification; it's the one aerobic activity where nothingness is expected. soccer feels fun because its not terrifying-- it's the only sport where you can't fuck up.

jerk. and i don't trust anyone who loves the semi-colon as much as him.

badges? we don't need no stinkin' badges.

2008-04-09T14:12:00.006-04:00

i learned early in girl scout troop 141 that one's life motto is to "be prepared." i was kicked out of scouts the very same year for talking trash about the leader on a stayover at camp mary elizabeth. well, for that and for refusing to earn badges.

there is something to be said for never running out of, oh, i don't know: dish sponges, peanut butter, frozen tortellini, toilet paper, cases of corbet canyon chardonnay. i prefer the rebellious life, never knowing if i'll have enough shampoo to get me through friday.

the first sam's club opened in midwest city, oklahoma in the spring of 1983. by the mid-eighties my parents were star struck. we managed to buy cases of stoffer's frozen tortellini (at 19 cents a serving) and our first VCR all at the very same place.

my childhood best friend had six brothers and sisters. her home seemed forever stocked with gigantic tubs of condiments--mayonaise, salsa, grape jelly, ketchup. in the freezer were hundreds of those frozen push-up things made entirely out of sugar, food coloring, and water. on afternoons when we were particularly desperate for sustanance, we ate tortillas filled only with salsa.

my jewish friend jennifer's mother came home once with decades worth of matzah and, about a year ago, my father called me breathless: "your mother and i just did the math and, if we buy cases of corbet canyon instead of alice white chardonnay, we save close to 2 grand a year!"

last week my mother joined costco, saying, "your father has a membership to sam's, and now i've got my own to costco. it's like his and hers bulk shopping." in my head was the eery echo of will ferrell's voice...bed bath and beyond...i don't know if we'll have time.

i fear bulk and feel completely jittery when i'm too stocked. obviously, this has much to do with an obvious fear of commitment, of settling down in one home or city for too long. and there's also the fickleness. why buy two huge bottles of paul mitchell when i might find a better, more attractive option next month? this from a woman who only fills her gas tank up with 10 dollars each time, SURE gases prices will be better later in the week or at another station.

yesterday, when asked about her reporting/interviewing approach, susan orlean said, "i believe in being unprepared. the only preparation, really, is being truly interested in your subject."

so, i've been staying with he-who-will-be-referred-to-as-undergrad for most of the week while transitioning from old house to new. mondays are his days off from work, when he does exactly what you think he'd do--shops for softball uniforms and bats, takes it to the batting cages with a friend, eats sushi for lunch, and goes out with two other guys to shop for grills at the local sam's club.

this is not what's interesting. what i appreciate most about this man is that he comes home without a grill but with a year's supply of girly body wash. we're talking white tea extract infused dial with vitamin e exfoliating beads. i could have bathed with axe for months and not noticed that i smelled like a man.

if carnations and movie dates involving wesley snipes and on-line tetrus and dinners at on the border are symbols of a man who doesn't know what a woman wants, then the body wash cannot be emphasized and appreciated enough.

holy god, then there's this guy

2008-04-08T10:49:00.005-04:00

Recently widowed man looking for room to share (Wilmington,NC) (map)
Reply to:
Date: 2008-04-07, 9:56AM EDT

My name is Joseph and I moved back to Wilmington 7 months ago when my wife of 26 years suddenly passed away. My sister lives here and invited me to stay with her until I had healed some and got on my feet, but after about two months she found out that she has breast cancer so I moved out to an apartment to give them their space. I am in a bind now. I am a self-employed interior trim carpenter and business has been very slow recently so I cannot afford my apartment by myself any longer. Idealy, I would like to find a house or apartment to share that needs work and I would work for part of the rent or all if it needs to be remodeled. I would live there while remodeling. If there are any women that live alone that need a man around the house and have a room they are willing to rent or trade for work I would do that also. I have got to find somewhere to live by the end of the month or I am going to be homeless. I am also expecting a pretty large settlement check from workers compensation in Seattle because I had to have carpal-tunnel operations on both hands. I can cook, clean,paint, any carpentry and lots more.

This post could also read: Serial killer from 1978 seeks roommate.

decor: a day late and several ben harper posters short

2008-04-05T14:01:00.007-04:00

at my niece's roller-skating birthday party, i was surprised when all the kids laughed at me as i laced up my skates. "what's so funny?" i asked morgan. "aunt mamie," she said, embarrassed by my naivete, "you're way too old to roller skate."

when, twenty years ago, my sister misbehaved at a dinner party, my father grabbed her by the arm and snapped, "act your age." to which she hissed back, "i'm only eight, dad."

every so often, i'm forced to make a decision that employs the question of age. one friday night a few years ago, my first semester teaching, i put on one of those cut-off denim skirts with flat knee boots and a sweater. initially i'd rationalized that i had found a nice balance between cover and exposure but then envisioned myself running into the dean on front street.

when morgan asked my sister, "why don't aunt mamie's underwear have backs on them," molly answered, "used to be, none of aunt mamie's clothes had backs to them." and i remembered all the shirts held together only with string, the dresses that involved lightening bolt cut-outs, short shorts with wedge heels...i shudder at the thought.

because i've just moved into this new place, my uber-feminine counter parts have been discussing style. "i once thought you much more contemporary," my mother says. "whatever," hannah says, "you're obviously english cottage." these terms mean little to me and thus my house is decorated with antique furniture, one neon green desk chair i stole from an ex boyfriend, some very nice art but also the museum prints and billy holiday posters from college, a chest of drawers with no drawers...little use of methodology as it were.

but i've been trying to grow up. to maintain fresh cut flowers on some used dining room table. to host dinner parties (a custom both foreign and exotic to some of my high school students: who cooks at those things? do you talk about books?).

and so, of course, my karma is that i date a man whose house is represented by the above photographs. i didn't take them. he, late at night (perhaps, as hannah suggested, thinking all things fleeting), flashed these himself. what he missed: a ben harper poster, one tie-dyed TAPESTRY, two turn tables and a microphone, antique bowling bags, one jam box, a shelf entitled "accoutrement corner" that houses costume items to wear for fun, and ROCK BAND the game. and i hesitated to tell you this part--several young life stickers holding stubbornly to guitar cases.

hannah calls this house "undergrad." as in, "having fun at undergrad? who all's hanging out at undergrad?" but she asks with a hint of nostalgia in her voice...

by the way, hannah line of the week. she, in a fit of accusatory rage, asks, "i mean, mamie, don't these people have a shred of laziness?"

aaron sings the blues

2008-03-31T19:55:00.005-04:00

i've been meaning to blog, but the kids are leaving so soon i can't do anything but stave off the hysterics by watching 'dancing with the stars' online. i don't care! i'm out of shows.

anyway, i was going to do this whole funny blog, but i don't have the heart for it. the kids are leaving. and they're perfect. the way they eat plastic toys is perfect. the possessed sleepwalking is ADORABLE. i even smiled fondly tonight as aaron ran into me with his plate of lasagna. how fucking cute and aaronish of him, i thought as i scraped the cheese off my belly with a spatula.

it's clear i'm in no shape for blogging. the only thing i'm good for is blaring 'handle with care' while weeping and eating chocolate. so make sure the volume's up:

four quick things:

2008-03-24T14:38:00.002-04:00

1. hannah has, this morning, discovered that the children have been eating their toys. they have kept it, i think, to a particular box of beads...but all the same--toy eating. so, just as we're moving from that point in the conversation to another, kanasta--in the background--says, "what are we supposed to do exactly?"

to which hannah says, "put all small toys--toys that you would consider eating--into a box. no, we are not selling them. we are giving them to other children who will not eat them."

then, throughout the rest of our phone conversation, she pauses several times to answer whether or not a toy has to go in the box. "well, kanasta, i don't know. is there any part of you that wants to eat the stuffed animal?"

2. bo and i passed a blue honda accord (one of those great ones from the mid-nineties) whose bumper sticker displayed the following: life's a bitch. don't vote for one.

hillary's face had a big X over it. hannah pointed out that the better choice would be to have the same slogan but with mccain's face.

3. MEN: you are not allowed to tell us how "adorable" you think our "bellies" are. period. even if you mean it as a compliment. you are certainly not allowed to say so while also trying to pet said belly.

4. what the hell is up with people displaying a cursive monogram on the back windshield of their car? in south carolina, these are usually paired with that annoying state flag tree and moon symbol. i find them both offensive to my taste (and have noticed that both frequent toyota forerunners and highlanders).

speedboat

2008-03-21T10:10:00.002-04:00

my dad calls aaron that. it's meant to be ironic. the kid moves so slowly, you'd swear sometimes he was going backwards. he can take hours to finish a meal. every night, i have to sit there and remind him to chew, to take the next bite. so it's no wonder that in the mornings, we have the school bus out front with the angry driver laying on the horn and me inside roaring, 'MOOOOOOVE!' even then, aaron's all, 'lalalalaaaa.'

so yesterday, i go upstairs at 6 and flip on their light, only for aaron to stumble out of bed fully dressed wearing socks and shoes. 'a present for you hannah,' he said trundling by me to the door. 'i got dressed last night so i wouldn't be late.'

also, WHOOOOO!!! check it out! a mamie reading/interview!!! it's priceless. piano fade-ins, sincerity... you don't want to miss it.

SB2K8

2008-03-18T18:45:00.003-04:00

so, my day peaked when "nobody does it better" came on the easy listening station and i got to do my best carly simon in the middle of stopped traffic on I-85. after i did my taxes and found out that i OWE the government money. this is a first. i did it on the computer and it has this price-is-right-ish thing in the upper corner that flashes numbers in the green when you get a refund and red...well, it started out green. very green. then i entered the restaurant W2 and everything went red.
oh, and just now i sat down at this coffee shop that serves alcohol and ordered a beer. why? because it's SPRING BREAK. idowhatiwant. anyway, i say to the waitress:
"i left my license in the car. but i swear i'm legal. i'm a teacher."
for some reason i always say that when i can't find my ID. "i'm a teacher." dunno. anyway, she cuts me off with, "don't worry about it. you're obviously way older than 21."

i'm sorry. "way older?" it's like the lady who told my mom that she looked "well preserved" last weekend. i thought she was going to pull out her gloc.

okay, none of this is important. what is important is wal-mart. listen, i don't want to shop there. no one wants to watch parents beat their children with hair brushes by the faded glory stand. it's just that wal-mart's always been there for me. like the worst pimp. the time stevie and i cooked thanksgiving dinner and i didn't know grocery stores closed on the most gluttonous day of the year? sam walton. the time morgan popped both lenses out of my eye glasses the sunday night i had to write a twenty page paper on jane campion's the piano? sam. where else are the new ipod nanos 145$? the summer after fifth grade when we were broke and my mom had, like, 60 bucks to buy me back-to-school clothes? mix and match brightly colored t-shirts and biker shorts.

it makes me sick with guilt in a way starbucks doesn't, what with their kick ass 401K plan for partners.

lastly:
hannah sent me flowers this weekend, for reasons i will not disclose here. (if you haven't figured it out, we try not to tell you people anything that requires we be earnest.) anyway, her card reads:

if there's one thing white people love, it's BEING THERE for someone. while there are many coveted rituals associated with BEING THERE, the ideal situation presents when the friend is far away. here, white people excel. and nothing makes them feel more sophisticated and understanding than sending a thoughtful gift to illustrate their thoughtless compassion and flawless good taste.
XOXOXO, H.

pretty sweet. what's better is that carlyle, also being a good friend, brought over a bouquet of gerber daisies. so he goes to put them down beside hannah's--keep in mind hannah's are, of course, entitled "canary song tulips" and are something helen mirren would send maggie smith or cate blanchett after a terriffic dinner of veal and blueberry risotto. so he sets them down and then stares at both of them, looking defeated. like on oprah's big give when one of the saps only raises, like, 46,000 dollars for the guy who needs to pay off his student loans...or something equally dire.

also, avett brothers. tomorrow.
also, the flo' rida album dropped today. this isn't irony. this is sheer, unadulterated joy.
also, i took my mother to charleston. it was a surprise. although it shouldn't have been. people should forever be planning trips on which to take my mother. she works that hard. she's like martha stewart with a soul. she's somehow kate spade and janeane garofalo. and, we manage to get in these moods once a quarter when we hate everyone but each other. anyway, we drank and ate and watched 27 dresses in bed and bashed men...which REMINDS ME!!!!

my karma for implying men who like waitresses are sexist and insecure?!!! i fell in love with each and every bellman (bellboy?). hot, those people. and they're constantly in a state of getting your car and carrying your stuff and hailing you a blacked out excursion in lieu of a cab...so you ride around town with your mother looking like young joc and jermaine dupri.

are you there god? it's me, hannah.

2008-03-17T14:08:00.003-04:00

well, the hot water heater is broken. and i'm choosing to deal with it by lying on the couch under a blanket and eating many oranges.

earlier today, i did trudge around trying various taps and showers in the hopes that it was all a huge mistake. but it's not. i don't even know where it is, but i'm guessing the basement. which i refuse to go in, because there is someone hiding in it with a machete ready to kill me.

there's nothing else for it: i'm going to have to ring up the landlord who lives far away and has no idea that i'm harboring animals and children, which means i'll have to erase all evidence of said animals and children. then two weeks from now, she'll show up with the fresh stitches of a new facelift to try to fix it herself with duct tape. i just can't bring myself to pick up the phone, because she's the kind of person that writes notes on our front door. on the actual door.

so, tonight? i guess i'll be heating pots of hot water and putting the kids in bathing suits before throwing them both into the jacuzzi tub. jesus christ.

while i love all of you equally...

2008-03-12T18:03:00.002-04:00

i love this:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

more than anything else in the world just now.

i know this doesn't count as a post of my own, but i'm having one of those moments that i used to have in workshop (or, actually, after i watch anyone do anything that i like to do better than i could ever do it, which happens almost every day) and subsequently i swear to never (write a poem/ride a bike/plant a garden/make a martini) again.

this time, i'm rendered totally immobile and post-less by "stuff white people like."

You have 3 minutes staaaarting... NOW!!!

2008-03-12T17:10:00.002-04:00

I’m having a month of tongue tied. I caught myself lisping today. Weird shit happens when you don’t sleep, and truth is sleeping’s been a problem for everyone in this house. Except Aaron, I guess, who could basically sleep upside down in the chimney.

Kan’s had 2 more night terrors. Here’s an event I won’t forget for the rest of my life: it’s midnight and I’m in that insomniac place where I’m resigned to watching Dateline on the computer until the sun comes up. My door’s closed. The kids’ door upstairs is closed. This is important, because you can’t wink in this house but everyone can hear it. And my door especially, well it just doesn’t fit in its frame. Despite my best efforts to saw parts of it off with my bread knife.

Anyway, I’m there in bed and I look up and even though there hasn’t been so much as a damn creak in the floorboards and I haven’t heard the kick it always takes to get my door open, Kan. Is. Standing. RIGHT THERE. INCHES AWAY FROM ME. And she’s doing her best zombie stare and her hands are doing their best lobster claw impressions. She starts crying without blinking, which is really fucking disturbing, and shouts, I NEEDA SLEEP WITHU. And I’m ashamed to say it, but I didn’t let her. I’m a miserable and terrible person who clearly was born without the ability to feel anything but fear, because I just carried her back upstairs (and wasn’t that sketchy as hell b/c I could feel her little hands twisting the skin on my back) and stayed with her until she fell asleep. Then, I had a drink.

Anyhow, because of the insomnia and a whole host of other reasons, I’ve been, like, in orbit or something this last month. Totally disconnected. I’ve been playing “scramble” on facebook, which is pretty much “boggle” only you’re online and playing live against a thousand people. I have a weakness for timed word games. And they’re so not good for me, because then I carry around this nervous energy that gets me so twitchy I pretty much hit the deck when someone coughs. And small tasks, like doing the dishes, I feel like I have to get them done in 3 minutes.

Finally. Finally? Like there’s been some coherent list happening here. I took this stuff called Simply Sleep (from the makers of Tylenol PM) last night. I know, the name alone. But it worked. Only too well, because I had trouble walking when I got out of bed AT TEN THIRTY and I almost shouted when I got into my classroom because the words on the page were too blurry to read.

Yeah, so that's all I got. Mamie?

waitressing and ballet fit class: the mystique?

2008-03-10T22:38:00.003-04:00

to be fair, when hannah decides she really does love me and wants to continue being my best friend, it's because i've manipulated her. not called for a while. taken up hobbies. achieved greatness through embedding. see, a part of her feels she's meeting someone new. like the transfer guy in eleventh grade who, perhaps, played the drums and exhibited mad devil stick skills.

when i fall back in love with hannah, it's completely by accident. one man's black widow is another's...anne hathaway? anyway, she's not trying is all.

she calls this morning from the uncw parking lot. not the one she's supposed to park in, but the lay person/student lot.

"mame, there's a ticker in this lot. i hope she's canvased this side already."

canvased. as a verb. adorable.

then, then: mame, today in ballet fit class, when the lady asked us to do, like, our tenth squat, i just sort of stuck my butt out.

precious.

secondly:
i've recently begun noticing that there is a certain type of guy that "has a thing for waitresses." i began thinking more about it after daisy's recent post (concerning date who paid more attention to waitress). these men--who range from trainwreck to successful--will also tell you they have a thing for waitresses. which is pervy when all i want to do is get you that last newcastle and send you the hell home.

thing is, i've been thinking too much about it, find it vaguely insulting. like, what does it mean? are we somehow more accessible because (to their knowledge) we don't have other, more lofty careers? does this imply we have lower standards? i mean, i'm not riding some wave of stereotype. listen, i said "verbiage" at a table last week and two people actually clamped their hands to their mouths in delight.

listen:
1. somehow we manage to be both servers and literate.

2. somehow, many of us can serve you and be submissive as all hell. this is not our actual personality. once taken home, we require you relinquish all sexual and cable-related rights. we make you rake leaves. we too require that, at some point, you spend your saturday at ulta/barnes & noble/world market.

3. we are not aspiring actresses. no, we have never done pageants.

4. we too eat in nice restaurants. (never thought to clear this one up until i saw a customer at devereaux's last week who was obviously mortified that i wasn't where--and i quote--i was supposed to be.)

5. we are not 20 years-old. we are not halfway through nursing school. (well, adrianna is. and her sterile technique is amazing. and she has two year-old twins and another job.)

6.we do know how to serve single malt scotch without your nine step instruction. why? because we drink it, assholes. and if you want it on the rocks you can get the hell out of my bar.

cheers. ha. and it's only monday.

a brand new november blue

2008-03-09T23:57:00.003-04:00

sweet lord.

okay, so maybe it's not exactly synesthesia. but i say: ck one, molly ringwald, jams, mr. wendel, roger rabbit, mix tapes, el camino, that certain neighborhood gas station where you met between football games and whatever else, coors light 22 oz....

it's like whatever cologne your first boyfriend (or girlfriend) wore: drakkar noir? coolwater?

anyway, i hear this and can almost place myself in castle hayne.

hannah's somewhere readjusting her visor and listening to gershwin, trying not to kill me.

talk about two birds...

2008-03-06T14:18:00.003-05:00

so, the greenville newspaper printed the letter i wrote in response to the letter some idiot wrote about obama's profane lifestyle. and do we really want judas running the country...yadda, yadda, yadda. only problem is, the geniuses in editing decided that every time i used the man's proper name, they'd replace it with "letter writer." for example, "the letter writer seems to think reproductive rights for women are atrocities." so, i come off sounding like an idiot. or like one of those people who has aphasia and can't think of the word "fork," so use some sort of middle english kenning...like "food-utensil." seriously, i'm convinced my niece or kanasta or aaron is wearing a suit and sitting in the corner office downtown looking over proofs, going "natalie! where's natalie? someone get her in here to change his name to Letter Writer."

no matter, though, because (WAIT FOR IT) some crotchety old republican lady named MAMIE MORGAN is threatening to sue the paper for slanderous remarks. she can't believe she has the same name as some "crazy liberal" and doesn't want her name attached to it. oh my god!!! you don't know how happy that makes me. she's probably fanning herself somewhere right now.

oh, and two things: my student tells me that the hacks at MLA say we can use "well" and "good" interchangeably. this MUST be a mistake, right? "only food is good" or whatever my grandmother used to say...

also, i'm now posting songs for each entry to see if i can make eric ride his bike off a cliff. cheers.

Demonic possession, and other sugarplum dreams...

2008-03-04T20:38:00.001-05:00

At 9pm the night before last, Kan let out a bloodcurdling yelp. I was running to her, calling out all the while, but all she would do was scream my name. Sim was upstairs and got to her sooner. She found Kan standing in the hallway, staring straight ahead-- crying, gasping, hiccupping. There was something weird about her hands.

When I got there, the kid was hysterical. Unable to articulate anything. The gasping and panting continued in the manner of fifty-five year old marathon runner. I thought dimly that she was having some sort of seizure. Frantically, I scanned her body for some sort of wound, thinking that this was what clearly happens when you don’t clean the child’s room properly. Anything could be on that floor.

Then she yelled at me, “OKAAAAAAY!!!!.” A very loud and deep yell. Sim and I sat back. I hesitated. See, her voice is usually a sort of high-pitched princessy chirp.

I said nervously, “Did you have a bad dream?” She was still staring unseeingly straight ahead, not at either one of us. And it occurred to me that she wasn’t blinking at all. A very bad sign, I thought to myself wishing I’d turned on the light.

“Was it a bad dream?” I repeated.
“I couldn’t do it to you,” she ground out.
“Hmm?” I made out Aaron wriggling anxiously in the background.
“There were three… They told me to.”
Oh shit, I thought, wishing the house were lit up like a Christmas tree and that there was 80s music playing to discredit the situation.

Then. She grabbed my shirt, twisting it and pulling me to her. She looked straight at me for the first time and in that same deep voice yelled, “I WANNA GO!!!!!”

I think I might have passed out had she not been practically holding me upright. “Go where, sweetheart?” I asked aiming for a merry, let’s go to the circus kind of voice.

“ANYWHERE!!!” my small sister bellowed. “We have to get OUT OF THIS HOUSE!!”

In a move that was more mature than I thought myself capable of, I did not in fact go tearing out of the house and into the street grasping a crucifix. Instead, I got her to sleep and Sim and I had the following exuberant dialogue: It’s fine! No, yeah, it’s FINE! It’s totally FINE! Sleep well!

Afterwards, I looked up night terrors instead of exorcisms. Turns out, she had all the right symptoms for it. Which I guess is slightly preferable to demonic possession. But this might be a reoccurring event? Awesome. And you’re not supposed to wake them out of the trance, which is counter to everything in me. I was close to commanding she stop being terrifying right this minute young lady.

Later, Sim told me about her hands. They were clawlike and twisted. Uh-huh. And the next day, when I asked her timidly about the bad dream, she smiled brightly up at me and said, “What dream?”

Aaron broke in: “Ehhhh, Hannah, what would happen if everything had alcohol in it? Like the banana, and the water, and everything? Would I feel good?”

I was unable to answer, having been transported by a blissful vision of a more magnificent world. Yes Aaron, you would feel good.

new digs

2008-03-02T14:22:00.005-05:00

my mother calls a few weeks ago, says:

"listen, i have a few new rules for you. i know you're grown, know also that we never gave you many rules as a child. which is precisely your problem. but i've been thinking. no more dating men in the food industry. and no more dating children. now, there's nothing wrong with the industry OR children per se."

*i should note here that by children my mother means man-boys. to her (who, keep in mind, married a 35 year-old when she was 20), this constitutes anyone under the age of thirty.

she says, "really, i don't see why you bother. actually, i don't think you should date at all. yes. i think that's even better. refocus your energy: career and a new place to live!!!"

to her credit, my mother is almost always right, no matter how crazy she sounds.

and, while i like the house where i live now, the only space that's mine is my bedroom. and i have two terrific roommates. only, they're still roommates.

so i've been waiting patiently, storing my moneys, for the perfect place. which should NOT have worked out. when i looked at it a month ago, it was just out of my price range...which made me only love it more (see: she who begins text messages while parallel parking and other self-destructive behaviors). then, a week ago, he lowered the price!!!! anyway, i love nothing more than creating a comfortable space. i love design, decor, art, food, entertaining...and haven't been able to do any of it in some time. so, psyched. so much so that i sat in the driveway of said condo today, staring at it, listening to "quedate luna." creepy. i know.

p.s. you must be worried about hannah's absence. it's become a bit much. i can only say, she's writing elsewhere. this is the woman who spent an afternoon at my house deciding whether to use the word "clothed" or "dressed." (it's completely obvious, i realize. who says clothed?) anyway, i'm concerned as well. typical behavior patterns: inattentive husband (me) becomes shocked and confused to discover unappreciated wife (her) has taken up salsa dancing (book) behind his back and is leaving husband for javier bardem.

it's not you. it's hannah.

2008-02-28T14:08:00.002-05:00

listen: hannah's back on the book. as in, there's been all this talk about finishing it. and whenever one of us gets on the bookwriting wagon, the other just finds the whole thing silly. it's our twinned rebellious streak self-defense mechanism. like, i begin screaming "poetry" while performing an interpretive dance dressed only in magnolia leaves to "suddenly i see." hannah snorts, says something about the lameness of it all. anyway, she's writing, which means it's my turn to get my hair done.
(incidentally, she's using some terrible thesaurus. like, she wants to coin a word for "charging," as in the bull charges. she types in: frantic, running, desperate, attack. the thesaurus says, "canter," and "lope." similar to when you find yourself in a trailer park in easley while looking for a new restaurant and the GPS system says, "you are AT your destination. you are AT your destination.")

i call hannah today and she actually answers:

me: thank god. what should i do with my hair?
han: i definitely like the honey blond instead of that thing with red you sometimes do.
me: what about cut?
han: um, i trust you on that one. it always seems so, uh, well formed. like it'll just stick with you. no matter what. like, it's not going anywhere."
i realize she's referring to, instead of the elements, my personality. like she's shocked my own hair puts up with me.
me: do you know what propitious and carbuncular mean?
han: yeah. i mean propitious i do.
me: a carbuncle is a festering, pustuous wound.
han: why are you telling me this?
me: they're in the waste land.
han: have you ever thought maybe people don't use words like that anymore because, i don't know, we don't walk around with open wounds these days?

later:

han: how's the hair?
me: blond and bobbed.
han: maybe you could send me a picture. or i can see it myself when you come visit in, who knows, like six months.
me: yeah, when we finally see each other, i show up with a long, golden brown braid down my back.
han: so you're showing up as sally?

quarterlife.

2008-02-26T23:13:00.003-05:00

i happened to be home tonight and watching television, which occurs bimonthly. only, it was the season premiere of quarterlife, which i'd never have known. only, the biggest loser: couples had just ended and i was only halfway through a tub of coldstone creamery brownie ice cream. so, you know...
anyway, you can just GUESS the demographic. three guys. three girls. mid-twenties. and the aesthetic scale is as follows: really cute, average, total nerd who (clearly) NEVER WENT TO PROM. and i love how the costume people do this. the total nerd girl is gorgeous. so they have her sans makeup and in sweats at all times. average girl--gasp!--is gorgeous. so they put a pair of glasses on her. "hot" girl is blond and bartends/acts. same goes for the guys.
pilot opens with two of the guys trying to land the deal at a prius dealership so that they can make their commercials.
then, BACK AT THE HOUSE:
foose ball table, cases of coronas and....everyone's in love the wrong people! i know. i too was aghast. average girl and hot guy (dum dum dum) don't know if they're ready to move in together. only average guy (who reminds me, inexplicably, of carty...not that anything about bill is average) is in love with average girl.
dorky girl creates a blog called quarterlife. outs everyone. exposes dark, unexpected secrets: hot actress/bartender drinks too much!!! for example.
also, blogger is underappreciated editorial associate at a mag called attitude, where her pretty, rachel-mcadamsish boss steals all good, environmentally sound ideas involving recycled paper.

i'm afronted by all of it. the cliched, cardboard representation of twenty-somethings. but, whatever, i haven't the time to go on. i've got to whoop my boy roommate's ass in darts before we settle in for a game of flip cup. then, we need at least 10 minutes to complain about student loans before taking out our beautiful dog for a walk and jetting off in our 30,000 dollar energy efficient cars.

xo.

an homage to"once" kicking that amy adams person in the ass.

2008-02-25T07:47:00.003-05:00

so "once" took home the oscar. in the face of that "enchanted" trainwreck. for some reason, this also makes me think we CAN elect a democrat to office this term. in other news, because hannah took home the oscar for most evasive friend of this season, i've taken up hobbies that might impress her: embedding. i've made a play list that has no exposition/warm-up, no denoument/cool down. in fact, i've worried little about the composition of this thing. don't care. consider it, oh i don't know, a cubist example of the disenfranchisement of the individual. whatever you need to tell yourself.

hannah's been preoccupied lately with things that aren't me, so, naturally, i'm doing what she doesn't think i'm capable of to rouse her back to a state of love.
enjoy.

it's like you can holler CHURCH AND STATE all day long and, here, the only sound is crickets chirping.

2008-02-22T18:41:00.003-05:00

so, i'm just going to say it: i am, and have been for years, one of those angry people who writes letters to the editor. don't care if i sound like a crazed, female franz wright. actually, i like to think of it more as, on a best day, chelsea lately meets wolf blitzer.

this began in college when elle published an article about the glories of carrying on an open marriage. to be fair, i was much more (shall we say) buttoned up in those days. whatever. the word appalling was thrown about a few times. finito. then came the whole truth and beauty fiasco where clemson canceled anne patchett's book from their summer reading list, citing that it advocated promiscuity. which, of course, it doesn't. and the letter to the editor i wrote was so mean that my dad said, gently, "why don't you sit on it a few days. revise." i e-mailed it immediately, received letters from the public, etc.

so, yesterday, this letter (written by a mr. hiers) is published in the greenville news:

"voters should study obama's religion"

"one of the candidates running to be the next president of the united states, barack obama, is a prominent member of the united church of christ. this church is an affirming program of a coalition of lesbians, gays and bisexuals...who support sodomite marriages...reproductive choice [etc.]. why is all of this information so important to the wise voter who is a mature follower of christ? because god's moral absolutes have no place in barack obama's religious beliefs!"

hopefully, your mouths are all just slightly open. i can't even repeat the letter i wrote, mostly because i don't quite remember what it said. something about the author of this diatribe being frighteningly ill-informed, misguided, yadda.

on a lighter note, hannah has been watching lost for the past three days. every episode. she wants to, like, have all of matthew fox's babies.

also, my mother, who wears the guise of a relatively laid back person really well, needed me to help her arrange bouquets of flowers for my uncle's memorial service, which is tomorrow. i put together some mums, white roses, and peach spray roses, and presented them to her. she cocked her head slightly, grabbed two sprigs of something purple and set them in.

"a bouquet," she said firmly, "must always have a hint of blue. even if that blue is purple. it makes the warmer colors pop."

and the way she did it, moving her hand just so, was like that part in cinderella where the birds drape the fabric and it magically becomes a dress.

meanwhile, i'm standing there in workout clothes with leaves in my hair.

hannah says, "she's just the most adorable tyrant."

If Mame is, as I'm always telling her, Tea Leoni in Spanglish, then I am clearly Toni Colette in About a Boy.

2008-02-21T13:14:00.004-05:00

Last night, I stood in the grocery store staring at the organic frozen food dinners for approximately 45 mins. The idea, I reminded myself, was to cut corners now as much as possible. Avoid cooking and dishes whenever possible. Used to be, I scoured Gourmet for the most exotic recipes. I even owned truffle-walnut oil and candied my own pecans. Now I sort of want the kids to eat out of the pan with their fingers.

Anyhow, the fact that this frozen stuff was organic seemed important, like it canceled out the lazy inside. The problem with organic food, though, is that it’s prejudiced against meat. There is absolutely no yummy meat by-product in any of it. So I decided finally and irritably on some eggplant disaster with cheese all over it.

Only to get home and remember that I don’t own a microwave.

So, I popped it into the oven. It said I could. Conventional oven at 350 for… an HOUR. For fuck’s sake. And I was starving too. I paced round the kitchen, peering in at it periodically—this wee, pathetic mound of gunk in a cardboard dish. I pulled it out when the plastic started to melt. The instructions said to leave it on, which I felt from the start was the wrong way to go about it. Anyhow, after I scraped off the plastic, I prodded and found the center still frozen solid. I popped it back in for another 20 mins, until the paper started to smoke and burn, and then I pulled it out and dropped it upside down on the floor. Maus was in there eating it. Lapping it right up. But she didn’t get it all, nope, because some of it is Pollocked all over my ceiling.

Speaking of Maus. The thing is, and this isn’t really relevant, but I figure it never will be… the thing is, she’s started to pee when I pee. I’m not imagining it. At first it was just that she ate when I ate, but I figured that was fairly normal. But the latch on the bathroom door in my room doesn’t catch, so she can push it open with her paw and then wedge a leg through, and eventually her whole body comes squishing through this door. Then she gets in her litter box and pees. While I’m peeing. And then we’re in there together. Staring at each other. Peeing.

house hunting: definitely, maybe

2008-02-17T23:01:00.008-05:00

symbolic character sketch through conversation of the week:

because sunday is my only day off, when hannah asked what i'd be doing that day, i yelled first WHATEVER I WANT!!!! then, definitely, maybe! definitely, maybe! the latest romantic comedy. only, i'm in starbucks and people are staring at me. she says, chilly and with eerie composure, "yes, if i didn't have the kids, i'd be seeing there will be blood."

i've been house hunting these last few weeks and, in doing so, have run into some of the strangest property owners ever.
house I:

found a cute, two bedroom bungalow with an all new kitchen: granite countertops, stainless steel appliances. the owner steps out of his green mazda miada, says almost immediately: "i know the deposit is high. i just don't want you walking off with my stove."

i laugh.

he blinks.

"it's not funny. last tenant did just that. wouldn't be laughin' had it happened to you."

apartment I:

i know immediately i don't want to live here. kitchen appliances are in a closet (i'm not kidding). everything is old. and not in a charming way. more like a place where sylvia plath would live, were she much poorer and more breathing.
which is why, i'm convinced, the landlord keeps talking. she explains to me every other tenant: age, sex, occupation, status. "ryan in 12C works for the zoo." inexplicably, they're all men. she saves the one she's most ashamed of for last. "steven on the bottom floor is, well," whispers "a waiter. but he's young, you know. and doesn't bother anyone."
as if food and beverage people are, across the board, out robbing people between keg stands.

**the part in a reading where i'd say section break while cutting my hand through the air.**

1. while at work last night, i thought up a plan so amazing, so utterly unheard of, i snuck my cell phone into ze apron and ran into the bathroom to call hannah.

"hey," i whispered. "listen. for our trip this summer, i was thinking...a beach house!"

silence.

"we could have friends down. maybe pawley's island."

silence.

i'd forgotten, of course, that hannah lives at the beach, that this would be no trip at all.

we hang up, realizing i'm an idiot.

later:

her: it's that you keep bringing me closer to home. i say nepal/iceland. you say portland. then vancouver. then...the beach.

we're both convinced i'm just trying to recreate grad school holidays at the mountain house where i, on more than one occasion, fell asleep face down with my shoes on. where sally ate butter with a fork because we dared her to. where we all but wrestled ulysses out of bill's hands. where we ran out of alcohol only to discover a cabinet filled with knob creek...like a grad student's alice in wonderland. where we recorded "the weight," "jet plane," and others.

"you realize those days are over," hannah says.

which i don't realize. not at all. only, it reminds me of that scene in when harry met sally, when meg ryan says, "i'm going to be forty."

"in eight years," billy crystal says.

"yeah, but it's out there."

2. val kilmer: the voice of kitt on nightrider. it's weird. no one listened to me when i hated his portrayal of jim morrison in the doors. in other news, tomorrow is the premiere of the new reality show (which looks a lot like double dare) called my dad is better than your dad. yeah, that NBC is doing swimmingly.

3. and yet again i've been had by another great new hip hop song on the radio that turns out to be a sprite jingle. as in, i turn it up. it's catchy. it could very well be the new timbaland beat. and then, inevitably, so drink sprite! followed by a new kids on the block-ish huh.

4. my student uncovered a NYT article last week that "proves" the american people are, and i quote, "hostile to knowledge."

5. marlee matlin, who plays jody on the L word, is going to be on this season's dancing with the stars. i question the integrity of what used to be my favorite series.

6. marie howe, beth ann fennelly, and jorie graham all have books coming out this spring. think of it as a gift registry for the unengaged, unpreggers. my address is...

i see their training is coming along well...

2008-02-15T11:19:00.002-05:00

in the car, kan was explaining to aaron who god and jesus are. he knows, but she was explaining anyway.

'they're people. exactly like you and me. they're just very large. but very nice and good.'

ten minutes later in the university library where i'm checking out dvds for them, aaron shouts, 'hannah, i think YOU'RE jesus!'

notes from the snowbound

2008-02-14T11:21:00.002-05:00

here in indiana, it is cold. cold-cold. snow-gray-sky-ick-ice-evil cold. here are my notes about it, and what happens when it descends and never leaves.

1. my crackhead neighbors have a new full time job. they shovel. at midnight. they come to my door, knock loudly, and when i groggily open the door, they say, "ma'am, i don't mean no harm, can i shovel your walk for five dollars?" when i say, "no, thank you," they say, "well, you got a cigarette then?" this happens at least every other night. they're either rich or well on their way to a full pack.

2. my windshield is cracking. i can hear it while i drive, because when it is cold outside, the cd player refuses to play and makes mournful, whiny, cd-spinning sounds. but it is less pleasant to hear the sharp snap of a branch breaking and realize that, in fact, it's my windshield, cracking another 1/2 inch. i am waiting for it to explode and spray me with glass, which will look like snow and ice, and so no one will realize what's happened.

3. i got the winter sick this week. a tiny nasty virus, which resembles the flu in all things except it is not the flu. i stayed home from school -- i felt like a twelve year old. except i had to get up to get the popsicles myself. when i fell asleep with the achy spine and arms that come with the flu, i had a dream that my students had made a voodoo doll of me and were laughing gleefully while spearing it with needles. i did not wake up feeling any better.

4. my students panic when i miss class. they miss class all the time, whenever, but when i'm not there... different story. one student wrote me a long email sob story about how she could not finish her paper on time. paraphrase: "my twelve children are sick it might be the plague seven people are at death's door it's my responsibility to care for them all i cannot finish this paper on time and i do not know what i will do if you have a heart at all please give me an extension."

i write back, "we do not have class today anyway, as i am sick. please turn in your paper thursday."

she writes back, "i am going to come to your office tomorrow preferably between 3:00 and 4:00 so you can look over my paper."

i write back, "i'm not sure i will be in my office tomorrow as i have THE FLU. "

she writes, "i'm sending my paper with this email so that you can look it over before we meet tomorrow."

i think, "wha...?" and go back to sleep.

5. we've had two snow days this semester. the days they decide to call snow days always end up being beautiful, sparkly, sunny days. the days after those lovely snow days are awful. but the powers-that-be are ashamed of their previous lack of weather prescience, and so we must trudge, slide, slip, and spin into school on those days. absurd.

6. my new full time job: fishtailing.

7. unrelated to the cold, but made more irritating because of it: the police have come to my door twice in the last month. it always goes like this: BANG BANG BANG on the door. i open it.

the uniformed officer, with his hand on his gun/club/whatever, asks, "are you courtney so-and-so?"

"no," i say in a panic.

"did your ex just drop off the children?"

"no, i have no children. i have no exes with children."

"is this your home address?"

"yes."

"stupid caller. i'll have to talk to dispatch. sorry for the trouble."

whoever this courtney person and her ex are (and their invisible children), they are apparently living in my house. whenever i find them, we're going to have words.

and that's all i got for you now. this in no way outshines aaron's picture of his girl who is a friend, or kan's acting skills, but it's indiana. what do you want from me?