Waiting on Sunday to Drown

There's so much on my mind, all the time. I think about writing a lot. I open Notepad and stare at the blank page and nothing happens. Yes, someone actually uses Notepad.

A spider fell into my cleavage. I didn't realize it had fallen in there, just knew it was on me somewhere, and gave my hair and clothes a good shake. Then I felt it bouncing back and forth in there, trying to escape. I don't know what kind it was, because I was all like, "AAAAAAAAAH MY BREASTS" and clawed my chest up trying to get it out, fast. Didn't see where it got off too, either, I was too busy being relieved.

On that note, we're leaving for Indiana. Have a nice week, everybody!

I bought a red jacket this weekend.

"Ah," I thought as I pulled on a pair of green pants this morning, "I'm glad I hung onto my green jacket. This is not the time of year to be wearing red with green. There will be no Christmas jokes from my coworkers today."

I sat down on the bed to put my socks on, looking down at my red nails. "Or maybe there will be," I thought, then remembered that, oh, yeah, my socks and shoes will be covering those.

Pulled on my red shoes. D'oh!

Socially Awkward Penguin


Courage Wolf


Married to the Sea


Chitlins? featuring Adam's hand/handwriting/notebook

I'm not sure what it was that woke me up that morning last Monday. Maybe it was Adam talking in his sleep beside me. Maybe it was Brendan talking in his sleep across the room. Maybe I was talking in my sleep. We're all guilty, though I'm more often accused of laughing.

I opened my eyes and realized I wasn't in my bed at home. This was a hotel room in western North Carolina. The clock beside me read 5 A.M., and the sky through the blinds was still black. Outside was silent. There was nothing in the darkness, just a sliver of light under the bathroom door, the breathing of two other people, and me.

Stretching my legs, I rolled over onto my stomach, staring at the window like I thought the view would change. Sleep wouldn't come again for a long time, something like 45 minutes. Maybe I didn't want it to. It was almost criminal to be so comfortable.

I dozed in and out of sleep, a few minutes passing between my clock checks, punctuated by the strange, vivid dreams you have when you hit the snooze button on your alarm. Eventually, I knew I'd have to get up. I knew it would wake everyone else. I knew it would be a long time before I felt so safe again, lying awake in the dark, listening while two people I felt so close to were dreaming.

Two days before Jon Gosselin filed a cease and desist order against TLC to stop production of "Jon & Kate Plus 8," the network released a statement that the show would undergo a revamp. Jon would appear less frequently, with focus shifting almost entirely to Kate roughing it as a single mother, and the show's new title would be "Kate Plus 8."

I wondered to myself, how would the executives have handled the name change, had roles been reversed? All I can really come up with is "Jon Plus Spawn."

Shame about that show. I've been enjoying it, even since the split-up. It's so excruciatingly awkward and funny to watch Kate struggling to pitch a tent while the children stand around her, repeating half-wonderingly, half-gloatingly, "DADDY knows how to make a tent. Daddy ALWAYS makes the tent."

They were here in Wilmington in a recent episode (which was actually filmed in, like, May), but I have still never managed to catch it.

"Maud visited her old home (in the dark, so her uncle would not see her) and wrote:

'For a space the years turned back their pages. The silent sleepers in the graveyard wakened and filled their old places. Grandfather and Grandmother read in the lighted kitchen. Old friends and comrades walked with me in the lane. Daffy the cat frisked in the caraway. Above me my old white bed waited for me to press its pillow. I could hardly tear myself away from the spot. Perhaps the charm it had for me was not a wholesome one. . . . It may not be well to linger too long among the ghosts. . . .' --(June 27, 1915)"

--From Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, a biography by Mary Henley Rubio, expressing so much that I love about L.M. Montgomery

I could never have a Twitter, because my Tweets would be constant eyerolls.

Oh, plus, something about the whole idea of Twitter annoys me.

Yo La Tengo
Live at the Carolina Theatre, Durham, NC
September 18, 2009

More Stars Than There Are in Heaven
All Your Secrets
I Should Have Known Better
Shaker
Avalon or Someone Very Similar
Here to Fall
If It's True
Mr. Tough
I'm on My Way
Nowhere Near
We're an American Band
Periodically Double or Triple
Nothing to Hide
Tom Courtenay
Blue Line Swinger

Encore:
With a Girl Like You [cover]
I Heard Her Call My Name [cover]
Our Way to Fall



-The venue was so nice and small and personal. I'd prefer that to the sweltering, crowded, standing room only of Cat's Cradle any day.

-I was surprised when they opened with a 9-minute+ song, but as it was the track from Popular Songs that I most wanted to hear, no complaints.

-"Here to Fall," another favorite of mine from the new album, rocks hard even without the strings in the background to send it over the top.

-Adam and I couldn't decide if it was the acoustics playing with my mind or not, but I think some of the audience was singing along to the ba ba bas in "Tom Courtenay."

-I forgot to time "Blue Line Swinger," but Adam estimated 20 minutes. It didn't feel that long to me, but it was up there, and it was dizzying, how en energetic and powerful and utterly perfect it was. I'm not going to pretend I didn't tear up.

-The bad point to an encore as moving and gorgeous "Our Way to Fall" is that now the album version will never sound quite as good, much as I still love it.

-The only real complaint would be directed toward the zombies around me. I know we're seated here and that's weird for a YLT show, but enthusiasm doesn't mean dancing around like a shameless idiot to every song; if you're blocked from doing that, there are other ways you can enjoy yourself. Not that it's really my business if they want to sit there like mannequins for two hours, but I wanted to shake some of them. "HAVE FUN, DAMMIT." Or at least applaud. Christ, that's common courtesy. Oh, well. At least that's the worst I can say about them.

-Oh, and the two hours the band played flew by much too fast. Not that that's their fault, but I want some moooooore.

-Oh, oh, and the opening act was some kind of awful bluesy jam band called Endless Boogie--which became an all too appropriate name, as Adam pointed out, when their 12-minute songs felt like half an hour each. I'm pretty sure the lead singer was wasted on something (probably not just alcohol) and between songs, he did that thing where he kind of hissed and growled out the words and paused dramatically at random points during the sentence, like, "Tonighttttttuh...we're gonna hrrrrrock...this venuuuuuue." Not that anyone could really understand a damn word he was saying, as far as I could tell.

-Adam, whose last concert, I believe, was Mudvayne, got really into the music and was bobbing around with me. Oh, my god, this guy is way too cute.

-I loved the quiet drive home through a thin veil of fog. I love being out on the road late at night.

-I think I'm done.

Watermelon gum, probably chewing it obnoxiously. I wonder if I'll ever get used to chewing gum with an odd tooth missing.

Adam's been getting more into the music I listen to lately. I really try not to shove things down people's throats, so this is through no attempts of my own. Since he uploads anything on the computer to his MP3 player, he ends up with anything I've downloaded on there.

While he doesn't listen exclusively to metal (more death, less nu), there is definitely a slant in that direction. So now we'll be driving along and go from Rammstein to Depeche Mode to Dethklok to Radiohead. to Slipknot to Ben Folds Five to Metallica to the Kinks--and he will know the words to every song.

I've heard him humming Pet Shop Boys late at night ("I Get Along") and seen him drumming the wheel to the beat of a Talking Heads song ("Slippery People"). He's played my arm like a guitar while I listened to Yo La Tengo ("The Story of Yo La Tango") and whistled R.E.M. while cooking ("Leave"). He regularly recommends a Boards of Canada song to his friends ("Everything You Do Is a Balloon"), and he texted me the other day to say he'd listened to a Tori Amos song five times in a row ("Bouncing off Clouds") and HE HOPED I WAS HAPPY WITH MYSELF, YOUNG LADY.

A few days ago, at the grocery store, he suddenly broke into "I Saw Her Standing There." And when I walked in after work on Tuesday, he launched into "Revolution" on his guitar (thank you, amp, for the presets). There was something so endearing about it. He never used to like the Beatles, not even remotely.

This could mean I eventually break down and pick up what he listens to, as well. In Flames, As I Lay Dying, Killswitch Engage. Honestly, um...probably not.

Last night Adam and I were standing in line at the grocery store and he pointed to a nearby tabloid cover that read, "PATRICK SWAYZE GOES HOME TO DIE WITH HIS FAMILY." He was laughing about something, I'm still not entirely sure what, maybe just how ridiculous the whole thing seemed. Ten minutes later, we got home and saw the two-minute old AP press release that he had actually died. At home with his family, even.

So that was weird.

Although maybe it's in keeping with that week in June. Adam and I were making fun of Michael Jackson the night before he died. Brendan and I were making fun of Billy Mays the day before he died. Bonus!: I was telling Brendan about some creep I've worked with for years, and the guy was fired two days later.

Anyway.

Enterprise bought us customer appreciation pizza. A customer brought us cookies. I will be going home to Adam's fabulous spaghetti at lunchtime. Hopefully I'm hungry by then.

Customer: "I liked your hair better when it was redder. It used to be a brighter red."
Me: "Oh...um..."
Customer: "I mean, I still like it! You should just make it brighter again."

Anyway.

OH MY GOD SO BORED

That's not fair. In fact, it's bullshit.

My dealership just filmed a commercial here in the service area.

I didn't know it was going to happen, just happened to be lucky enough to be at lunch, otherwise I would have been in the ad. At least, my desk would have been; I'd have ducked behind it.

We wanted to see what Hurricane Bill was doing to the waves, so we drove to Carolina Beach last night.

We made our way down River Road, unlighted and mostly undriven, the radio in my Focus turned just a little too high, playing songs that remind me of autumn. There was something lonely in it, but comforting, Adam's hand on my thigh, occasionally squeezing. He was driving, his 5'10 frame crammed into my 5'4 space, not wanting me to have to readjust my seat again later.

We pulled in at the hotel, skirted the restaurant, and headed onto the pier where Adam proposed to me last year. It wasn't what I'd had in mind, looking out at the water from the edge of a pier, but at the last minute, Adam turned to a staircase I'd never noticed before and we descended to the beach.

The tide was high, higher than we'd thought, chasing us back to drier sand.

"Wanna take our shoes off?" he asked. "We can leave them by that little fence."

I had expected to get cold fast, as I usually do at the beach at night, even in the summer, so I'd worn a cardigan and brought another light jacket along for good measure. Wet feet seemed like a bad idea to me.

So we walked, our shoes slowly filling with sand, moving away from the light, the noise, the people on the pier. We followed the shoreline until the waves blocked us from going any further, then walked back and sat by the little fence.

We looked out at the Atlantic, the white caps and a million stars the only color in that direction, no lights from town to orange out the sky. The crashing was incredible and I felt that I should have been more charmed, more awed, more humbled. Something was throwing it off. I could feel my toes curling and uncurling in my shoes.

"Ah, what the hell," I said, and untied my laces. "How often are we at the beach?"

"Exactly," Adam said, pulling off his sneakers.

We set our shoes aside, pulled ourselves closer. I pressed me feet into the sand until they were covered, wiggling my toes, and leaned back, the wind tossing the hair that had escaped from my ponytail. Lightning flashed out over the ocean. And everything was right.

I leaned back far enough to look up at the sky, and thought I was going to be crushed by the closeness of the cloud overhead. It was drifting slowly out toward the storm, stars we can't see from our street peeking out behind it. I followed the line of its direction with my eyes, and saw that the stars hanging distantly over the ocean were being swallowed in clouds just a little lighter than the night sky. More lightning.

The odd couple or small group walked by, faceless blobs in the darkness, taken in their conversation, not looking at the water, just trying to be heard over it. They didn't notice the lightning, and they didn't notice us, stumps in the sand, pressed back against a little fence. I stared freely, because they'd never know, wondering if they had faces we'd recognize if it were light enough, knowing if it really were light enough that I wouldn't be looking at anyone around us, just focusing on being invisible.

The occasional Glo-Stick necklace turning the occasional almost-visible face green, the owners thereof completely oblivious to the show going on behind them. There were never many people, but there were even less as the tide climbed toward us. Sometimes it was quiet for several minutes together, just the waves mixing with the distant thunder.

Once, all the waves stopped together, and there was complete silence for one pregnant moment as they worked toward one giant crest, a crash I felt in my chest.

"Did that really just happen?" Adam murmured.

It had.

A jogger ran by, the clouds behind him lighting up at just the right moment, and I wished for the millionth time that my mind were a camera--equipped for both still pictures and motion, if I had a say in it.

The jogger just kept running, unaware that he was in my movie. He's like a surfer whose silhouette I kept watching at Wrightsville Beach one day, four years ago; like a woman who was making a snowman in her yard with her children when I walked by during an Indiana snowstorm, fourteen years ago; like the couple passing across the Banana River in a boat as I watched the sunset behind them twenty years ago. I have never forgotten them, although they never even noticed me.

The jogger disappeared up the shore. He'll never know that he was part of the picture my mind was taking of the beach the night Hurricane Bill passed the east coast without a visit and the clouds hung low and the stars peeked out and the waves held their breath and the lightning made a show for a couple on the shore where a girl with her feet buried in the sand didn't feel the urge to hide for a little while.

Fun with Text Messaging.

Adam: What is Helen Keller's favorite color?
Chuck Norris.

Me: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Because Helen Keller was deaf and blind.

Adam: How many Helen Kellers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
She does not use lightbulbs, because she is blind.

Me: Two blondes walk into a bar.
It's a dead baby joke!

Adam: Mr. T and Chuck Norris walk into a bar.
The bar is bent.

Me: A Mexican and a Muslim are walking along a cliff.
The black man says, "Doctor, you racist!"

Adam: What?

Me: No?

Adam: Don't count your chickens before they're in the bush.

The Chuck-E-Cheese across the street from my work was robbed yesterday. Guy rode up on a bike, waited until there weren't any customers in the lobby, and robbed the person behind the front desk.

This is probably the same crackhead (no, seriously) who came into my work the other day and bugged me for a few minutes. Rode up ON A KID'S BIKE, came in, and asked me if I took cash from two specific banks down the street. He kept asking questions that made absolutely no sense, until the manager finally called him out on it.

At that point, he stumbled over to another desk nearby and asked my coworker sitting there...if we take cash from two specific banks down the street. Wisely, she answered, "You know, I really don't know. You'll have to go ask someone in the sales department."

After a few minutes of asking her more nonsensical questions and barely receiving a reply, he made his way toward the door. I looked up as he was leaving and caught his eye. "It ain't funny!" he shouted at me, then rode off on his kid's bike. Rode off not toward the road, but into our back parking lot. I was sure he was out there still, lurking, and that I was going to be mugged trying to leave that night. Adam stayed on the phone with me until I made it safely to my car.

I thought I was through with worrying about personal safety at work when I quit my job at the convenience store. Too bad when I switched jobs, I only moved two blocks down the street.

From "200 Things I Learned from Knowing," courtesy of the IMDb message board:

-The caves won't save us!

-When encountering a person on fire, it's best to just yell, "Hey!"

-"Did your mother have some kind of ability?" is not a good pick-up line.

-You can be in an aircrash and walk out just fine, or on fire if you're unlucky.

-Animals who are on fire run the same way they normally do when they're not.

[SPOILERS]

-If you wish hard enough for an annoying main character to die, a semi truck will fulfill your wish. [Sidenote: This happened immediately after I said, "Characters like this bug the shit out of me. I always want them to die."]

-When it's the end of the world, hug it out, bitches!

-You can drive across a city in chaos and still spot your best mate across the road.

-Banging a tree with a bat, yelling, "Do you want some of this?!" will NOT endear you to aliens.

-Aliens don't "want some of this" from Nic Cage.

------------------------------------------------

But seriously, Knowing could have been worse. It wasn't as bad as, say, that newest Friday the 13th, which literally made me want to leave the room at parts, and contained such great lines as, "Your tits are awesome. Perfect nipple placement!" Knowing had its own brand of Nicholage Cage silliness, with lots of muttered lines and children with abnormally strong fingernails, and Adam and I spent most of the movie saying, "Yeah, I know," in response to character lines. But still. Could have been a lot worse.