On The First Week Out of Missoula.

On Friday night, I went to my ten year-old sister's dance recital. Which was interesting, in that it was in a high school auditorium, which prompted my brother and I to reminisce about our respective high school experiences. It's always enlightening comparing notes with Austin because, though we were at the same high school for several years, we were on opposite ends of the social strata. The fact that he was popular, however, did not exempt him from feeling like an outcast--a fact which probably would've endeared me to him had I known this when I was being slammed into lockers and harassed for being a rampant lesbian art-freak (though, the 'lesbian' part was an erroneous assumption based on my short hair and tendency to sport military boots).

Despite having performed in my fair share of them, I'd forgotten how excruciating dance recitals are: the costumes are never flattering (especially in the older classes, wherein there is always one slightly chubby girl forced to prance around in unflattering attire), the choice of music is (in my experience) always inappropriate, either because it has five year-olds sashaying to lyrics about "bang bang-ing in the backseat" or because it just sucks, and--because it's a dance recital and not a concert--very little effort is expended on making the crap music sound right. This recital was no exception. Halfway through the first hour (midway through a "modern" dance piece to Regina Spektor's "Samson"--which, btw, is one of those songs that I only listen to when I need a good cry), I decided that dance recitals were as solid an argument as any for not having children.

Worst was having to tell my sister that it was fun--nay, it was loads of fun, so entertaining, I loved it!--while secretly wishing I'd brought along the shit novel that I can't seem to bring myself to keep reading. I mean, even "Cloud Atlas" would've seemed pleasant under those circumstances.

In other news:

-I've made the regrettable oversight of showing the same sister LOLcats, which means she now will only speak to me in LOLspeak. Strangely, her LOLspeak has a vaguely German-sounding tinge to it. I suppose this is my karmic retribution for only speaking to my parents' cats in LOLspeak, and imagining them responding in like...

-I made a bangin' fideos dish the other night. My culinary prowess has surely increased.

-On Thursday night, I bowled a 72, while a 5 year-old bowling under the moniker "Juju" two lanes over bowled a 98.

-I've become some kind of crazy recluse type who blogs about children's dance recitals and bowling scores. I need to find some other way to fill my time...

On Love.

I mentioned this over at URFCKD, but I only posted a few of the hearts I really love. Here're the rest that could've (easily) been my submissions:

Notably absent: "I love you more than 'Zelda: Ocarina of Time'"; "I love you more than clandestinely smoking cigarettes in my parents' garage because it's too damn cold to smoke outside"; "I love you more than Febreeze after I've clandestinely smoked in my parents' garage and the smell has somehow permeated the house"; "I love you more than the Sweet Jalapeno Vinaigrette I invented tonight"; "I love you more than Crown and Diet Coke while watching 'Skins' with my brother"; and "I love you more than DVR."

On Things That Go Bump In The Night.

My parents have (or used to have) four cats: Texas, Annabelle, BT and Amanda. Half the time, they're indoor cats. The other half of the time, they're crazy, quasi-feral barn cats. When my folks head out of town (which is often), the cats revert to their primal nature and turn into hunters: with no one to coddle them, they wander the fields killing rabbits, moles, and mice.

Except Annabelle. Annabelle never seemed interested in straying from the confines of the house. She was not an explorer.

A couple of months ago, though, my parents left town and Annabelle went missing. They assumed she would wander home eventually, as the other cats were wont to do. Texas would leave for weeks at a time and come home with new scars to show for his adventures, so it didn't seem implausible. However, Annabelle has not returned. She has a collar, so they presume had someone found her, they would have been notified.

In other news, the coyotes seem to have fallen on hard times and their search for food brings them closer to house than it has in the past. Last night, I fell asleep to howling outside my window. If you listen, you can hear the horses panic.

Annabelle's disappearance and the nearing of the coyotes may be unrelated incidents. Or, they may not be.

Make of this what you will.

On Inspiration.

I think I should only blog when I've been drinking. Last night, when I couldn't even lift my head up and had to respond monosyllabically for fear of more than words leaving via my mouth, I had a million ideas for blogs. And maybe it's because I was having these wonderful ideas while I had my head in a trash can, but I feel like most of them were witty. And smart. Possibly even brilliant.

Alas,today I am idea-less, tired, sick and busy. Not witty. Not brilliant.


I'm ready to leave now.

On Taking Only What You Need From It.

Packing sucks.

Moving sucks.

See the picture to the right--the one where they're smiling and happy? The one where they're not thinking of ways to fake their own deaths in an attempt to get out cleaning their house? Yeah. That one.

It's bullshit propaganda.

NO ONE IS THAT CHEERFUL ON MOVING DAY. Normal people have three empty cans of Red Bull in front of them and are kind of twitchy and are ready to snap if they find EVEN ONE MORE GODDAMN DVD after they've already taped up the DVD box. Or, if they're slightly troubled (I say 'troubled' because it sounds nicer than 'fucked up') like myself, they're already drunk at 11 am, because they found that bottle of Crown Royal they were too drunk to finish on New Year's and remembered there was Diet Coke in the fridge and so figured, Hell, maybe that'll take the edge off of this whole ulcer-inducing process. Or, at least mellow out the caffeine/nicotine buzz I've been riding all morning...

Every time I move, I resolve to simplify. To cut back on possessions, to minimize, to only take what I need/can carry. And that philosophy serves me well... For about a week. And then I'm back to collecting. I've accumulated more shit than any person in my situation could ever possibly need.

And you know, I think I might be alright with packing and cleaning and the whole moving routine (and trust me: by now, it is routine) if I were moving to someplace I wanted to be. But I'm moving to Billings, so I'm not excited about the move, which makes it hard to get motivated. And I'm not going to hop on the bandwagon and declare that Billings is Satan's asshole, because it's not. I've been to Satan's asshole, and it's in Washington. But Billings is definitely Satan's lower back, or maybe his upper thigh, and I'm not thrilled about the whole thing.

At least twice today, I found myself standing perfectly still, staring at nothing, simply because I was too overwhelmed to function.

And I'm up for round two tomorrow. My plan is to listen to "Kids" on full volume, on repeat, until my subconscious learns its lesson and I remember that stuff is just stuff and I don't need more stuff . Or maybe I'll just finish that bottle of Crown. We'll see.


"Kids" by MGMT

On The Matter of Reading.

I finished a book yesterday. As in, sat down and read a book cover-to-cover. Most of this reading was done in a coffee shop adjoined to a book store, which made me feel very much like the Danielle-of-seven-or-eight-years-ago, when I would go to Barnes & Noble on a Sunday afternoon, stake out the comfiest of the couches, and (without actually purchasing it) read (in its entirety) whatever new novel the New Yorker was ranting about. If it was a particularly long novel, I would use a toothpick as a bookmark, so I could just pick up where I left off the next Sunday. Only once did the book I bookmarked ever get sold before I could finish it.

Anyway. I actually bought the book I read yesterday. But it was at a used bookstore, so I still feel like I was cheating someone out of something. Maybe like I was cheating Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned (the book I bought/read), out of his cut from the sale of the book. Or maybe not. It was a good book, if not much too fast a read (it only took me two and a half hours to finish), but none of this is really the point.

The point is: I miss reading. I blogged a little about this over at URFCKD, but I kind of want to mention it here as well. To drive it home, maybe.

I used to be a voracious reader. It was my thing. Other people have music, and I like music (although, not as much lately), but music was never really my thing. And yeah, I watch a lot of movies, but I never considered myself a film buff; nor did I ever strive to establish myself as a film buff. I doodle, but I'm not an artist. I write (occasionally), but I'm not a writer.

I'm a reader.

I'm the kind of person who will--schedule allowing it--stay awake for three days, just to finish a novel in one sitting.

I'm the kind of person who, when imagining her dream house, has an entire floor devoted to books. My dream house has an actual library. With a card catalogue.

I'm the kind of person who falls in love with a person based on the caliber of his bookshelf. Always have been. I usually don't realize that I'm serious about a person until I start imagining our collections combined... his books, my books, the shelving it would require for such a union, which novels we'd have multiple copies of, etc. Seriously: some women imagine what her kids would look like were she to marry so-and-so; I wonder about what our library would look like.

Or, at least, I used to be that kind of person. Somewhere along the line, I stopped. Reading stopped being my thing. Maybe it had to do with school, and being forced to listen to absolute morons discuss novels I loved. Or maybe it was the fact that I had to get a job, and finding the time to scout out books I wanted to read seemed impossible. Not to mention finding the time to actually read the book once I'd decided on it. Maybe it's the fact that reading is a solitary activity; you can watch a movie and listen to music in a group, with people, but reading is really an alone-time activity. And maybe I'm afraid of alone-time... Maybe I'm now the kind of person who subconsiously needs to be with people all the time, and dreads having to spend any quantitive amount of time by herself...

Whatever the reason, movies and Nintendo and drinking are my things now (or, at least, have been for the past year.) They're just so much easier, so much less of an investment. They're cheaper (and I don't mean "cheaper" as a financial statement.)

And I feel cheaper for choosing them.

So, my New Year's resolution--and don't even get me started on how I used to be the kind of person who didn't make New Year's resolutions--will be to finish at least one book a week (unless I decide to finally finish Ulysses or something equally epic, in which case I will allow myself longer.) I'm not going to resolve to review the books once I've read them, because I won't, and I'm not going to set myself up for that failure. But I am going to resolve to start reading again. I'm going to try and be that girl who isn't afraid of spending time alone.

I used to be that girl. I can be her again.

Right?

(On a totally unrelated note, Goodwill had the most amazing selection of self-help books from the 70s and 80s yesterday. Any--or all--of them would have enhanced my collection greatly, and I was thisclose to buying them, but then... I remembered I have no place to put them, and they'd just be more crap I have to haul around until I do. Le sigh. And so, just like that, I've let a trove of precious gems slip through my fingers.)

On Not Sleeping.

I can't. Sleep, that is. So here're some illustrations. I found them on the interwebs. They're by Marc Johns. I like his work.