avett brothers

it pays to be nice.

one of my favorite customers at the dripolator offered my an extra avett brothers ticket tonight!

i'm exhausted, and feeling under the weather, and should probably just go home and go to bed, butttttt, i'm not going to do that.

i've never seen them before. i can't wait!

i feel this song in my chest....

....when i'm feeling really deeply

pad thai

i am so over peanut sauce...



and even peanut butter is losing its luster. all is not right with the world!

i used to crave it! i needed it! i have stood in kitchens and cleaned out entire jars of peanut butter...jars that weren't even mine! i've had serious issues with peanut butter. it's like a drug. and then when you add other foods to it....like noodles....forGET about it!

and then all of a sudden the other night when i ordered pad thai, all i could think of was the red curry rice and vegetable dish my friend ordered. i choked down my peanut-covered noodles with disdain for the chalkiness and saltiness of the sauce. the noodles were sticky in my mouth. i hardly ate half.

my tastes are changing. it scares me a little. this aversion developed strikingly close to the appearance of my first gray hairs. what else could change? what other childhood favorites are going to suddenly begin leaving bad tastes in my mouth?

***

i haven't had a drink in almost three weeks.
the quitting smoking is taking a bit longer, and i've definitely been cheating, but i haven't had a cigarette in a couple of days, and i don't want one.

i've got that winter feeling

it's cold here. it's been snowing off and on for the last week. my windshield has been covered in ice almost every morning, and all i have to clean it off with is the flat blunt edge of a plastic comb my step-father must have left in the car years ago. i went out to buy winter snow boots and bought puma high-tops, which are definitely not waterproof, instead. i'm going to hot yoga, to keep myself warm, and eating good food. by good, i mean i ate two toaster pastries for breakfast, and a pb & j for lunch, and i'll probably have pizza for dinner.

i'm knitting a lot, filling all those custom orders...thanks 'big crafty!'

i've also been making time, like i promised myself i would do when i left school, for my friends...for the people i can call when i'm feeling low and say, "let's craft and eat cookies and cry," and i know that, weather permitting, they will come.

i feel strangely at ease in the middle of what i see as a great earthquake. seismic waves crashing through the earth and splitting it into sides. this side, that side. my side, your side. everything is changing, and aside from my job and close friendships, i don't feel like i can consider very much else constant or stable.

i'm going home for christmas for a couple of days, and i'm sure i'll be walking right into the perfect picture of denial. the cheese & sausage balls, the christmas tree, the family pets, the family of four, the faux-finished kitchen walls, and the polished wood. the laugh lines, the crow's feet, the gray hairs, full glasses and silence. and from what i'm told, the "plan" is to go to the mall, my mother sister and i, on christmas eve day, to pick out our presents.

fotos, classes, bridge-mending, and self-love

i love blogging. i love writing. just recording, in general. i used to think, a long time ago, that i kept journals in order to go back. so i could go back to that page where i began the poem that would put me on the map...so i could return to the dog-eared page that had a list of bands somebody referred to me, and look them all up...so would be able to share the events of my life with somebody years from now, in precise detail....so i could re-read and conjure up memories with the clarity of recency.

the truth is, i never re-read. my life is a ball that rolls, and there isn't any time to go back. it gathers momentum, and it gathers mass, and there's no time to add to the verses of a love poem whose subject is no longer even relevant, and whose pages have buckled with the moisture from my hands and the weight from the books it's been shoved between in various bags.

my life is dangerously compartmentalized, and that fact has become glaring, blinding, in the recent months. i have strings and years of exciting, life-changing, vision-altering friendships and relationships that fit into little boxes on little time-lines and fit even smaller into the weeks and months of my very elaborate calendar. something begins, and it feels like my life, and i enjoy it, and then it ends and something else begins. if i were to go back through one of those journals of mine, it would probably be filled with hundreds of entries that begin the exact same way: "this new person is great....this job is great....this is the plan....here's what's next....this didn't work....nothing lasts...."

there has been no continuity. i fill my life with business busyness, and make little room for any-thing/body else, so that when they fall away, there's little deep impact...or so i think. for the last few months, i have begun to realize that the terseness of my time with these people/projects, and the casual nature with which i wave off the idea of any potential deep-rooted heartbreak or disappointment, has great impact. the impact of absence is great. the absence of that continuity, has had great, deep, impact.

because of these realizations, and all the mornings i spent convincing myself to leave bed once i realized how many bridges i needed to get to work on, i have been writing letters. most of them are in their baby-stages, and who knows when i'll be brave enough to send them all, but i've sent one, and already good things have come. i feel good. i've been writing to people, and taking pictures of the things i think are beautiful, and i really haven't been writing, because writing about people doesn't make them stay. writing in my journal about hurt feelings and disappointment isn't a conversation. it does no good. and nobody sees it. feeling sorry isn't an apology. it may not seem like there's a direct connection, but i've started going to yoga, and working out a lot. taking care of yourself, and loving yourself, i've found, makes it so much easier to love others, and to let others love you.

i had to move my studio space recently, and that's also why i haven't been posting here, or updating my etsy...but writing here keeps me honest. it keeps me on top of all the little things in the background that need to be done.

today i planned and added knitting classes to the dry goods shop class calendar, but i still need to...

}organize receipts
}take work to hip replacements & atelier 24
}update this 'ole thing with all the photos i've been taking
}clean my room
}buy toothpaste--i just ran out
}ask off work for days in january

oh yes, and recover from the big crafty...still working on that...