here you have it

no, i'm not on drugs

and so, 2005 is drawing to a close. i wasn't really sure what i wanted to do to celebrate this year. or rather, the end of the most turbulent year of my adult life. i've never been one to honor resolutions or even really make them. and i'm still not. but things have changed this year. i've been forced to realize the fragility that is life. not so much in terms of life and death (directly), but in terms of comfort, relationships (whether it be with family, friends or lovers), and paths in general. in the book that she gave me for christmas, jennie wrote, "there are no predetermined endings." so true. so true. there is a certain amount of comfort in making a plan or knowing how situation will work out, but i am learning how to better operate in a moment.

i feel like i am a completely different person than i was at this time last year. and in that, i feel like i have many, many things to be thankful for. especially after my sweat lodge experience, i realized that giving thanks is something that i need to take time to do on a daily basis. at first it seemed awkward, but now it feels like a necessary part of my day. i've realized just how many things in my life i have to be thankful for...

i am thankful for my relationships my family. when i was visiting my nana and great grandmother (among other extended family) for thanksgiving, my great grandma said something that will stay with me. the conversation was about a cousin who is addicted to drugs and as a result has lost custody of all 3 of her children (though they are still in the care of family members), among other rock-bottom hardships. yet she continues to use street drugs. my great grandma, in a display of the most unconditional love i have ever realized, said that even though she doesn't understand my cousin's actions, she is sure that she has her reasons and that if she showed up to thanksgiving dinner, we would feed her and love her and be thankful that she's well enough to show up. it made me realize just how lucky i am to be a part of a family that operates with that level of acceptance. and even though we may not completely understand eachothers' lifestyles and choices and reasons, we still love and provide for eachother to the best of our ability. i am thankful that i can be who i am and know that my family will still love and support me.

i am thankful for my relationships with my friends. i know that at times when i need a friend to talk to, a friend to get out of town for a weekend with, a friend to have a beer with, a friend to bring me a gatorade in the morning when i'm too hung over to be productive without some hydration, i've always got someone to call. i am thankful for friends who don't hold it against me if i can't hang out tonight. i am thankful for friends that i only see once or twice a year, but can still relate like we see and talk to eachother every day. know that each and every one of you have left your own unique little imprint on my life, shaped like only you could shape it.

i am thankful for my relationship with jennie, and all that she has helped me learn, both about myself and about life in general. sometimes it takes a person to be a sort of mirror for your thoughts for you to really be able to see them. i am thankful for, among other fabulous things, waking up slowly together and the levels of comfort and honesty we offer eachother.

i am thankful for understanding.

i am thankful for my health.

i am thankful for my job.

i am thankful for the comforts that i enjoy.

i am hopeful for the coming year, and feel like it has good things in store for me. i hope that the good times out-shine the rough times, that i can learn the lessons i need to learn, and that my path is lighted with courage and understanding and love.

best wishes to you all in 2006.

listening to:
modest mouse - float on
ok don't worry we'll all float on
even if things get heavy we'll all float on
alright already we'll all float on
don't you worry we'll all float on
all float on

uh... hi.

wow. i think it's been a record amount of time since i've posted. what's been keeping me so busy that i can't even take a moment to blog? here's the short story:

sweat lodge. for the rest of the week after i posted last, i was mentally preparing for what would become a life-altering event. on saturday, the 17th, i headed out of madison to participate in a winter solstice native american sweat lodge ceremony. but i will not post about it here. if you are curious about my experience, ask, and i will talk to you about it in person. i spent the rest of my free time for the rest of the week thinking.

jennie. in the words of deputy clementine johnson, "when two dynamic people get together, there's a whole lot of dynamite." there's also a whole lot of conversation, processing, and staying in bed all day.

christmas. on wednesday, i realized that i had less than a week to prepare for christmas. oops. since i don't have extra cash this year, and didn't really have many people to shop for, i got it all done on thursday morning before work. how's that for efficient? after running errands and getting some loose ends tied up, i was off to minnesota on friday. after christmas with the family all weekend, and breakfast with mike bright and early monday morning, i was back in madison in time for work on monday afternoon. the haul:

* the super sexy vegan leather jacket that i had been lusting over
* cordless 18V power drill/driver
* handsome boy modeling school's white people
* liz phair's exile in guyville (from before she was an annoying sellout)
* hand made clay sculpture
* silver dyke necklace (blessed by one of molly's coworkers)
* digital voice recorder
* alice's adventures in wonderland dvd
* best buy gift card
* comfy pjs and fuzzy socks
* the mysteries of harris burdick by chris van allsburg
* a mix cd, a hand painted glass ornament, and some very yummy (and handsomely decorated) road trip cookies
* lavender bathy things and comfy slippers
* rechargeable batteries
* a refill cartridge for my photo printer
* love

the weekend was awesome. lots of food. lots of rest. even got some recorded snippets of my family singing along to lynyrd skynyrd's tuesday's gone while doing shots of dr. mcgillicuddy's mentholmint schnapps. ah, family.

back in madison. work is keeping me busy, which is great. i need to be making money right now. i've got a lot to think about for the coming year and it would be nice to continue not dipping into what i managed to save while i was working a jobby-job. decisions, decisions, decisions... go back to school? how do i pay for it? what should i study? stay in madison? let myself fall head over heels? a practical path spiritual fulfillment?

thinky, thinky, thinky. time to go scrounge up some food for my thoughts... and my body.

...

do you ever think so hard that you can't read? like, you're so deep in your head that when you look at a book or a newspaper or a computer screen or a text message, you just can't read it? like the symbols just don't make sense? like, you've actually got to step back for a minute or so to clear your head enough to let through your ability to read?

...

i still have a hard time listening to girlyman's music without feeling like there's a wrench stuck in my throat, and a fire in my lungs.

blogathon

and now, the moment you've all been waiting for:

the mexico photo album is captioned, posted, and ready for your viewing pleasure. please proceed to your left-hand sidebar. i haven't really done much proof reading, though, so if you see something that doesn't make sense, let me know. and if you're robert, i need your email address so i can send you some pictures that i found on my camera that... didn't make the final album cut.

in other news: i updated the entire right sidebar of my site.

enjoy!

**edited to add**
12-17-05

in some sort of unfortunate series of events, the hosting service for this site went down just after i made all of the changes and additions to my sidebars. the information was not lost, but it has taken a couple of days for the site to get republished as i changed it. so if you're looking at the right sidebar and thinking, "bitch, you didn't change this!" be patient.

sit down, let me tell you a story... you best get comfy

in addition to my new musical addictions, planning some minor changes to this blog, working on my mexico photo album (soon, i PROMISE), catching up with friends and family after being on vacation, and freaking out about the impending holiday season, i've been up to my ears in a totally new subject: israel.

starting at the beginning, i have been friends with simmi since we were both in jr high. simmi's sister, bunni lives in isreal. given all of the terrible stuff i've seen on the news about the state of things in israel, i didn't really understand why she would want to live there. there must be something that i'm missing. so i started seeking information about who is fighting and why. i thought that i needed to get a grasp on that before i could get a balanced sence of what daily life is like in such a turbulent place. turns out, the question of who is fighting and why is not so black and white. it's actually quite complicated, and tends to change depending on who you ask. even if you're listening to public radio. i found no real objective middle ground. and i don't trust the political spin the american mass media tends to put on things. plus, i didn't even understand the difference between israel and palestine, or even what it means to be palestinian. i've heard people say that palestine doesn't even exist. what?

so one day, bunni left a comment on simmi's blog, complete with link to her website. it was fascinating, and i had a billion questions, mostly stemming from "what started this whole mess?" so we started emailing back and forth, and then i went on vacation. when i got back, she had delivered. in a MAJOR WAY. she posted SO MUCH INFORMATION that it has taken me weeks to really appreciate it. this is some complicated stuff, going back thousands of years. i'm still digesting and sitting with all of this information, wishing i had fewer distractions. i've actually been meaning to make this post for at least a month.

i want to share this with anyone who is interested.

bunni's blog : life in israel

i'd start here

special delivery

i'm the friend who has been your friend for 12 years, and even though we live within a block of eachother, and invite eachother all the time, we rarely go out together. but sometimes i come over and watch dvds until bedtime. and when we do go out, it's like we do it all the time. i like your friends.

i'm the friend who wants you to visit me at work. not because i'm going to have time to hang out with you, but because i love my work space, want to share that with you, and i would love to make you an espresso chai and not charge you for it.

i'm the friend who routinely sends you a birthday greeting at least 2 months after your birthday. not because i don't know when your birthday is (actually, i may have forgotten the day, but i do know your astrological sign) but because i need to send you something that was created when my energy was fully devoted to you. and i can't schedule that sort of thing.

i'm the friend who basks in the energy of our friendship.

i'm the friend who needs to tell you way more often how much i love you.

*

i was tearing my bedroom apart today, looking for a piece of paper that i needed to make a copy of to send to a potential employer. it took me almost 2 hours. i ended up finding what i was looking for, but i also found something much more important. something that i completely forgot that i had. it was a birthday greeting from a friend who, though we live in different states and communicate very little anymore, still holds the deed to some prime realesate in my heart. she sent me this, which i must share with you. i must have not fully recieved it when i recieved it, as i was in a different place then. its re-entry in my life is most excellently timed...

"How numerous and manifold is everything that is yet to come, and how differently it all surfaces and how differently it all passes from the way we expect.

"How poor we are in imagination, fantasy and expectation, how lightly and superficially we take ourselves in making plans, only for reality then to arrive and play its melodies on us.

"We lead our lives so poorly because we arrive in the present always unprepared, incapable, and too distracted for everything.

"One has to live to the limit, not measuring it by each day but according to its depth.

"One does not have to do what comes next if one feels a greater affinity with that which will happen later.

"One may dream if one's dreams are more necessary than bread.

"In a word: one ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one's life, for each life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.

"I confess that I consider life to be a thing of the most untouchable deliciousness, and that even the confluence of so many disasters and deprivations, the exposure of countless fates, everything that insurmountably increased for us over the past few years to become a still rising terror cannot distract me from the fullness and goodness of existence that is inclined toward us.

"There would be little sense in approaching you with good wishes if each wish were not preceded by this conviction that each good in life arises pure, undamaged and, at its very bottom, desireable out of upheaval and ruin."
~rainer maria rilke

it was the last sentence that i read over and over again. and then i read all of the words again. and again. and i'm still wrapping my brain around it. because, while i agree fully with the last sentence, it is difficult to give myself permission to live my life with the fluidity that these words imply.

the perfect distraction from careerophobia, or: i love my coffee shop job

2nd day of working this week, 2nd day of friends braving the cold all the way from the east side to visit me, and my mad espresso brewing, milk steaming super powers. it also feels really good to share with my friends a space that is so calming and safe for me.

my favorite, though, was when rae said about the way the yogurt and granola was displayed in the cooler, "it's *so* cute! i'm having a gut reaction to it's cuteness."

sometime near the end of the day, matthew, one of the co-owners of the store was roasting beans in the back of the kitchen. while i was scooping out some yogurt and granola for some customers (the first time anyone has ever ordered yogurt and granola from me), i realized that a john mayer song was playing on the radio.

me (in my head): "i hate john mayer."
matthew, from across the kitchen: "john mayer sucks!"
this was the first thing he'd said out loud in almost an hour.
me: "i was JUST thinking that! john mayer DOES suck!"
matthew: "you're getting a promotion!"

but now i'm wondering, is it john mayer that i think really sucks, or is it jason mraz? the thing that gave me such a strong reaction to the song that i heard was that one time i went to see jack johnson at the orpheum, and one of these guys opened for him and TOTALLY SUCKED. and then later he made a music video that also TOTALLY SUCKED. and now i can't remember who it was. their music sounds the same to me, anyway.

in my head:
ben folds - rockin' the suburbs
let me tell y'all what it's like
being male, middle class, and white.

"wait, i have to axe my husband"

and, i don't serve "expresso."

i'm not all about correcting people, but "expresso" makes my skin crawl. if there were a 4 lane highway somewhere whose *only* destination was a pristine palace of coffee, then i would be glad to call that road the expresso.

later, a group of three teenagers decided against buying a $1.00 (an unholy $1.06 after tax) cookie because they didn't have enough money. or at least none of them wanted to give up $1.06 for a cookie. but they ALL had SALON FAKE AIRBRUSHED FINGERNAILS. i hope that never in my life will i have to choose between eating and getting my nails done.

by the way, i'm posting this not to be bitchy, but so that you can laugh with me. and feel old, because after they left, i said (out loud) to myself, "i will never understand teenagers."

*drool*

the mad rollin dolls, dairyland dolls. yum.

i had my first roller derby experience last night, and along with the all the pretty horses show on thursday, i feel like i've rediscovered something that i've been missing since i moved to wisconsin: punks. a little tiny hole somewhere in my heart has been partially filled.

also, i've mastered the tie. in the summer, i am fairly low maintenance: pants and t-shirt. simple. but when the weather gets colder, and i have to start layering, things get complicated. long, boring story short: getting ready to go to the derby and putting on all those clothes at the same time made me feel like i was dressing up, so i decided to throw on a tie, just for the hell of it. usually, when i tie a tie, i have to look up the diagram online and go back and forth between my computer and a mirror. not last night. i pulled off the most symmetrical windsor knot i've EVER tied. despite what the website says, the windsor is WAY more symmetrical and sexy than the half windsor or the four-in-hand knots. plus, i did it ALL BY MYSELF! i was so proud of it, that it's still tied, hanging from my closet door. i'm even tempted to wear it to work tomorrow. i don't remember ever being this excited about an article of clothing. ever.

don't worry, mom, the mohawk is not coming back anytime soon (merry christmas to you!)... but i may be just on the brink of a tie phase...

who am i turning into?

listening to:
portishead - humming
is it all as it seems,
so unresolved, so unredeemed?

real. fucking. loud. music.

you know it's good when your ears are still ringing a solid 12 hours later. apply where needed. my obsessions with loud music, punks, and mohawks have been reignited in a serious way.

pictures soon. not of last night, but of when i saw them last summer.

anyone wanna take a trip to minneapolis with me in january? punks. loud music. mohawks. minneapolis. guaranteed.

also:

my new musical obsessions are
lo fidelity allstars : battle flag
scream club : dead wrong

i'm real proud of scream club. found 'em all by myself :) in all reality, though, i've got two or three friends who are likely to comment to this post something like "i've had that cd since it came out last year."

not having a job that pays more than $10 an hour really does wonders for my wish list:
~ veruca salt : american thighs
~ team dresch : personal best
~ scream club: don't bite your sister
~ lo fidelity allstars : battle flag

listening to:
30 second snippets of scream club songs in the itunes store

peel.