33

on the way home today, i was trying to come up with an elaborate allusion to thomas wolfe and the whole "you can't go home again" line, and it was going to have a wisecrack about seeing thomas wolfe's own home last summer in asheville and its wraparound porch and lord knows where else i was going with that.

but 1) it was pretty lame and 2) i'm too tired for allusion or metaphor or synecdote or any of the devices i had to commit to memory in high school. 

christmas was absolutely lovely and oh-so needed.  i went home and in my grand coty tradition totally regressed.  by the second day, i actually told my mom i was hungry but figuring out what to eat was too hard, and i should be ashamed, but the ensuing grilled cheese was just delicious.  not having habie there was worse than i had even imagined, but i'm going to find a way for her to come to napa for next christmas, because lord would that girl love wrapping paper and a fenced-in backyard and constant commotion, especially when my brother swoops in for one of his fifteen-minute visits (just long enough to shower and change and lose something vitally important and then stomp around the house looking for it).  she would also love my sister's dogs, although i doubt the feeling would be mutual, at least with the older one, since mercedes's idea of heaven is eating food with my sister nearby in absolute peace and quiet, and habie and peace and quiet aren't exactly complementary. 

it's funny, figuring out what and where home is.  because it's not such a simple answer, particularly when your childhood home still exists and your room there looks just like it always has.  my bookcases are full there, and i know that i need to coalesce and consolidate at some point, but i sort of like stretching out across states.  i like that there is still room--still my room, with a poster of shah rukh khan on one wall and more lit crit than i ever know what to do with on the shelves (oh twenty-year-old self).  there's that movement to pare your belongings down to 100 things, and once i thought about doing it, only to realize later that "books" or "craft supplies" didn't just count as a single item and so it was impossible.  i'm not to the level of hoarders, and the image of a woman who had a crate of strawberries sitting in a corner of her kitchen for two years because she couldn't bear to throw them out horrified me so much that i'm pretty sure i'll never qualify for an a&e reality intervention.  but i'm not a minimalist and never will be.  invariably, any room i inhabit for more than three days has piles--books on the nightstand, sparkling water bottles within arm's reach, change on the corner of the dresser--and even after cleaning, the piles are just neatened and streamlined, never eradicated. 

because those people with 100 belongings:  do they just not read?  do they get their books from the library and so never have the pleasure of dog-earing pages or reading in the bath?  what if they want to play a board game?  we played hours of yahtzee over christmas, but sometimes it's euchre or scrabble or boggle--are they just not game players?  or do force their guests to BYOBG? (which seems like cheating somehow and is also absolutely un-southern)  if one can actually get down to stuff in the double-digits, great.  but that's just not me, and that's just not any home i've ever had, or ever will. 

sure, home is where the heart is.  but often the heart is in more than one place, like say when your dog is at the kennel in one state and you are with your human family in another.  so maybe home is where you can leave trashy mysteries in plain view and where you can navigate in the dark without a single bump and where you can fuss at someone and know that she still loves you.

the ties don't only bind.  they also tether.

32

the nashville airport: tumi bags and toms shoes and louis vuitton luggage sets oh my! (toto, we're not in southwestern kentucky anymore)


going back to the n-a-p-a for a week. will undoubtedly: miss habie terribly (already do), kvetch about how expensive everything is, overdose on burritos and thai food and fresh produce.




cannot. wait.

31

do you ever go to the grocery store and see something on sale and get it and then the sale's going on the next time you go to the sto' and you buy it again and then you go another week later and forget all about what's at home on the shelves and hey there's this great sale! and then you come home and put the groceries away and rearrange and realize that oh good grief, you have become that little old lady with tuna cans (and dozens of cats mewing at her feet) who doesn't even like tuna that much?

yeah, me neither (but at least i'm a tropical mrs. havisham?)

30

i've been living here for three months now, and thanks to frequent walks with the habes and me being incredibly inquisitive (fine, super nosy), i've learned a lot about my neighborhood.  i've counted the number of red trucks on my block (four) and noticed which houses went all out with christmas lights and which are still in the dark (if i were anywhere else, i'd say that those are where the jews live, but this is literally christian county and the nearest synagogue is an hour away (believe me--i've checked)  in another state.  i'm pretty confident that the member of the tribe population here is a null set).  i've watched the next door neighbors on one side start fixing up the house in order to sell (if i were selling a house, the first thing i'd remove is the dilapidated doughboy, but we apparently have different staging ideas) and i've waited for someone to steal the racist jockey (no such luck yet). although i can't manage to get habie to consistently sit and "come" is a lost cause unless i shake a bag of chicken strips, she knows to jump up on the stone walls down the street as we pass and that i will laugh every time.

but to really know a place, you can't just walk the streets and walls.  you need to talk to an insider who can tell you what goes on behind the sun porches and french doors.  and oh, did i get some info last night.  i met someone who grew up on my block and she gave me lots of dirt--the ugly little stories that everyone knows but usually no one tells.  the cute little yellow house with the porch swing?  the dad was murdered while the two kids hid in a toy chest.  the house with the door on the second floor?  it's been "under construction" for ten years and a pedophile used to live there and lure teenage runaways.  okay, okay--these are horrible stories.  but they're the ones that the locals know.  just like how everyone on my mom's block knew not to trick or treat at george's house (george being a developmentally disabled man who walks all around town.  i've known him since we moved in, when i was one and a half, and this summer as i recuperated in the sun outside, he stopped me and made me promise to invite him to my wedding) because one year he put a safety pin in an apple and gave it to kevin.  or how the man in the house above us on the hill has a serious drinking problem:  every night a "har har har" starts up around ten, and you can almost taste the scotch coating each syllable bellowed.  the har hars stopped for a little bit, but they're back now, and when i visit i lie in my bed and laugh quietly back.  because every call deserves a response.

at the party (the local bar association's christmas bash), i also met the owners of the house i rent.  and they told me how the house is eighty-six years old and has only had two owners, and how the second floor was original, even though i was sure it was an add-on.  i learned that their niece and nephew picked out the colors of the rooms, and i told them that i loved it all, hadn't touched a single wall, that even though my grandmother's dining room set didn't go with the burgundy in there, i would just reupholster.  i told them that i knew that it was the house for me within five seconds of first walking in, and that my dog loves every nook and cranny.  and because i was in the flush of my second glass of pinot grigio, i even broke the no money/politics talk rule and told them how i paid more to share an apartment with three others in law school, but that this is the first place i've ever lived outside of napa that felt like a home.

this has been a big transition for me--still is.  but in making my list of things i am thankful for on thanksgiving, so many of them had to do with this place.  and as i sit here, on my couch from big lots that sits next to furniture from my grandmother's house, habie snoring softly with her head against my hip, i am again so grateful.  because when we return from dog walks, past the tragic yellow house and the haunted pink one and i see the olive stucco, my heart and my dog both leap for joy.



(come visit, won't you?)

29

my mom came for thanksgiving and all i got was this lousy cold.  well, that's not actually true at all.  i got the pleasure of her company and a rug which really ties the whole (living) room together and a great thanksgiving feast that lasted me through lunch today and office furniture and a respite from the early weekend morning habieinsanity and an amaaaaaaaaaaaaazing vacuum that both cleans and makes me feel bad about the apparent filth i was living in before i met its DUAL CYCLONIC ways.  not to mention lots of crucial mom conversations where i whine about not knowing where my life is going and she sympathetically nods and listens and then says something wise that makes me feel better, at least until the next wave of panic. 

but forreals:  she leaves and i get sick.  coincidence?  well, probably.  or else some weird psychosomatic thing since i only started feeling bad when her departure neared.  and of course she made me gargle salt water and load up on vitamin c and water and tea with honey and sleep and zinc.  but still!  she's been gone for a day and despite continuing the mom regimen, i appear to be fighting a losing battle with the beasty.  it's still in the early "my head feels like it's a balloon" stages, so i predict a full touch down on wednesday.  which is also the predicted first day of snow.  oh winter, i haven't missed you at all.  and true, i'm not in michigan anymore, so i really have no cause to complain, but being on the far eastern edge of the central time zone means that it's dark by five pm and a wee depressing. 

tonight i was full of good intentions, but they got lost in self-pity, so i just lay on my couch and did lots of creepy internet searches.  not creepy because i'm looking up anything illegal or super weird.  just really incredibly random, with a side helping of google stalking people i don't talk to anymore.  once a friend decided to type in a letter on my computer and see what google autofilled from my previous searches.  this quickly rose to the top ten of things coty freaks out about and is (perhaps irrationally) unable to have a sense of humor about.  (also on the list?  jumping out from behind things and scaring me; putting meat on my plate; haley joel osment)

no really, i swear:  it's not the individual searches so much as the combination of dozens of them.  plus i'm weirdly good at extracting that golden link on, oh say the seventh page of results that leads to someone else's waaaay too confessional blog.  it's a skill!  really!

but anyhow, i started feeling worse and worse this evening.  and--this is most likely the cold medicine i just took talking--i began to think:  what if lying around wasting hours on the internet doesn't make one feel better?!?! 

and because i'm a sucker for clean starts and new leafs and beginnings*, i happened to remember that tomorrow is december first, and so i decided to make a new month resolution:  no more mindless internetting for the rest of 2009.  i can check my email and read my google reader and buy christmas presents and watch friday night lights and even post things like this--let's be reasonable here.  but navigating the world wide web without a set purpose and goal?  nunca. 

ideally, this would mean that i'd become super-productive and get the rest of my office/craft room (oh yes, you read that right.) set up and finish my shopping before vacation and call all the people i've been neglecting for the last few months and maybe even think about real writing again.  but baby steps.  even if all i do is play "klondike" (is the name solitaire trademarked or something?) on my bbry and watch hgtv?  this is still, sadly and incredibly, a definite step up.

to kick it middle-school-style: this could be a long december.


* i do not eff around with resolutions.  not eating meat?  started as a new year's resolution . . . for 1995.  in 2008, i gave up celebrity gossip and made it all the way to finals, which is particularly impressive considering britney spears had her meltdown about two days into the year and yet i still refrained.  obviously i consider that a much harder feat than the not-eating-meat thing. 




even with a codependent dog at my feet, i am not a fun under the weather (as captured by my mom this weekend)

(this post brought to you by alka seltzer cold & cough)

28

depressed by the game, sober on the third saturday in november for the first time in years, and decidedly not in the mood to clean the kitchen and living room floors, i went on a walk this afternoon.  with habie AND my blackberry.  i live in a historic district (encompassing an entire three blocks), and so most of the people around me 1) own their homes and thus 2) work on their lawns.  A LOT. the pressure to landscape is only encouraged by the official powers-that-be, who bestow a "yard of the month" award on the front lawn that best fulfills the aims of the founding fathers of hoptown.*

i take habes on the same few routes and so i've gotten pretty familiar with the different sights.  until now, i've refrained from photographing the curiosities since i didn't want to be labeled a creepster.  however, despondent over tate's second-half performance, i threw caution to the wind.  behold:

while most places i've lived have adhered to the "christmas decorations after thanksgiving" rule, hoptonians laugh in the face of calendar-based tenets (see also:  white shoes after labor day).  this crèche has been up since the beginning of november. 

do i encourage habie to pee in the yard that displays the black jockey lawn ornament?  do you really need to ask? (and yes, i realize that you didn't actually ask, but just go with my rhetorical device!)

 

dear kandy,  we'll go ahead and disagree.  love, strunk & white

but i digress, because there's something very important that i want to discuss:  the ubiquitousness of finials in this hood.  perhaps seen as symbolic bulwarks of the hearth, these heavy, concrete-cast ornaments are generally found closer to the front porch rather than the sidewalk.  

not only are finials prevalent, but the types of finials are highly prescribed.  especially valued are two different figures.

figure # 1:  the lion

it's not surprising that lions appear so often:  symbols of strength and power, lions often appear as noble protectors in myriad cultural depictions.  (see:  aslan, richard the first, sri lanka's flag, mgm's logo, simba.  but see:  the cowardly lion before he was off to see the wizard).  area residents have embraced paired lions at the entrance to the house, watching and guarding, in a decorating choice that calls to mind patience and fortitude up north. 

the classic lion look

this house displays winged lions at their side door.  perhaps they are venetian?

little lion, big world?



figure # 2:  the pineapple

while the lion connotes strength and seriousness, the pineapple sends a message of fun and frivolity.  or a love of tropical drinks?  i don't have an effin' clue.  according to the googs, pineapples are symbols of hospitality, especially of the southern ilk, but different websites that state this only further confuse the issue when trying to explain why.  but if pineapples are meant to communicate "c'mon in!" then my neighbors are some of the friendliest people in america.

this is the classic pineapple shape with a colorful twist.  i think they look stupid.  perhaps not-so-coincidentally, these are the neighbors who let their hedges grow onto the sidewalk, forcing habie and me to walk in the street and risk life and (six) limb(s).

 

a spin on the standard:  the elongated leafless variety.  one might argue that these look more like footballs, but that one would be quickly labeled a philistine and brought back in line through social shaming.

symmetrical finials is of the utmost importance.  while some variation is allowed with other decor elements, paired identical finials anchor

while unpaired finials report feelings of unease and helplessness.  :(  :(  :(

also uneasy:  me every morning when i drive down the street and encounter this house.  i get that lots of construction is going on and it is clearly a work-in-progress:

but that doesn't explain WHY ON EARTH IS THERE A DOOR ON THE SECOND FLOOR WITH NO STAIRCASE!?!?!

i recommend a pair of lion finials for this house, since i don't think "welcome!  come in!" should be the message it's going for just yet.   



* while this is not explicitly cited as the criteria for YOTM, it can and should be inferred.

27

today, probably because of this article, i thought of the game show debt (hosted by wink! martindale!), which was on during my year o'home school and so i watched it evvvvveryday.  the conceit behind the show is that there're three people who announce at the beginning that they're in debt because of school or love gone wrong or an obsession with star wars action figures.  it's basically like jeopardy except that everyone starts in the negatives based on how much money they owe.  instead of a final jeopardy-like end round, however, a player could double down and bet her debt and be asked a single question based on a pop culture subject of her choosing.  so one person would pick star trek and someone else would opt for the monkees and yet another went with caddyshack.  the bet your debt questions were hard, and when someone got it wrong, you could see this panic flash across her face as she realized that maybe she wasn't davy jones's biggest fan after all.

it's that little part of game (show) theory that captivated me so, keeps me going:  how do you choose one subject to master?  what is finitely knowable?  when joyce brothers, who is neither dr. ruth nor dr. laura thankfully, had to become the expert in one area for the $64,000 question, she picked boxing and apparently memorized twenty volumes of a boxing encyclopedia.  and damn if girl didn't take it all home. twice.

i read that in a trivia book, i think, one of the yellowed paperbacks from the seventies or eighties that lined my dad's bookshelves.  i'd sit and go through these books like they were food; i didn't read them, i chewed my way through.  chapter 12, sports and leisure?  bring it on, and i'd sit there on the window seat learning all about the dodgers of ebbets field times.  or food and drink, where one page could take you from drinking games in germany to tea ceremony customs of feudal japan to what state consumes the most potato chips per capita (this is apparently an ungoogleable fact?  and i forgot the answer!).  the only thing common to all this information was that it was culled together by some nameless, faceless staff who apparently felt that a book wouldn't be complete without both descriptions of llama courtship and the best of mae west quips ("between two evils, i always pick the one i've never tried before").

even when i stopped with the trivia books, i didn't stop with the trivia:  it's just mutated into 90s TV stars:  where are they now? and trashy trashy celebrity gossip.  but there is a limit:  when you decide to learn everything about one area, another must be sacrificed.  when i was abroad and stuck with creaky dial-up that rarely lasted for more than five minutes, something had to go, and that was sports:  goodbye heisman finalist histories and ERA stats and a complete rundown of women's ice skating olympic champions (if only i were joking about the last one).  when i got to law school? farewell memorized passages of mrs. dalloway.  there is only so much that can stay in.  and so the whole game becomes a juggling act:  what goes up and what needs to be thrown out, or at least packed away in the back of the closet for a while (and it's true:  "so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster."  but others are like bone marrow, and i'm not ready for aspiration just yet).

for all of this worry, i don't think i'm actually good at most of this, because i'm not a master of anything.  well-meaning, sure, but i can't seem to keep on something past g, much less x or y.  there are started-but-not-finished projects all over--bags of crafty things that once had designs, pictures that need to be framed and hung, to-do lists on post-its that have long since fallen behind the nightstand/desk (in my office office, not home office.  i haven't gotten around to getting that yet), piles all over the utility room.

and maybe the hardest part of all is that in order to get good, you have to be bad.  you have to be bad over and over and over until you want to throw up and pull the comforter over your head and never ever try again.  and you have to doing all this failing without knowing if there's a point to it, if you're ever going to be really good, much less great.  i mean, i could try 10,000 cartwheels, and i'm sure i'd be a lot better at the end than i am now (hahahahahahaha), but that doesn't mean that i'd ever hang with bela karolyi.  there are some things that are hard, and you do them because it's good for you, sure.  but there are other things that make more sense--even when you're not good, there's something worth holding onto and returning to.  telling the difference when it's rough going can seem impossible. 

i had my first two suppression hearings today.  lost them badly.  lost them both and cried in the car and cried after getting a limeade from sonic and then cried on the phone with my mom.  "you'll win more, cotes," she said, but all i could reply was "well, i can't win less."  oof.  and yeah yeah yeah i'm a puppy lawyer and it's tough at the beginning and all my talkers of pep keep reassuring me that i'll get better.  but how much?  how fast?  when and where and how?  it's like i just started my own game of debt:  i'm 2 in the hole now and sadly my bet your debt category will  have nothing to do with the cast of full house.

26

when you get a dog, especially one that's part german shepherd, you worry that your dog will be out of control or overly aggressive.  and when that dog and you drop out of obedience school, that worry grows.  what if she never learns to stop jumping up?  what if she bites someone outside the house who isn't so forgiving next time (sorry liz! and mom! and kate!)?  what if she confuses the neighbor's new daschund puppy with a squirrel?

you know she's not a mean dog, that she just wants to play, but girl plays rough.  when she wakes you up at six am one morning and you have the audacity to brush her away, she grazes your face with her nails and you show up at work with a scratch under your eye.  at least it was an accident (you hope).  but now that she's forty-five pounds, things are less cute and more dangerous.

she's not a bad dog.  most of the time she's pretty calm, when it's just the two of you.  she's afraid of the swiffer and she cries when she can't get to you.  she sits on the back of the couch like a cat (she's doing that as you type this, her butt pressed up against your neck as she surveys the street) and rolls over to have her belly scratched.  after a day of doggie day care  (you know that it's bougie, but it's also a lifesaver at $8 a day), she comes home so exhausted that she slumps on the floor and snores while you watch 30 rock or british tv shows on hulu.  she puts up with more cuddling than she needs to, and you often pick her up when she's curled up at the other end of the couch and she nestles her head in the crook of your neck and settles next to you and goes to sleep.  when she barks, she barks to protect you and her and the house, and you kinda like knowing exactly what time the neighbors get home or take their garbage can to the street early tuesday mornings.

and so you practice sitting and heeling and "off!" and you buy/are gifted tons of chew toys.  every morning you play fetch with her rope toy and every evening she gets a teaspoon of peanut butter (unsalted, obviously) in her kong.  on non-day care days, she gets long walks.  and most of the time, it's all right, or it's gonna be, anyway.

and when the bloodlust appears, you are very very very grateful that it's directed at inanimate objects.


RIP monster.  your service and sacrifice was not in vain.

 

 

25

there's a lot to love about this new yorker article about robots.

this line alone knocks my socks off:  "gerontologists have observed that, when fish tanks are introduced into a nursing home, residents congregate to watch the fish; this not only sparks more conversation among the residents but also encourages healthier eating."  not because it's amazingly written (no offense jerome groopman--it's just not hemingway-level prose), but because of everything it evokes. 

it makes me picture a sterile environment, one not even white but that off-grey shade, with the flecked tiles on the floor and salmon formica halfway up the walls.  and in this place that you can't believe anyone could bear, at the end of the hallway, there's a sitting room, filled with those hospital waiting room chairs in patterns the textile equivalent of muzak, and the chairs are pushed to the sides to make room for wheelchairs, and just when it becomes too much, just when you have to get out of there, run to the front door, and breathe in air untouched by all this sad resignation, you notice that there's a glass bowl on the top of a counter.  and inside the bowl are rocks and some grass and one orange body that just swims around and around, in a circle.  not fast at all, but fast enough.  and it just keeps going, and so do you.

and another reason to love the article?  it talks about "the uncanny valley," and that just makes me think of tracy jordan and his porn video game.  tracy jordan!  why are you the BEST EVER?  and why did i just discover this website and sit there reading it for ten minutes?  i mean besides the fact that i can because we didn't go to obedience school tonight and ain't ever goin' back.  see you never, crazy teabagger lady!

this entry brought to you by my all-popsicle dinner and its ensuing sugar high and low.  being old enough to know better made them all the more delicious.

24

habie, who doesn't flinch at oncoming traffic, doesn't hesitate before running to play with a pitbull, doesn't bat an eye when i force her to sit like a baby in my arms and sing modified rod stewart songs to her ("wake up habie, 'cause i think i got something to say to you . . ."), has finally met her match:

yellow leaves

unfortunately, below is a picture of my backyard

(and yes, i've considered raking.  but the leaves are all wet and rain is forecast for days to come.  so instead i kick a pathway and coax her with treats until she finally runs to the unfettered grass in the way back.  this is considerably unfun at, oh say FIVE IN THE MORNING)

23

 (or "there's no crying in dog training")

as anyone who reads this (if you are, sorry for the month-long hiatus!  i was lawyering up!) knows, i am not exactly a strong disciplinarian.  and within two seconds of meeting habie, it's clear that girl needs some schoolin'.  so we've enrolled in obedience classes.  the first one was two weeks ago, and thankfully there was a beagle who barked at his owner, so habie wasn't the worst by a long shot.  but we had to miss last week, since i was training/bingeing at half-price books up in lex, and so we drove up to tonight's class with some trepidation.  all right, fine:  flat-out fear.  which happened to be completely well-founded!  crazy beagle has been replaced by his much calmer sister.  all the others were heeling and sitting and about-facing like it was no biggie, while habie flat-out refused to sit on command, only choosing to put butt to concrete whenever i didn't ask.  and the dog trainer lady who runs the classes made at least five comments to the whole group about me missing last week, as if she was shaming me into attending without fail from here on out. 

the first "oh, glad to see you've made it this week"?  i let it go.  the next "well, we learned this last week, so she'll have to catch up"? i shook it off.  but the next and next and next ones just sort of sat there, and then she took the leash away from me, which only happens when the owner is a complete mess, and i stood there in the corner while habie trotted around in an ellipse.  and then i get the leash back, but habie's still refusing to sit, and that wasn't even something covered in last week's lesson and it's stuffy and i'm exhausted and then it's the end of class and dog trainer lady tells me (loudly, obvs) that i should "stay behind to learn what we all covered last week because habie definitely needs to catch up" and while all the other little stepford dogs line up to leave, i go against the wall and sit on the floor.  habes wants to sit in my lap because that's how we are, and i start feeling really really sorry for myself.  i had my first non-family visitors this weekend, and it was so great but when they left today, i remembered how much i like and miss having friends.  the making them part stresses me out, but once they figure out what a weirdo i am and still stick around?  golden. 

so i'm sitting on the floor trying to hold it together, and all of a sudden i start to lose it.  my eyes begin to fill with water and my nose starts running and i focus on running my hands up and down habie's back, staring at the cracks in the floor, thinking of how i've been to maximum security prisons before and been fine--anything to stop that hot flush of self-pity.  and now it's jasmine's turn to sit/stay at the door.  jasmine is the best behaved dog in the class and often gets used for demonstrations.  apparently she's a foster dog and her foster owners have only had her for a few weeks and she does everything perfectly and watches her owner like a hawk.  sometimes habie's right in front of jasmine, and i always get embarrassed when i try to get her to heel and she is insisting that she lie down and we have a brief, ugly showdown while jasmine sits patiently waiting for us to get it together.  while all the other dogs leave, jasmine waits in the corner in military precision.

of course jasmine does the sit/stay at the door without a flinch, and i can hear the dog trainer lady outside tell jasmine what a good dog she is.  and then she's talking to jasmine's foster owners about how well she's doing and how she's such a model dog and at this point i focus on scratching behind habie's ears even harder.  

and then, all of a sudden, i tune back in and realize what the dog trainer lady has just said:

"she'd be a great search and rescue dog.  we can put her to work after obama gets the world blown up and someone has to go through the rubble."

so thank you dog trainer lady.  you may have contributed to my tears, but you also helped dry them, because nothing turns me from pitiful to quietly righteous as much as hearing crazy.

22

sure, i have my kentucky plate and even a kentucky driver's license, but that doesn't make me a kentuckian.  and since i can't stomach bourbon anymore (oh poor choices when i was seventeen), i'm going to have to start talkin' right.  sure, there's the whole accent thing, but sounding true isn't just about how but what.

are you there g-d?:  i need to stop saying "oh god" or "oh my lord" or even one of my personal favs "lordy lordy."  because as much as i'm not trying to offend or blaspheme, it's simply not done here.  the first week i was here, i overheard a conversation about a third person daring to "say G-D" and it took me a for-real minute to understand what they meant.  so more "good grief!" and "my word!" and i sometimes feel like i'm in the forties and a total square.

hisself:  oh my word (see!) i love this word.  some yankee snobs say that this isn't a "real" word, but dude?  jump off that stuffy prescriptive grammarian train and chill out.  you know, i used to be a self-described prescriptive grammarian.  but i was twenty and even more painfully self-conscious and still an INFJ instead of the INFP that law school led me to.  i might be one of the few people who becomes less judgey in law school, but i picked up enough faults to make up for it.
oh yes, hisself.  love it.  LOVE it.  first of all, himself?  sounds wrong.  his/self--you can break it down to a phrase that makes sense, and i like the idea of getting back to the self.  not in an -ish or -absorbed sort of way, but in an -affirmed and -confident one.  "he better watch hisself."  oh yes, that self better be on guard.

bless his/her/your heart:  and this is where my non-nativeness really betrays me:  i don't understand when to use this phrase.  sometimes it's used sincerely, like as a response when someone's sniffling in front of you because she's been working nonstop for two days sewing little appliqued owls for a fearsome toy store boss and you actually feel sorry.  that one is accompanied by a pat on the hand and rummaging through the cabinets to get the fixings for tea.  (how the heck did THAT become my example?).
oh, but sometimes it's used a little sardonically, with an edge.  after someone's told you about her ex-husband who never had it together during the marriage, and now that they split, he's decided to finally start up a custom motorcycle business and he's made up business cards and has started handing them otu at her kid's soccer game.  well bless his heart, because even if he works his fingers to the bone for the first time in his life, it ain't gonna happen.
at least i think.  and then there's other uses, like insulting someone to her face but she knows it but not really all the way, and i need someone to sit me down and be my virgil of the vernacular.  maybe i just need to start trolling the aisles of wal-mart more and start taking notes.

21

so long california license plates!  hello single kentucky plate (the front of my car is going to feel so naked).  don't you like how kentucky puts your religion on the plates?   (kidding!  it's the county, but i can't wait for horrified glances if baas ever returns to the west coast).   i also got a new driver's license today, and i was SO AMAZED by the crazy wizard machine creating the card right in front of me that the lady said, "well it sure doesn't take much to get you excited."

oh hon, you have NO idea. 

20

i've definitely worried about separation anxiety with habie, and according to cesar millan forums (oh yes, i went there), one big sign of troubling codependence is when the dog follows you from room to room. and it is a little creepy when she stands outside the bathroom and whines.  but oh, when i'm sitting on the couch and the girl comes galloping in like a little horse and leaps with such a thud onto the couch, my heart is beyond full.

te amo habiecakes

(oh, i am SUCH a goner)

19

oh hello dining room, says the living room. 

this has been a crazy long week, and my head (oh scar) and feet (oh work shoes) have hurt a LOT, but what keeps me going:  getting a dog on saturday (!) and my lovely lovely house.  the light is awful in this picture, and i clearly need some furniture (although it's really fun to run around the house in circles and not worry about bumping into anything), but ohhhhhhhh, every time i step into the house, i can feel my load lighten.  this house has good bones and a great feel and i can't wait until it's a home. 

18

oh my.

well, i am here, in hopstown, sitting in the fairfield inn, which is in front of the comfort inn and overlooks the hampton inn.  we almost didn't get here; our first plane took off from oakland, climbed a little then stopped, descended so far down that we were just fifty feet over the bay, and then, once relanded at oakland, was surrounded by firetrucks.  apparently an engine overheated, but the pilot didn't tell us anything until we were on the ground.  it was complete radio silence in the air and you could hear the murmur of people freaking out all around, quietly but surely.  i grabbed my mom's one hand and the lady across the aisle grabbed the other and we all held our breath until the water stopped and the runway appeared.  everyone was fine; we unloaded and sat around and joked since we had all bonded and then we took a new plane that got us here without incident, but there was that minute (and it was really that long) where all i could see was water that was way too close, and i kept thinking, "oh dear, what are the chances that our pilot is as good as the one who landed in the hudson?" and "i am going to be pissed if i die this way" and "if we have to make a water landing, is it okay to ask for an extra week before starting work?" my frightened self is, like my unfrightened self, really really random.

today was house hunting day #1.  highlights include talking to strangers everywhere we went, and the lovely woman in a bookstore who told us about living in california and the random customer who  walked in, joined the conversation, touched my shoulder and told me everyone in the town was crazy within 90 seconds.  lowlights include:  most of the houses hunted.  there was one ad in the paper for a duplex in a safe neighborhood, and when i called, an incredibly gruff voice answered.  within our five minute conversation, he had informed me that "i don't take no crap from tenants" and, upon learning that i'm from california, let me know that i might not like the place because of my "rich california tastes." to top it all off,  the duplex was located right next to his restaurant, a smokehouse.  and yet we drove over there straightaway to check it out, because desperation is apparently my third middle name.

and oh my gosh.  we drive up and a hand-sharpied sign outside  says "plaese come in." of course, we've come this far, so we do, and there's a man who's about eighty sitting there, and mr. w___, as he introduces himself, he takes us out back, past a rusted metal box that's apparently the smoker and so close i could almost burn my hand is a mobile home and this is the duplex.  i have to duck to go in the door, and the ceilings are about six and a half feet high and and there's an overwhelming smell of stale cigarette smoke and something else.  it's dark with wallpaper so ugly that it's almost amazing but no, still ugly and furniture that aims to be called sad.  there are clothes in the entry closet and mr. w then tells me that the last tenant "from puerto rico.  i think he got into drugs" skipped town and left.  the carpeted windowless kitchen has a guy in in, and he's supposed to be fixing the lights, but it's still dark.  he is holding a fluorescent tube and says "i changed the bub (no "L" in sight/hearing) but i don't know if the new one works" and while he and mr. w start talking about bubs, i look in the bedroom and of course desperately look for something to compliment, because lord knows i even need to camper of the week this.  the closet was pretty big, so i didn't even have to lie. 

god, writing this out makes me feel so snobby, like it's just a class issue.  but oh lord, i swear this wasn't just a case of my rich california tastes.  or maybe it is, and my love of windows on more than one side and personal requirement that i don't feel nauseated by the walk to my home or creeped out as soon as i enter are just unrealistic.  but then we went to look at another duplex, which was totally decent and  inhabitable, and i told the owner that i was so relieved after what i had just seen, and when i mentioned the name of the smokehouse, he said he knew just where and what i was talking about.

and really, note to self:  as a vegetarian with a weak stomach, try to stay away from places two yards  and downwind from eleven hours a day of meat smells.

17

i'm due to leave for the airport in about six hours, so clearly the smart thing for me to do is update this. but this seems like such a big moment--the last time before i officially become a kentuckian--the last time before i first see the fair and lovely state of TN, home to dollywood and the closest whole foods and TJs (it's totally legitimate to pack my car with coolers and drive to civilization/whole wheat naan once a month, right? that doesn't mean that i'm failing to thrive in my town of two super wal marts, does it?). it's funny--i've never been to TN before, and now it's the closest most convenient airport. oakland-nashville nonstop tickets are as low as $120, and i predict that i will double check that fact many many times in the next few months.
last time i wrote about how great i was feeling. there was, i believe, even a mini-ode to dex the steroid. oh how times have changed. once i stopped taking dex, it decided to rear its particularly ugly head and give me steroid acne. yes, that's right--my forehead looks like i'm fifteen, work at mcdonald's, and have never heard of face wash in my life. times ten. and of course this is a perfect look for meeting potential landlords and starting my job. in the myriad warnings on the side of the prescription, this effect was never mentioned, but when i googled it, i found tons of bodybuilders complaining (and requisite criticisms of "stop shooting up you meatheads") and debating the merits of injecting some other vitamin that supposedly helps and another terrifying website that said that these side effects usually go away in "a couple of months." good grief.
my hairstylist reminded me yesterday that my forehead is so small (it's really a threehead) that bangs aren't a viable option, so my only recourse is to stock up on teen empowerment movies that remind me that the most popular guy at school will rescue me from my drugged-up sister's wedding and we will eat birthday cake while sitting on the table, and all my dreamz will come true (except for the fact that jake ryan will probably be grounded til the end of time for trashing the house and lending his dad's rolls. but details details.) whether or not i'm prom queen perfect.
hopefully by the next update, i will have: a place to live that cannot be rolled away (and cement foundations do not ameliorate) and fewer stray roids playing tetris with my hormones. and a bit of a clue about this whole j-o-b thing i'm starting on the first. and, if you're lucky, a report from my first visit to a) the piggly wiggly or b) the jefferson davis memorial. let the games begin.

16

it seems a little crazy and jinx-y to write such a thing, but two weeks after brain surgery, i'm actually starting to feel okay again. or at least within a standard deviation of okay. i mean--i'm definitely not all back (and am in fact typing this while lying my head on a cold pack, which is one of the single most revolutionary ideas ever. how is cold so good?); i'm still way more tired; the thought of starting work in a week and a half still freaks me out; my head is still tight and will be for the next few months. but even in the last few days, a corner seems to have passed, and i think a lot has to do with me being almost done with my steroids. i have never been so grateful for a drug in my life as i was that friday when my brother picked up the dex and i got to swallow eight. apparently not everyone gets swelling, but when you get it, there is nothing else that fixes it. not painkillers or screaming or pleading with your personal god. as nuts as it was that i went home less than 24 hours after surgery, once i had the swelling under control, i was so much happier to be home, on the couch, conquered by the family cat. so dex, i really owe you one. then again, i'm pretty sure you make people crazy. when i went to my check-up this week, my doctor explained that he doesn't automatically prescribe steroids anymore because of the awful side effects, both psych and otherwise. and while it's hard to blame crazy on just steroids, the less of the dex in my body, the more i feel like myself. or less not like myself? or less like an unknown? i've also gone to the acupunturist twice, and even though i have no idea how it connects to all of this, i've felt a little better and calmer after each visit. the woman says that one of the goals of acupuncture is to make new blood, and i like the image of that--all my little red blood cells firing on extra cylinders to top me off. or whatever those crazy kids are doing. i've spent so much time thinking about a piece of my body this summer that i find myself wanting to remystify everything. like, it's fantastic that the lab work on tumie came out great, but i'm really excited to keep a lid on everything until an mri in a year.
so i leave on the 28th for ky again, and i start work on the 1st, i think (although maybe i should confirm that?). and as someone who likes to plan ahead, i'm dying a little bit on trying to find housing. there isn't really a craigslist for the area; there is for a town in tennessee forty minutes away, but they don't really cross-list postings. and there's the local online classifieds, which i check every day, but most places are either three bedrooms and too expensive or in terrible neighborhoods or verboten to pets, and oh am i getting a dog ASAP. my mom's coming out with me, and i've written real estate agencies since there don't seem to be property management companies, and people must find housing in this town somehow. there are 30k people, after all. i just have a sneaking suspicion it's going to involve driving around and looking for signs. literal ones, in the yard.

15

i really should be watching mad men, but i'm not because i have the attention span of a gnat these days. especially with tv or movies; i cannot just sit there and watch something or i start getting so restless that i start drumming on the wall and that just drives my mom crazy. and considering the woman has been taking far better care of myself than i deserve, complete with grilled cheese and onions on raisin toast without me even asking for it, the least i could do is not actively drive her nuts.
yesterday was the first day since surgery that i didn't cry. i guess i'm a natural born crier, but wen i tried to explain to someone how every day i burst out in tears a couple of times, i think they thought i was really nuts. "no, i don't know why, and there's nothing that really precipitates it, and it just happens and then i pull it together and finish whatever thought i was on. for a while it was happening at 1 and 4 pm each day; i was just like a baby settling down for a nap. i'm trying to find something that describes all of this, because even though my mom's well-meaning friends keep saying, "you must be so glad to have this behind you," no, not really. because even though i rationally know that i needed to have surgery, and all things considered i'm doing really well, that still doesn't erase the fact that i went in asymptomatic and feeling fine into the hospital and left with less skull, five steel bolts, and a windy incision that itches. there is a violence to surgery, especially ones that don't feel needed, and i sort of feel like someone stuck a marble in my head and sealed the cap on and started shaking, like the way we made butter in first grade. and i'm not really bitter or angry, but i miss the way my head was configured before. i mean more than just the shape--something feels lost and even though everyone swears it's just temporarily, how does anyone really know? i cried today because it was too hard to figure out what i wanted for dinner, and though i later baked cookies and my mom says that counts to counteract a cry, i would like to return to a person with a rational distance between her and the outside world. and my mo jo--i miss that. i hope once they remove the staples on tuesday that some of the magic seeps back in. otherwise, my scalp's going to need to do some stretching.

14

so this time last week i was coming home from the hospital. i didn't know it yet, but the Rx i had been given did nothing to stop the swelling and so i spent that entire thursday night and friday morning lying on the couch thinking i was going crazy. no no, not crazy. just not given the right stuff.
and then eventually my mom got on the phone with the pharmacist, who made me cry until my mom had a talk with her and sometime during all of this, my brother shows up and he's sitting there dissecting fried green tomatoes the movie with my sister and then he gets the steroids and i get to take eight and things are better. and really, that's the easiest way to phrase everything: things are getting better. i'm off pain pills and most of the steroids, although i'm on ambien until i manage to sleep through a full night. my spelling has improved somewhat although it's still a little off. i made it through a book, although it was trashy. i've watched more television than i know what to do with myself and made my mom watch head staple remover videos on youtube to prepare myself for next week. unless you get reallyclose to my scalp (or battered arms. oh IVs), you can't tell anything's going on, and yet i don't feel the same at all. i'm tired and i cry every day for no reason? i mean, there must be a reason, but my brain chemistry's too shot to figure it out.
i wish there was a word better than strange to describe all of this, but it hasn't come to me yet. it's weird to be functioning so well and still not have any absolute clue that anything was removed (hopefully confirmation to be received at the doctor's next week). when i was on all the drugs the first day, i wrote out an order for a burrito, and my best friend laminated it since it doesn't look like my handwriting at all. the letters are small and short and tight, and i wonder whether signs of this more precise person ordering a braised tofu burrito will continue to emerge. or if it was just a trip down the controlled narcotics wonderland.

13

how i feel tonight about the coming week:

how i'll feel next friday night about that coming week:


how i'm hoping i'm feeling the following friday about the rest of weeks to come:

12

so much in my head with so little coherence to speak of. it took me until i stared at a label on a water bottle in whole foods today for ten minutes before i realized that i'm stressed. and immediately after naming the problem, it . . . well, it didn't disappear, but it got a little better. because fighting something known isn't fun, but it's conceivable at least. you can patch together remedies and coping mechanisms. but when all you know is that your inner voice sounds like a very high-pitched "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafdklajdsfa" noise, it's hard to figure out the next step. but now i know: i'm stressed. super-stressed. the next three weeks are not going to be fun, to say the least. first the bar exam, then that other matter. and i've of course gotten a cold so that my head feels like it's being held in a sumo wrestler's vise and i couldn't sleep last night because of it until 7 am, when the exhaustion finally took over for a few hours, and tomorrow i have to drive seven hours total and charm and dazzle and lord knows that's the last thing i feel up to. but tagging this as stress allows me to take one thing at a time: dig up humidifier, pester the gum-smacking clerk at rite-aid to recommend the best cold remedy for someone who can't take antihistimines or anything in pill form, because they leave her drowsy. yes, even the non-drowsy ones do it. yes, i'm sure. yes, i've tried non-drowsy sudafed. yes, even the new kind, the one without the meth chemical. i've ended up with alka seltzer cold tablets which don't hit me as hard as the other ones seem to. plus, the plop plop makes me feel like it's the 1940s and i'm on a radio commercial. giving all of this jumble a name allows me to go into survival mode, which isn't a sure thing but the surest thing i've got. head down, into the wind, don't stop moving.

speaking of never stopping moving, due to the no sleep until staten island, my brow was especially furrowed today. i've become a bit obsessed with foreheads, because now that i've finally figured out what botoxed faces look like, i see them everywhere. on tv, yes, but off too--there was a lady at panera today whose face. stayed. still. while i'm sitting there in the corner spilling water all over myself, with my hair mussed and papers strewn everywhere. probably no one around me spends so much time people watching, but the contrast was jarring. well, at least for me--i'm not sure she could've moved, could've been moved if she tried.

11

i've composed and deleted about elevenbajillion paragraphs, trying to cleverly write about:

the panic of the next three weeks and the need for diversion and ensuing guilt when it's found, and how the easiest way to feel better seems to be self-bribery, and that's how i ended up buying an old quilt top online today. and it's perfect for the future guest bedroom i hope to have, but i don't even have an official job yet and so this all feels premature. but when i saw that quilt top, i could feel it, could trace the pattern underneath my thumb, and so the returned security deposit from my tenancy for years (not that i have any idea what that really means) dwindles even more.
but worth it, no? yes.;

the trip home this past weekend (so lovely and full of mountains and the bay and skies without a cloud in sight. as i drove into san francisco sunday morning to meet up with amy for brunch, i actually got mad at myself for not wanting to move back there. because there's so much i love about the area and the familiarity and politics and weather and proximity to family and i have no idea why that's not enough, why that can't fit the bill. only that it can't);

that moment when the plane touches down on the runway and we are still hurtling through space, although it's not really space but it feels, for just a split second, like we will never slow down. and how, during night flights, you sometimes find yourself holding your breath and then you notice that the man next to you has caught his breath, too, and then you see that he is holding a copy of the atlantic and his thumb has creased the pages and you feel for a second like there isn't really any difference between you and this man, or the old woman in front of you, or the flight attendant with the tired eyes--that you are all small dots in a bigger image. and then the plane does start to slow, and you contract and retreat and reconfigure;

how all the books i've found myself reading recently have something to do with surgery. at least, that's the only tie i can find between atul gawande and john irving--that both focus on procedures, interventions. and how both are oddly reassuring, even though they aren't exactly full of best-case scenarios. how this must be preparation of some sort, for some part;

how i keep listening to neko case, over and over, even though it makes the room feel hotter and sadder and makes me crave a porch, a cigarette, a vodka tonic in a mason jar (even though i don't even like two out of the three!).

but cleverness doesn't come easy these days. or if it does, it feels artificial and reenacted. so i should go to bed, and get up and work, and lather rinse repeat until the hair squeaks and the stuff is learned. because cleverness doesn't answer multiple choice questions or explain payment systems or even do the grocery shopping, and right now i need its dull cousin consistency by my side.

10

one of the many reasons i will never be mistaken for "cool" is the excitement, really exhilaration i feel upon first casing the shelves of a new-to-me public library. when we were little, my mom would let us "drive" by putting us on her lap and giving us what we thought was control over the steering wheel. if all the mormon mothering blogs i have in my google reader were to hear about that, they'd probably tsk tsk and pull their own children back a bit so as to avoid accidental contamination, but luckily they don't seem to have the same weird obsession with me as i do them. and anyways, tough, because it was pretty much the best evs.
so one day it was my sister's turn. she must have been three or four at the time, since her hair was still solidly mulleted. as she's "driving" up the street to our house at about a snail's pace she proclaimed, "look at all the cars i missed!"

and that's how i felt at the public library today--look at all the books i haven't read yet! my current mystery writer of choice is amanda cross, partly because she's really carolyn heilbrun, a fancy pants virginia woolf scholar who very nicely answered an email i sent at seventeen; mostly because knowing that makes me feel like the books don't really count as trashy mysteries; and definitely because the protagonist is an english professor who pokes around in other peoples' lives and solves mysteries (my dream career in many respects). and the lexington public library did not disappoint: there was a whole shelf of yet-to-be-read amanda crosses. i snatched them up, every last one i hadn't read, and as i walked down the stairs to checkout trying to will the stack not to teeter, i felt like a greedy child who knows that she has taken too many cookies and that others will not have enough. and like the child, i can't seem to stop, or care.

public libraries are really a miraculous thing. there's usually a cross-section of society there: older men in threadbare shirts working diligently on something--though who knows what?--at a table; moms who radiate exhaustion corralling a group of toddlers around the kiddie section; awkward teenage boys who refuse to learn volume control and angrily debate the merits of lord knows what but there's always something in the corner. i like how the people you see inside aren't much different than who you see outside. but because they're in a library i feel more charitable to them--because how bad can people who voluntarily surround themselves with books be? a friend of a friend in college once proclaimed that "fiction is a waste of time" and this became the number one charge on the indictment against him that i composed in my head.

currently i'm going through what might be politely called a not-so-deep spell in terms of my reading tastes. maybe i should be worried that i can't remember the last time i read something that made me work too hard to unravel the meaning of a line. noun verb object is how i seem to like my printed sentences these days. and not only am i not reading the hard ones, i also seem to be missing the point of the others. at least that's what i'm left to consider after reading reviews of this a.m. holmes book that i just listened to in the car. apparently it's a satire, but i had no idea--sometimes it would sucker punch me so much that i'd sit in the car in the darkness outside my apartment complex finishing a chapter and gasping for air. audiobooks are really an amazing thing, especially for people who tend to skim and not absorb. every. word. which makes it even weirder and worrisome that i missed completely that it's satirical. and sure, looking back, a story that involves a huge sinkhole in los angeles should be suspect. but i took it totally literally, and when the main character spent three minutes looking at the sinkhole, i dutifully pictured one and then also gazed into it.

so is that a book recommendation? i don't even know; the audio CD was definitely a lovely way to spend 10 hours but what maybe the written version is more self-aware and jokey. all i know is that i miss richard novak, the awkward semi-recluse protagonist. he accompanied me all around town for the past three weeks. when richard grocery shopped, i'd find myself following suit, and i don't think it's any coincidence that the day after listening to him notice another character's cluttered house had me tidying up stacks into piles.

and really, that feeling you get when some piece of fiction bleeds over into you the reader/viewer's life is surreal in the best pedro almodovar-sort of way. like the way that you come out of the theater after a particularly affecting movie and look at everything curiously, as if the cars in the parking lot are no longer just cars but signs of a sea change. people talk about the escapist value of books, but there's also that burrowing ability of some that lasts longer than "the end," where it doesn't just feel like a one-sided reader/static text relationship but more of a call and response. and if that's a waste of time, then i am a spendthrift, albeit one currently trolling the aisles of the dollar tree. although amanda cross strikes me as at least a meijer.

9

i was already thinking about being old before michael jackson died. i mean, i had to cut short my conversations about him maybe being dead to go to water aerobics. but his death got me thinking, through the warm-ups where i tried not to splash the woman in the pool connected to an oxygen tank (no, really), through the lightning storm that cut the class short even though it was in an indoor pool, through the slightly wet drive home where i flipped through stations looking for a great, hell, any MJ song. "smooth criminal" came on while i was pulling into the apartment complex, and i sat in my car until after it finished, letting the DJ take a call from a woman who said that she had taught her kids the dances. "they can't read but they can moonwalk." okay fine, she didn't say it in so many words, but in my head everyone's a little more pithy when contributing to my point.

it's funny to think that, when i have kids (don't hold your breath, mom. no time soon), that michael jackson will be much as elvis was for me--a guy who made killer music and yeah, was a little weird and got tragic there near the end, but all that's forgiven when you put on the great stuff and dance around the house. i'd put john lennon in there too, since when i was little i sniffed at his free love later days, but it's probably time to put the snobbishness of my nine-year-old self to bed.

because that's what all of this reminds me of: being nine. that was the year my favorite book was ryan white: my own story. i had a paperback copy and read and reread sections so much that the spine broke and pages started falling out, even though i knew it didn't end well--that every time he would die. i remember hating kokomo, indiana, because that's where he was from and the kids at school were mean to him and wouldn't be in the pool if he was in it, and the idea of everyone else refusing to inhabit the same space was more than i could bear to read about (and yet i did, again). factor VIII was the name of the blood product, and i would shiver when i thought about it--even the name sounded sinister.

i also remember being mad, too, that so much time and attention was paid to ryan white (both names always said, like an incantation), because most people didn't get AIDS through blood transfusions and it seemed unfair that he get so much attention when others got so little. but that wasn't really ryan white's fault. he was just a scrawny kid who couldn't stop bleeding. and somehow he met all these famous people--macaulay culkin and elton john, but his favorite was michael jackson, who invited him to neverland. there was a photo section, and one of the photos was him holding bubbles, and i was jealous, even though i didn't want to die and i didn't even really want to meet michael jackson. because i wanted to hold a chimpanzee and pretend that it was a baby. i wanted to hold that chimpanzee wearing a diaper and rock it to sleep.

that christmas, when i was nine, my dad gave me an instructional video on how to do the moonwalk--one of those presents that he "saw and thought of me." i never opened it, and in college i went digging through the old tapes to find it and display it ironically but it was lost by then. but why would i have watched it? michael jackson wasn't a real person to me, and though my friends and i liked to "moonwalk," we mostly liked to slide our feet backwards across the rug in the living room.

it's actually my dad that made me start thinking about getting old. not that he is. really. but he had surgery this morning to fix his shoulder. and when i asked him what happened, why he needed mending, he said that it's the shoulder he's been sleeping on for the last thirty years or so. there was no sudden injury or accident: doing something that's pretty much as passive as it gets over and over broke things down. and this has stuck with me--the idea that as we get older, it's not searches for adventure that spell our doom or need for convalescence. no, it's the day to day that wears us out, takes its toll.

and while shoulders can be mended (and my parents aren't allowed to get sick, anyhow, i've continued to decree), a lot of these injuries are less-seen but more permanent. like the hard-faced women at meijer who refuse to smile, even when i chatter after them and try my hardest to be sunny: did they just stop smiling one day? how did they get there? or the slightly-weird older man in the water aerobics class. does he know he's weird? he couldn't have planned to be like that, could he? weird guy in water aerobics class surely can't be anyone's goal.

when i was nine, twenty-five seemed so old. it's the average age women get married in this country, and even though i suspected i'd be older than that (the things i caught onto even in fourth grade), i figured on being settled at least by this age. and while lots of things are frustratingly in flux, i realize more and more that, even if it's not the way i imagined, i am settled. i no longer walk into stores awestruck at all the adults shuffling around me. i know what type of pillow i like to sleep on and have a little trouble adjusting when i travel. certain things have to get done, and so they do. and none of this really feels bad, but it was simply inconceivable to my nine-year-old self, who once cried when she started thinking about having to pay taxes when she got older, since "it just seems so not fun." and yeah, the prospect of kids and the like still feels foreign, but the day-to-day stuff is more than conceivable--it's often already existent.

so then i have to wonder: is the way i sleep now and tomorrow night and the nights after going to mean that i too have to have surgery in thirty-odd years? should i be reconsidering the pillow selection (even though i would hate to change)? when i think about holding a chimpanzee like a baby now, a piece of me still wants to, but that's quickly silenced by the other me who has seen the 20/20 videos on what happens to people who anthropomorphize primates; it certainly ain't pretty.
nothing can stay as it is, as it was--if mj taught us anything, it could be that--and yet. and yet.

8

i was all set to write about lightning bugs here. others may insist on "fireflies" but my family's always called them lightning bugs. we only saw them when we came here to visit my grandmother. we'd find jars and run around shrieking and trying to capture some. and then, once we managed to trap an unfortunate one, we'd shake the jar, when our mom wasn't looking, to make it light up again. we always tried to remember to let them out before they asphyxiated, but though i don't remember any deaths, i'm sure there was some mortality. we were young and stupid, after all.

i was all set to come and write about how lightning bug season has arrived in full force in kentucky--how, when i first got here, i didn't see any, but the last week has apparently gotten hot enough or muggy enough or late enough that the larvae/eggs/? hatched and they are all over, and how i stood outside on my way in from class this evening and watched them in the lawn area of the complex. how sometimes all is dark, and then one flicker and then another, and just when you start to believe it, they disappear and you begin the waiting again.

only then i got hungry, because class from 6-9 has me eating at weird hours, and my new mantra is "more forks, fewer spoons" because only having four sets of silverware means that i'm conscious of what gets used and what doesn't (dinner knives). and spoons means rice krispies and yogurt and laziness, so even if i'm not really cooking, a fork feels more civilized.

so i got the last of my tomatoes from last wednesday's farmer's market out. (and thought about the tomato farmers i've encountered: both have utterly charmed me. the one last week joked about how rednecks didn't know what to do with green tomatoes until they looked at the frying pan one day and got an idea, and i laughed a real laugh for the first time in a while). and i made a caprese salad, which is such a pretentious/italian way to talk about something so simple and lovely and good. and then i sat down on my pretend couch, which is just my tomato blanket on the floor, and turned on the tv.

only by now it was 10, and the pickings were slim, what with my sixteen channels. i don't know why a converter box wasn't needed for the digital transition, and for a couple of days after i didn't bother turning on the tv because i assumed that what i had here had to be analog; every form of basic cable i've seen in the past ten years has had at least forty channels. but then i did one day, as a test, and lo and behold, there was dr. oz. so of course i shut it off immediately (because really, i hate that guy) but i made a mental note.

after realizing that i could not bear "america's got talent" and skipping past the three religious channels, i got hooked into this 48 hours mystery because the accused killer had overplucked eyebrows and i kept watching even after i started getting stressed out by watching real people's pain. i finally turned the tv off, but of course wanted to google the people in the show to see if the trial's happened (because as ridiculous as the girl's story is, i feel compelled not to convict).

and now i am left with that gross feeling from reading stuff that i know isn't good for me, the same way i feel when i read "fashion" magazines or gossip blogs or sit on facebook for more than a minute, because when i close my eyes, i don't want to see overwrought scenes where the reporter interviews the head detective on the case in a shadowy garage to emphasize the gravity of the situation.

instead, i want to think about how i am still not used to lightning bugs, so that i am startled at first each time i go outside. and how they remind me of my grandmother's house and the sliding back door, and how every time i would run near a tree to try to catch them i would think, "is this the tree that zachary taylor's brother hanged himself from?" because my mom told us once that that had happened on the property, and i carried that factoid around like a totem that signified "i am from a place with history." only i could never remember what tree it was exactly, because that didn't matter in my retellings, and so with jar in hands, i would look up and think, "is this the one?" for a second before catching up to my brother and sister and their jars.

and now i don't want to catch them anymore. but i want to capture it somehow--that looking out on an expanse of grass and gasping a little every time the lights start again. i want that to be the image that sticks, that stays.

7

my mother has coined a great term: "the big heavy." for when you're so tired that you have to go to bed rightnow or else the world might end. the big heavy usually strikes at socially-questionable times, like 7:30 pm for my mom on the couch with a book covering her face. or, like today for me, 5 pm. i was sitting in bed reading a book i bought for a dollar(!) and then the next thing i know the pillow was luring me to it and all i could do was set an alarm so i didn't sleep for hours and hours. but then of course i turned off the alarm when it rang in my half-sleep because, duh, the big heavy does not take kindly to incompleteness. and so i finally awoke at 8:30 pm, when the sky was beginning to shift to darkness. there was that lovely millisecond where i didn't know where i was exactly, but i knew that i was rested and didn't need anything.

this succumbing to the big heavy was especially satisfying because, unlike many days here this summer, i wasn't just sitting around my apartment trying to study all day. oh no! i was out, interacting with people other than clerks at meijer or whole foods. friends came to town and i talked (and listened)! to real people i didn't have to buy something from! and everyone had ties to kentucky, so i didn't have to spend too long answering the "why on earth kentucky?" or "what could you possibly see in that place?" questions.

instead i got to remember why i have answers to the questions other ask. because kentuckians know how to tell snappy stories with impeccable timing. because i got to ask "where are your people from?" which is the way my mother has always asked other people who understand how to respond: with the name of the county. kentucky has 120 counties, more than almost every other state. and the state doesn't just have counties; it cites them, counts on them, uses them. my grandmother's people are from clay county; i am most likely moving to barren county. the license plates here say the county you're from, so i've been trying to find new names: here in lexington (fayette), there's a lot of jessamines and scotts and even boyles to be found, but spotting a cumberland or magoffin? that sends me back to the map, to try to make sense of the new discovery.

a woman in my class told me about the blue fugates last week. oh lord, was i grateful for the tip. a group of people near hazard (perry county), starting with martin fugate in the early nineteenth century, intermarried for generations with another family, the smiths, and both families carried the recessive gene for a disease that plays havoc with the oxygen levels in the blood. and so a fair number of the descendents were born with dark blue skin. the best account of the blue fugates that i (well, really my mom, who read from it to me while i walked up and down the aisles at meijer) found was this.

sure, you can't help but laugh a little, but then you feel bad, because the fugates weren't mean or dangerous or deserving of as much ridicule as they got. some of them were just a little blue. or more than a little blue. but the blue fugates have stopped being blue, so now there must be those out there who hope that no one will ask them too many questions about their people, because their people are "yes, those fugates," but, if they get comfortable enough, if they trust you, they end up telling you stories about them.

because that's what people do here, even if the story is a little sad or weird. you take out the profound unsaids, of course, but you figure out what can be spiffed and spit-shined and you present it. and you make sure that your telling of it crackles. so hopefully the fugate descendents these days have found a way to toss off lines that make everyone chuckle, have found a way to pause and then say, almost-offhandedly, "and this one woman always said of aunt luna, 'she was as blue a woman as i ever saw.'" and i hope the listeners understand to respond in kind with stories of their uncle myron's foibles. because, as a good kentuckian knows, the telling must never be one-sided.