why are we still chasing our own tails?

from this day forward i am officially a crush-free-zone. unless you are an inanimate object or a stranger on the street. i am even worse at being in a crush than i am at being in a relationship!

whenever i feel a crush coming on i will put joanna newsom on real loud and sing along to the yappy parts. you know the ones.

hour four of sixteen into my shift and i have made discoveries including, but not limited to, the following.

brooches are pretty much the cutest and make people look really nice and like they tried. looking nice is actually really, really nice!
i have really awesome friends who visit me at work and make me HAPPY.
i love the office more than any other show, maybe even more than arrested development.
i am going to start being nicer, being really, really nice to people instead of being mean. defense mechanisms are pretty stupid and building fences keeps you in and everyone else out and where is the fun in that? having pleasant conversations and laughing is better than saying “you are stupid” to everyone you meet and scowling.

the working-marathon bravely marches on.

oh my goddess. right now i have a crush on so many things it is impossible! here are some of them;

1. the first issue of heirloom which i will lend/direct anyone who asks to. it is full of so many good writings and has a super cool advertisement for www.foundinthemargins.com
2. my hotel job which mostly means i get to write in my blog, read books and eat hummus by the fireplace and listen to john coltrane and have friends drop by with surprises/presents!
3. john coltrane!
4. the boy who dressed up as three-hole-punch-jim who i did not have a crush on in the summer at all but when i saw walk into the halloween party in a shirt and tie i thought, who is that super cute boy who looks a little bit familiar? and it turns out he is actually very tall and funny and sort of awkward which is exactly my type! (!!!) this is my first and only real-life crush that isn’t someone in a coffee shop or just wearing big headphones and brown cordouroy in so many months!
5. my new shoes that are perfect for wearing with scarves and sweaters.

tomorrow my parents are coming down for breakfast and to buy me groceries and hang out with me and then i get to come home and write a paper about the construction of 16th century love poetry and i am excited about all of it!

i am dizzy with exclaimation points lately. mostly every day has had aspects of good in it with only tiny moments of bad. and even though i have been hit by silly bad moods sometimes i still have a pretty big crush on my life and everyone in it.

xoxo.

every day for two weeks i found at least one spider crawling along my ceiling, quite near my head. now, for the past week i have not found one spider ever, despite many rainy days that were built for spiders. after rob pointed out all of the spider “hotspots” in my room i am especially worried that the spiders have been organizing themselves into some sort of invincible spider-brigade, set to charge at me any moment in my sleep and carry me off to their queen. it is making sleeping difficult and uncomfortable and laden with spider-filled dreams.

also, i wish that the forecast wasn’t always rainy. or: totally shitty with a chance of decentness.

also, i wish my job was to watch movies every night and play with puppies and frolic in leaves and drink hot chocolate (the good kind from 1842). if there is an opening in this department, i hope someone will contact me.

morgan holmes discussing the rights of intersex children = the best lecture of the year.

also, it opened up a really nice discussion about the uses and ramifications of language, which is kind of like reading going nucular by geoffrey numberg except way more social and intellectual and way less political (except that language is always “political” just not that kind of political).

the point is that morgan holmes, in fact, is one of the most interesting (and compelling!) professors i’ve ever heard speak and maybe rivals holly baines for my heart, from a social and feminist perspective. during the question-answer period morgan and holly opened up a pretty interesting discourse concerning the role of medical professionals AND inclusive language!

now i am almost too excited about a time (next semester) when my life is no longer limited only to pre-16th century literature (CHAUCER) and can be about things like gender and identity!

everyone go see who killed the electric car?

if you take any sort of issue, moral or otherwise, with the amount of power corporations exert over our everyday lives. or our environment. or our lawmakers!

as of late i am feeling very, very inspired and motivated and am not entirely sure where to channel all of this extra energy. it will not be channelled into things like sunbstance abuse because drinking leaves me with a really bad taste in my mouth, no pun intended. i am no longer comfortable with the feeling of losing control. i used to think the best release was to drink as much as possible and make big choices, leaving the night a silly, messy haze. suddenly it doesn’t feel good to play with that much power after six beers, it actually feels daunting and terrible and i would almost always be reading in bed. it also makes people confrontation and sometimes meaner and mostly say things they don’t mean.

sometimes i forgot to remember that the mistakes i made three months ago or even three minutes ago really don’t define who i am. because i am always smart enough to grow, up and over, from them. sometimes i forget that the people who really love me a lot understand this.

on wednesday i have a mini-date with the tallest and most handsome boy in town and i already feel lucky about it.

everyone is pairing off. and finding boyfriends and husbands and perfectly nice and boring love interests.

suddenly my friends and roommates get drunk every weekend in the living room and go to bars and flirt with boys and are social butterflies. i am a big fat caterpillar.

all i want is someone who thinks that eating indian food and doing laundry and watching cooking shows or woody allen movies is the best saturday night ever. who thinks that going to bars really is overrated and who thinks sunday morning breakfast with newspapers and jazz is the best date in the world.

all i want are things i really can’t have.

i wish we were farmers,
i wish we knew how
to grow sweet potatoes and milk cows.

less than one hour after i blogged about being thankful and having lots of blessings i picked my mom up from work and we hopped out to buy her some new shoes. and i bought a really pretty new sweater. and someone stole it.

right out from underneath me! at a mall! someone stole my brand new sweater on thanksgiving weekend. and, boy, did i not feel thankful!

instead i started to cry because i felt so sad that someone would want or need a sweater that badly. enough to steal! so, sweater theif, i really hope that you did need a sweater and are enjoying it a lot because it was really a very nice sweater and it cost me a lot of money. and if you are a person who didn’t need my sweater and instead just needed to steal to show off to your friends or be a generally bad person: I HOPE YOU GET HIVES FROM MY SWEATER.

yesterday we went to the farm and bought so many apples and made the best applesauce of all times! and all the little kids were pumpkin bowling and it was the cutest ever. they also painted faces on all the pumpkins and rode around in wheel-barrels and even though they were the children of yuppies i loved them all! last night i ate about a hundred potatoes and read about christianity and loved fall some more.

and that’s the story of the best thanksgiving ever.

give thanks.

i am thankful that my best friend called me up this afternoon from equador to tell me that she is going dancing all of the time and learning about politics and has a crush on the engineering professor to whom she teaches the violin. she told me about the beach and learning to surf and eating potatoes and rice every day for weeks.

i am thankful that the trees are changing colours.

i am thankful that i am with my family and tomorrow we will go to the farm and buy apples and carrots and a pumpkin and cook all day long and knit and watch movies and rake leaves.

i am thankful for change and changes and changing. every day.

xoxo.