we are vagabonds, we travel without seatbelts on

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:38:08 GMT

i don't write here anymore, but i still read my flist obsessively. if i've added you, it's because i think you're funny or smart or gorgeous and probably a combination of all those things. if you wanna add me back so i can read your secrets, i'll get a bunch of kicks.

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:28:45 GMT

i've been thinking about my life lately, in a big spread out whole-horizon way, a way i never have before, either because i didn't want to or didn't know how. you hitchhike along on other people's love and genius for a while until you find your own ride, i guess. but the past few weeks have left me in this wholly different state, where i want to be organized and ready and making plans and being productive.

i want to go back to school. i've been thinking about it for a few months, ever since i started this job at the university. i don't miss being an undergraduate, but i do miss school. i miss debates in class, books, meeting with professors and talking about work and words. i suppose i have a fair amount to prove to myself as well.

i registered yesterday to take the GRE in november, and i plan on applying to the creative writing MFA program here and, god willing and the creek don't rise, starting in the fall semester of next year, to eventually get my ph.d. and teach creative writing at the collegiate level. yesterday we went to the bookstore and bought test prep books. i've been emailing my undergraduate professors and asking for edits, references, good karma. mark is helping me with some writing and i swore i'd visit very soon with a big-ass portfolio. pencil lead and studying on the bus, this morning.

excited!

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:38:41 GMT

we had syd this weekend, and took off on saturday morning for indiana, larry's parents' house and the diamond g ranch. we spent the day there, playing outside, pasta for dinner after a prayer with everyone holding hands around the table. larry and i spent a long time looking at old photo albums on the couch and falling further in love with his parents' tiny white dog, CAPPY!!. that night we went to the campgrounds and watched his older brother's band from lawn chairs, hoodies and jeans and making syd sit on my lap to keep me warm. the kids ran through the dark grass and laid on their backs to look at the stars. that night, we fell asleep from separate beds for the first time in our career, me on the couch and larry on a cot next to me, whispering back and forth and giggling like a schoolgirl sleepover, listening to the kids do the same from a tent in the front yard, kitchen window open so we could hear them in case of wolves or bigfoots. we got little sleep thanks to the two grandfather clocks in the tiny trailer, one of which was set to chime every fifteen minutes, and in the morning we gave hugs goodbye sleepy-eyed and shaky from no sleep. we bought a watermelon along a dirt road on the way home from a melon farm at which there was no staff, you just wrote down what you wanted and left the money in a jar. stopped for breakfast in town and a two-hour nap at home, finally falling into our bed while syd watched pee-wee's big adventure twice in a row, doing the tequila dance barefoot in the living room. that night we hosted our first party here, our first party together, the cutest little barbecue spread, syd and larry making deviled eggs in the kitchen and people walking in with string cheese and cases of beer. our front porch is divine for summertime, that big wooden swing and little yellow charcoal grill. after everyone left we turned out the lights, lit candles and listened to war of the worlds on the record player, but sydney was not as thrilled as we'd anticipated and fell asleep halfway through the first side of the record so we put him to bed instead. today we played at the park and then met my mother and my aunt julie, here from kansas for the weekend, for lunch and they came over and sat with sydney on the couch looking at a big book of salvador dali paintings, pointing out all the recurrent keys and clocks, gruesome skulls.

now i'm home alone and i sit on the couch eating chocolate and watching pretty foreign movies with girls in eyeliner and long grey sweaters. please don't make me go back to work, i am so skilled at this instead.

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:06:55 GMT

last night angelina came over and we sat outside on the porch swing smoking cloves with the little white lights twinkling just above us, strung inside the roof. our feet didn't touch the ground; we talked about everything you aren't supposed to talk about. how life and relationships and sex and friends and your gut and your brain and every day can be so hard, so complicated. but at the same time, that's how they're miracles when they work. angelina is brave and smart and i love talking to her. i love putting on mascara in the bathroom with her. we walked downtown and saw trombone shorty and drank red bulls & vodka until there were sparks in our blood, and she kept saying let's dance now! why is nobody dancing? we have to dance!, dragging people she'd just met to the front of the room, singlehandedly starting a dance party with everyone twirling and laughing and happy. when i introduced her to a friend of mine, he thought i'd said angel, and she corrected him graciously, said that's an awful lot to live up to.

summer is slowly slipping away. i can't believe it's almost september. i look forward more to autumn now that we live in our new house; i think of cookouts on the porch and open windows with wind smelling like charcoal, walks in the neighborhood wearing hoodies and kicking leaves.

it turns out i don't want cable yet either, radio podcasts and knitting projects and reading on that porch swing are so reassuring. it turns out i love britney's new single. it turns out that sometimes i half-heartedly fill out grad school applications. it turns out that when larry said boyfriend on the phone i thought he said butt friend. it turns out that my brown skin has faded, i miss my bus and sunburn, sitting in the grass for seventeen minutes. i cut my hair in the bathroom mirror with kitchen scissors, coming out naked turning circles saying is this straight? i mean, straight enough?

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:42:31 GMT

i'm so itchy.

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:08:25 GMT

BEDROOM:

larry's closet. there is UNTOLD amounts of storage e'erywhere. the cabinets go up to the ceiling.

STUDIO:

LIVING ROOM:

this door is bomb.

detail

KITCHEN:

i'm gonna sew new kitchen curtains when we find fabric we love.

UNTOLD amounts of storage, everywhere. funny little cabinets and drawers.

& you can read zines on the john.

tbese pictures frustrate me because i really want you to hang out here and it's hard to convey how great and spacious and adorable it is here without just watching a movie on the couch.

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 04:40:34 GMT

we got a pet!!

here are some photos

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:13:57 GMT

i just found the cord to connect my camera to my macbook.

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 06:10:44 GMT

hay guys!

let me share with you the most ridiculous and offensive film OF LAST YEAR:

BLACK SNAKE MOAN.

in a nutshell, this is what happens: christina ricci is unhealthily skinny and in her underwear. her boyfriend leaves for the war and before his truck is even out of the driveway, she starts rolling around in the grass groping at herself and moaning. she takes a lot of pills and liquor and gets raped and beat up and looks sexy and adorable throughout. sam jackson finds her in the road half-naked, bruised and bleeding (still qt!!) and chains her up in his house, determined to "fix her." we find out from one of the many dudes who has been doing her down that she has "the sickness," which is, without mincing words, an unrelenting need for dick: "girl gotta get dick or she go crazy." "the sickness" is so strong that, when a boy comes to sam jackson's house to help work in his garden, half-naked christina (though she fights it as hard as she can, clearly, by rolling around on the floor w/ more groping and moaning) peels off her shirt and straddles the poor boy before he's even in the door. IS SHE OVULATING OR WHAT, AMIRITE LADIEZ?? anyway, sam jackson cures her of this dick sickness by: making her wear a dress, leading her to religion, teaching her to cook, and making her marry her boyfriend. oh, and at the wedding he puts a gold chain around her waist instead of a ring on her finger! this is not a joke, this is the plot! and no, it's not a satire, and you can take my word on that b/c nobody wanted it to be a satire more than me!

kthx.

oh and P.S. SHE WAS MOLESTED EARLIER IN LIFE. i can put that as a p.s. because that was how the movie treated it too. POST-SCRIPT: THIS ALL HAPPENED B/C OF SEXUAL ABUSE! KEEP YOUR BRAS ON, FEMINISTS!!

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 03:36:29 GMT

so, i know you'd probably like to see pictures of our perfect new apartment and hear about how life is in it. life is wonderful.

what i want to talk about right now is auditions. i went to an audition on sunday afternoon for a play called rabbit hole, by david lindsay-abaire. i bought a copy of the play at borders earlier in the week, just because the station (which, by the by, is in one stroke my favorite and the best theater in and around this city IN CASE i haven't made that previously clear) was having auditions, but as soon as i started reading the play, in the van, my heart seized up somewhere in my throat.

this play is about a family dealing with the unexpected death of their five-year-old son. i read the play and went to the audition yesterday, read for karma, the same director who directed three sisters in the spring. i didn't say anything about macey; i didn't think it was necessary and i didn't want her to feel obligated in any way, as if she had to appease some horrible thing that happened to poor lindsey once. and besides, horrible things have happened to everyone. so i auditioned and i cried because this play is precise and spot on. the mother fights with her husband and says my grief is just as real and awful as yours. real and awful.

and i got the part? the lead? i went in to read for the offbeat younger sister role and karma cast me as the mother, of the little boy. colleen EFFING klein is the younger sister and we are already gmailing each other obsessively in all caps. what? i'm just walking around the bedroom like @_@. i'm shaken and excited and sad and so happy. i don't even know what to do.

I LOVE YOU COME TO THE PLAY

and apartment pictures come soon, i promise

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 04:12:31 GMT

hi!
we're half-moved!
we love you!

okay. okay? okay.

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:27:13 GMT

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:25:45 GMT

first of all let's not talk about how this child has gone from

to

in less than eight months.
LET'S NOT EVEN TALK ABOUT HOW HE'S AGED EIGHT MONTHS AT ALL.
IN FACT LET'S JUST CHANGE THE TOPIC ALTOGETHER.

other things to talk about:

i. i went to the doctor last week and i have degenerative disc disease, which i think sounds much worse than it really is. first of all, it can be stopped, so it's not like my bones are destined to grind themselves into a fine powder by the time i reach my mid-twenties or anything. i was also diagnosed with a touch of arthritis in my spine, though, which makes me feel totally ridiculous, and my spinal canal may also be narrowing, and therefore pinching stuff like a frat boy in a crowded bar, but we'll see. i started physical therapy this morning and i think it will help a lot.

ii. i went to peoria and saw kelly in a play, which was wonderful, and then i drank $5 mason jars of long islands with kelly, kaitlin, bryan and my new friend katy. pictures are mandatory and here.

iii. we took syd to his second wedding ever over the weekend, to watch our friends brandon (you should probably watch brandon do this) and megan get married. their ceremony was very simple and genuine, outside with barbeque and room for all their friends and everybody making music by the end of the night.

iv. we took syd to chicago, to the museum of science and industry, as a surprise. he gasped when he saw the sears tower and realized where we were, then wouldn't stop talking from the backseat about how nobody would believe he had actually seen the series tower.

v. today nicole is twenty-three years old. we had sushi and alcohol and played big buck hunter ii to celebrate. ilu bb.

vi. we move this week, unless packing in the heat kills me first.

ugh i don't like being srs.

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:34:01 GMT

in case you didn't know--i am always surprised at how i can have friends for years and somehow this never comes up--i had two spinal fusions when i was very young, and then another surgery on my spine a few years later. this was all due to scoliosis; when i was twelve years old, my doctor discovered that i had two lateral (side-to-side) curves in my spine. one was in the 60-degree range and the other was in the 40-degree range; i was referred to an orthopedic surgeon (dr. harms!) who conferred with other orthopedic specialists all over the world and who came to the decision that the smaller curve, which was higher up on my spine, had formed to try and correct the bottom curve, and that if the bottom curve was corrected through a fusion, the top curve would straighten out on its own as i grew.

my first spinal fusion consisted of some vertabrae being removed, part of my bottom ribs being cut out and fused in place of the bottom curve, along with a titanium rod and a handful of screws and bolts to hold it all in place. it all sounds very frankenstein-like and is very surreal for me to think about, even now, after it's been a reality in my living breathing body for over ten years. this was all done through an anterior approach and left me with a scar that winds from just below my bellybutton to just under my left shoulder. despite the predictions, though, the top curve didn't correct itself after the bottom curve was straightened--it got worse, and so i underwent a second fusion at age fifteen, this time through a posterior approach (the incision was on my back), but which involved the same surgery process.

the preparation, process, and recovery from this sort of surgery is no joke, especially when you are twelve years old, and i still can't really talk accurately about the impact it had on me as a child. my senior year of college, i was required to read lucy grealy's autobiography of a face for a class, in part, her autobiography of going through treatment for cancer as a child. the margins of the pages are filled with ink notes, exclamation points, arrows, brackets. she writes of her "body recognizing itself as a body;" going through an event wherein your body is an experiment, a hands-on project, just as you are beginning to mature and realize the importance of your own body: the statements it implies about you, the ways in which you will choose to inhabit it.

i wore a milwaukee brace under my clothes all day, every day, for six months after surgery, and a charleston bending brace while i slept for years afterward. i had to be fitted for another charleston brace, trading in my bright purple one for a light blue one, somewhere along the line because i had grown far out of my old one. the body recognizing itself as a body.

people ask if i've experienced long-term effects of these surgeries, and it's always difficult to answer accurately. before i was diagnosed at age twelve, for instance, i wasn't able to pinpoint the fact that i had terrible, wrenching back pain, because i had always had that; it wasn't out of the ordinary for me. years later, i suppose i do experience more pain than other people; my spine still isn't straight, and there are still lots of bits embedded in my body that look like they could've come out of my dad's garage toolbox. when it's cold, my flesh contracts against the metal and my back aches; when i accidentally sleep on my stomach for too long, my back muscles ache from trying to bend the stubborn parts of my spine. it's worst during my period, like most back pain is, and it's rarely anything that a handful of ibuprofen and a nap can't handle.

lately, though, i've been experiencing this burning ache in my lower back, one that spreads down through my hips, occasionally up through my upper spine or down one thigh. i was diagnosed my sophomore year of college with bursitis, which basically means that little fluid-filled lubricators were forming to cushion the flesh from the spine and were getting irritated from overuse. this may be just a worse case of bursitis, but as of now it is this constant caustic ache; it wakes me up from sleep. i've been working from home, squirming on the futon, homemade heating pads filling the apartment with the smell of rice.

my self-esteem, which i generally keep stubbornly regulated in the face of a culture that tries its hardest to tear women down, plummets when i go through times like this, because it becomes hard to imagine myself as anything other than what i can feel and what i fear: this cage of meat and gnarled bones. crooked and limping down the street, writhing in the bed.

i try not to think about getting old. it will come eventually, but i fear it. i fear the kind of pain that is here, now, at twenty-four, so i don't let myself think about forty years from now.

i go to the doctor on thursday for, presumably, x-rays and investigation into the current situation, which may be easily remedied with pills and rest, or could be something more serious that could require minor surgery; i have no idea nor any real predictions. i will be surprised if it's something serious, anything more than irritation and pinched nerves, but in some ways, those little effects are the ones that scare me the most; in all honesty, the diagnosis i dread most is a regretful shrug, a handful of pills, the words just something you'll have to live with.

crafty time with l & l

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:23:19 GMT

for a couple of months now, larry and i have known that we wanted to decoupage the cheapy coffee table we bought for at a resale store for our new apartment. we've been collecting hip pictures, cutting old-timies out from books, grabbing things from free piles on the sides of roads, and paging through old magazines for a while now, and TODAY WAS THE DAY WE DOVE IN.

...by "dove in," i mean "crouched in my messy old apartment for three hours listening to mix cds on the dvd player and sharing sponge brushes, and HEY i only spilled the mod podge once," of course. DOVE IN!

here's a totally awkward angle of the finished table. I'M NOT TALL ENOUGH TO GET WAY UP THERE. side note: we couldn't find spray polyurethane anywhere at home depot today so we finally asked a sales boy who just happened to be somewhere around 6'BILLION", and he casually strolled to an aisle we'd already been down and plucked a can of it from right around his shoulder area. and the 5'4" lindsey and larry TINIES were like OHH THAT MAKES SENSE. larry was like OK LINDS LEMME JUST GET ON YOUR SHOULDERS.

detail shots:

finished!:

i love it so muuuuch. COME OVER AND PUT YOUR FEET UP ON IT IN TWO MERE WEEKS.

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:44:25 GMT

eve ensler, on finding happiness in body & soul.

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:59:15 GMT

THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY.

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:28:12 GMT

DO YOU GUYZ LIKE MY NEW LOOK?

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:34:15 GMT

we woke up this morning and walked downtown for brunch at radio maria, which will now be all i want to do on any sunday morning ever. i love the idea of brunch; it's so classy and old-timey to me. and a good excuse to drink before noon (which i didn't, thank you). we did stop by furniture lounge on our way home to look at records and old art books to cut up and collage our new coffee table. our lease officially starts one month from today. we walk by our new house and whine, joke about sleeping on the lawn, but really it is so close.

it's beautiful outside. i'm glad it's sunday. i painted my nails with glitter last night, like either a child or a drag queen, and watched planet earth dvds until 2:30am.

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 14:32:13 GMT

nicole and i packed my car with cds, snacks and cold water yesterday and drove to the indiana dunes, a beach on the shores of lake michigan. we spent our entire friday afternoon lying in the sand, talking, reading, walking down the beach, eating gummy worms.

when i got home from my friday at the beach with a bff of almost ten years, had made dinner--sauteed quorn cutlets with tomatoes and onions, sauteed squash and zucchini, garlic breadsticks and his FAMOUS rosemary potatoes. and two glasses of white wine.

hey, life, thanks buddy.

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:43:47 GMT

i'm assistant directing/stage managing the youth summer theatre show for the urbana park district -- we're doing "honk!" which is a re-telling of "the ugly duckling" and opens july 25th. I AM OBSESSED WITH THESE KIDS.

in the blue is "ugly," in the red is a frog, and the little peanuts are FROGLETS!

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:56:12 GMT

videos from camping:

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:50:59 GMT

today larry and syd met me for lunch. when our waitress came to check on us, she asked if everything was okay and syd was like, "yeah. have you seen ratatouille?" she was like, "no, i haven't, but i want to! was it good?" and he goes "yeah, BUT THERE'S SOME KISSING IN IT."

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:39:51 GMT

whenever there's a weekend as full and fun as this one was, i have a hard time posting about it on the internets because i want to be able to tell you everything, make you feel the way i felt and see the things i saw and hold the hands of the people i was with. but this full and fun weekend has left me a very tired girl at 11:30pm on a sunday, so instead i am crawling into bed and directing you to the highlight list and photos below. goodnight.

this was sydney's first camping trip, first nature trail, first marshmallow over the fire. we saw a huge black snake in a tree, nearly blocking our path on the trail, and larry walked up to it and said "so you're telling me that if we eat this apple..." every time we saw a toad, saw a daddy-long-legs, heard a strange call from the trees, syd would run ahead and tell the next people he saw all about it. there's a snake here, people he said before we passed, directing traffic with his tiny hands. we played in the pool, sydney squealing for larry to chase him, oh no! it's jaws! and then when larry left the water, oh no! it's jaws' girlfriend! the boys played basketball on the courts at larry's old jr/sr high school; we stood in the place where he first breakdanced as a child, on the playground to impress a girl. we set up a tent and inflated mattresses and had a dinner over the fire with part of their family, including larry e. gates the first, who was confounded at first by the thought of feeding a vegetarian, but showed up with a cooler of boca burgers, vegetarian baked beans, and leaned in over the table: this potato salad here doesn't have any eggs in it. the kids played wiffleball, i knitted and talked to larry's mother quite a bit. s'mores and a sunset; everyone else left and it was larry, syd and i at the campfire when the fireworks started just a few miles away, us running through the already-damp grass to stand in a tiny row silhouetted by the lights, syd saying over and over this is amazing.

and this morning we went to an indiana flea market and bought old-timey liquor bottles for our new kitchen, a children's school desk for my new computer. sunburns and air conditioning and lemon shake-ups, kickball and how cold movie theaters get in the summer. sleepy, happy, good.

the whole set is here.

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:28:47 GMT

guyz

i got a macbook

i don't know how to use it

I LOVE IT

8|