My Luck Could Change

Cheap Ass MP3s and Hometown Musik!

Thanks be to Frank, the rockin' exchange rate, and the fall of communism.  For without a mysterious synergy of all three I never would have discovered this site which, once you click in the right-hand corner to switch it off Russian, lets you legally download full albums for, sometimes, under a dollar.  I just got the old Shins album for 95 centavos.  Очень хорошо !!

And for free tonight, Subpop shared new Low tracks with me, a band I grew up in the same dinky city with but never got to touch.  I don't think they played all-ages shows and if they did, I was completely oblivious and now I'm pissed.  Something came out of Duluth that was worthwhile?  That real magazines are talking about?  Something's that's getting TV coverage that doesn't involve a cat getting frozen to a sidewalk (etc) and being cryogenically reactivated?  Now, after opening for Radiohead, etc etc, they've signed with Subpop.  And I'm still a nobody and, even though I'll be in Duluth this weekend, I won't get to see them play.  They're gigging Europe.  And I'll be hanging with gramma.

This may be my last post before I venture to the tundra and back, so I hope the 10-cent downloads and frozen cat stories keep you warm these cold(ish) winter nights until I return.

I've Become A Silhouette

I've been absent.  My parents were in town, my uncle etc came down from Ventura, James made a 2-day stop between Seattle and his cruiseship...a veritable hoedown at my place.  I've got stories to tell but now I'm drowning in the SoCal rain (tornado warnings today.  Neet!) and moldy walls, all the little things I put off while everyone was here to distract me.  I've only got 2 more days before I'm on a plane to sub-zero Minnesota for the weekend to drop Jeremy off with grandparents for a couple weeks before Adam flies back to pick him up.  When I get back I'll have little to no responsibility and ----  ERWIN!!  I think he was over there long enough to techically be a common-law Iraqi citizen, but now HE'S ALL MINE!  If he survives the trip back through hostile territory and if I can make it 4 days in the winter hinterland. 

Listening to:

We Will Become Silhouettes - The Shins Cover (get it quick while it lasts!  I'm already at  900% bandwidth!)

**Free Prize!**

A picture of my beautiful mommy doing some beautiful gardening during a rare patch of sun this week:

We'll All Float On OK

In elementary school I was popular not because I was cool, but because I was a natural leader of all things 8-year-old-girls.  I started a club by being a geek about animals and then making others do my bidding.  Eventually we got pretty big and our teacher gave us class time to do our thing.  We raised money and somewhere in the midst of the Amazon, there's 1000 square feet of jungle with our name on it.  Right.

In Jr. High I got a little strange.  Or, at least, had the freedom to express myself more.  When I was 12 my mom helped me dye my hair fuscia.  That was the beginning of my "Rainbow Brite" nickname, the only one I ever had.  Guess I'm not a nickname kind of girl.  I dressed in the coolest clothes a thrift store budget would afford, and did too much of too many different drugs before the 8th grade began.  I ate a bagle and a baby food every day (like I just did, which is reminding me of all this useless garbage).  Someone carved "ED 78" into our lunchroom table.  I wrote in pencil Return of the J-I" over it and then erased it.  Somehow the evil lunch ladies thought that was worth 2 months of lunchroom detention...my own private table that my friends couldn't visit and then after the bell rang I'd have to stay after and, literally, sweep the lunchroom floor WITH MY HANDS.  Since I had only 5 minutes to get to my next class I'd always be late and then I started getting detention for being late to that class, too.  Eventually my mom finally broke down and believed me and complained.  After one unexpected brush-against from the principal (the one who had the pull-out couch in his office), all was forgiven.  But not after enough in-school suspension and after school detention to give me an even deeper seated hatred for authority.  My principal used to jog by my house and when I was lucky enough to catch him I'd scream obscenities at him as he jogged by.  I was pretty coy for a 13 year old.

When highschool started I had the punk rockingest boyfriend ever, who I miss severely and should probably track down.  He had 3 inch spikes on his jacket, but the sweetest, sheltered, choir boyness about him.  My mom loved him since she knew he was a totally pussy.  He moved to Phily, promising to come back once he turned 18 a couple months later and, of course, never did.  Good for him.  I met Adam somewhere during my sophomore year and totally thought he was my rebound guy, the one with balls enough to finally take my virginity.  He made me wait.  Fucker.  The first 2 years of highschool were mostly spent skipping as much class as I could get away with (my mom didn't really care so long as I kept up my A's), smoking pot, going to all the punkrock shows I could and whipping shitties in the (6 months of) snow.  The teachers I loved I really loved and really loved me and the teachers I didn't like rarely saw me unless it was test day.  Since I was in the top 10% of the class I was eligible to start at the university my junior year, which was great for all the free credits and for the fact I got to experience a little taste of college life before I got married.  I had some really close friends but lost my way somewhere when I was 17...they begged me to get Adam out of my life (drugs, weighing me down even though he was 6K miles away and we were both living our own lives, etc), but I was in some kind of strangling depression that set in after I got back from 2 weeks in Europe and suffered through another Minnesota winter.  I went through a bunch of guys but couldn't stand anyone for more than a couple weeks at a time...I didn't want their intimacy.  Didn't have that part of me to invest.  For a month when the SADD kicked in I rarely came home and drank nearly a bottle of gin a day til the near-stigmata liver failure kicked in.  We had a foreign exchange student my senior year, Paola from Italy.  My mother started working soon before and we had money for the first time I can remember.  Beyond a trip with my dad to show Paola the Dakotas, the most recent vacation to that point had been a drive to northern Michigan when I was 10, but that winter we fled the cold and spent a week in LA, my mom, Paola and me.  The first time I stuck my toe in the Pacific in Santa Monica, I vowed I'd be living in California in a year.  It was the warmth I was lacking.  And, in this crazy roundabout way, I got exactly what I wished for.  When I get cranky and start to feel that this marriage and child are weighing me down, I remember that they were my salvation.

So, who am I?  This creative, extraverted, partying intellectual with a intense fear of intimacy, but a love of feigning it as best I can so that one day, maybe, I'll change my mind about it all.  Someone that craves her space as much as she craves attention.  Someone that still eats baby food at 22. And I like me this way.  Most of the time.

There Go My Cool Points for the Year

I have absolutely no evening plans this weekend.  None.  There, I said it.  Last weekend was all settled upon the Tuesday before, but this weekend I think I'm going to do myself a favor and lay low.  It's come to my realization that I'm getting downright boring at times now, even compared to just a year ago.  A lot of is has to do with the fact that I'm on the road to having to donate plasma for grocery money this month.  But, yep.  No plans.  And me, of all people, getting old and boring.  It's sad.

Leave me pity comments or the panda dog gets it.

Off to go on a walk with my dog at 9 o'boring on a Friday night.  Then, I'll probably read a book and go to bed.  It's stories like these that keep you coming back for more!

And to prove what a nrrd I am, check out this list of early 90's TV shows we all know and love with all our - farts!  Hahaha...oh.  I kid.

A Plea for Help

*shudder*  I feel so stalked.  We'll get to that in a minute. But first...ever since I ditched my stupidly-pricey domain name I've been losing a lot of hits since no one can find me anymore. 
So here's a cute baby groundhog picture that my blog-friend Ricky assures me is the pathway to more hits and idiotic comments.  Hey!  I'll take what I can get at this point!  Also, you HAVE to see this!  Thanks to this guy.

So...creepy.  This guy calls me today wanting the Spanish textbooks I'm selling but then changes his mind.  Then calls me 2 hours later to say he's changed his mind again and wants to pick them up.  From the first second I got that icky creeped out feeling.  Something's not right.  I hand him the books but he doesn't even look at them, but also isn't getting out my money, either.  I tell him everything's there and he finally glances at them, telling me that they aren't what he needed (even though I'm positive they're still the same books this semester and I'm positive that he knew what books I had).  But then, instead of leaving, he's still standing there.  I wish him a good day....standing there....a safe drive....standing there....a good night at work....finally he says "you play bass, huh."  And I think I finally get it...he's seen me before and was just trying to place me all that time.  That'd make sense, but no...he's never seen me play.  He said I had an interesting email signature and he looked up my myspace profile.  So I just inadvertantly gave my email, phone number, and address to someone creepy enough to go through all that even though he never needed the books.  So hey, creepy guy...since I know you probably read my blog now too - I know tae kwon do and aikido.  And that cute beagle's got a mean bite when I tell him to.  And, if my husband's home, he's a certified Expert with an M-16 and can be a bit overprotective at times.

There's a Fine Line Between the Monkey and the Robot.

You know, I thought I'd totally grown out of this.  But I was palm-sweaty nervous on my walk to class tonight.  And, at times, shy.  Me.  And I left class feeling like a total loser for absolutely no reason.  What am I, 13?  No...I just totally forgot how to speak Spanish without 2 or 3 tequilla shots in me.  But the class is entirely in Spanish and since it's a new profe she's using all kinds of words I've never heard before.  It's going to be a hella work, this Spanish through film thing.  Not only are we watching tons of movies, we're writing an ungodly amount of reviews and papers and our own screen play which we have to pitch.  Sometimes I love this creative get-the-kids-interested kind of stuff, other times I just want vocab lists to memorize and trips to the Baja so I can practice on bartenders.  Que sera sera.

Right around the holidays I was perfectly content to spend even a Saturday night en casa.  Now, I don't feel like I should be here even though it's a weeknight and I've got to be up in 8 hours.  I told Chris that I might stop by the Zombie, but that's not it.  I feel like I'm missing something.  There's something wrong with me tonight...I'm too anxious, too off.  I think I'll have to fix this the old fashioned way...chocolate, whiskey, a good book and a warm doggy armrest.