laurabrill

1. I am stressed out. Moving always sucks balls, but it sucks many extra balls when you are moving to almost-Canada, and have to find apartments from Atlanta, and have to move your dude up before yourself, and have about two million things to do at your current residence because you promised your parents two years ago you would do them, and are now working twice as much as you were a month ago. Why have I not cleaned out the attic yet? Why is the living room still a chaotic conglomeration of all the bullshit I don't use? Why have I not given away this bullshit?

2. I have to quit smoking, or at least cut down, before we get to New York, because I will not be able to afford it. And yet I am smoking more than ever. Due, I think, to the above-mentioned stress. Who has time to make a plan for quitting smoking when there are a dozen unwanted trees growing in the pinestraw island in the front yard, and the kitchen sink is leaking in a gnarly way, and you haven't done laundry for three weeks? And, most importantly, you are suffering from a serious case of over-commitment paralyzation, in which you work yourself into a mild hysteria over all the shit you have to do instead of doing it?

3. Also, it is hot as hell outside. And it's hot, too.

Rejection rarely takes the form that I imagine when I conjure up an image of it: of someone whose affection you desire patently expressing distaste for you. Instead, it usually takes the form of someone ignoring you. When you are into a dude who's not into you, for example, it's less likely that he'll tell you he doesn't like you than that he'll just walk in another direction when you approach. When you apply for a job you want, you will rarely receive a letter detailing all the reasons you are not going to get it. You just won't get a letter.

I should note that this month started out with a definite non-rejection: I got an e-mail, and an interview, and a job. I got a big heap of non-rejection to start out my month, and I feel a lot better than I did last month. But there are lots of little rejections piling up around it.

There is the little rejection of standing around with your best friend from high school's other best friends from high school while they discuss bridesmaid's dresses at her engagement party.

There is the little rejection of knowing only about three people at said party.

There is the little rejection of trying to contact a former professor whom you adored and having her completely ignore you.

There are those sorts of things.

There's this:

Dude1: That's your sister?
Me: Yep.
Dude2: Older or younger?
Me: Younger. She's 21, I'm 25.
Dude2: I would have thought she was older.
Dude1: No, she doesn't look older, she just looks...wiser. Smarter. I mean, you don't look stupid...
Dude2: Yeah, that's it. She looks way more wise than you.

Oh, well, thank you.

Generally Jenna's engagement party was an unpleasant experience.

Sometimes when Stephen's gone it clears my head, and other times it just makes me feel bored. This time it's more boring. I think it's good that he's gone so much, because it makes me appreciate him more fully. But I also fall asleep on the couch every night, let the house descend into chaos, and lock the door of my bedroom when I finally get in it to deter the various grotesque monsters of my imagination. And then the cat gets pissed off and wakes me up at 6 every morning.

So it's not ideal.

Maybe a relationship is a kind of rejection salve, and I don't feel it as much when he's here.

At any rate, whining aside, I'm in a decent place. Today I am going to try to correct the house chaos, and also the yard chaos that has resulted from my never having had to manage such things before. Then I'm going to invite you to a dinner party. This is some weird domestic fantasy I haven't been able to shake, so I feel like I might as well embrace it. I'm thinking second weekend of August.

At certain points in my life, I have hibernated. I do this on the cusp of big changes: the year I graduated from high school I hibernated, and I hibernated in 2005 when I lived with Niki. Sometimes the changes that follow hibernation are good (post-high school I went to AmeriCorps and found myself in all kinds of cheesy ways) and sometimes they are bad (post-Niki I entered a two-year debilitating depression*).

Hibernation is characterized by an intense focus on hobbies and home-bound activities and an uptick in conversations with myself about myself. I do not do many productive things when I am hibernating. My brain is taking its time in absorbing a change in situation or world-view.

Sometimes I think that I am an intelligent person, but even if I am I have to acknowledge that I am a very slow thinker. This is why I am sometimes funny while I'm writing but am never funny in person (I can never quite keep up with what's going on around me, so banter eludes me) and why I have a six-to-eight-month turnover period whenever something in my life changes.

So, obviously, I have been hibernating since I graduated. I sort of expected it, although I was hoping it would not last quite so long. And right now I am waking up. But the longer you hibernate the harder it is to wake up, and I am finding this wake-up period slow-going. I feel like every molecule in my body has been asleep for six months, and I must rouse each one individually.

For example, so far I seem to have woken up the part of myself that cleans my house. Still asleep: the part of myself that makes decisions about career paths.

But we're getting there.

Here are some important life lessons I've learned in the past few weeks of wake-up:

1. Own your shoes**
2. Do not be like the dude in Ikiru***
3. You are a soft and squishy human being, unlike Russians who lived through German occupation in WWII****






*The effects of Niki withdrawal?

**From an Arab folk tale about a guy who was such a miser he kept his old shoes for several decades, and everyone in his town made fun of him for how gross they were, so one day he decided to get rid of them. But every time he tried to get rid of them he would get himself into horrible trouble (he throws them out of a carriage and hits a pregnant woman in the head and she miscarries, so he gets thrown in jail; he throws them into a river and somehow clogs up a dam and floods a town, so he gets thrown in jail, etc.). The moral of the story is that there are some things about your personality you would do well to accept and learn to live with rather than trying to totally eliminate them.

***Totally the best movie I have ever watched

****Scott lent us City of Thieves, which was a really good book and also made me feel like a huge soft lump of flesh with a mushy brain in comparison to the characters.

17:45 Listening to a woman totally bomb a two-on-one interview. Very, very painful. #

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19:03 Birds can dance! tinyurl.com/cqu3fh #

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23:50 Ariel, upon presenting 'drink stirrers' that look a lot like toothpicks: ''just pretend they're drink umbrellas that have been through a ... #

23:52 ...A bad storm.'' #

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20:46 Life is being so annoying right now. #

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22:39 As a remedy to my messiness I'm leaving notes for myself all over the house that say, "Don't leave your shit here." #

22:39 But Stephen says you can't write curse words on post-its. #

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08:51 Jenna the Dental Hygienist has already hooked me up with a like a hundred whitening strips and "the best toothbrush ever." #

08:51 Also she says if you eat anything with cheese it won't give you cavities. #

11:38 Hanging out at dental hygienist school while jenna tries to find some papers. #

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18:53 Swamps smell like wet dogs. #

19:07 Stuck behind 2 cops going 2 mph. Think they might be fucking with us. #

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00:33 Hanging out with coworkers @ weird bar i'm underdressed for = best night ever. #

00:48 One of our stylists has been propositioned by not one! but two couples! #

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12:02 After a month and a half we just got a working washing machine. I have never enjoyed doing laundry more. #

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16:14 It was a were-possum. And the horrifying sounds we've been hearing were the sounds of a were-possum eating rats. #

22:19 Stephen's got possum fever. #

22:20 "I would be into the following things: 1. Catching a possum. 2. Finding a possum, following it home and having possum tea with it." #

22:22 "...3. Catching a possum and making it grant me three wishes." #

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In the past month I have knitted this and this:


One of these:


Three of these:


The gayest dishrag in five counties:


And 3/4 of a baby sweater:


This is way, way more knitting than I should be doing.

A live streaming feed of puppies! Just toggle that shit to full-screen and feel the stress melt off your brain-cicles.


-> View directly here
-> Gawker: America Deserves A New Puppy, Too

My emotional progression last night was like this:

7pm: I hope Obama wins Georgia!

8pm: Obama ain't winning Georgia, and my idea that he could win in Cobb County based on my voting experience (so few old white people!) now seems very misguided (although he won in Washington County, my county of origin! By 1%) Map looks the same as 2004 so far, and I am concerned.

~9:30pm: They announce Obama won Ohio. I relax my balls and realize he is probably going to win the election, then sob for half an hour. It was not dignified.

10pm: Apparently exhaust myself & fall asleep.

????: Wake up to MSNBC like, "What's up President-elect Obama???" Crowds screaming. People at Spellman dancing. Jesse Jackson crying. Oh, the tears.

Of course, I am trying not to get too carried away.  As Gawker says, "He inherits a nation utterly fucked to it's core by the venal incompetents of the Bush years, and lord knows it's idiotic to invest all your hopes in one guy egomaniacal enough to want to be president at all, but we have secret hopes in our tiny heart that he'll be a decent success. And, of course, we all get fucking unicorns. Seriously. Check your mail next January. Unicorns and cocaine for all!"
--Gawker: President Barack Obama

Here is James Brown with a song weirdly appropriate to electiontimes this year.


I suffered through a four-hour line on Friday so y'all can deal with that bullshit on your own tomorrow.

Creative Loafing has a voter's guide that, in addition to giving a helpful explanation of the amendments we're voting on, has a truly amazing cover image.

Lemuria is playing here with Jeff Lewis at the Drunken Unicorn tomorrow. Jeff Lewis delights me, so I am psyched about that.


I am also psyched about seeing Jay and Sheena and Alex again, because they are so damned lovable.

Not psyched about: this paper, anything re: school, or the fact that there are a million Reese's peanut butter cups in my house and I am capable of eating approximately half a ton of those in one sitting.

Is a million Reese's peanut butter cups equal to half a ton of them? I'll let you know.

Here are some thoughts from my mind grapes to start your Monday morning:

1. It's good to be strict with yourself*, and you should deny yourself some things.

2. You are always, always living within the restrictions you place on yourself, and it would behoove you to occasionally step back and try to figure out what they are.

3. None of the myriad smokers in my family have ever gotten lung cancer, but a few have died of emphysema.

4. Strong group identity develops out of a need to protect your dignity.

Questions I am preoccupied with:
Have I become dumber, or was I ever smart in the first place?

Do all people have to fight to remember their ethics, or does this only happen to people who pursue careers in ethical minefields?


*I use the second person a lot when conveying my little platitudes, which I believe occasionally makes me seem pompous, so allow me to clarify that I am pretty much always talking to myself.

Milan Kundera May Have Sent Someone to the Uranium Mines
A Czech newspaper is accusing Milan Kundera of denouncing someone in the '50s.  Meaning, they say he told the Soviets about some non-Soviet and they sent that non-Soviet to work in the Uranium mines. 

The NYT says the evidence is suspect, but apparently the Czech national character involves hating famous people, so they're all like, "Yeah, fuck you Kundera!"