sometimes when i'm sitting there i think about time

and about what life would be like if time went forwards and backwards.
if it were a glitchy, short-circuited thing that jumped and twitched and would sometimes work right but sometimes flip and send you back exactly to where you came from.

so i sit there, and i think about all the implications of that.
you'd relive some of the best days of your life, most likely also some of the worst. but you wouldn't be so scared of birthdays because you might have your 40th ten times over and someday be 20 again anyway. you could make decisions flippantly knowing that you might have a chance to make them over. it'd be easier to come to terms with the thought of losing somebody because you would most absolutely get them back at some point.

and then i think: what if you sneezed, and then time went backwards, to the beginning of your sneeze, and then forwards again--to the end of your sneeze--and then it got stuck in this loop and you just spent the whole rest of eternity sneezing?

that would be the ratsiest thing ever.

once somebody told me that if you lick the roof of your mouth right before you sneeze, your body will forget what it was about to do and stop in its tracks. that's right, i have the cure for sneeze. and it's not too good to be true, it really does work.
i keep forgetting about that rule, though, til just right after i sneeze, and by then it's too late.

i lick the roof of my mouth anyways though. just in case i get stuck in a time loop.

that's why my friends call me whiskers

we were making something.
supper, i think. [and to those of you who call supper "dinner", i say, "shsh."]
anyway, i was stirring something {kraft dinner, i think} and that was when he ducked out of the kitchen for a minute, because either he needed to get something in another room or he was pushing the play button on the tape deck again, and that was when i pulled a clumsy and, while reaching for the salt shaker, knocked the porcelain bowl off the counter.  and then time




slowed
and
stopped.

i       was          able       to         calmly          and         accurately        evaluate        the        situation:        my         flailing       hands,        my           beloved            porcelain        pajama-patterned             bowl--mid-flight,         that        old         man            across          the              street           that       i         always        see         everywhere     but         don't        know         where         he           lives.       and          in          that          split           second,           i            swung            around,          180        degrees,           quietly         reached          out         my         hand          and        made         the          catch.        out        of         thin            air.         and           then                                            time




sped up and we were back in full swing again, bowl intact. i was pleased with myself.
"barclay!" i screamed, "i am like a jungle cat!"
as if jungle cats could catch falling things or something. but i meant it to mean that i felt very agile and cool. like maybe a tiger.

but upon further examination, it may have just been a lucky catch.

the thing about the piano

i forgot to actually say what it was i found in my living room upon arriving home on friday.

silly me.

the thing about the piano is this [i'm sorry if you've heard this before]:

february 2008, i watched a movie with my friend sara. it was about a boy and a girl, and of course it was a love story, and of course i was single and thought i'd never be married. at the end of the movie, he buys her a piano--thus began my firm belief that a piano was probably the most romantic gift a guy could ever give to a girl. hence, my facebook status the next day:

happiness is a guy who will buy a girl a piano instead of stupid old flowers.

*note: in the event that someday a guy does buy me flowers, i will probly not think it is stupid. however, in the event that someday a guy buys me a piano...i will drop everything and marry him. 

Added February 9, 2008 · Comment · Like

 it can't have been a coincidence that that was the night that sara told me that i was going to marry her friend barclay krause, who i'd never met, who lived 3 hours away in a town i'd solemnly swore i'd never inhabit. you can read that whole story here. 

but the point is not that. the point is that after our first meeting, i went home and somewhat rashly facebook messaged this little bit to a few of my closest friends:

Elena Christensen May 6, 2008 at 11:11pm

GUYS!!! i met my future husband tonight!

and while i was doing THAT, he was facebook creeping me, and he found the above facebook status about a guy buying a girl a piano. we each found out about each others' may 6 evening activities on march 12, 2009, the night he asked me to marry him, at which point he said that he had money put away to buy me a piano, but no place to put it yet. 

when we bought our first house, on may 29, 2009, it was absolutely not in the state to be lived in, nor, at 480 square feet, was there any room for such a massive instrument. we poured so much time and effort into making that house livable, but squeezing a piano in there seemed a bit extreme. 

and yet on friday, there it was. my very own 88-keyed, black and white and brown all over, studio piano. squished right in there with the love seat and chesterfield. 

i spent my afternoon yesterday alternately playing old royal conservatory pieces and scales on my new piano, and painting up some pictures to hang above it. 

ah. j'aime bien.

next year maybe i will read this and laugh my head off

today i really should have stayed in bed. i try not to say that phrase too much because i don't want to be a debbie downer and i don't like whining, but today it's not so much emotional as financial.
because it just would have been cheaper to stay in bed today.

i woke up feeling sick and weepy. you know what i mean by weepy right? i don't mean emotional. i mean beyond that. like if emotional is a street lamp, weepy is like some star a billion light-years beyond it. i mean if i were to watch dumb and dumber right now, i would probably cry at the part where lloyd and harry get mad at each other. it's like that.

most people call in sick when they're sick. i only call in sick when i can't get out of bed, otherwise i wouldn't really have a job anymore. so i sit up, and if that goes ok i stand up, and if i'm still good i walk upstairs to where barclay is making brekkie [he makes me turkey bacon and eggs every single morning, i'm not even making that up] and if the food goes down ok then i'm good to go. sort of.
to make a long story a teensy bit shorter, this morning i ended up deciding to go to work.

i got in my car, backed out of the driveway, and started down the street, realizing at the moment that i started to go forward that my windshield was a bit on the foggy side. i could see out of it but felt like i should probably wipe it all off anyway. so, at the next available chunk of side-of-the-road [about a block or two later], i pulled over and got out of the vehicle.

sirens, lights, sirens, lights. i jumped out of my skin and back into my car. oh my heart.
i think that policemen should not be allowed to just sneak up behind you and just blare their sirens right in your ear. i made sure to give him a look that said 'how rude!' i made sure to point it at my steering wheel instead of him so that he wouldn't get mad at me.

but he got mad anyway. he came and yelled at me about killing people and driving dangerously and killing people and driving dangerously and paying a fine. and then he gave me a ticket. not a movie ticket, not a concert ticket, a, like, a ticket ticket. for 125 bucks, for having a foggy windshield. and i sat there and cried and cried because that's what happens when you yell at a weepy girl, these weird snort/sob/gaspy/wail things. he probably thought it was me trying to get sympathy but i didn't need his sympathy; i felt sorry for myself enough for the both of us.

at this point, please do not comment and say, "well he was right, you shouldn't have been driving with a foggy windshield."
because i know that. that's why i pulled over. it's just lame and i'm weepy and i feel like my head is falling off.
and yes, tomorrow, i'll absolutely wipe my window off before i leave.

anyway, here is a picture of a house that i took with my phone on sunday. i thought it looked nice in person, and i think it sort of looks nice in picture too.

welcome to the twilight zone...

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination, a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas; you've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone... [-rod serling]

it was saturday, september 25. almost a week ago now. the streets were packed, the skies were only slightly cloudy, and they were lost.

being lost is a fine thing, when you don't really have anywhere in particular you're going to in the first place, and this was the case for the young couple on this day. it is arguable then that in this instance they were not technically "lost", just aimless, but in either case they absolutely did not know where they were.

they'd arrived in the city just then, and were looking for something to do. it didn't need to be something extraordinary, just needed to be something to pass the time together. they'd come here for no other reason.

somebody's car alarm was going off, a police siren sang in the background, construction workers pounded away at the cement in a closed lane. a student driver gas-braked his way through the noise. car horns blared: "YOU'RE GOING TOO SLOW" "YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST" "I'M GOING TO RUN YOU OVER" "YOU ARE TOO UGLY TO DRIVE A CAR" "GET OFF THE ROAD".

it is a wonder there are not more traffic accidents. it is a wonder, with all this going on, that there is room for anyone to actually drive.

"can't find a parking spot..." he mumbled as he inched through the city with the mass of cars. she was draped over her seat, searching in the back for a sweater. it was an easier thing to find than a parking spot.

a sign: PARKING GARAGE. an arrow. good.

he pulled up to the doors, pushed the button on the parking machine. the bar lifted, the door opened, "please take your ticket."

he did. it had the parking rates and directions on the back.

it was eerie, the way that the garage door closed behind them.

when you drive into a city, you don't notice the horns, the sirens, the hum of thousands of people in a hurry. you hear it far off without really knowing that you're hearing it and it builds into a solid sound that doesn't make any noise. but as they drove into the parking garage and the door closed behind them, they heard a sound that was louder than the collective city murmur: nothing.

she was instantly uneasy. white walls, concrete everything, not a single car in sight.

"well, i guess we have our pick of parking spots."

they parked, got out of their car. he took her hand and they followed the exit signs across and down and out a door, back onto the busy street.

they'd been walking for some time, ducking into thrift shops and music stores here and there, stopping once for a cup of coffee too. there were no familiar faces, and they loved the anonymity that came with a strange place.

the time flew by and his feet got tired and she felt hungry and they'd seen all the shops and walked down all the streets, seen at least five different wedding parties take jumping pictures in front of a street light. it was time to find their car again.

they walked down that street--king's street, he thought it had been. they found the sign, the doors with the bars. there was the exit door they'd come out of. there was nothing--no handle, knob, no crash bar. just a lock. a locked lock. a very unhelpful, irritating, locked lock. they looked up. the building looked old. run down.

there was no way in.

he pulled the parking ticket stub from his pocket, to see if there were directions on it.

it was blank.

they looked up, and the building was gone. and so were they. and so was the world.

aliens, i think.

no, not really. barclay had just misplaced the actual ticket stub. we found it a few seconds later, and it had directions to a different entrance down the street. nevertheless, i hummed the twilight zone theme song for the rest of the day.

neurotic

my cell phone is bright green.
the color of a traffic light telling you to go go go get going get gone
i looked and looked and couldnt find my cell phone anywhere in the house and you'd think you'd think you'd think it would be easy to find something so bright somewhere in someplace so small but it's not it wasn't and it drove me up the wall
hufffffffffffff....
that is the sound of me trying to calm down.

i will be real with you: i get worked up really easy these days. and then from up it's a long way down and i'm afraid of heights.
but a missing cell phone is ok, i'm ok, it's ok.

i give up and decide to call it from my home phone. enough running up stairs down stairs from room to room and up stairs again, i'll just call it.
beep beep beep-beep beep beep beep
ring
ring
ring
ring
click: you have reached the voice mail of samantha brown. i am not able to take your call right now--

what.

beep beep beep-beep beep beep beep
ring
ring
ring
ring

click: you have reached the voice mail of samantha brown. i am not able to take your call right now--

i hang up, confused.
i don't know my phone number.

weekends are good

today i got punched in the face by a guy named rambo.

tender bones

a picture is worth a hundred thousand million words.

unfortunately, the picture is stuck in my head, and none of the words are coming to mind.

i'm sitting in the dining room watching the rain come down on the hollyhocks, and listening to tender bones by ohbijou. 

this song is perfect for rain and hollyhocks.

 and also, this song is perfect for the indescribable picture i have in my head. 

we were walking; we were about a block away when the accident happened.

there was an angry horn, a collective gasp.

then there was an elderly woman under a big white truck, and blood, and people. 

i'd never seen someone like that before. 

i'd never seen limbs like that before.

and we couldn't help her, but there were people who could, so we could only walk and walk and walk until our shaky legs gave out in a park where we sat and prayed for her. 

i know we left her there, but i brought her picture back in my head.

and i know she's not under the truck anymore, but she is.

the apocalypse in the music store

we were trying to remember the name of the last song on coldplay's x&y album when the walls started rumbling.
i stood up from my spot on the floor where i was leafing through songbooks, and robyn glanced at me quizzically. we were in the sheet music store down the street immersing ourselves in quarter notes and half rests and the like, and the rumbling seemed out of place.
i mean, if you're from california, this sort of thing might be easier explained. or if you live on an active volcano.
when you live on the prairies, rumbling like this means it's most likely the end of the world, or else a semi truck is driving into the building.
the store clerk was standing by the window looking distressed, but the sun was pouring in and it looked relatively gorgeous outside, so i decided it wasn't the end of the world. i imagine the apocalypse won't happen on a gorgeous summer day. [i think the world will wake up at three in the morning all disoriented and it'll be thundering and lightninging and the rumbling will be just a wee bit more fear instilling and, you know, completely disastrous. and everything will be on fire.]
so that left the other thing.
by the time we got to the window, the semi truck was dissapearing into the back alley, still scraping and grinding and thundering against the poor wall of the music store, which gave one last shuddering sigh and was silent.
and it was no end of the world, but it was ok.
but we still couldn't think of the name of that song.

take your stranger to work day

i have quite a way with kids.

a way to get them to be quiet and let you do your work.
today at work, a little boy came up out of pretty much thin air and looked in my face without saying really anything at all. so i looked in his face, smiled, and kept at my computerizing.
"hi," he said.
"hi," i said.
because anything less would've been rude.
i didn't know who this kid was and [far as i knew] he didn't know me. hence,
"what's your name?"
"i'm elena," i said. "what's yours?"
because anything less would've been rude.
"tyler," he said.
"alfred?" i asked.
"tyler," he said.
"alfred?" i asked.

"no, tyler." he stated.

"alfred." i stated, too.
"TYLER."
"ALFRED?"
"NO. MY NAME IS TYLER."
"CAN I CALL YOU AL FOR SHORT?"
"NO. YOU CAN CALL ME TYLER."
"HOW ABOUT FRED? CAN I CALL YOU FRED FOR SHORT?"
"ok."
agreeable little chap.
i went back to my computer things.
he went back to looking in my face.
"i'm bored," said alfred.
"me too," said i.
"i don't know what to do," he said.

"you could build a snowman," i pointed out.

he gave me a look like i was probably the dumbest thing since sticks. i didn't know a kid that age could produce a look so condescending.
"no," he said, "i can't do that."
"why not?"
"there's no snow!"

"WHAT?"

"yeah. it melted into dirt!"

that made me feel a little bit better.

"rats," i said.

"so...what should i do?" he asked.

"well..." i pondered this. "you could have a snowball fight. those are fun."

"IT'S SUMMER!!!" exasperation is one of my favorite facial expressions.

"yes," i said "it is that."

he looked really long and hard at me.

"snow angels?"

"NO!"

"snow tunnels!"

"NO!!!"

"you could color a picture?"

"ok."

and he sat quietly for probably a half hour, until his mom came and found him, and drew me the nicest picture you've ever seen. of a girl with long blonde hair and hearts all around her head.

so.

you know.

i have a way with kids.

can you spell "inebriated"?

"hillsdale church, this is suzy."
"how d'you spell thaaa word? the one thaaa sounds liiike... um... pris'ner?"
"uhhh...p-r-i-s-"
"NO. no. not pris'ner. buuu like, pris'ner. like, pris'ner buuuu... not pris'ner."
"um. p? r? i? s? --"
"NO NO NO. NOT pris'ner. izz like another word. not pris'ner."
"ok. do you know what word it is you want me to spell, exactly?"
"no. no. see, izz like pris'ner. izz those guys. y' know?"
"well, i'm not sure i can help you spell the word if you don't know what word it is you're--"
"YOU STUPID see lillel girl, izzzz... like, pris'ner, but izzz those guys who preach at you, but they're not pris'ners, buuuu it sounds like thaaa. y' know?"
"um... maybe?"
"ok, so how d'you spell thaaa??"
"i have no clue. sorry. have a nice day though...?"
*click*

i figured out the word he wanted after i hung up the phone though.
and i even know how to spell it.
can you?

in the event that your first impression really is everything i may have to retire from meeting people as i'm getting exceedingly more bad at it part 4

me, i'm great at first impressions. most people will never forget the first time they meet me.
and by great i mean awful. but still: most people will never forget the first time they meet me.

i suppose you want to know how i met shlee.

that's valid. i will tell you:

i grew up in a wee little town called frontier. it was a prairie town with one school and one gas station and no hospital and not even a swimming pool. 

not even a swimming pool.

--but we did have a sketchy little golf course.

[i've never been golfing.]

in a little town like that, every new girl was a celebrity. they didn't come often, but when they did, it was an event. every girl wanted to be her best friend, every guy wanted to date her. before anyone even knew her name or anything else about her. she was new; that was enough.

in the case of shlee, i had a wee advantage over everyone else. because, though she didn't know it at the time, we had a mutual acquaintance: my cousin, alyssa, who had called me up the day before school started back up for the fall and informed me that one of her camp friends was moving to frontier.

sweet. i had two questions: a) does she know i know you? and b) what are some or most or all of her deepest darkest secrets?
alyssa was more than helpful.

so anyway. how i met shlee.
it went something like this:

i walked into school, backpack most likely completely empty except for two chocolate bars and my discman and a cd book, big grin on, right up to the new girl.

"hey." i'm friendly like that.
"hi..." she's friendly too.
"i'm suzy."
"ashley."
"i know."

shlee made a puzzled face.
i don't remember for sure, but i probably pulled a chocolate bar out then. i was always eating a chocolate bar. the milk chocolate kind with almonds in it.
those were the days.

we talked about something or another. she told me she was from consul, i told her i'd never lived anywhere but frontier. she said something about the move and i listened for a bit and then i said i liked music and asked if she liked music and she said yeah she did like music and i told her what music was good because i was cocky and kind of considered myself an authority on music and then i told her i was a little bit psychic and i had a dog and also too many cats--

"psychic?"
"yeah. a little bit."
"oh..."
"yeah. like... i just know things. about you, even."
i squinted at her. i didn't know how to act psychic. i didn't believe in psychic...ness. psycnicity. psychosis? psychisiousosity.something. the point is not that.
the point is that i just squinted a lot at her forehead, as if i could see through it. it was a little bit awkward, it being the first time we'd met and all.

"i know you had a crush on a guy this past summer at um...camp. you went to summer camp and had a crush on a guy. a guy with an afro."

she squinted back at me, but didn't say anything. i'm socially awkward and don't know when to quit, so i kept going. i told her his name, what he looked like, his brother's name. her eyes got huge. i kept a straight face and chomped on my chocolate bar. if i remember right, i was kind of rude and didn't offer her any. for all i did know about her, i didn't know yet if she was a germophobe.
anyway, i told her a little bit later that i wasn't psychic but i wasn't lying about having a dog and we became best friends and had marker fights in chem class and had an adventure in a back alley in a big city with a bunch of hippies.
she's all grown up and married now, and has a blog of her own.

i'm going to very ungracefully end this post now because i've plum run out of words.
the end.

today is going to be a wonderful day

sometimes you find what you've been looking for.
sometimes you find a very cranky old woman with a thick russian accent who scowls at you and slams a gate in your face.

for your sake, i'll start at the beginning.

we were just going out for lunch, shar and i. it was a gorgeous day; hot, calm, not a cloud in the sky. those are the days that i like best.
after we finished our pandinos, shar mentioned a garage sale she'd been at the day before. it sounded completely amazing and she told me i'd find scads of sweet things there, so we packed up and started off to find it.

i love shar. shar is great. but i found this out about shar yesterday:
shar doesn't know where she's going.
we went this way, and that way, and back over there, and east and north and down that street.

i guess that's about when it started to rain a little bit.

i looked down and saw this.

then i looked up.

the first crack of thunder reached deep down into my head and knocked hard on my brain, and a shard of lightning flew from one end of the sky to the other.
we walked a little faster. we talked about death.

we found it.

the garage sale, i mean. not death.
dead people don't web log.

the point is not that.
the point is that we made it.
after three hours of walking.
just as the woman was packing up her last few boxes.
the gate was open, so we just kind of stood there; two pathetic, wayfaring strangers.
she scowled angrily.
"VHAT DO YOU VHANT?"
we smiled. the kinds of smiles that you smile at someone who hates your guts.
shar was brave. "you're probably packing up eh?"
"VHOULD YOU LUK AT DAAT? DAAT SKY EES SO BLECK! EES GOING TO REEN, AND I AM NOT PUTTING MY TINGS OUT IN DAAAAAT WITHER."
and with that, she slammed the little gate shut and jammed a bony finger at the threatening clouds.
"YUS LUK! LUK!"
she kept hollering after us as to yus luk at daaaat sky as we hurried away. i began to feel like she thought it was maybe our faults that the sky looked the way it did.
it wasn't.
and that's when the sky opened up and dumped twenty thousand gallons of water right on our heads.
to say we were wet is kind of like saying barclay is cool. it's true, but it's a monstrous understatement.
we were soaked. and freezing.
we stepped in a puddle that turned out to be an ocean and had to wade through water up to our knees.
i was wearing my newspaper on my head to keep the rain from dribbling down the back of my shirt.

but we [eventually] made it home.
and guess what?
the sidewalk was right:
it was a wonderful day.
because shar is good company,
AND
because after i got home and dried off, mum and dad krause threw me a birthday party and gave me THESE:

kind of a booky rainbow after the rain.

emma, a tale of two cities, jane eyre, pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility, treasure island, tom sawyer & huckleberry finn, and little women. how happy am i?

very. 

amazing still it seems, i'll be twenty three

my birthday this year found me at the exact same place as it did last year, and also at a different place entirely.

22 was a good year. we completely renovated our little house, got married, went to california, came back, played about a million games of trivial pursuit, got our first Christmas tree, and met our very first niece.

i rung in the first day of 23 roasting in the burning sun with barclay, holding his hand and listening to some sweet music. the rays drew a blotchy, fire engine red pattern around the edges of my clothes and shoes, and i had to squint hard to see the performers on the stage. finally, i gave up and closed my eyes. good thing you can still hear with your eyes closed. 

AND! it was father's day. i like celebrating father's day on my birthday. considering they're somewhat completely connected.

as expected, i got my dixie cup of ice cream, saw lots of friends and family, and listened to scads of music, as well as saw the best tour bus i think i've ever seen [owned by one of my favorite bands maybe ever].

on our way out of the valley, we stopped at the top of the hill to just check out the view. i pretended it was the grand canyon. it was easy enough to do because i've never been to the grand canyon.

all day, barclay kept pulling small birthday presents out of his backpack. a freelance whales cd, some small notebooks, clodhoppers, stuff like that.

my favorite:

the pencil crayons are made of rolled up chinese newspapers. they are the nicest thing i've ever seen this week. he said i can use it for my paper rants. i love my husband.

so i'm off. to write a paper rant on my new paper with my new pencils while eating clodhoppers and listening to freelance whales. so best.
how was your weekend?

inspiring inspirational inspiration about success and succeeding

i found an inspiring piece of inspirational writing the other day at a thrift store.

i love sayings that say something about the subject that they are referring to.

needless to say, i just need to say that this quote -- plus the encouraging picture pictured below it -- made me think about thoughts that i hadn't thought of thinking before.

i almost bought it for my living room because i wanted to hang it in my living room, but the price pictured on the picture's price tag was exponentially more and a lot higher than i was willing to spend [it was 2 bucks].

and now, without further adieu, i will not make you wait any longer because nothing irks me like an irking thing [such as further adieu and waiting for a long time].

nothing succeeds likes success.
words to live by.

a story about bag clips

they brought me a present.
it was a basket; wider than my pillow, deeper than the kitchen sink, filled with oodles of magical things. there were sharpie markers and colorful tupperware and food and snacks and kiwi-flavoured toothpaste and laundry detergent and cds and headbands and even those little bag clips you can get at ikea if you're lucky enough to live near one.
[i'm not.]
i was most excited about the bag clips. i put them in the kitchen in the drawer beside the stove.

so yesterday when i got home from work, i opened up a bag of frozen peas for supper, emptied half of it into the pot, and reached into the drawer for my new, cheerfully-colored bag clips.
gone.
gone?
wot?
i looked everywhere for them but they were not anyplace.

then it hit me like a sumo wrestler with steel fat.

a quick glance in the medicine cabinet where the toothpaste wasn't, a sweep of the cd cupboard where i saw that my new andrew bird cd was gone without a trace, a peek in the laundry room where there were no longer two boxes of laundry detergent.

finally, i flung the bead curtain door of the pantry out of my way and my suspicions were confirmed.
the snacks and food were gone too.

dreams are nice. dreams are great.
but those realistic ones'll get you every time.

i'm so dissapointed right now.

my first ever ultrasound and my lightning blood

a heart just doesn't look like a heart. did you know that?
it's not bright apple red.
it's not still.
it's not even really heart-shaped.
you know how i know?
i know because i saw mine today.
and it was not bright apple red, it was not still, and it was not even really all that heart-shaped.
but i wasn't dissapointed.
i was actually even very impressed.

i watched the monitor in utter fascination as the cardiologist expertly measured and typed and clicked. she sees hearts every day, all the time.

not me.

i watched the green lines sketch out my heartbeat on the bottom of the screen, getting bigger and shakier with every hacking cough. my black and white heart pounded out a great bass drum beat in the center of the screen. i tried to think of what song it looked like it was drumming along to. i tried to realize that all of this was going on inside of me.

i think the thing that excited me the most was that my blood is fast. i've never been fast. i always lost the races. but i bet my blood could beat your blood in a race.
i got lightning blood.

now, don't you want to know why there was rotten potato salad in my purse?

aren't you a bit curious?
it all started at the coffee house down the street, where you can get a large panini for $9.49.
the panini is nice. the panini is fine. the panini can feed two hungry people or one extreeeemely hungry person.
[i can eat a whole one myself. i'm a rhinosaurus.]

but the point is not that.

the point is that the $9.49 panini comes with a puzzling little container of what would appear to be potato salad. i've never met someone who likes the obnoxious little salad, and it usually gets tossed.

good graish, wot a waste.

you and i both know that food has two uses: "eating" and "other".
[["other" includes but is not limited to: food fights, crafts [maccaroni necklaces and such], and, my personal favorite, pranking.]]
this food was not eat-worthy, so aimee and i decided to figure out the "other" use. we further decided that this particular food would be especially good--and only, really, good--for pranking.

a prank involves three components: a victim, a plan, and a flawless carrying-out.
we got the first two, and about a sliver of the third.

the anatomy of Project Potato Dalas

the victim: Dallas [because his name is pretty much salad backwards and also his office is the most accessible from my workspace.]

the plan: every friday, we will split a large panini and obtain one container of "potato salad". shortly after one o'clock [taking careful note of the time] suzy will slip into dallas' office and hide the container somewhere out of easy eye-sight. we will then wait outside and take note of how long it takes dallas to find said potato salad. we will keep a log book of his times, personal bests, personal worsts, how stinky his office becomes, etc.

the flawless carrying-out: i'll shoot straight with you: we did it once. it took him roughly an hour and twenty minutes to find the potato salad behind his desk. we returned to the coffee house the following friday, at which time i stuffed the potato salad into my purse, and promptly forgot about it. until saturday. not like saturday next saturday saturday. saturday a month later saturday.

the backlash: that's right. when you don't pull off the third part of your prank well, there will inevitably be a fourth part. and that part is this part--the backlash. the part where i open my purse a month later and stick my hand in month-old rotten potato salad.

anyways. that's all. kids: think twice before playing food-related pranks. think three times. and don't transport the ammo in a non-sealable container.

saturday, two days later

ok. now to finish the post i began writing right before i found the rotten potato salad in my purse. 

which is a whole nother post in itself. 

anyways. where did i leave off...

oh yes, "it was almost my dream saturday [see friday list number 8] except brekkie wasn't quite that elaborate and we weren't in california and it rained so i didn't get my sunburn and substitute a cadbury chocolate bar for the lindt chocolate and an elephant for a panda bear and i didn't get to sleep in a hammock.

however..."

...however, the day was a gas. 

i took pictures on my cell phone, because professional-type cameras are beyond overrated. 

also i can't afford one.

[mostly i can't afford one.]

we [we = kiersten &  i] walked down 13th to the cathedral arts festival.
first we saw shar, dancing up a storm in the street with her dance team.

shar dances like the northern lights!

then we jetted to the cathedral to see liz sing. 

she hit the very highest note. i was beyond impressed.

then we wandered down the street, past buskers--

--hippies--

--royal court jesters--

-and men wrapped in saran wrap for no good reason.

[he was shouting, "hey! hey you! do you think i can get out of this saran wrap?" and then he wriggled out of it and asked for money from the bystanders. 

"don't be cheap. i gave you a good show. you owe it to me. i don't come into your place of employment and leave without paying, do i?"

no. that's true. 

but if i sold women's hats and i came up and stuck one on your head, even though you don't need a woman's hat and don't want a woman's hat and didn't ask for a woman's hat, would you still owe me money?]

anyways. the point is not that.

the point is that THEN we went for coffee with a bunch of nice people. 

that was nice. 

then kiersten, full of nicety & an overly wonderful london fog, had the highlight of her day. 

we met caitie vancise, the designer for Vintage Charm Jewelry & Hair Accessories.  

she was very cool and very sweet and wants to someday open up a shop all her own and sell cute things.

i think she should. i offered to sometimes just sit in her shop and look at all the cute things and she said something like but not necessarily, "sure, i'll pay you in jewelry."

stellar.

anyways, kiersten bought this necklace and a sweet peacock headband and we swooned over them alllllllll day because we're girls. that's what we have to do sometimes. 

          

then it started raining.

like, torrentially.

we ran for cover into another coffee shop. 

[luckily, there are about twenty million of those in the area.] 

[well four. and three bakeries. that's not important.]

we sat by the window and talked about love and work and the cute necklace that kiersten bought. 

the day was lovely, but the rain started to wash the cathedral arts festival away. 

 

so we had to go home.

but THEN!

barclay took me to the circus!

and we lived happily ever after. 

discombobulation and giraffes and wet cement

the clock.

it's one of those with an overly boisterous second hand.

TICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICK

but i understand the clock because i myself have a sort of spastic energy just in my right hand and nowhere else in my body.

everywhere else in my body feels like it's full of sand.

you could throw me on the floor and i'd make a sound like "WHUMPH."

[but my right hand would flail and shake like it was full of fire-ants and caffeine.]

the song carousels by mewithoutYou is stuck tight in my head and it's perfect for today because whenever i listen to that song i feel like it should be raining outside.

and look: it's raining outside.

so i guess i feel like i should be listening to that song.

this is my thought-life as of late.

you know when you wake up in the middle of the night and you think something like, "why is there a giraffe in bed with me, and where is my husband?" and you try to push the giraffe out of your bed but then you realize there is no giraffe, only a husband?

yeah. it's like that lately.

today i stepped in wet cement with my white dress shoes and when the workers came around the corner to make angry faces at me i made a really innocent one and said something like but not neccessarily "oh, shoot. i wasn't supposed to step there i guess." and they just said something like but not neccessarily, "which is why we barricaded this area off."

and then i realized i'd actually climbed over the barricade without even realizing it was there and slopped right into the gunk like a three year-old..

i think maybe i went to sleep last week and just haven't fully woken up yet.