I need a fix 'cause I'm goin' down...

<-- Me, a 17 year-old, pink-haired Rock 'n' Roller...

Listening to Ben Folds a loud as your thin apartment walls can take it. Candles. That clean-house smell... what could be better? Possibly only Chinese take-out. And that's highly do-able.

It's been a completely bizarre couple of days. Last Saturday I woke up at nine, made a pot of coffee (which I never do), made fresh juice (which I rarely do), turned on the stereo (which I used to do all the time), and put a chicken in the crock pot with potatoes, carrots and mushrooms (which I haven't done since I moved to DC). Tim woke up and thought I'd lost my mind (which he does pretty regularly). In reality, I kind of reclaimed that summer-feeling that I used to get at home in Crawford when I'd wake up like a mad, cake-baking fool, spend half the day laying on my picnic table in a bikini with sun-in in my hair, then listen to my 21-disc stereo on random and stare at my bedroom ceiling until dinner time.

I'm sick of the TV. I have it on so often that it's ruining my ability to use my senses and turning me into an apartment zombie. Instead of all that bullocks, I'm going back to 1998, when I had no cable and the 3 available local channels were so depressingly silly that we only turned the tube on when we rented a video from the library. Before we got cable Mom and I would listen to music, eat dinner at the table and play rummy until we got bored (or, occasionally, drunk. Don't judge, we both turned out alright). Anyway, I used to make art until my fingers were blue and I thought my brain would fall out. Every piece of clothing I bought before 2002 has a paint stain on it somewhere.

Ok, maybe it's because I didn't have a job then and my only real responsibility was to not fail high school or become a teenage casualty. Maybe it has nothing to do with the TV. But I know that when the TV is off, I feel better about my life. Like I might get paint in my hair again and stop being so fat and dull. God, wouldn't that be nice?

The whole week seems to reaffirm how bad I need sunlight and the Down-and-Dirty Process, also known as making something new. After that great Saturday (which ended with going out and getting to eat the perfect piece of cake at Brittany's house), Sunday was "meh?" and Monday was good because Jeremy and Mae came over to eat Tacos, play a little Jeopardy, and throw popcorn at the State of the Union.

Tuesday and Wednesday were essentially wretched. I had so much nothing to do at work that I scrubbed the entire kitchen clean from top to bottom and I don't think anyone noticed I wasn't at my desk for over 2 hours. The antibiotics from The Staph make my stomach hurt like I've been eating Tim's socks and so this 10-day stomach ache combined with a sense of utter boredom and wasted potential finally made me so sick and tired I had to go home. (I did get up and go to a Financial Planning Seminar, where I learned that I, in fact, should not sign up for a 401-K.)

Today is better though. Today is a good day. It's nothing major, but at work I've been getting the chance to do more and more design, more work on the marketing and PR side of things, which is as close to make a collage about drugs, sex, and Rock & Roll as I'm going to get in the legal staffing biz. And on top of it, my boss actually likes what I come up with. So there's a chance I'll get to do more.

And the TV will be off more and more often, and the stereo will be on.

Bleach! Bleach it all!

There's really no better way to start a three-day weekend than by taking your first trip to the E.R.

Don't get too excited--there was no real emergency. Guess who got a staph infection! Despite all odds, no, it isn't Tim. But because he's had them before, he rightfully insisted that I see a doctor ASAP and I took my first-ever trip to a hospital. I don't count the day I was born A) because I don't remember it and B) because technically I didn't check in... I only checked out--if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'll spare you the details but three hours, some moderately painful prodding, and a couple of prescriptions later, I'm home and using this as an excuse to be utterly lazy and worthless. And I cannot believe I got a freaking staph infection. Even though hundreds of thousands of people get them all the time.... I feel pretty much contaminated and disgusting.

I guess I'm sharing all this because... well, if you're Saturday wasn't that great, at least you aren't contaminated and disgusting. Now go wash your hands.

In 2008, I will be voting for my Wii.

Kacie has the mighty power to make mountains move. Or at least to make me write on my blog.

I was loath to write while I was on vacation because somehow writing about it makes it feel a little too much like it's over. Well, sadly, now it really IS over. And my company vacation is over too. And I regret to say that I left my photo memory card in my Dad's computer so this is really the only the only photographic evidence I have that I've been alive for the past three weeks:
And it's not even a picture of me. It's a picture of a giant bird.

Really though, I have been alive. Wonderfully so. Going home was so rejuvenating and reaffirming--just smelling my cat after he's been playing in the snow (he smells like warm biscuits and healthy dirt) was enough to refuel my brain for at least a month.

At first being Home felt just awkward enough to make me worry. It seemed like I might have crossed some time threshold that made it impossible to ever go home again. It's a great cliché among philosophers and basement songwriters that you can never go home again--but it's not true. At least not entirely. It only took me day or so to remember the comfort of parents and pets and fresh air, of riding in a car and eating fast food and not being tired 24 hours a day.

Oddly, that "home" feeling became even more pronounced (though no more significant) when Tim and I crossed the Texas/Louisiana border--mostly because I hadn't realized just how much I missed it. I didn't pay much attention to this until I moved to DC, but when I was at Centenary, even though there were times when I was homesick, I don't think I ever once thought seriously "I have to leave--I quit." My friends and family can correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly. But there must be a part of me that loves Shreveport if I stayed and did so well for so long.

Maybe it sounds immodest, but I think I did pretty damn well there. I made the kind of friends that you can't remember ever NOT knowing and I felt comfortable in a way that weird, slightly manic, overly dramatic people like myself rarely feel.

I'm lucky though. I have always felt, and am guaranteed to always feel, the pain and frustration of not being able to be in two, three, or thirty places at once. I doubt that I'll ever get over it--I savor the tragedy of it a little too much. I read somewhere that as soon as you make a decision, all of the other, possible, unchosen futures are snuffed out like a candle. The thing is, all those little paths live on in my brain forever, which is probably as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Like a metaphysical bologna sandwich.

Mmmmmmmm.

So there is it. I haven't written anything about the company vacation or how I feel somewhat better about being back in DC. Tim starts his second semester of graduate school tomorrow and I'm sure that too will be out like a candle before we even know it. I know I've said it before but I have to say again that if I have to have a job where I'm not using my college education AT ALL, I couldn't have found a better company to work for. I got to watch my office-mate sing "Dancing Queen" at the top of his lungs because he bowled a 42 and was beaten by everyone else in the company and their spouses. That's both impressive and delightful, which is just about all you can ask from life.