traveling swallowing dramamine

grotesquely sleep-deprived

from "Beautiful Grade" (Birds of America) by Lorrie Moore:

Bill believes in free speech. He believes in expensive speech. He doesn't believe in shouting "Fire" in a crowded movie theater, but he does believe in shouting "Fie!" and has done it twice himself--both times at Forrest Gump.

so last night i did a google search on myself (stop making that mean face--i was trying to make sure i hadn't made this bloggy thing public--seriously, stop laughing) and this page came up. apparently, my name was engraved on a microchip that was sent into outerspace. i have no idea how this happened, or why. all i know is that my name is on its way to meet up with some comet or something, and it will be in space forever, along with 999,999 other names.

i find this totally bizarre.

tonight michael and i were discussing the difficulties of choosing member names and titles for online identity stuff. i picked "annietoes" for this site because the form i had to fill out suggested choosing a nickname, and this guy joel (for whom i pined in 6th/7th grade--and who dated my busty cousin instead of me--bastard!) used to call me annietoes, which i found a bit strange but oddly endearing.

and "how now brown cow" was just out of desperation.

today was the first day of class at LSU. my classes are going to be badass, but hard. really, really, really. i have over twenty books to buy tomorrow. that's what i get for taking nothing but upper-level literature classes.

i realized this week that i will have class with my ex-boyfriend every single day this semester. we didn't schedule like that intentionally. it just happened. we're on good terms, but still--that kinda sucks. thank god he was home for the break and i could pretend for three weeks that he didn't exist. it's been three months since we broke up--after dating for nearly two years--and i suppose i'm doing well considering, but...i don't know. things would be so much easier if he were unattractive. fortunately, i have other friends in those classes. in fact, i have friends in all my classes. it's pretty exciting.

yeah, my life is one big party.

expose this monstrous illusion

ye gods. too much reading to do for class, so instead of a post, a quote. from "Agnes of Iowa" (Birds of America) by Lorrie Moore:

Side by side now, their footsteps echoed down the corridor toward her classroom; all the anxieties she felt with this mournfully quiet man now mimicked the anxieties of love. What should she say? It must be the most unendurable thing to lose a child. Shouldn't he say something of this? It was his turn to say something.

But he would not. And when they finally reached her classroom, she turned to him in the doorway and, taking a package from her purse, said simply, in a reassuring way, "We always have cookies in class."

Now he beamed at her with such relief that she knew she had for once said the right thing. It filled her with affection for him. Perhaps, she thought, that was where affection began: in an unlikely phrase, in a moment of someone's having unexpectedly but at last said the right thing. We always have cookies in class.

onto Joyce and Faulkner...

--temporary--

[[quentin: The Sound and the Fury]]

it is hard believing to think that a love or a sorrow is a bond purchased without design and which matures willynilly and is recalled without warning to be replaced by whatever issue the gods happen to be floating at the time

attention: OED

dealbreaker (n., deel'-brake-er): the seemingly trivial or insignificant personality quirk in a potential mate that nevertheless compels one to write off potential mate as unsuitable for coupling. see example in Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding):

He turned round, revealing that what had seemed from the back like a harmless navy sweater was actually a V-neck diamond-patterned in shades of yellow and blue--as favored by the more elderly of the nation's sports reporters. As my friend Tom often remarks, it's amazing how much time and money can be saved in the world of dating by close attention to detail. A white sock here, a pair of red braces there, a gray slip-on shoe, a swastika, are as often as not all one needs to tell you if there's no point writing down phone numbers and forking over for expensive lunches because it's never going to be a runner.

having been in "serious relationships," and thus out of circulation, for the past three and a half years, i never appreciated the wisdom of bridget's advice until my recent break-up with jesse. but now i've been single for over three months, and apparently he's been kissing on other women, so i feel as though i ought to buckle down and hunt in earnest for a suitable relationship partner. or at least someone to make out with.

the thing is, i have a great deal of experience with monogamy, but not much experience with variety. i've only had two boyfriends, both long-term, and they are also the only two boys i've ever kissed. not counting, you know, that one time with the boy sitting next to me in mass practice in first grade. or murray, spontaneously, in the lunch line in high school. or jake, inadvertently (we were going for a cheek kiss but we missed) the other night. and in all those years with the long-term boyfriends, i always had something of a morbid curiosity as to what it would be like to kiss different boys. i  never went through with it, of course. i couldn't cheat on a boyfriend. i have way too much catholic guilt.

so now that i'm single, you'd think i'd be running buck-wild through the streets of baton rouge, kissing everything in sight. shockingly, you'd be wrong. it's not as if the opportunity hasn't presented itself. i've been on dates. with nice boys, even. and i've really enjoyed them. it's just that, at the end, there's that awkward kissy moment, and i get this sinking feeling in my stomach, and i realize that kissing is just not on my agenda for the evening. so i do something retarded, like offer up a high-five. yes, i've actually given a high-five on a date. (i think there was a low-five involved, too. scandalous.)

i'd been saying, towards the end of my relationship with jesse, that i thought i needed time alone to sort myself out. and indeed i have learned a lot, even in these few months. what i've discovered, more than anything, is this: i don't think i can kiss someone and not mean it. as my kierkegaard professor might put it: i'm morally incapable of such an act. if it's not someone that i'm really interested in, and attracted to--i just don't see the point. i don't know, i guess mild curiosity isn't enough to inspire me. i need a gigantic crush. or maybe a lot of alcohol and a random boy that i've just met and will never see again. but that's kind of whorish, and whoredom isn't really my bag.

i guess the biggest deterrent for me is that the boys who want to kiss me are my friends, and to kiss them would mean crossing into strange new territory, in which they assume the right to make demands on my free time as if i am obligated to see them again, and often. and that's exactly what i don't want to happen. rikki and i were discussing this yesterday; she likened long-term monogamy to living in a plastic bag: "and now, it's like, you just got out of the plastic bag, and you're gasping for air, and all of a sudden they want to put you back in it." and i don't want to go back in the plastic bag! i don't! 

see, what i like most about being single is the freedom i have to spend my time as i so choose. if i want to sit at home alone, i can. if i want to rent a movie, i can watch whatever i want, with no bickering or compromises. if i want to put off my homework until 1AM, and in the meantime go over to a friend's house and play poker, there's no one to stop me. no protestations, no questions. i report to no one. i feel obligated towards no one. i spend my time with whomever i please. and after three and a half years of largely biding my time with just myself and my boyfriend, i am anxious to be around as many people as possible, as often as possible. so now i've got these boys that seem interested, and i'm interested too, but what i'm interested in is the kind of dating that our grandparents used to do, back in, like, the fifties. back when there was dating, and then there was "going steady," and to date a boy didn't mean to act like you were married. but i don't think these boys are into that kind of dating. i think they want exclusive ownership rights.

what's worse, i don't even know if i'm capable of that kind of dating. i tried it with jesse and matt, after matt and i "toned things down" and agreed to see other people--and the experiment was a miserable failure. they both watched me expectantly, clearly waiting for me to choose, and it made me feel like shit. so i don't know if i can deal with more than one boy in a romantic context. presently i've been keeping the interested parties at bay--refusing to see them alone two days in a row, keeping my weekends open to hang out with groups of people instead of going on dates, and of course the aforementioned high-five tactic. but i don't want them to think that i'm only interested in them as friends. however, as ian pointed out tonight, unless there's kissing involved, you're still in friend territory. but then kissing seems like a slippery slope into coupledom. like i said before, i can't kiss and not mean it. i have to be emotionally involved. and emotional involvement of any degree of intensity with more than one boy strikes me as a complication that i may not be able to handle. it sounds...confusing. i hate being confused.

in the midst of all this, i'm enjoying the time i'm spending with boys, as friends and as dates. i met a nice guy the other day, whilst watching the superbowl with barrett. i don't know if he's even single, but he was very friendly and he sorta reminded me of this guy i had a crush on in 7th/8th grade (after the joel-meghan incident). the three of us ended up going to the grocery after the game, and barrett found this fringed yellow satin sash in the back of the guy's car. i thought it was a graduation stole or something, but when barrett asked the guy about it, he informed us that it was his kung fu belt.

i hadn't even been consciously thinking "gee, this guy has some potential! i want to date him!" and there are worse hobbies than kung fu. i respect the martial arts and all.

i mean, i never said dealbreakers weren't petty. 

madam, i never eat muscatel grapes.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce):

He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how: but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured. He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment, he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.

still raining. my feet are cold. they were cold and wet all day. cold wet feet make me cranky. i can’t wait for summer. summer rain is better, infinitely better, than winter rain. summer rain makes me want to walk around barefoot and wiggle my toes in warm sidewalk puddles.

plus in the summer i can wear tank tops. i’m tired of sweaters.

it is nice, though, hearing the rain against the window and, very softly, on the sidewalk. pattering. i love it when it starts raining hard and everyone feels compelled to say to each other: man it’s raining hard. really coming down. pouring. storming. even when you’re inside—over AIM, say—and you IM someone and you say “it’s raining”—and you pretend to be disgruntled but secretly it gives you a kind of cozy feeling inside. i think listening to the rain when you’re inside, warm and dry, is cozy. my mom always said that it made her want to curl up in bed with a crisp apple and a good book.

(breton bought apples today at the grocery, and they are beautiful apples, red and shiny, and i told her: those apples look delicious. and she paused mischievously and said: they are. red delicious.)

so when i’m listening to the rain, and i’m talking to someone far away, and the other person is also listening to the rain, i feel as though we have a cozy secret bond.

maybe that’s because when it’s raining what you’re really supposed to do is curl up in bed not with a good book but with a warm person.

[[hold her and kiss her]]

argh. i want to write so badly--and there's so much to say--and i just don't have time. so a quote instead, to ease the lack--courtesy of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

His silent watchful  manner had grown upon him and he took little part in the games. The children, wearing the spoils of their crackers, danced and romped noisily and, though he tried to share their merriment, he felt himself a gloomy figure amid the gay cocked hats and sunbonnets.

But when he had sung his song and withdrawn into a snug corner of the room he began to taste the joy of his loneliness. The mirth, which in the beginning of the evening had seemed to him false and trivial, was like a soothing air to him,  passing gaily by his senses, hiding from other eyes the feverish agitation of his blood while through the circling of the dancers and amid the music and laughter her glance travelled to his corner, flattering, taunting, searching, exciting his heart...

His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or in revery, he had heard their tale before. He saw her urge her vanities,  her fine dress and sash and long black stockings, and knew that he had yielded to them a thousand times. Yet a voice within him spoke above the noise of his dancing heart, asking him would he take her gift to which he had only to stretch out his hand. And he remembered the day when he and Eileen had stood looking into the hotel grounds watching the waiters running up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff and the fox terrier scampering to and fro on the sunny lawn, and how, all of a sudden, she had broken out into a peal of laughter and had run down the sloping curve of the path. Now, as then, he stood listlessly in his place, seemingly a tranquil watcher of the scene before him.

--She too wants me to catch hold of her, he thought. That's why she came with me to the tram. I could easily catch hold of her when she comes up to my step: nobody is looking. I could hold her and kiss her.

But he did neither: and, when he was sitting alone in the deserted tram, he tore his ticket into shreds and stared gloomily at the corrugated footboard.

his blood was in revolt.

Cosmo could take a few lessons from James Joyce. oh my. talk about sexy.  (from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:)

There was a long rivulet in the strand: and, as he waded slowly up its course, he wondered at the endless drift of seaweed. Emerald and black and russet and olive, it moved beneath the current, swaying and turning. The water of the rivulet was dark with endless drift and mirrored the highdrifting clouds. The clouds were drifting above him silently and silently the seatangle was drifting below him; and the grey warm air was still: and a new wild life was singing in his veins.

Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he?

He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures, of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips where the white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down. Her slateblue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some darkplumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither: and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

--Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.

He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.

and if that doesn't do it for you:
James Joyce's [extremely] dirty letters to his wife, Nora.

(michael g., don't you dare click on that link. those letters were not meant for children.)

and where the hell i've ended up on this glary random day

and i poured my heart out / and i poured my heart out / it evaporated / ...see?

i just listened to "evaporated," by ben folds five, and it made me feel better. if you have never heard this song, you should listen to it. right now! it is beautiful and good.

i got home today: so tired, so hungry. it was 8:30pm. we'd been on the road since 4. me and jacob and katie went up to monroeville, AL last night. a group of us from LSU went to shoot DV for this multimedia performance art piece called "thirteen ways to kill a mockingbird." (monroeville was harper lee's hometown and the basis for maycomb, the setting of TKM.)

anyway, trish, the director, was kinda stressed out and thus kinda bitchy, and we were all tired from driving and also from sleeping on the rock-hard beds at the Budget Inn, but it was a fun trip nonetheless. i got a lawn flamingo made out of PVC pipe. i also tasted my first fried twinkie. (it shall not be the last...) jacob and i split one (they were two bucks each!) and agreed that they tasted like moist beignets. they looked like beignets, too. they even had powdered sugar on them.

on the way home, we got to this split in the interstate where I-65 ends and turns into I-10E and I-10W. and i'm in the lane that splits, and i start to take 10W, and jacob starts flailing his arms and saying, "the other way, the other way!"--as in, take 10E. and i'm thinking, "baton rouge is west of alabama, right?" so i take 10W but i'm freaked out because he's like, yelling and waving his arms, you know? and then abruptly he stops and goes "oh wait. nevermind." and it was funny. so now i get to make fun of him for the rest of his life.

so i get home and i'm fucking exhausted. i haven't gotten a full night's sleep in a week, because of mardi gras and my joyce midterm. and i'm broke, because road trips are expensive, and i'm hungry. and on friday, while i was desperately trying to finish my joyce midterm, i ordered papa john's because i didn't have time to leave the house to find food. i ordered a small pizza, thinking it would be cheaper than a large--but it's also, you know, a lot smaller--so i ended up paying 13 bucks for what amounted to two meals--as opposed to a large, which would have been a few bucks more, but twice as much food. anyway, i was pissed with myself for paying 13 dollars for a small pizza--but i told myself it was alright, because i'd only eaten half the pizza, and when i got back from monroeville i could eat the other half for dinner. and it would be okay. so i get back from monroeville and i unload my shit. my room is a disaster, because i'd basically been holed up for three days working on my joyce stuff: there are clothes and dishes and papers all over the place. and i'm annoyed, because i hate when my room is messy. so then i think, "well, at least now i can eat my pizza." and i look in the fridge, and lo and behold: the pizza is gone. gone without a trace.

i wanted to cry. i'd been thinking about pizza for the past, like, two hours. the pizza that i paid way, way too much money for. gone.

so then i'm like, fine, i'll make some pasta. so i fill a pot with water and put it on the stove and turn the stove on--and ten minutes later i walk downstairs to see if the water is boiling, and it's not, because i turned on the wrong part of the stovetop.

so i'm like fine, i'll make grilled cheese. i throw the water out the pot, put the pot away. then i discover that we're effectively out of margarine. i'm pathetically scraping margarine off the sides of the container...i manage to put together something that resembled a grilled cheese sandwich. while i'm toasting the bread, i go to fix myself a glass of water. we drink water out the tap at our apartment. and the tap water isn't very cold, so i use ice. we have three ice trays. all three of the ice trays were empty. all three of them.

so tired, i am so tired, and sunburned. typical. typical of me to get sunburned. my cheeks and nose and forehead are pink. and i have a stupid-looking sunburn on my neck. and i'm tired, and i'm hungry, and there's no ice, and my pizza is gone. and my room is a disaster.

and all i can think is: this is when you need a boyfriend. the shit nights where nothing is really wrong but everything is fucking wrong and the only thing that will make you feel better is to curl up next to him. because being in his company makes you feel better no matter what. and he says nice things to you and is patient with your ridiculous complaining about pizza and ice trays.

see, i know that i'm being ridiculous. in the grand scheme of things, my missing pizza is completely irrelevant. my family is alive and well. that is enough for me. but you know, if something horrible did happen, i would have friends to get me through it. i don't need a boyfriend for the big tragedies. i need a boyfriend for the stupid trivial shit nights. nights like this.

but i don't have a boyfriend. and i don't really want a boyfriend. and what that means is, at the end of the day--good or bad--all i'm left with is myself. that's a good thing, i guess. what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, etc. and the whole point of being single, right now, for me, is to be alone and be okay with it.

but goddamn.

=======

kierkegaard says:

"[The knight of faith] has grasped the deep secret that even in loving another one should be sufficient unto oneself."

i will not rely on other people to make me feel happy or whole. i can do that on my own. that is what this is all about. figuring out how to do this on my own.

and when all else fails, there's always ice cream. chocolate, chocolate ice cream.

a smiling and fury-lurked and incredible indigo sea.

if happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

yesterday in my kierkegaard class, dr. whittaker was lecturing on hegel's myth of the world egg--whatever the hell that means--and i was struggling to pay attention--as i always struggle to pay attention in that class--and i'm sitting there, chewing on my pen, with my notebook open, and i'm thinking "maybe i should be taking notes. should i be taking notes?"

so i look over at the guy to my left, and he has filled up a solid page, single-spaced, of notebook paper--he's still writing--carefully, methodically filling up the lines single-spaced with neatly formed letters in blue ink.

and i think, "holy shit, those are some hardcore notes. should i be taking notes? maybe i should be taking notes."

then i look again at the page he has filled with his neat blue writing. i look at the top line. i can't read the whole thing. but i got this much: "whitney, my love, i am sitting in my kierkegaard class..."

he was writing a damn love letter.

i thought that was so damn cute.

because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.

THE TRAVEL LOG
(transposed and abridged)

July 24, 2004 / Saturday / from an email to Ben:

my class performed at the student reading on friday night. you're supposed to do five minutes of reading your own shit, but as playwrights that's a little awkward, so we did this in-class exercise called "prohibition" where we picked a prohibited object (a dictionary) and we each wrote a scene with a designated theme:

1) parents find child with object
2) congress debates prohibition
3) Public Service Announcement about prohibition
4) prohibited object sold on the black market
5) talk show debate about prohibition
6) performance art protest of prohibition
7) the ban is lifted

i had the black market one. we wrote our scenes separately and came together to read them, realized two scenes took place at a dinner table with a '50s sitcom family, and kind of worked it all the way through. so my scene was in the metro, with a Shady Man and the Mother. it was very dirty.

anyway, i got all cuted up for the reading--i was reading the Mother parts--and i ended up being about 20 minutes late for the reading because i forgot the scripts--typical.

on the walk to the metro station, this guy in the back of a parked car leaned out the car window and applauded at me. i cocked an eyebrow and walked on. then on the metro, i was sitting down--it was kinda crowded, and there was a little room next to me, but not much--anyway, this weird guy got on and said something in czech to the guy next to me--like "scoot over"--then he plopped down--he was practically sitting on me--and he started making slurping noises at me--which was really, really not funny. i bolted upright at the next stop and stood by the door.

when i finally got to the Ypsilon i discovered, to my relief, that our class hadn't gone yet. and everyone told me i looked cute, and then the reading went really fucking well, everyone laughed a ton--and people kept coming up to me afterwards and saying a) the scenes were great b) i was great c) i looked really cute. so that was fun.

----

Bohemia Bagel / 1:17pm

so hungry. chicken and leaf spinach sandwich. Bon Aqua--voda perlivá--

accidentally walked into some guy's room the other day, thinking it was mine--i'd taken a wrong turn at the elevator--the dorm is a goddamn rat maze. then last night at the reading, met greg from Tulane. told him he looked really familiar. he told me it was probably because i had accidentally walked into his room the day before. oops.

----

dear god.

(Shakespeare bookstore / 5pm)

am buying two books at this kickass fucking bookstore.

i miss ben. bookstores make me miss him.

these idiotic canadians next to me are having a very, very touristy conversation, about

("I yearn for decorated style!")

how to pronounce the letters of the czech alphabet, public transport,

("it looks like it's been iced, like an iced cake!")

how cool and not touristy they are, the difference between absinthe and absente--it's a guy and a girl, but they're not flirting--it's more like a pissing contest.

the guy was saying how he couldn't light the sugar in the absinthe spoon. i wonder if he soaked it in the alcohol first. jackass.

----

i thought i would feel isolated, being constantly surrounded by people speaking a foreign language, but in fact, it's convenient--they're so easy to tune out. whereas these two jerks, speaking american english--i somehow can't ignore them.

----

from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson:

'Don't you ever think about going back?'

Silly question. There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intend to bring you back. Mind turns to the pull, it's hard to pull away. I'm always thinking of going back. When Lot's wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt. Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean, but it's a poor exchange for losing your self. People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

five minutes of all is right in the world

i just ran from my apartment to the library in dark clouds and thick wind, a green sundress and penny loafers. this morning i thought i lost my favorite brown sweater, but they had it at highland. i don't remember leaving it; i virtually always remember where i put things, and it made me feel like i was drunk last night, that i have no recollection of leaving my sweater at highland.

mom called me last night at 10:30, which is crazy, and she had just gotten home from baton rouge. she'd been waiting all day for her bill to go up in the legislature. but it didn't. and we chatted about stuff, and i mentioned that i'd gotten a notice from the women's clinic saying i owed a balance of 22 dollars on the second installment of my HPV vaccine. i don't generally ask her for extra money. lately i've been asking for gas money if i drive long distances with/for michael, because my current gas budget is 2 tanks per month. but other than that i don't ask for extra help. my budget is so tight right now, though, that there's not even room for the 22 dollar vaccine balance. i don't feel too guilty asking for help when it comes to health-related stuff. and it's just 22 dollars.

but when i asked her, she hesitated. and told me that money was really tight, all of a sudden, because dad stopped sending a check every month for child support (michael just turned 18 and graduated from high school). but she could give me 22 dollars, yes, she could do that.

and i'm thinking, jesus, she's reluctant to give me twenty bucks for a vaccine? what about the other stuff she'd offered last month to pay for?

-- electric piano repair (circa 1995; middle C is messed up; michael will use in college)
-- digital camera (going-away present for spain)
-- buy my car (for michael to use in college)

so after we hang up, i'm considering my options. i can get an estimate on the piano and forgo the repairs if it's going to be unreasonably expensive. for the past month or so, i've been working odd jobs (sewing, line edits, scanning stuff for dad, selling clothes, video editing job lined up at a local nonprofit), the earnings of which i've saved first for my trip to chicago in july, and now with an eye towards new dance clothes. but instead of dance clothes, i could use that money to buy the digital camera myself. or i can buy it now with my current savings and pay myself back with some of the money from the car.

the car. this is the kicker. i am budgeting my income so that i'll have $10,000 in savings when i leave. according to the kelly bluebook, my 1999 corolla (CE) with 103,000 miles on it is worth $4740 in good condition.

the money from my car will go towards:
1) paying off my car note ($440 by september)
2)  buying my plane ticket (between $400 - 800 depending on if i buy a return ticket for christmas or just get it one way)
3) more savings.

my plan is to be financially independent when i leave for spain.

right now, my mom pays:
-- car insurance (about $100 / mo)
-- health insurance ($100 / mo and superfluous since i also have it through work!)
-- cell phone ($60 / mo)
-- low-limit credit card ($350 / mo).

when i leave, she can take me off the car insurance and credit card for sure. she can take me off the cell phone plan, too, but i want to review the policies to see how i can keep my number for when i return (breton, what did you do with your phone?). and she can also stop paying for my health insurance (she can stop immediately!) but she's reluctant to do it, because even though i'll have health insurance with my job in spain, she doesn't seem to think it will be good enough.

i should have enough in savings to cover anything my monthly income (631 euro, or $845 at the current rate) doesn't - and still have enough left over to be okay when i come home. but the money from the car is important. that's my real cushion. i need to get as much money out of that sale as i can, so that when i come home from spain i can get on my feet.

coincidentally, my brother will need a car when he starts LSU. you can live in baton rouge without a car, but it's far from ideal. i lasted till october of my freshman year - i ended up getting my mom's 1994 corolla so that i could drive myself to dance class at the studio on bluebonnet, twenty minutes from campus. (for the first two months of school, my boyfriend drove me to dance class. there wasn't enough time for him to drop me off and go back to the dorm, so he would sit in the parking lot for 1.5 hours and read or nap. he never complained. his selflessness was astonishing. finally we went to visit my mom and i told her what he'd been doing and i was like, "it's ridiculous. i need a car.")

as brett pointed out, it's customary for family members to sell their cars to relatives on the very cheap. so i'm sitting here, looking at the blue book value of my car, and knowing that my brother needs this car, and that my mom offered to buy it, and that she apparently has very little money - so little that she might not be able to buy the car for any price, cheap or not. and also that i need all the money i can get, so i can be in a position where i don't have to ask my parents for help. and simultaneously feeling like i'll be a bad, selfish, ungrateful daughter to ask for more than, like, $2000.

and i'm thinking maybe michael and i can ask dad for help, maybe dad will buy the car. or maybe michael can take out a loan from dad. or he could take out a loan from the bank and dad could co-sign on it.

but michael would have to start working now - and he'd have to take the room & board scholarship option, and work not only on-campus but off-campus as well, waiting tables or something equally lucrative. we talked briefly on google chat - i told him the latest with the car stuff, and told him my ideas for how we can make this work. he said he'd followed up on a couple of the craigslist job posts i'd sent - reginelli's and landry's in lakeview. the lakefront is a five-minute drive or very reasonable bike ride away, although the thought of michael on a bike on veterans boulevard makes me want to vomit. but still, restaurant jobs for the summer - this is good.

then i called my mom for lunch (she said she would be in baton rouge again) and she was still in new orleans and apologized for not having let me know. i wanted to bring up the money situation but couldn't manage to do it. then she called again while i was finishing my lunch and said she'd talked to michael about the car stuff (i guess he brought it up after we'd talked about it) and that she'd thought i was asking $2000 for it, but if it was $4000, she couldn't afford it. and i said yeah, i know. and i said the thing is, michael needs a car. he's not going to have to take out student loans for school, so maybe he could take out a loan for the car.

she said she didn't think he could take out a loan.
i said, you could co-sign on it.
she said, i don't know if they do that.
i said, i'm pretty positive they do.
she said, i don't know if i could even take out a loan right now.
she said, he'll have to work and save up money to buy a car.
i said, "the thing is, he needs the car to get the job to make the money to buy the car. you know?"

she sighed yes. we talked frankly about finances, what she was paying for me, what she could get rid of when i left. i asked her if it was going to help much and she said "are you kidding? it will help a lot." and that made me feel good. i told her i was willing to sell the car for less than it was worth, but not much less, because i needed that money so that i could quit asking her for help in the long run. she said of course. she said i needed as much money from the car as i could get. i actually choked up when she said this. i said, "it is such a relief that you understand about the car thing." she said of course she understood, that when family members give their cars away it's because they don't really need the money - but when you need the money, it only makes sense to make as much as you can. i told her hearing that made me want to cry. because i'd felt like i was selfish for even asking for money. and she said, "oh my god, i'm sorry you ever thought that. we should have talked about this sooner." and i told her about all the extra work i'd been doing, and she said she was proud of me.

and she said, you know what, i think we can make this car thing work.
i brought up the other expenses we'd talked about last month: the piano repair and the camera.
i told her i was waiting for the price to drop some more on the camera i wanted, and that i was hoping to get an estimate on the piano this week.
and she said she wanted to hear the estimate on the piano (she asked if i was taking it to spain with me - !!!! - i was like, yeah, mom, i'm going to wheel it around on a rolly cart while i'm looking for housing in granada. and also, seriously, that michael would really like to have it while he was at LSU.)
and she said she wanted to buy the camera as my going-away present.
i said, i can split it with you if you want.
and she said, no, you know, i really want to buy it. i want to do something for your going away.
and i said, well, that would be the perfect present.

not only was it a huge relief to end this conversation feeling like michael's and my needs will be met with effort on all our parts - but it was also nice just to talk calmly and seriously about practical things with my mom. she usually tries to keep this stuff a secret from us so  we don't 'worry' about money - but then we can tell money is tight and she is obviously stressed out and acts kind of passive-aggressive about it, like it's our fault for not knowing what she didn't tell us and for being expensive. it's so much better to have it out in the open. then we can actually do something about it.

buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this car.

in other news, i found a craigslist post requesting short stories about one's first menstrual period. this is the first creative writing post i've ever had a stomach feeling about - not counting my first round of craigslist queries and the play adaptation that ended up being urban erotica. i emailed the lady and she said she's based out of boston, trying to compile a collection of first period stories because she thinks it's interesting, she works as a technical writer, and she has friends in the industry who could help her get it published. she said her own story was well underway: "Think sharing one hotel room, on vacation with my entire family, including a very loud, overly proud-of-an-emabarassing-event mother." and she said she was looking forward to reading my story.

i don't know. like i said, i have a stomach feeling for this. there are some stand-out moments i can think of (i'm sure that's true for everyone) but i don't know if i could make it an interesting narrative. but it's worth a shot, i guess. i'm half-inclined to post a draft on this journal, but i worry about grossing ya'll out. what do you think? if i tell you mine, will you tell me yours? maybe you can even send in your own versions. she says she'll pay $500 for each story if the book gets published.

and

from How I Grew, sort-of sequel to Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, by Mary McCarthy:

The power of choice I held affected me as an urgency, forcing me to take out a book before I was fully prepared, hurrying me to make up my mind as though behind me there were a crowd of other borrowers. Summoning resolution, I picked a book from the shelves and advanced to the counter. It was The Nigger of the Narcissus. The librarian looked at me; I looked back at her. She took my card and tucked another one, stamped, in a flap at the back of the volume. I had the impression that she might say something, but she let me walk away. In my mind was only the vaguest notion of who Joseph Conrad was or had been.