traveling swallowing dramamine

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.

strictly metro

THE TRAVEL LOG
(transposed and abridged)

July 11, 2004 / 12:16pm

stosh just called--he and ian are down in the lobby and they want to get lunch--they're leaving on the midnight train. (to Budapest, not to Georgia.) (sorry.)

had a ton of weird dreams--i don't ever remember my dreams back home but here they've been so vivid--there was something about how i had a loose tooth--really loose--hanging by a thread, the way i'd let it get when i was a kid--and i kept pushing it with my tongue--i was freaked out by it, though--ben reassured me that he still lost his baby teeth--but i didn't have a permanent tooth behind this one--just a big gaping hole.

i dreamt a lot about ben--scary sad dreams--if he doesn't email me soon, man--this sucks. it's bad enough i can't afford to call him--

also dreamt about mom and dad--mom was mad at me because she felt like i was ignoring her--which i thought was unfair--someone had been driving a car through my house, through my bedroom, to get to the fridge, drinks in the fridge--they drove up on my bed and out the door--michael said they'd been doing it for ten years--dad offered to take me to Bud's and i told him i wasn't hungry but tomorrow? and he hesitated, we were in a parking lot, night, and there were other people pulling up, his friends, and he was like "i gotta go" and he thrust the contents of his wallet at me--credit cards, membership cards, coffee shop credits, gift certificates--and told me to buy some for myself and bring him back a napkin--and i wondered if he wanted the napkin as proof i'd gone to Bud's instead of using the money for something else.

------------------------

10:40pm

we went to that pizza place for lunch--came back, balanced checkbook, made out budget. have determined that for time reasons (and, to a lesser degree, money concerns) a trip to Budapest is impractical--it's a seven- or eight-hour train ride and we only have weekends. and next saturday we have a day trip to the bone cathedral.

so then we left stosh and ian on the metro--tried to tram it to this coffee shop rikki picked out of my Lonely Planet guide--tried to take the green line one stop to Hradčanská, then #18 to Národní Divadlo, but when we got off the metro it was pouring rain--crazy wind and freezing nastiness--i discovered that #18 no longer stopped at Hradčanská--that's been the difficulty with the tram system--first off, it's hard to tell on the map where the hell the stops are--and then, when you think you've got it figured out, you discover that the routes have all changed. so basically you wait and hop on and pray. it's very hit-or-miss.

so we took the metro two more stops, to Staromětská, and took #18 to Národní Divadlo, and walked in the nastiness down cobblestone alleys--found the address for the coffee shop--but the doors were locked, and there was no sign for a coffee shop--finally we just turned the corner, kept walking--found another coffee shop within the block, which fit the description, minus the name and address, of the shop we originally sought. the guy behind the counter was really funny and nice. and we stayed for a good four or five hours, reading, writing, talking--the place got pretty busy, although when we first got there we were the only ones--

anyway, it was exactly what i'd wanted in a coffee shop--cozy, funky, friendly guy behind the counter, and frequented by not-just-Americans-and-other-tourists. i was happy. it's pretty close to the school building, too.

so we were gonna try to catch the tram back to Hradčanská, thinking maybe we were at the wrong spot the first time. we got as far as Malostranská, and then the driver got up, briefly adjusted something in the back--i thought maybe we'd gotten to the end of the line, but no one got off--then, sure enough, the fucking tram turned around. we got off at Staromětská and took the metro back to Malostranská, hoping to eat dinner at this mediterranean cafe called Posha--but the prices were insane (seventeen bucks for an entrée--a pricey entrée here is about seven dollars). so we ended up going back to the dorm (strictly metro this time) and eating at the restaurant by the dorm--the titty bar--which is great but the service is even slower there than usual in Czech-land--like, it takes at least a half-hour to get your food--closer to forty-five minutes, sometimes--and rikki and i hadn't eaten since 1:30ish--it was 10 before we got our dinner--

we went to the convenience store next door afterwards, for a bottle of wine, which we purchased amid much hysterical laughter, because we couldn't read the labels--our purchase was based upon our mutual agreement that, as far as prices go, 60 crowns was a nice round number. but the store didn't sell cups or a corkscrew--we have a mug here, and i figured we could at least pass the bottle--and that the front desk of the dorm would have a corkscrew--which they did. the guy handed it to us, and we sort of tried to open the bottle and gave up, laughing, and the guy, also laughing, came out from the office and tried to open it, but it turns out the corkscrew was missing the, uh, screw part. so. no wine tonight. tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

got back to the room and put on PJs and dry socks. i'd had wet feet for eight hours. they went sorta numb at some point. it was really cold and blustery today.

while we were waiting for the tram (the one that would ultimately turn around on us), an elderly couple approached our bench. i stood up to let them sit, because that's a big deal here. the woman scooted over and patted the seat on her right and told the man to sit down--and then patted the seat to her left and gestured for me to smush in. so i sat, and their dog came sniffing up to me, and rikki and i started petting it and telling it how cute it was--which it was--and the woman pointed to the dog, and told me something in Czech--finally i figured out that she wanted me to shake hands with the dog--it raised a paw and we shook. it was the best thing ever.

nothing could beat complete denial.

i was going to write all about my beautiful weekend: sitting on the grass, in the sun, soaking up music, watching the neo-hippies hulahoop their own arrhythmic whirling dervish patterns into the field on ivanhoe street.

the boy that kept almost meeting my eyes at the rebirth show, and i kept looking away, because in a bar like that you don't want to give any lameass guys a reason to come up and dry-hump you on the dance floor. but he was wearing an old WRNO beatles concert t-shirt. he looked like the only person at fred's that i would have talked to besides the kids i came with. i didn't make eye contact with him, because i thought maybe he was just a frat boy in a cool shirt. but i saw him saturday at the ivanhoe street outdoor music festival, he was wearing the same shirt, and he was looking at me again.

the second-to-last band, Friends of Gravity, came on around 9:30pm. they were playing some pretty tight jazz, which was a change of pace from the rest of the day (folk/rockabilly/jam), and the drummer was amazing. and looked just like the rebirth boy.

then i heard people talking, and it turns out the drummer was simon l___. i've been hearing about simon ever since i moved to baton rouge. he's a hot shit jazz drummer, and he plays with my friend patrick, whom i met at the LSU in london program last year. simon also plays with this other guy brigham, who used to hit on B.J. in the lobby of the new music building before women's chorus rehearsal freshman year. brigham is also dating sid, ben's ex-roommate. further connections: simon lived in ben's house on geranium before sid moved in.

so after the Friends of Gravity set, which kicked ass, i walked over to introduce myself to this guy. and i'm planning on feeling very awkward and groupie-ish and saying something lame like "we know the same people"--but i'm spared, because patrick is fucking there. he goes to BC but school doesn't start for him till after labor day, so he's in town. and he's like "i'll introduce you." simon walks up and patrick's like "hey, this is my friend ann," and simon goes to shake my hand and immediately says "we had a class together."

this happens to me all the damn time. people always remember me from their classes, because i talk so damn much. but unless they're outspoken too, i never remember anyone. because i'm oblivious. clearly i'm oblivious, because otherwise i should remember this guy. because he's sort of....incredibly charismatic. and by incredibly charismatic, i mean hot.

anyway, he's like "we had a class together," and i'm like "oh no, which one?" and he says, "brit lit II." and i'm like "don m___?" and he's like "yup. that dude. he loved you." and i say, "i hated him," and i told him how i always felt like such an asshole in that class, because first of all it was a huge waste of time, and the professor would ask these stupid questions, and no one would answer, so finally i would raise my hand and answer, and i could hear in my voice how incredibly impatient and bitchy i sounded. and i was so afraid everyone in that class thought i sucked. so i tell simon this, and he's like "no, dude, i thought it was hilarious."

so it turns out he was not the rebirth guy--though i saw the rebirth guy again later that night. but he is playing at the mellow mushroom with patrick on september 1st. and that will be fun.

speaking of weird connections and the house on geranium: amy g. flagged me down today as i was walking to the M&DA building, and we talked for a few minutes. amy and i were supposed to live together our sophomore year at LSU, after meghan had to back out of our apartment arrangement. and then amy backed out, which is how i ended up living with the lovely ladies of the Fortress: becca, breton, and elizabeth. anyway, amy told me she was living on geranium, and i told her i was living on violet, and then i was like "wait a minute--which house on geranium"--and she's living with sid. in ben's old house. which was simon's old house. fucking baton rouge. this fucking community. is so ridiculously small. sometimes i love it, like on saturday at the music festival, with the field full of babies and puppies and everyone i've ever known. but sometimes.

like tomorrow i have class with ben at 10:30, unless he dropped. i wouldn't be surprised if he did. he's got a whopping schedule and i'm sure he'd like to avoid me as much as possible. especially given the new information i received from breton this afternoon. i've never been into confrontation. in fact, it terrifies me and usually i'd rather cower or sulk. but shit is about to go down. because i can't keep going like this. i saw him saturday on ivanhoe, he came up with reese and hugged me (again, he does it so fast, it catches me off-guard. it's a guilty nervous hug.) and he handed me a beer and asked me how i was doing. it was the first time i'd seen him since breton told me. and i couldn't even be cool. i started rambling spastically, like always but nervous, awkward, flailing hand gestures on steroids. i can't keep talking to him like this, like nothing's wrong and i'm fine with it. because he might not think i know now, but eventually he'll assume that i do, and if i never say anything to him about it--it's tacit approval. in the silence-equals-consent way. and i can't have any fucking shred of dignity intact and allow that to continue.

so this is a post in which i will not talk about the conversations i've scripted in my head where i tell ben that he has no balls.

that post comes later.

for now, i'll say that i love my linguistics class already. it filled me with glee. except for the part where the teacher tried to make a point about southern louisiana dialect by showing off her "pen pin"--which, if you're from south louisiana, you actually pronounce correctly--the "pin pin" pronunciation is more a north/central thing, i think. i'm just glad she didn't call on me, because i would have called her piece of jewelry a "pen brooch."

and anna and mary passed me in anna's car on my walk home from campus, and they honked, and stopped, and rolled down the window. and anna was like "hey, want a ride the rest of the way home?" which she knew was only, like, a block. so i got in and they were both really sweet. which was such a relief. i was so afraid anna was going to be weird with me because of all the bullshit. i was getting really sad about it. so that made me happy.

i'll end here. and i won't talk about the phone call, or the sleep-to-cope i sought at four in the afternoon but couldn't get because my blood was throbbing so hard.

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. tomorrow. tomorrow.

except that every time i think it's getting better, it gets a little worse.

out of the hot thin air.

the "confrontation" and-i-use-that-word-loosely with ben on wednesday took maybe ten or fifteen minutes. i said all i wanted to say, and he said all he wanted to say, and then we sat in awkward silence. not knowing where to look, and not wanting to look at him, i watched an ant crawl across the white plastic patio table. ben was wearing his red united way shirt, which i had returned to him the night before, when he came over with sharky. it was the first shirt he ever left at my house, and because it was soft and smelled like him--like dark wood and something warm and boyish--i took to wearing his shirt to bed. i slept in that shirt almost every night for four months. even after we broke up. by that time it smelled like me. i returned it to him unwashed, and he was wearing it the very next day, and i was thinking how can he wear that shirt, it smells like me. boys are so clueless. and it looks better on me anyway.

i blew on the ant. i looked up and ben was watching a different ant--his was examining the corpse of an ant that had been squashed against the plastic table top. "ew," i said. he laughed and cried out, in a mournful ant voice, "daddy!"

which made it possible for us to then sit there for an hour and talk about everything else that's been going on. in a pleasant sort of way.

and it's a good thing, too, because if that conversation had ended with us shouting obscenities and storming off to our respective houses, i'd be destined to suffer a tense semester. seeing as on thursday, i ran into him four times. the first time was on my walk to campus for our 10:30 class. we met on the corner of iowa and geranium and walked together. i went and took care of some paperwork for my independent study. then we had that class, which is on india and the short story form. it's a discussion class, and whenever he would contribute something i would add to it, and vice versa, so it ended up being a sort of conversation between the two of us mediated through the teacher. which was a little bit weird.

i ran into him again as i was walking to campus for my 1:30; he was walking home. i turned a corner and there he was. i was running late, so i didn't break stride--just laughed and said "creepy," and he shrugged, smiling, to the effect of "we live a block away from each other, what can you expect." and called "bye" over his shoulder. then i was walking back from my last class at 4:30--i was in front of coates, and he was walking to the union--i didn't even see him coming, he came up behind me and tapped me on the back--he turned to look at me as he passed, and i said "ben. i mean. really." because it was ridiculous at that point, and he was laughing.

the reason i was standing in front of coates was because i was waiting for janey. who is in my russian lit class, as of thursday. i was walking to the classroom, thinking "i hate the honors college, i should drop this class" and then there she was. and i thought "well, at least this will be interesting." i sat next to her and we had a brief and standard "hello, how are you, how was your summer" conversation. then she looked at me and narrowed her eyes and asked "so who are you seeing?" which is such a janey thing to do. and i said "actually, i just got dumped."

so on the walk back from class, i told her the story, and she asked me who ben's new girl was. (what a question.) and i told her "georgia. who works at louie's." figuring janey would know her. and of course she exclaims "oh, georgia! oh, i love her! she's so wonderful. i mean, she's just wonderful." and i rolled my eyes and said "great, janey, i don't want to hear this." and she kept going: "oh, she's just amazing!" and i shushed her. what a ridiculous thing for her to do. and so bitchy. but you know. i can't be seriously annoyed with her about it. four years going on five, and some things never change, and by some things i mean janey.

laren called me wednesday night to see if i wanted to go to the spanish moon for '80s night on thursday. and i said yes of course. but i called breton on thursday afternoon, and she told me she was going to twiropa in the warehouse district for '80s night with jesse and clint and jay, and i should come. i told her that i had already made plans with laren, and besides, i had an 8:30 class on friday morning.

but the more i thought about it--

she's leaving for france next thursday. becca asked me if i wanted to go with her to the nola airport, but i can't because i have class. and it's breton's last weekend--and twiropa sounded like fun--

so i called laren to see if she wanted to drive down to new orleans with me--she couldn't, but becca said yes definitely, so i picked her up and off we went. on the way out we stopped at the CC's drive-thru on perkins, and becca wanted a tall caramel mochasippi, no whipped cream. so i say "one tall caramel mochasippi, no whipped cream--and--uh--actually, make that two tall caramel mochasippis, no whipped cream--no, one with whipped cream, and one without--wait, are there flavors other than caramel--okay, so, one tall caramel mochasippi and one tall chocolate mochasippi--" and the guy over the PA says "do you want whipped cream on the chocolate?" and i say "no. yes. no." and he says ".....alright, drive around." and becca is cracking up laughing. we pull up and there are two CC's girls in the window, also laughing, and one of them leans out and drawls, "are ya'll fucking stoned?" and becca loses it completely, and i say, sincerely, "no, i'm sober and i'm really this retarded."

twiropa was fun, but i think the spanish moon is funner. the new orleans crowd is so self-conscious. at first i thought the boys were cuter, but then i realized they were just trying harder. which is too hard. it was great to see breton again, though. she was so excited that we came. and as i was getting my hand stamped to get in, i saw this guy sitting on the front steps who looked a lot like a boy i knew in high school named bryan f___. and then i realized that it was, in fact, bryan f___. i stared at him and he looked back at me unfazed, like, "of course it's perfectly normal that i haven't seen you in three years, since the flogging molly show at the shim sham, and it had been three years before that, but here you are at twiropa for fucking '80s night and here i am sitting on the front steps."

bryan was a senior at jesuit when i was a freshman at mt. carmel, and he and his friend tommy did theatre with me. ironically. as in, they did theatre in an ironic fashion. they were straightedge hardcore punk rock thrash metal, and they adopted me as their very small innocent and uninitiated little pseudo-sister. bryan made me mix tapes and tried to get me to write for their 'zine, The Hatemonger. tommy and i have kept in touch through email off and on since i moved to natchitoches. they are the reason i'm on my fourth pair of chucks (not counting my fifth grade high-tops). they are, in fact, the reason boys in beat-to-hell converse make me weak in the knees. as a freshman i had little schoolgirl crushes on both of them, simultaneously. they were smart and funny and i could never take anything they said seriously, but they were always kind to me.

so that was kind of crazy. also strange: we were inside, there was this lanky brunette chick dancing next to me, and she was wearing a black sex pistols t-shirt with a red plaid skirt. upon closer examination, i realized that it was the st. catherine of siena uniform plaid. i grabbed her skirt and i said "DUDE. you are wearing my grammar school UNIFORM." and she laughed and said she got it from goodwill, which i had presumed already. i told her i had three skirts just like it in my damn closet. then i asked her what her name was, and she looked at me kinda funny and said "izzy." and i realized that i had met her two weeks ago at breton's going-away party. she's jason's ex-girlfriend, pre-lsmsa.

so rikki and reid are both leaving for the weekend, which is depressing. but i'm trying to remind myself that i do, in fact, have friends. in support of this notion: laren called me wednesday, adam apparently called me last night at 1am, jeff wants to hang out saturday night, becca's going to come help me break in my new clothesline at some point this weekend. i think i'm going to go through my cell phone, write down the names and numbers in my phone book, and tack the list, entitled You Have Friends, to my wall.

and if the weather's nice this weekend, i'm going to sit in the sun on my front lawn and drink lemonade.

bad/good

BAD:

about two weeks ago, i got a letter from entergy saying that they had never received my final payment of $71.19 from my old apartment. but that they appreciated me as a customer, or something, and if i hadn't ever received that bill--which i hadn't--that i should call them.

so i immediately called them and told them that i had never received the bill. and they made sure they had my address right and they said they would send it.

so today i got another letter from entergy. it says:

Dear Customer,

We have recently written you concerning your outstanding final bill for utility service at [your former address] in the amount of $71.19, but you have not responded. Unless immediate action is taken by you, we will report this to multiple credit bureaus which could negatively impact your credit rating.

Furthermore, if this balance is not paid within 15 days from the date of this letter, we will refer your account to a collection agency for further action. We will empower this agency to aggressively pursue all means of collection including litigation to secure payment or to obtain liens against your assets in advance of payment. Help avoid this unpleasant process by making payment today.

i'm pretty certain that i'm within my rights as a customer to request and receive an official bill from them before i'm required to pay it. i'm going to call them (again) tomorrow. i don't suppose it's worth getting bad credit to hold off my payment--but the fact that they think they can bully me into paying my final bill from a letter and not an offical document detailing what i'm actually paying for is absolute and intolerable bullshit.

GOOD:

we have all these coupons for popeye's that we've been getting in the mail. and last night we were gonna get some yummy chicken for dinner, but rikki and i ended up getting free pizza at the Teach for America meeting, and then the debates were on, so i just made pasta (and chicken and mushrooms--i made it all by myself, too! breton would be so impressed) instead. and the kids went to rolypoly.

so tonight was designated chicken night. rikki and i came back from ballet feeling limber and healthy, so then the three of us got into reid's car and drove to popeye's. we had a coupon for a "family feast"--10 pieces of mixed chicken, one large side, and five fucking biscuits. we requested spicy chicken; the lady behind the counter said it was gonna be a ten-minute wait. she asked if we would like drinks while we waited. i said, "well...do we have to pay for them?" and she said no. so i said "sure" and she handed us three cups. we all got dr. pepper (why the baton rouge popeye's only offers pepsi products is truly beyond my comprehension), and as we were sipping our carbonated beverages, the popeye's lady looked at me and said "hey, would you mind doing me a favor?"

and she said, "would you mind going across the street to subway and getting me a sandwich?"
and i said, "sure, okay, what kind of sandwich do you want?"
and she said "a BMT."

so i grab the pen off the popeye's counter and start writing down her order on my hand. 6 inch, with everything on it except cucumbers and those mild peppers, on that cheese-herb bread, with oil and vinegar and salt and pepper. so she gives me five bucks and i walk across lee with rikki and reid and almost get run over by a white suburban. and we go to the subway next to plantation trace and get her food and walk back. i give the popeye's lady her sandwich and her change and a stamp for her subway card if she has one. and she gives us: our ten-piece mixed chicken, two large sides of beans and rice, and a box of biscuits. and she grins at me and says "here you go" and i say "enjoy your sandwich" and we leave.

we get into the car and rikki's like "aw yeah" and reid's like "i think she gave us like, eight biscuits"--we were only supposed to get five--"only"--one popeye's biscuit is like 800 calories or something insane. and it's like a little slice of heaven. of course. anyway, reid's like "see how many there are in there" and i open up the box and it's full. twelve biscuits. twelve. and we, like, explode into laughter. i'm hyperventilating i'm laughing so hard. i almost peed on myself. twelve biscuits. between the three of us. that's just ridiculous. we were so excited, we took a picture when we got home.

yay.

yaaaaaaaay for birthdays.
----------
crispybreton: happy birthday

Auto response from grapity purple: ::happy birthday to me::
bingo at chelsea's tonight.

crispybreton: i miss you like a sun misses a sunburn
crispybreton: i miss you like peanut butter misses jelly... or better yet how fromage misses pain.
crispybreton: i miss you!
crispybreton: and happy birthday
crispybreton: joyeux anniversaire

(note to breton: my grammar school french is a little rusty; at first i thought you were saying that cheese missed pain. but "pain" is bread, right? right?)
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LugEMONkeY (2:13:52 AM): happy birthday bitch!! you going to bingo tonight? great, see you there.
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geojesslsu: after i read your "livejournal" post, i happened upon this little nugget in The Advocate's horoscope section: Happy Birthday: You should be totally focused on work, money and going in the direction that will allow you to use your talents. Procrastinating about your goals will not result in satisfaction. You will be more receptive this year, making this the ideal time to try something new. Your numbers are 4, 17, 22, 25, 33, 41

(note to jesse: it's a *typepad*, smartypants. but that's okay, because jesse gets brownie points for being the first person to tell me happy birthday, at midnight last night.)
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swingingcat7: i need your address! i need your address!
swingingcat7 is away at 1:58:15 PM.
grapity purple: [blah blah blah, baton rouge address]

Auto response from swingingcat7: to my kumquat, my friend who was by my side during the "awakening" in pre-ballet, the nature fairies, sleepovers that lasted for DAYS, dinners at chilis, that incident with the covergray, "little women" in 8th grade (where we were really just playing ourselves), ballet recital upon ballet recital, bi-annual sushi dates and nights of just driving around to catch up...

happy 21st birthday, ann!

welcome to the cool-kids club :-)
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aaaaaaand matt called me this morning, from freaking england, to tell me happy birthday, because he is awesome.

aaaaaand i walked into my india class and told ben it was my birthday, and he took me out to lunch afterwards.

aaaaaaand my dad called me this afternoon, to say my camera came in, and he's going to drive up here tonight to bring it to me and to take me out to dinner. to ruth's chris. holy hell.

aaaaaaand when i got up this morning and went into the bathroom, rikki had a present for me sitting on the shelf in front of the mirror. it was wrapped in printer paper and tied with a couple of my hair thingies. and it was a bunch of really cute colorful bobbypins and ladybug earrings. which was very exciting.

so all in all, it's been a good birthday. because i have the best friends ever. and it'll be a good birthday all week, because the party is friday, hooray! and yes i'll take pictures, breton.

oh and we workshopped my first story and it went over really well.

happy, happy day. i feel so loved.

easier than i thought.

i've been sleeping too much. but the following things have, in their turn, made me happy. ecstatic, even.

--i went to highland to get some work done, and i thought i might have enough in my wallet for a muffin and a small iced tea. three bucks and some change. i told the guy behind the counter that i wasn't sure if i had enough. william from louie's was in line behind me, and i showed him the contents of my altoids box, pennies and nickels and a bobbypin, and he threw in two quarters. the highland guy gave me my order and said, "so are we gonna have to make you wash dishes back here?" but i had enough. i thanked william for contributing to the cause.

--reid was supposed to stay for carlotta this weekend, but heather couldn't get off of work in lafayette, so he went up to hang out with her. when i got home on friday for lunch, he was pulling out of the driveway. i flipped him off and he made weird hand motions at me. when i looked in the passenger side window, he said, "get in the car." so i got in.

he said, "i'm going to atcha's or something before i head to lafayette. do you want to go to atcha's?" and i said, "i've been craving izzo's." and he said he didn't think he could eat izzo's because of his teeth, but then he said maybe he could eat nachos. and i said, all excited, "oh can we split nachos?" and he said, all excited, "oh can we get them to go, and then come home and watch another episode of My So-Called Life?" and i sort of hopped up and down in my seat and flailed my arms because it was so perfect.

--someone knocked on the door and i opened it and it was the mailman, this young black dude in a lime-green shirt. and he said, laughing, "he's just...hanging there. just chilling." and i was really confused. i thought maybe he was referring to the letter i had posted on the mailbox. but then i realized he was talking about fred. fred spends his afternoons staring out of the front window from his perch atop the big chair in the living room. and the mailman says, "i see him every day, like, seriously, every day he's just sitting there staring. and i come in and i put the mail in the box and he watches me. he, like, moves his head to see what i'm doing. and he's just chilling. every day, i swear." then he handed me a package. it was my birthday present from matt.

--my roommates and i had gone to goodwill to help find a halloween costume for reid. we were in the pajama section and there was this robe thing. it was made of red fabric, calico, with tiny blue flowers. and it was quilted. i pulled it off the rack and i had that moment of slow-dawning realization, you know the terrible moment when you find a skirt on the rack that has possibilities, and you pick it up and you realize it's not a skirt, it's culottes; the skirt has legs. well, the robe had legs. not only did it have legs, it had red cuffs on the wrists and ankles like a sweatsuit, and a pointy collar, and it zippered up the front. "what the fuck?" i said, and i held the monstrosity up for my roommates to see. someone said, "it looks like a giant oven mitt." and the thing is, it looks exactly like a giant oven mitt.

thus i was a giant oven mitt for the carlotta street party. and i wore a pie tin on my head like a bonnet.

i spent most of the night stumbling around with a nice boy i met many months ago and was sort of slightly interested in. i went back to his apartment with him--he lives on carlotta--and we talked a lot and made bacon and eggs. i told him i liked cracking eggs, and he gave me six to crack. then we watched TV till 6 in the morning. he actually let me have the remote. he made several comments throughout the night about how i could, you know, come over whenever to hang out. and you know, i could crash at his place if i needed to. or whatever. i wasn't sure if i wanted to or not, but rikki was home by then--she called to check up on me--and i was sober enough to walk home alone but it was still dark. we were sitting on the sofa in the dark, and then he was saying i could sleep in his bed. and i said, "where will you sleep?" and he said "i can sleep in my roommate's bed."

so i let him.

this is the third boy in three months. he was only waiting for the go-ahead. isn't it nice, that they wait for a signal? and i didn't give it. i've been sort of depressed, really, about boys and the lack of them in my life right now. and then i was depressed about how pathetic and desperate i must be by this point. but apparently i'm not so pathetic or desperate, because when the opportunity has presented itself. and the other two boys, i couldn't have done anything with them in good conscience. it would have been a bad decision and it would have happened for the wrong reasons. this one, though. this would have been okay. but you know, i really just didn't feel like it.

i woke up in his bed at eleven, and i wrote him a nice note, gathered my things, and walked home in my wifebeater and boxers, which i'd been wearing under the oven mitt/robe thing. the football fans were tailgating all across campus. and i looked like an old man who'd lost his pants.

i suppose what this means is that i'm okay, and i don't have to worry, because i'm not throwing myself at whoever shows the slightest interest.

it doesn't make me ecstatic. but it is sort of a relief.

anything but.

let's talk about the election.

i cut linguistics wednesday morning because i couldn't drag myself out of bed in time.

i slept for four hours in the middle of the afternoon.

i missed ballet.

today, however. i went to ballet and it was cold enough to wear legwarmers, which is exciting in a way that is hard to explain.

i guess it's comparable to the way you feel on the first day you have to wear a sweater--but not a coat or even a jacket--and the night smells faintly of christmas.

or the way you feel the first time you turn the heater on in your car and the warm air hits your knuckles on the steering wheel. that reminds me of christmas more than anything. more than christmas trees, even.

why does the main office of arts & science have a christmas tree displayed in the corner when we haven't even had thanksgiving break? hodges hall≠ hobby lobby.

on today's episode of My So-Called Life (the one where jordan catalano tries to pressure angela into having sex with him), angela ponders:

people are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster.            

what i want to know is: what does it say about me, that what i want more than anything is to see angela hook up with brian krakow?

this is the 100th post.

i'm at work right now. on my way out of the house, i checked the mail and found an airmail letter addressed to me. to me! it even had the blue and red stripes around the edges. and it was from cameron.

i tore open the envelope and dumped out its contents: a half-full stamp card from highland and a full eCommons punch card. (eCommons is the union bookstore coffeeshop; it's also where cameron and i used to meet for lunch.) also enclosed was a sheet of double-ply toilet paper with the following message printed in dark blue ink:

Hi Ann.
HAPPY XMAS
I had 2 cards for Starbucks.
But lost the last one. Sorry!
Hope you are doing well

Love Cameron
XOXOX

how fucking cute is that. i'm trying to figure out how to reciprocate. i considered buying a cranberry muffin and sending him the crumbs. that would be funny. but also gross and possibly weird. maybe i'll buy a cranberry muffin and send him a picture of me eating it. at least that would be more useful to him than stale muffin crumbs. theoretically.

maybe i'll send him a picture of the muffin and i'll put the crumbs in a baggie.

sweet or unsweet

and for every one person he rescued there were ten bodies he had to push aside
hacking their way out of the attic with a
the reason is because they issued a no fly-over with the helicopters and the news cameras
with an axe and a bat they
they said it was too gruesome
the second floor of chalmette high as a morgue
found an axe and a bat in the attic that's what they used
huey p long fieldhouse as a morgue
20,000 body bags
and the new orleans i was raised to fear gutted and splayed across the national news i am ashamed
this is what happens when new orleans comes to baton rouge
don't take terrace back to your house you'll get raped
R U SAFE?
twice
fucking animals
these are not bad people
busses and gas, not food, not supplies, busses and gas
looking like third-world refugees but this is not
where's the national guard? where's the national guard?
where is the national guard?
candace who cut hair what's your mama's maiden name that's right that's right can you believe that pattie can you believe i remembered no mama i can't
(in the middle of all of this, every conversation still beginning with where you from where you went to school what's your mama's maiden name and my aunt pattie actually making a flow chart, an actual chart, i asked her and she said 'he's my neighbor!' as in, he's got the next room at the marriott, evidently such connections merit graphs)
alliterative disaster rhetoric and unwater isn't a word it isn't a word they couldn't have made a dewatering committee it's
surreal it's so surreal it's surreal it's just surreal it's surreal and i'm not going to believe it until i see it for myself
(i'm not going back i'm never going back i don't want to see it just give me the money i'll get and you can raze the lot we're going to tennessee it'll be like a vacation just a week we'll go to dollywood)
and all these connections lost
you're born in new orleans, you live in new orleans, you die in new orleans. everyone knows this. a whole city can't disperse. neither can it be homeless. and the joke no one gets-- did you hear the one about the speaker of the house (rep. dennis hastert, R-illinois) and it's funny how touchy people get at the suggestion that new orleans could or should be bulldozed since it's below sea-level because in fact new orleanians have been saying it for years

thursday night we went to sogo it was supposed to be rebirth brass band but instead it was the refugee brass band two guys from rebirth and the rest from the mike foster project five dollar cover and two dollar everything me barrett bitoun wade josh breton clinton jacob ravi alanna shuchin and another scattered few dancing barefoot and the guy from tulane up by the stage with crazy eyes (i lost everything i had) shouting fuck you katrina to the beat we had a chorus then they played oh when the saints and i ran to the bar grabbed a fistful of napkins and passed them out we second lined around the dance floor then the band came down and led us out the door i told barrett i'm so happy right now is that corny and he said we lost our houses and that's kind of corny so

proud to crawl home

to take a little nap while the road is straight

the weather was so blue and clear and windy cool that it made me restless all day. when it's this pretty outside there's no way to do it justice. there's no way to absorb it all into you. i wanted to lay in the grass somewhere but i wanted someone with me. i don't know who. it's like when you go somewhere cool by yourself and it would be twice as cool if you could share it. i read outside at highland, i wore a cardigan, my toes were cold. ethan's pipe sounds like dried leaves and smells like my childhood. all day i kept thinking about being alone, and beginnings. this is renewal. i always get excited when the weather turns. i don't like being cold but i love this season.

gutting houses

today i drove with michael to mimi's house. not the one in st. bernard. the new one, off oneal lane, way on the other side of baton rouge. i looked over at michael: this is weird. we're going to mimi's. this is how we get to mimi's house now.

when we got there, claire ran up to me and threw her arms around my waist and wrapped her legs around my leg and clung there, hanging, hello.

kaylen, kelsey, kevin, cullen: how is it? how are you?
great! we're great!
i fixed myself a plate of beans and rice and sat down and asked them again. how's school?
we hate it. it's horrible.

they're all ready to go home. except their parents bought houses in baton rouge, and they're enrolled in schools here, schools they hate, kids who don't want them. kelsey explained: at st. michael's, where the male/female ratio is like 1:3, the new orleans boys are welcomed and the new orleans girls are 'intruders.'

(aunt shannon and uncle tim went in together on a house and it's spacious, room enough for uncle tim, aunt elly, aunt shannon, leigh, kurt, cully, erin. there's a pond in the backyard, a fake one with a plug-in fountain. i told uncle tim, this is nice, weird but nice, and he said, you know, yeah, it's nicer than my old house--but it's in baton rouge.)

the party was at bethy's house, the whole extended family, mimi and her two sisters and the kids and grandkids. seeing everyone there was bizarre; it was my family but not our house.  still: bethy lives five houses down from uncle tim and aunt shannon. mimi lives two streets over, and aunt kay lives right behind mimi. it's not st. bernard but it's exactly like it was in st. bernard.

i was so happy to see everyone. mimi was so excited i thought she would bust. i hadn't even talked to her since the week after the hurricane. i miss them all, and i've been wanting to visit, but the traffic is so bad that i've stopped driving during the day unless it's within five minutes of my house and i can take a back way to get there.

aunt kay and i were talking while she snuck a cigarette and mimi came over, fussing. aunt kay was like, "mama, not in front of ann," and i thought mimi was trying to take her cigarette away. but then she took a drag and told me: kay's teaching me how to smoke. it took me a minute to realize she was kidding. she smoked in college. i said mim, what are you doing? and she said, completely serious, well, ann, you know, i didn't really want to take up drinking, so. she said the other day, grandpa confessed that when he saw aunt kay's virginia slims on the counter, it took everything he had in him not to sneak one.

that's when i realized how bad it is for them.

and still we are the lucky ones.

aunt kay has all the old pictures up in her new house, mimi as a little girl, granny and her sisters on the beach in 20s bathing suits. she’d put the old pictures on the second floor of her house in st. bernard before they left. but all the pictures of her own kids were downstairs. they’re ruined now. that’s all i had cared about, before i knew about my house. the home movies and the baby pictures. i can’t imagine them gone.

i played frisbee at bethy’s with a little redheaded girl, no relation, who looked like a ten-year-old katie p. she had her hair all curled up on top of her head and she was good at throwing the frisbee. uncle mike’s two-year-old, ryan, was running around in a batman costume. he looked at me and the little redhead and he put his hands on his hips and he said OOOOOOOOOH YEAH. then he ran around in circles and shouted it, again, OOOOOOH YEAH OOOH YEAH OOOH YEAHHHHH. ooooooh yeah.

kelsey told me to come sit in her bedroom. she and kaylen are sharing a room now, they bought new posters today: led zeppelin, jimmy hendrix, bob marley, pink floyd. they bought them, i think, at bed bath & beyond. which is probably the same place they got their matching reversible purple/teal bedspreads. kaylen asked me about waiting tables, she wants to get a job, she’s got too much free time because her new school is easy and she has no homework. i asked the girls what they do in baton rouge for fun, and they exchanged glances and said: we walk. sometimes, they said, we get chased by dogs. claire came into the bedroom and kelsey, irritated with the girl-talk interruption, told her to get out. kelsey is claire’s surrogate mother and it was weird seeing her fuss. 

--but kelsey—
i played barbies with you today.
--no you didn’t--
yes i did. on the internet, remember. (get out.)

sibling bargaining. michael was like that, he would chase me around the house wanting to play and i'd run into my room and slam the door, or try to, and if he caught it before it closed he’d stand on one side leaning and i on the other side leaning till the wood bowed or i could get it locked. and he would cry. and then if i would play with him, it was never enough. and he would cry. his adoration was thorough, endless, there was no satisfying him, and i felt horrible all the time. but he was almost six years younger than me. and it’s not like we could play barbies together. he dismembered my barbies. and besides, i played barbies better alone. if i sat on the sofa he had to sit next to me. and if i snuggled with him it only made him want to snuggle more. i told him, when we were both little, that he was a black hole of affection. my dad used to sit me on his knee and tell me how i was emotionally scarring michael for life. that made me cry. just like every time michael got hurt, scraped knee busted lip, that time when he was three and nearly impaled his right eye on the coaster holder at grandmotherdear’s, i drew him a band-aid.

hey, fix me a coke.
how many ice cubes?

this morning when i woke up, he was lying awake on the sofa in my apartment, it was 12:30 and we were supposed to be at mimi’s for 1. i told him get up. and do you want a shower. (yes.) so get up. (he lay there.) now. get up. hurry. (so he did.)

later, after the party, we’re driving down siegen to the bus stop so he can go back to natchitoches, and he’s being quiet and i’m worrying about him, and i think: there’s no one else in the world i can talk to like that. who else can i tell to wake up, now, and take a shower, and hurry up, and he'll actually do it. this is a weird point of sibling affection, but it’s true.

in kaylen and kelsey’s room, aunt kay and aunt ellen have joined us and they’re sitting on the carpet. beth comes in and says uncle mike’s on the phone. she puts it on walkie-talkie mode so we can all hear him. 

aunt kay says: well, mikney?
he says: your house, the downstairs, is gutted.

to me this sounds scary, but evidently for her it’s good news: and he took the kitchen cabinets down by himself: and next weekend, saturday and sunday, they’re doing more work, he wants kaylen and kelsey to come help him pull nails.

i think: i want to go, i'll pull nails.

and aunt kay will bring a radio with batteries: there’s power now in some st. bernard neighborhoods: there’s running water at her house.

aunt kay says: power and water, what more could you ask for?

kelsey sits up straight.

can we go back?
yes, my girl. but not yet.
--when--
not till may, kelse. at least.
--we could live upstairs--

kaylen stops her. (shut up. it’s not going to happen. stop asking.)

aunt ellen says: michael, listen to me. don’t touch my house. are you listening. don’t touch it. i want it bulldozed.

she looks around at us and nods. she says: i never want to see it again.

there’s a trampoline out back, i take off my shoes, i haven’t been on a trampoline since i was twelve. kelsey is jumping and talking to erin on her cellphone. claire climbs up with me, and sean patrick, and colin. then ryan, still in his batman costume. he sits on the trampoline instructing the other boys to stop jumping. maybe he’s scared, so i sit down with him and he climbs onto my lap. he’s got his arms around my neck, he’s saying something like “jump me,” and i bounce with him, sitting. then i stand on the trampoline and pick him up, he attaches himself to me, he’s heavy, i’ve got him. he whoops and we jump.

this is why

last thursday i brought coffee to this guy, not my table, he was studying physics, and he looked up at me and ironically rhetorically asked "if i were fired from a cannon, how far would i travel before i hit the ground?"

holding the coffee pot, i said "what's your initial velocity?"

he stared at me and i smirked and walked off.

then i felt mean for smirking, so i went back later to see how he was doing. he said, "you know, when i asked you about the cannon thing, i was trying to be patronizing and kind of funny, and instead you asked me about velocity, and then i thought maybe i having a nightmare."

and i couldn't help but laugh. because imagine the nightmare you'd have right before a kinematics test, where you go to a 24-hour diner and the waitress opens her mouth and it's not "more coffee?" but "if the initial velocity is--"

i saw him again at highland a couple nights ago. he looked familiar but i didn't place him as a louie's customer. he appeared to be doing homework in despair. he was wearing a striped shirt.

so last night he came in towards the beginning of my shift, in the striped shirt. i said "hey, were you at highland last night?" and he said "yeah." and i said "...were you wearing that shirt?" and he said "yeah." he sat in my section. then i realized he was the cannon guy. he was studying physics. we talked about salted coffee, my english degree, and book jackets. finally he said "i feel like we should have coffee outside of physics and louie's" and i said "i'm always at highland, just come say hello" (because i didn't want to deal with it).

when he left (all he had was a cup of coffee, which he didn't even drink, and it was $1.53, and he left me, as a tip, 3 dollars and some change) i thought "oh, i didn't even ask his name." but on the receipt he had stuck a HELLO MY NAME IS... sticker.

it said HELLO MY NAME IS...dave.

this is the first time i've gotten asked out while waiting tables.

here's the important part:

at 5:30 in the morning i am doing syrups. 'like a rolling stone' comes on the radio. i have a damp cloth and a container full of hot water from the coffee urns and fourteen pitchers and two jugs of maple and cane.

(some servers complain about doing syrups, because you get all sticky and smell like pancakes. but i like to watch the syrup when i pour it from the jug to the pitchers. maybe it's my delirium, because it's something i have to do at the very end of the shift. but the syrup pours steady and smooth and sometimes you can't even tell that it's moving, except the pitcher is getting full. watching the syrup makes me feel kind of peaceful.)

when the chorus of the song comes around, i am scrubbing congealed syrup off a maple pitcher. and about five people--a cook, a dishwasher, a waitress, some customers--sing out, with bob dylan, "how does it feel?" i am one of the five. i am laughing.

a little happy.

when you walk into a crowded bar, you're meeting someone there, and after a minute you see them. they don't see you, but you know they're looking. you can tell they're looking for you. you're making your way towards them, and you're watching them look for you, and it makes you feel

holy mackerel!

i went to see mimi yesterday. she had potentially scary heart surgery last monday; they were going to put a stent in. but instead of having 70% blockage, like the first doctor said, she had no blockage at all. the surgeon said she should lose thirty pounds, though. she's had all sorts of complications from her diabetes and now she says she gets short of breath if she walks half a block.

the last time i went over there, i asked her, "so mim, how are you?" and she smirked and said, "fat and sassy."

she made me a porkchop for dinner, with half a sweet potato, which she always said would give me rosy cheeks.

gathering crumbs from the tabletop with the gold scraper--like the one i used to play with at granny's house on sundays, funneled tongue depressor, after french bread--she said my hair gets darker every time she sees me. she said i get prettier as i get older. i told her it's like being examined through a soft-focus lens. she can't see too good. not that i mind.

when i first got to her house, she was helping uncle mike wash the boys: sean, colin, ryan, ian. sean is six, i guess; colin must be four; ryan is two or maybe three; ian is walking now but the last time i saw him he was an infant. beth is pregnant again. uncle mike always wanted a big family, but finally they went and talked to their priest--with four kids under six--and the priest said god must want them to keep having children. so. beth is pregnant. again.

i told my mom: oh, her poor vagina. and she covered her mouth with her hands to keep from laughing.

i went to say hello to mimi in the bathroom with the babies, but the boys were all naked and so i sat on the sofa and talked to grandpa instead.

finally sean came out in his spiderman pajamas and sat next to me. we watched the men's halfpipe competition. he told me: my mom's pregnant.

i said: i know.

he said: maybe it's twins.

he's excited. he can't wait. i told him even if it's not twins, he's going to win the contest for having the most siblings out of all the cousins. (currently it's a tie between aunt kay, uncle steve, and uncle mike, each with four kids.) he seemed pleased by the prospect. even without twins.

it must be a big responsibility, being the oldest of all those boys, i told him.

and we watched as the other three emerged from the bathroom, each in his pajama set--i think colin's had robots on them. i can't tell the three little ones apart unless they're standing next to each other so i can get a sense of proportion. colin found a square black scarf and was stomping around humming the darth vader theme. ryan and ian were ping-ponging off the living room chairs, sometimes humming along with colin. ryan is a full head taller than ian and he would shove him into the sofa and ian would shove him back. both good-natured. ryan is curly-haired and perpetually smiling. he looks like the kind of kid who enjoys butting his head against furniture.

sean said to me: you laugh too much.
i told him: it's funny.

so we watched them together and he watched me laughing and he laughed too.

after uncle mike took them all back to laplace, we sat in the kitchen and mimi said she thinks uncle mike is so good to beth, bathing all those boys. and doody, remember how you used to help me wash the kids?

she said it kind of sly, and grandpa shook his head, no honey i can't say that i recall.

we talked about something else, maybe how mimi had five kids by the time she was twenty-seven. eleven years younger than beth. and the bathroom at the old house, the downstairs one, how big it was, and with five kids already (pattie-stephen-cookie-shannon-meg-and-tim-on-the-way), when they moved into that house on friscoville, mimi looked around the downstairs bathroom and said this will work out nicely.

and i'm thinking about the two or three kids i'd have by now, at twenty-two. and how could you stare down bathtime alone.

but then she looked at grandpa directly, with serious eyes, she told him: and for the record, you did. you did help me bathe the kids. you sat in the bathtub and i handed them off to you. you don't remember?

when the boys were getting ready to leave, the babies came around to give kisses and ryan approached me with big eyes and a round rosy mouth. wet baby kiss. i don't think he knows me yet. he smiles anyway. they were all barefoot and we were putting on their coats and zippering them up. i think the jackets were reversible, i had it fleece-side-in but then the zipper tab was on the inside and i was confused. i said, aloud, do i have this inside-out? and ryan told me no. then i hoisted him onto my hip and we went out to the car.

four carseats, lord almighty.

have you ever felt your whole body beat

whiskey out the flask
bitebruise on your upper arm
girl in a mask and pink party dress
finger to that guy on the huey p eastbound
sangria from a pink thermos
pat o’s bloody mary
sips off somebody’s hurricane
mardi gras mambo on speakerphone to boston
crown on the rocks
crown on the rocks
dollar for the toll bridge
lose an earring
twelve dollar strawberry margarita unfrozen
hershey’s kisses foil hats
whiskey out the flask
crown on the rocks
crown on the rocks
dark sidewalks down
le bon temps to tip’s to some girl’s apartment
sleep on the floor
boy’s sweater balled up for a pillow
watch the sky light up the window
igor’s bloody mary breakfast
streetside jambalaya
cold abita keg on the neutral ground
homemade jambalaya
nap on the sofa
semi-stale fried chicken lust
bacchus zulu the first fifty-three floats of elks
first sunburn of the season

driving down west end past the wreckage and over the canal, it fullbody hit me how the levee could have just as easily cracked the other way. it could have been my house with water to the roof. it almost was. and instead it was lakeview. by blind unfeeling incident.

i knew this year it was about morale and stress relief but there’s also a sort of bewildered pride. that we’ve made it, a kind of milestone, after everything. here we are.

at midnight, when johnny vidacovich said happy mardi gras, it was the kind of heartleap joy you want to feel on new year’s.

and sometimes it takes astonishingly little to make me happy

i just got back from jordan's. we played the game of life.

i think i'd only ever played it once before, at jennifer j's house. we were probably in sixth grade. i remember it being kind of boring. when you're a recent college graduate surrounded by recent college graduates and about-to-be college graduates, it's not such a light-hearted game. my lesbian partner alicia and i were in debt most of the time. debt is so hilarious and fun. especially when you're actually in it. like in real actual life. it's funny like car insurance.

on sunday i went to breton's house on the west bank. she was having a graduation party. her mom got a cake that said 'good job, breton.'

clint and jesse were there. i played the piano, like i always do, which makes breton's family inordinately happy. breton wanted us to learn a song for the occasion, so we did 'three hits'--indigo girls, inevitably. (indigo women?) we got the harmony mostly right. we did the usual fiona repertory: love ridden, paper bag, i know, parting gift, oh well. when breton took a break to socialize with the party guests, clint and jesse sat with me and we mangled some ben folds (annie waits, boxing) and counting crows (black and blue, amy hit the atmosphere). breton came back and we did raining in baltimore, we rocked the fuck out, all of us at the tops of our lungs and it was amazing. the grown-ups came and sat around us and kind of stared. i think they find us quaint, the way we sit around a piano and sing old songs we love. we saved natural woman for last--i've started doing that on purpose, so at least everyone's sort of warmed up for the chorus, if not the bridge--i leave that to jesse. everyone sang along to carole king. everyone sings along to carole king.

at one point it was just me and clint and jesse lying on the carpet in front of the piano. 

all three of us graduated on time in may of 2005. it's been a whole year. i spent my year waitressing, bouncing between apartments, and writing grants. clint was a delivery driver for a while and i don't know what else; now he swings kegs for a living. jesse's in law school at tulane, so he spent half the year hurricaned in lake charles and just finished his first fairly miserable semester.

so we're lying there talking about i don't know what, life, and jesse said something about maybe going into therapy, he said actually the other day he thought about committing himself.

ordinarily i'd roll my eyes at a statement like this.

instead i told them how when i was driving in that morning for the party--i've got a lot on my mind, short-term about work and where to live, long-term about what to do before grad school and what to do about grad school and why am i not writing if that's what i say i want to do. on top of all this, i've been feeling kind of tired and sick and generally out of it--and driving, i felt like i wasn't really able to focus on the road. which probably isn't terribly safe. and what if i got into an accident.

wouldn't that make everything so much easier.

and sometimes i think that a lot.

and clint and jesse laughed. i knew they would. that's the only reason i could tell them.

none of us are doing what we want to be doing.
i don't think any of us know what else to do at the moment.
none of this carpe diem fucking bullshit, either.
i think i'm doing what i should be doing right now. but i don't know what it is that i want to be doing, now or five months from now or five years from now.
we're sorting it out.
it's scary and hard.

clint said laughing about our quarter-life crisis and i said it's no bullshit.
he said not to mention the
and i said yeah, the actual fucking tragedy of the past year?

anyway. not many people in my usual circle of friends have been out of school for a full year. it's a special sort of mindfuck. it was a relief to be around old friends who felt it too.

afterwards i drove to metairie, feeling alright, and glad to be home again. it's been a while.

then i pulled up to the house, my mom's boyfriend's car in the driveway and immediately that old tight feeling in my stomach, and remembered why.

i'll save this stuff for tomorrow, maybe.

here's the rest of it:

i work on oak street and our office is lovely and i like the people i work for. yesterday a guy from the neighborhood merchants' association came by to greet lynne and eric. he runs the oak street cafe; his name is brad. today i got lunch at the oak street cafe, a bacon egg and cheese sandwich on toast, and brad handed it to me and said oh, hello ann, i guess we didn't officially meet. i smiled and shook his hand and turned to leave, but he stopped me, he came back with a little bag and smiled and said thanks for coming in. and in the bag was a chocolate-covered glazed doughnut.

of all the doughnuts that currently exist in the world, chocolate-covered glazed are my favorite.

mckenzie's chocolate-covered cake being the obvious first choice, but c'est levee, as no one but a new orleanian could say.

i was ecstatic.

so i walked down to the rue, ordered a mango iced tea, sat at one of the outside sidewalk tables and had an egg sandwich and tea and a doughnut.

lagn
iappe.

what was the point? what could the rain say but rain, rain, rain?

i called paul yesterday around 5:30 to see what he was doing. he was hanging out at his apartment and said to come over. i said can i bring a book? and he said yes. he was reading vonnegut and i was wearing a brown dress. him on the sofa and me on the bed. it was hot and i sat not very much like a lady.

he said i'm starting to really like this apartment. it's like a treehouse.
i said it's exactly like a treehouse.
he said it's everything i've always wanted.

i wanted to make iced tea but the huge mint plant by perky's apartment on carlotta seems to have disappeared. i don't know where it could have gone to. it was so big. this means i have to buy a mint plant.

much later, i smoked a cigarette. i decided i should know how to smoke a cigarette. paul sat on the railing outside his door and told me to breathe. he had to light it for me because i'm incompetent. it took a while to figure out how to inhale, and then i coughed, and then i figured out how to do it without coughing. my lungs felt coated in slime for the rest of the night. cigarettes are disgusting.

much, much later, i told paul the whole story, from top to bottom. he doesn't read this so i didn't have to skip parts or worry about being redundant. even though he's a boy and boys usually try to fix it when i tell them things, he didn't try to fix things, or at least he didn't try too hard. when they try to fix it it means they don't understand. mostly he listened and said small things that meant he understood. i told him everything in order, it must have taken two hours, and when i got to the end he said "of course. it's your mom."

it was the simplest affirmation, and the most on-point, and the one i needed exactly to hear.

i'm so tired.

story-tellers and shit-talkers

michael and i are sitting by the water, listening to kurt hassle kevin about getting into sports. kurt is michael’s age, going into his senior year at brother martin. he’s on the football team. also maybe the basketball team. kevin is in 7th grade and has never had anyone his own age in the family to play with. this is my aunt kay and uncle craig’s kid. it’s him and three sisters. i asked him how he doesn’t go insane.

anyway, kurt is telling kevin how he needs to get into sports now, because what's he going to do in high school if he doesn't play sports. or he should at least do something physically active, like, fine if you want to skateboard, but really do it.

michael goes, "alright, dad."

kurt continues: because i don’t want you to grow up to be one of those guys in college who’s like twenty-one and skinny and doesn’t have to work out and just smokes cigarettes all the time.

like my friends, i say.

kurt says, "i mean, what if you get into a fight, how are you going to defend yourself?"

i ask michael if he’s ever been in a fight. he rolls his eyes and says, "i run fast."

kurt says he got into a fight a couple weeks ago, he was with a bunch of brother martin boys and they came across a bunch of holy cross boys.

who won, michael wants to know.
kurt puts on his man voice: well you know, the holy cross boys, they roll deep.

i misheard him, though. i thought he said they were deep.
like, you know those holy cross boys, bunch of philosophers.

kurty says, "yeah, their thoughts defeated us."

.

i'm sitting on the balcony of the beach house, just showered, my stomach is a little sunburned. also on the balcony: kaylen, michael, cullen, kelsey, erin, kevin. we are talking about the babies. cullen tells this one about colin, a story i had forgotten:

uncle mike was teaching colin, his second kid, to ride a bike. (uncle mike taught most of the twenty cousins to ride a bike. he taught me at aunt meg's house on ocelot, it must have been thanksgiving, i was on brady's bike.) anyway, this was last year, colin was four. and he was scared, yelling his head off, uncle mike was letting go of the back of the seat, and colin called him every bad name he could think of. but he's four and his parents keep good track, apparently, of what he watches on TV.

so in his terror, as his dad lets go of the bike, colin's screaming: you THIEF....you ROBBER......you PIRATE!

cullen says: you heard about when we took sean to walmart?

this was a couple years ago, cullen and kurt with sean, who was maybe five. and there was this man with a prosthetic leg, and sean goes, "that man's got a wooden leg! he's a pirate! one leg, one leg..." as kurt steers sean away.

kelsey and kaylen tell one about how ryan, uncle mike's three-year-old, learned the word "intercourse" from a TV commercial, although he had seemed to be napping. and also recently they were babysitting uncle mike's kids, and they thought ian, who's two, was sleeping. but then in the middle of their sisterly argument, ian opened his eyes and repeated back: bitch.

i tell them about the saturday afternoon when michael was in first grade and he had this kid adam over to play. adam was a little hellion and he was getting into everything. my mom was somewhere else and my dad was in the backyard, so i was basically watching to make sure they didn't die. the mail came and adam ran to get it and threw it all down on the rug in the den. he ripped open a blue plastic bag (labeled Always, addressed to my mother) and dumped its contents onto the rug: four pink-wrapped maxipads.

adam says, disgusted, "it's just toilet paper."
michael blushes. "no it's not."

i'm in seventh grade and feeling wicked. "it's not, michael? what is it, then?"
michael reddens further. "it's....Always. you know.....like Always With Wings."

and what's that, michael?

in agony he says, "you know.....that stuff to make your butt more comfortable..."

we are sitting in white plastic lawn chairs laughing and erin asks, "what would we do without the little kids?"

she means: like die of boredom.

we are quiet a minute and kevin, feeling included for once in a big-kid conversation, says, "someone tell another story."

.

michael and i are on the balcony, intermittently reading and talking, and i start reminiscing about street fighter II, which we used to play on the super at maria's house. we didn't have a game system at our house until i was in high school and michael was in fourth or fifth grade. i always thought this was kind of sexist. the discrimination began when i was eight or nine and repeatedly asked my parents for a gameboy, which never materialized. i had to settle for playing on ben's or pat's. then michael got one for his fourth birthday. what the fuck is a four-year-old going to do with a gameboy? lose it, break it, or have it confiscated by his older sister.

anyway. i'd brought up street fighter on the balcony because i inexplicably had yoga fire! stuck in my head. i ask michael what that stretchy indian dude's name was and remember as he's saying it: dhalsim. we successfully name the other characters and bosses, though there is brief confusion over balrog and zangief. then i recreate our e. honda/chun li standoffs. also: sonic boom! and how we used to take 'pictures' of the characters in stupid poses by pausing mid-fight. and how we decided that what chun li said during her helicopter kick was: kiiing saaaardiiiine!

i say how i miss playing soul caliber. back when michael had the dreamcast and matt would stay over, they'd sit side-by-side on the rug in the den like they were both twelve. matt showed michael that siegfried move, which his friend from denham had named Face, Face, Crotch! and this is something we said from that day on, whenever one of us played as siegfried: Face, Face, Crotch! Face, Face, Crotch! three of these and you were either dead or out of the ring. fuck siegfried and his big-ass sword. i always played with sophitia, my chun li equivalent, with killer legs.

i tell michael, even after the dreamcast, jesse and i used to meet for lunch at the union and then go downstairs to play in the arcade. we saved all our quarters for soul caliber. i was always sophitia; jesse alternated characters. we cursed a whole lot and he won more than i did. but what really got me was how if it was getting to be time to leave and i'd won the last game, he'd say, "one more game," and i always capitulated, but if he won and i said one more game, he'd say no. so it always ended on him winning.

michael says, "wow, that must have been hard on your relationship."
i say, "no shit!"
he says, "man, that's a really terrible idea if you're dating a girl from the doody family."

.

i'd gone to the outlet mall, i was hungry, i knew it was dinnertime and i also knew it was red beans for dinner. walking up the stairs to the beach house, i hear my family: mass yelling, then a pause, then another roar. and i think, oh god, what am i missing? i can't stand knowing that crazy shit is going down without me. i used to cry if i overslept at gulf shores because it meant i'd missed whatever my family had done in the morning. not that they'd gone and actually done anything. but someone was always doing or saying something funny, which invariably turned into a long-running joke ("feeder bands..") or family legend ("don't be 'caed, it not real"); you didn't want to miss it.

so i get to the top of the steps and they're playing this DVD music trivia game. everyone is on or around the sofa. and i mean everyone, as in everyone who is staying at the house for the week: mimi, aunt pattie, mom, michael, aunt shannon, uncle tim, aunt ellen, cullen, erin, aunt kay, kaylen, kelsey, kevin, claire, uncle mike, sean, colin, and ryan. i walk in and they are apparently split into two teams and the sofa-half nearest me yells ANN'S ON OUR TEAM and then the other sofa-half goes NO SHE'S ON OUR TEAM and i'm standing there holding shopping bags. it escalates into chanting, like both teams are actually chanting ANN ANN ANN, trying to drown each other out, and i say, flustered, "um, i gotta pee."

after fixing myself a plate of red beans, i take a seat behind the sofa and tell the teams that i'm just going to watch for a while. secretly i'm pulling for the red team, because my mom and brother are on it. the game is split up into ten rounds and each round is different, like in one you guess which artist did which outlandish thing and in another you put albums in chronological order and in another you decide what's longer, this song or this historic event. you enter information with the DVD controller and sometimes you have to acknowledge that, say, someone from the blue team screamed out the answer before someone from the red team did.

we are a fiercely competitive people. there is a lot of screaming.

in one round, they give you a bunch of blanks on the screen, then they start to fill the blanks with song lyrics. one of the blanks is highlighted in yellow; this is the word you are trying to guess. and you're trying to figure it out before other team does. like the first one is:

___ broke  __  ____
__ ____ _ thrill
goodness ________
_____ ____ __ ____

so i realize it's the lyrics to "great balls of fire," and the highlighted word will be "balls." i yell, "balls!" and no one hears me because they're all yelling. so i have to keep yelling "balls! balls!" because, you know, i want to win. but it's also kind of awkward shouting "balls!" over and over again.

but the hands-down best moment of the game, and in my opinion, the highlight of the 2006 gulf shores trip--though i went home early, and i'm sure other ridiculous things happened after i left--which is exactly why i used to cry if i overslept--anyway, here's how it went.

it's another one of those guess-the-missing-lyric ones, and the screen looks like this:

mama ___
mama ___
____ ___ ___ __ go
________

and i say, aloud but softly, to myself, "mama mia?"

and aunt kay says slowly, "mama mia....mama mia...." and then, faster, "mama mia, let me go!"

which means the missing word is:

"BEELZEBUB!" aunt kay shouts. she jumps up from the sofa. "BEELZEBUB, BEELZEBUB!" 

she hops in front of the TV, waving her arms in the air, shouting "BEELZEBUB!" until the word appears in the highlighted box. having thus invoked satan, she marches towards the kitchen, arms flailing, possibly conducting an invisible Queen-esque orchestra. she throws her head back and sings: "be-eeelll-ze-bub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me...."

the rest of us, we're agape or aghast or laughing. and for the moment we're quiet, at least relatively, because she has by far outshouted us all. indisputably the point is hers.

tribute

i'm staring at this bowl, hoping to figure out a way to lick it clean without getting red gravy all over my face.

i've tried everything else already. drunk the dregs, licked around the edges, scooped up what i could with the fork and then my fingers.

if the bowl were flatter i could go at it with my tongue, but i don't think it's going to work out.

i suppose i have to let it go.

good red gravy is a terrible thing to waste.

it is something of an institution at my mom's house. we actually refer to it as Good Red Gravy. it comes in two forms: homemade from my mom's friend madeline's recipe; and in a jar from Sal and Judy's.

they are sweet sauces, on the thin side; sal and judy make a "hearty" version but i prefer the original. red gravy, by the way, is tomato-based italian-style sauce. if you're not from st. bernard you probably call it "tomato sauce" or "spaghetti sauce" or "marinara sauce" - in any case, i feel sorry for you.

(a long time ago i got in an argument with either matt or jesse about this; he pulled out a dictionary to inform me that "gravy" is inherently a meat-based sauce and therefore it makes zero sense to call a tomato-based sauce "red gravy." and i said: i don't care.)

there is a story about madeline's recipe v. sal and judy's. madeline's husband never liked her homemade version, complaining that it was too sweet. he loved sal and judy's version, though, and so he'd buy it from the grocery. madeline tasted it and said she thought it was pretty much identical to hers. no way, he said. so one day she poured out the storebought sauce and filled the jar back up with her sauce. he never noticed a difference.

my mom's rendition of madeline's red gravy is apt, but batches of the stuff are few and far between. i love sal and judy's just the same. it's a local brand, so not all groceries carry it, and it's almost five bucks for a jar. and it's worth it. my past roommates are aware of my red gravy thing; i didn't care what kind of red gravy they bought, they could get any kind they wanted, three-cheese-mushroom-whatever-whatever, but i had to have sal and judy's in the house. sometimes we ended up with, like, three jars of red gravy, and this is ridiculous, yes, and i am stingy and i know it's cheaper to share. my stinginess is surpassed only by my stubbornness. so i buy sal and judy's without compromise and i conserve it like water for a dying man in a desert. like there's a red gravy drought.

i could heat it up in a small pot and eat it with a spoon.

in breton's essay for her application to teach in france - back when we were living on jim taylor - she wrote about coming into my bedroom to tell me something - i think it was that she'd decided she had to be fluent in french within two years - anyway, she says in the essay that she walked into my room and i was sitting on the bed with a bowl of leftover red gravy up to my face and i was licking it clean.

these are things that never fail to make me happy - they require little effort or skill, risk no disappointment, and function independent of any mood: fresh cut flowers. thick paper and a nice pen. styrofoam go-boxes and a ballpoint pen. slanty afternoon light an hour before sunset. berries. large groups of people singing together.

good red gravy.

broken city

my friend tommy is in law school at berkeley but spent the summer working in new orleans, and he posted something the other day about the people in berkeley constantly asking him 'how it was' to be in the city.

i was going to write about the anniversary night but didn't.
i was going to tell you about the maple leaf, how it was packed and sweaty, and i waited at the bar for a cup of water, rebirth was playing and how impossible it is to keep still, sitting or standing, and i'm standing waiting for water, watching the people waiting at the bar and dancing to themselves, watching this girl at the corner dancing and i kept grinning at her, and something in the music changed and suddenly everyone is bouncing, even the bartender as he pours the drinks. and bliss rolling down my back. there aren't words for it. joy that makes your hair stand on end. revival-meeting ecstasy, the people are fanning themselves or holding their hands up. they're standing on the walls. i was telling barrett about it--the whole anniversary thing and whether or not to acknowledge it with some big-deal event--seeing as we're forced every day to acknowledge that it happened--it's not like you can live in this city and not notice it. and that night breton wanted to see rebirth, she thought it would be fitting and i agreed--though i was tired and not in the mood for partying. so i didn't drink except the water. and mostly i danced by myself and didn't say much. and i told barrett that it felt good, like church, like church would be if it were cool and led by a nola brass funk band. and what i meant was it felt restorative.

today i woke up and took my temperature and it was 101.8. so i went to the doctor. my doctor's office used to be on robert e. lee; the new office is on vets. i figured he moved because the old office got water. i asked him and he said twelve feet. then he said i probably had strep, but he couldn't test me for it because they'd run out of the tests. so he wrote me a prescription for amoxil. then i went to CVS and there were two pharmacists working and five people waiting, the pharmacists looked like they were about to tear their hair out. my mom said it's been like that ever since. i hadn't dealt with the medical sector of the city. i didn't know.

it's like this: you think you've got a handle on the situation--then you come into contact with a different part of the infrastructure--and it's a new perspective--and it's always worse.

and these are just the petty surface details.

i went to the blockbuster next to dorignac's at quarter to nine. there was a cop car in the front and about seven people standing by the doors. they said the door was locked because the store just got robbed. some dude had run out with a stack of movies and some other dudes chased him and then the robber's friend drove up and pulled a gun on them. eventually the blockbuster people let us in. the movie i wanted to rent was checked out, so they sent me to the store on clearview and w. napolean. the girls working the counter were really nice and i was like "ya'll know the vets store just got robbed?" and they said yeah, we got robbed at about 3 o'clock this afternoon.

at the vets store, waiting to be let in, the women standing with me were chatting about how stupid it was to rob a video store--and how busy the vets store was--and how not-busy the metairie road store was--and i said was that old metairie cc's open?--and they said yeah, it just started staying open after six--and one of the women said she drives out to the vets blockbuster even though she lives on st. claude--and the other woman was like oh my god, the parish--and the first woman said she used to get movies mailed to her house but she can't anymore--and the second woman said you could get them mailed to your work--and the first woman said you're right, i do that with all my other mail anyway--she said, we're living at this one house while the other one is getting fixed up, it's the first time we've lived alone since the hurricane--and this other woman was like, yeah, i love my FEMA trailer--

meanwhile i'm thinking:
-- you can't drive more than five blocks down a main road in the city proper without seeing a cop car.
-- and we've had three bikes stolen in two months from outside our oak street office.
-- but this is metairie.
-- even while they're waiting for a video store to be secured post-robbery, new orleanians will chit-chat about goddamn anything.

right above from where you are

but now we must pick up every piece
of this life we used to love
just to keep ourselves
at least enough to carry on

i drove in to nola with josh last night and we sang all the way there. and we saw a show and i drank too much.

it was a proper new orleans evening:

two jack and cokes / tv on the radio at the republic, where i saw jeff, jessica, becca, eric, patrick, sully, natalie, peyton, and p.j.;

a pint of blue moon / ryan's on decatur with breton, jason, peyton, natalie, anson, matt, and that guy from my milton class whose name i never can remember;

a shot of soco (which was disgusting) / one-eyed jack's for 80s night with breton et al.

i'd told josh earlier that breton was leaving for paris on saturday--we were sitting at ryan's and he was like, "so when do you get to see breton again before she leaves?" and i said, "i don't." and he was like "what? this is it?" and i said yeah. so he and francis went to visit their friend derrick and he left me with breton to hang out for an hour or so. it was awesome. i thought i was only going to see her last night for a few minutes and hug her goodbye. and instead we got drunk and a little lost and then we danced for a while.

then josh picked me up and we were starving. so i directed him to bud's on clearview, where we ate food which was both cheap and delicious. and i was really happy. and i fell asleep on the way home.

after the show ended at the republic, i was talking to becca and eric and their friend patrick came up to say hi. i met him last friday--he ate dinner with me and becca and eric at reginelli's before we left for the beach. he got his master's in english lit, or something, and we talked about english-dork stuff over dinner. it was nice to talk to another english nerd. i'm never around them anymore and i forget how nice it is, such an easy connection--i feel like i'm so starved for book talk.

anyway, he was friendly at dinner and i got the feeling that he was also glad to be talking to an english nerd. so at the republic he comes up and says hi and how was the beach. and i say, "well, i got pretty sick," and he says oh no, and i say, "but we had a lot of fun. we bought a lot of underwear." and he says oh really. and i say yeah. and he says what kind of underwear. and i say tiny underwear! and he says, with raised eyebrows and concern in his voice, "but are they uncomfortable?" and i say oh no, they're very comfortable, just tiny. they're hot. and he might have asked if i was wearing them at the moment (i was)--but maybe he didn't--but i had to leave so i gave him a hug, and he said as i was walking off, "we can talk more about your underwear later"--which was funny--

mostly it was funny because i haven't flirted with anyone, like actual unabashed flirting--it's been a long time. like six months. there aren't any boys in my social circle who i can flirt with safely and/or appropriately. the guys i would flirt with are off-limits for various reasons, and the rest are my friends who i snuggle up to, but i don't mean anything by it--i'm just a snuggly person.

so it was refreshing--kind of a stupid conversation but still. it reminded me that it feels good to meet new people.

sea change; cycles; circles; gravity pull; 
draw me out
closer
(further away)

there's a you-shaped hole in my dancing heart

oh i don't know.
i cried at dinner, i feel like no one takes me seriously, i feel like my dad and my mom and my grandfather don't take me seriously, i feel like i'm not doing anything that's worth taking seriously. there's no structure in here for me to be an overachiever. there's no up or forward. there's just digging straight down. there's just moving in place.

they look at me like it's my lack of motivation.

i don't know how many ways there are to explain fear to people.
i don't need you to push me.
i can push myself.
i'll figure it out.
that's kind of the whole fucking point.

hari said, well, when you walk up to a cold swimming pool, how do you get in?
she was asking rhetorically.
i said, not rhetorically,
"i go to the shallow end and i walk in really slowly, making terrible noises all the way."

and she laughed
and i said seriously.

tonight my dad actually said,
i was telling him about being afraid, about holding back, about not taking risks,
i said something about being pathologically obedient
and he snorted and said come on, if anything, you're pathologically disobedient.

i mean
i don't know.

i mean.

independent-minded, maybe, stubborn definitely, unconventional by the most conventional standards maybe.

he also said some bizarre something about how the reason i want to go to grad school is because all my life my mother has wanted me to go to grad school--and that she wanted to be a writer, which is presumably why i studied writing--(he made a similar argument a long time ago about louisiana school)--

try to explain to him that frankly i don't give a shit what she wants me to do--it's always struck me as irrelevant--because she's never projected or pushed any career choice onto me--and in fact, to counter his claim, she has within the past six months intimated that she doesn't understand or even approve of anything i'm doing--though i suppose she only said it at that particular moment to be spiteful, because she was being out of her mind, again.

reason number one i can't leave yet.
not in order. but that's one unresolved thing.
also the city.
and marcia said what about the holidays
and i said oh, the holidays
and she said so january then
and becca said but not till mardi gras
and then i remembered michael's graduation
it goes on it goes on
at some point there's a cut-off
you people
please.

it's hard enough.
paul said what i was thinking.
he said it's like if you wanted to go sky-diving
but you were really scared of sky-diving
and not only are you really scared of sky-diving but there's six months of impossible paperwork bullshit to fill out so you can go do this sky-diving thing that you half want to do and half are terrified of doing.
like it's hard enough to work up the nerve to actually go sky-diving,
much less force yourself through a bunch of bullshit so you can do this scary thing that you're barely able to screw up the courage for in the first place.

but that saturday, the first home game, i'd agreed to sit on the rooftop of the tallest dorm and monitor a time-lapse camera for a fox sports documentary. i regretted it all the week before and woke up saturday morning irritate