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[03 Oct 2008|10:41pm] Today was very nearly a disaster. Thankfully, it was partially redeemed by the delivery to my mailbox of the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice. To which I say: booyah. Despite my intense dislike for Collin Firth, I love this version of the film and will watch it again and again with nerdy, girlish glee. It was this version that inspired the Worst Book in History: Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife. Again and again and again. Every 3rd page, in fact. Mr Darcy Takes a Wife picks up where Pride and Prejudice leaves off ... after the wedding and straight into the sack. That's about where the intrigue ends. I read through some other reviews of the book, hoping to gain some better insight (and better articulation) into what others liked or didn't like beyond my fairly blanket statement of "it sucks!" I was genuinely shocked to find that all of her reviews were really positive. People love this book, praise her over the top grandiloquence, love her anachronistic metaphors, and salivate over the page upon page of euphemism to describe Mr. Darcy's uncommonly large penis. I'll admit that I've only managed to struggle through about 100 pages of this tome, but I can't help wondering when the fucking will end and the plot will begin. I can only read about Elizabeth Bennett Darcy getting lost in the vastness of Pemberly for the millionth time, Fitzwilliam Darcy's uncontrollable lust for his new wife, and how his footman is an asshole so many times before I feel like screaming. Also, seriously, if I read the words "connubial bliss" one more time I will lose it. I will read every last word of this stupid book because my father always taught me to finish what you start, but if I don't start to see some plot soon I'm going to hunt down Linda Berdoll and have we're going to have words. While I slap her. 1 | comment

[10 Nov 2007|04:21pm] I swear to god, being so pragmatic is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I'm mad right now. I want to scream. Mostly, I want to throw things. Things that shatter. And are loud. But I know that if I give into that I'll just have to clean it up later. And my neighbors will wonder what's going on, and they'll ask questions. So I stew. And say fuck a lot. Fuck! 2 | comment

[27 Nov 2005|04:09am] [ mood | thoughtful ] [ music | ani difranco : loom ] I wrote an entry once about my perfect life. It involved a tiny, private wedding, a fast paced career with a high heel requirement, a country house and a pair of short, rowdy spider-man fanatics. It's a pretty idea. I still really love the entry and, honestly, if that ended up being my life I probably wouldn't cry about it. Too much. It is not, however, how I'd like things to turn out. At this point, my perfect life consists of an apartment with a big kitchen and a dishwasher. Someone I can love and trust and talk to, who laughs a lot and is going to respect my ferocious, frustrating, stubborn, independence. A job that stresses me out but makes me feel really good at the end of the day; a job that lets me wear jeans and flip flops every day if I want to, that doesn't care if my hair is bright red, that I have my nose pierced, that someday I may not be a size nothing. I want cats, just the two. Maybe a dog. No kids. Some things haven't changed. I still want a tiny, casual wedding, and to live in a big city and I'd definitely take a mountain retreat and more than 12 minutes of real conversation a day with the man I love. I'd still like to make pancakes. I just want walks in the park, a little flower pot garden, mounds of snow in the winter, and a reliable coffee maker. I want to do yoga and cook really good food; learn to make bread and a few choice Indian dishes. I want to get back to writing and maybe paint. I want an apartment that smells nice and doesn't have bugs and has enough room for me to have an office. I want whole days without a schedule and I want hugs on demand. I think that's manageable. 7 | comment

[07 Jul 2005|01:59am] I miss you, Blurty, you stupid jerk. I feel so tied to you because so much of myself has been left in this damn journal but you frustrate me. You're slow. When you load at all. I'm a child of the 90's and not inclined to wait. Neither is anyone else, it seems, since most of the people on my friends list have abandoned you for your big bad cousin LiveJournal. Which I hate. Man, B, I'm looking forward to a time when people can ask me what's new, what's been going on and I can say, "Mm, nothing much" and mean it for more than a few months. My friend Graham died a little over a week ago. I'm over talking about it since I'm tired of feeling like a fragile, weepy girl and then talking to people about my fragile, weepy girlness. Some days are better than others. The days that I don't see Morwenna (his fiancé), for example, are fine. While days that I do see her -- which has been every day lately -- find me in tears at least once. How long do you grieve for someone you've lost? A week? A month? Forever? And why do people tell you to be happy for them or think that "he's in a better place" is in any way comforting? It's fucking not. Shut up. These last few weeks have been so so sad but really amazing. For the first five days after I heard, I shut myself off from the world; I couldn't deal with sharing my grief. When I finally emerged from my cocoon of sorrow on Wednesday night I was greeted with tears and bearhugs and an overwhelming feeling of closeness to the rest of my friends and I almost regretted closing myself off from them for so long. So that happened. My uncle has cancer. Super duper progressed and metastasized, apparently, like Suzi's was last year. Plus he doesn't have health insurance. Sixty years old and no health insurance. Nice, John. Responsibility was never one of his strengths. So there's that too. I dunno. It's not all bad. It's mostly good, in fact, it's just those few really bad things that kind of cast a shadow over everything else. I just thought I should update you, Blurty, on the goings on in my life. So there you go. Blurty friends, I still read you. Just so you know. 6 | comment

[26 Apr 2005|03:26pm] [ mood | shocked ] Russian guy wakes up to find that a friend has stabbed him in the face!! I laughed. This makes me a bad person, I know. 7 | comment

[17 Jun 2004|08:44am] [ mood | unmotivated ] Sprawled on my bed, cheek pressed firmly against the bare mattress pad, I'm trying to come up with things to write about. All I know is that my bare legs are cold and that my world has been blotted out by a red-gold curtain of hair. I feel heavy, every fiber of my body weighing me down and I feel that any minute I'm going to sink through this mattress, sink through the floor, through my whole house and into the ground, into damp, sucking darkness. I've written about depression before and will again, I'm sure, but the days that are my darkest are just that. Days. I'm over the real depression, the one that consumes, and breaks, and kills and the only signs I see of it now are rare. Which, I suppose, is why it's so weird to feel it right now. It's situational depression, not as intense as the other kind; it will go away. I remember this, though. It clings to you like a shroud, invades your idle moments; it makes conversation difficult and then you realize that it's 5 pm and you've yet to smile. If I believed in god I would be very angry right now. But I'll stop writing about this, I promise. 3 | comment

[07 May 2004|11:22pm] [ mood | dreamy ] [ music | ani difranco : itch ] In the future ... I want to get married quietly and humbly, outside, in bare feet and a sundress with only the people I love most in the world around me. I want to go home after the honeymoon to a gaggle of outraged relatives and family friends who can't decide if they're happy for me or pissed off because no one told them. I want to be approached by my mother's country club friends who will give me that pinched, cloying smile that says they disapprove and will ask me, with venomous veiled sweetness, if the rumors were true and then scowl at me when I give them that sarcastic, sickly-sweet response that I'm famously disliked for. I want them to meet my husband, knowing that they plan on disliking him, and watch, smugly, as they're won over. I want a love and a friendship that will last forever and know that I can give myself and every inch of my heart and vulnerability to him without fear or hesitation, and know that I will never be left for a bottle of gin or something better. I want to live in the city, in some stylish apartment with a huge kitchen and chairs that swallow me completely after a long day at work. I want to write for some snotty, well-known magazine, editorials that are smart, scathing and entertaining, but modestly sentimental and sweet sometimes. I want to walk fast in impossibly high heels and short skirts, with straight hair and glasses that make me look like I'm capable, like I know what I'm doing. Because I probably won't. I want to have more than the average 12 minutes a day of real conversation with my husband. I want to work like mad and still manage to be the best mother in the world, because super-moms can balance that sort of life. I want to own a house in the country. I want to wake up with the sun on my face and stand on the huge wooden deck that over looks the little brook not far from the ground-level patio where we typically entertain on the Fourth of July and other summer "holidays" that don't actually exist in any other world but this one. I want to stand out there in my pajamas and glasses, with my hair in a bun and a hot cup of coffee in my hand and watch the sun rise, and listen to the water and the small animals just waking up to begin their daily routines. I want to feel the petal soft breeze on my face and drink in the scents of peace and nature and know that I am alone and that my closest neighbor is miles away, nothing more than a sharp glint of early sunlight reflected off of a window pane. I want the smell of pancakes and bacon to wake up a sleepily grinning husband and two little boys in matching spider-man pajamas that they outgrew last summer but insist on wearing anyway, because those are their favorites and there's no use arguing when they've made up their minds. They take after their mother that way. At night I want to lay down on a huge blanket spread over thick, soft grass and stare at the inky black night sky and teach my children the constellations and the stories that accompany them. When they're finally asleep I'll pick them up and carry them inside, a soft, silky head nestled on my shoulder and long legs dangling and I'll sigh because it won't be long before they're as tall as I am and then taller and then they'll have girlfriends and I'll no longer be the only woman in their lives. This is my perfect life. 13 | comment

this is pretty stream-of-consciousness [30 Mar 2004|12:47am] [ mood | calm ] [ music | joss stone : for the love of you ] It's funny how dire a thing can seem when you're floundering in your own thoughts at 4 am. Though there's a certain clarity that comes with the cleansing, rejuvenating wash of daylight; things seem less horrible under the sun. I can't bring myself to worry during the day, or face the inevitability of the future. I only hang out with my demons at night; though I think that's the case for a lot of people, if not most. But let's face it, what else is there to do? Maybe that was my problem with therapy ... I should've gone to my sessions at night, perhaps the truth would have come out then. Probably not. I waste so much of my life just sitting in thought, staring out the window or into the cold, midnight darkness of my room, lost in myself. I wish I could devote more of my thinking hours to sleep. Life is strange; it never ceases to be interesting. Sometimes I feel like an onlooker, held like some sort of twisted captive audience, waiting with bated breath to see what will happen next ... Does The Father have cancer? Will he lose the lawsuits, plunging the family into bankruptcy? Will they all be able to keep it together!? Tune in next week for the next exciting chapter in this family's dramatic saga ... Life is interesting and beautiful and amazing. I wish we could all just take time out and relish the moments we have, the small ones that so often slip us by but, if we stopped to savor them, would have the most profound effect of all. Life is so short and too often wasted trying to relive the past, buried in old hurt. For 10 minutes go outside. Suck great, gasping breaths of air into your lungs and taste it. Stop thinking about work, school, kids, your boyfriend, whatever's stressing you out. Walk around the block, feel the way your muscles move and glory that they do. Listen to the wind, feel it on your face, soak up the sunshine. For 10 minutes just be, recognize the fact that you're alive and relish it. It will do you a world of good, I promise. 9 | comment

childhood [14 Mar 2004|11:06pm] [ mood | nostalgic ] [ music | vienna teng : eric's song ] I loved playing in the rain when I was younger. With the first warm summer drops I was out the door in my bathing suit and an old tee-shirt of my brother's. I would join the other neighborhood kids on the street, all of us standing at the end of our driveways, the cement warming our little feet as the rain slowly plastered our hair to our heads. We would stand grinning madly at each other, gap-toothed, brace-faced, beaming with glee. Then, shrieking with delight, we'd plop down in the gutter, make dams with small butts and giggle wildly as the water soaked our little bathing suits, the bitty river breaking against our backs and parting to flow around our legs. Sick of soaking on our own we'd jump up, leaves and dirt clinging to us, twigs tangled in our hair we'd run off to turn cartwheels on the black, bubbly tar of the streets, heedless of our mother's warnings as they stood, cross-armed in the dry safety of doorways. We would run, screaming, up and down the neighborhood, calling excitedly to each other with the discovery of a lake at one of the intersections that just begged to be splashed in. We'd bang on the doors of the children unlucky enough to be imprisoned -- by cruel, heartless parents, naturally -- inside on such a glorious day. Eventually the rain would stop or the light would fade and one by one the voices of our parents could be heard calling us in from our fun. We'd drag our feet back up to our houses, whine at mothers waiting to wrap us in plush, dry towels. It wasn't fair! Quickly, we were ushered upstairs to strip out of the claustrophobic cling of soaked clothing and deposited into steaming bathtubs. Being a kid was tough back then, as you can see. 5 | comment

snow! [26 Jan 2004|04:21pm] [ mood | cold ] [ music | ani difranco : anticipate ] It hasn't stopped snowing since early yesterday morning, big, fat flakes coming down with purpose. On a mission to bury my city in banks of choking white. Within seconds of being outside you're covered in snow; it clings to your jacket and your pants, to your eyelashes, it coats your hair, and dusts your cheeks, quite effectively blending you into the white and gray landscape. It's not long before your cheeks and hands are burning with cold yet you're loath to go inside. There's something about standing out there in the icy, eerie calm that's really soothing; the world has been muffled and shrouded in a blanket of white, now it's just you, the snow, and the wind. Down the street you hear branches snap under the weight of winter, over your head ice-caked wires creak in the wind and for a while you forget about the cold. 7 | comment

over-active imagination [13 Jul 2003|02:48am] [ mood | cowardly ] [ music | tori amos : silent all these years ] I really hate letting my dog out at nights. I'm always waiting to open my door to find Mr. Scary-Ass Creepy-Leering Fang Man peering at me from the other side of the screen. Indubitably he'd grin at me, his big, horsy teeth stained yellow, and he'd say something terribly cliché like, "Hello, little girl. Do you want to come out and play?" His voice would be low and raspy, the tell-tale sign of someone who's been smoking since they were about eight. The beauty of an over-active imagination. Of course I'm also the girl who's convinced that there are mass murderers lurking in my living room as soon as we turn out all the lights and I usher my sleepy mother off to bed. I hardly ever turn the lights on when I'm running around the house at 3 a.m., and the fact that the house is kind of old and naturally creaky, and the vines outside of the window like to tippity-tap on the glass while I'm alone in the dark makes late night tv watching an adventure. I still get that childish thrill of fear and panic when I turn off the lights in the basement. I imagine great donnie darko-esque monster, killer-bunnies lying in wait, and giant, hairy tarantulas with foot-long, razor sharp fangs waiting to pounce on me from the laundry room. That's when I squeak and bolt up the stairs as quickly as I can, slamming the door behind me. I'm fearless when it comes to walking down a poorly lit street alone in the middle of the night. But when it comes to monsters, killer bunnies, and toothy men trolling the immaculate boulevards of the country club area I'm a total chickenshit. 6 | comment

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