death by gin

I'm not having a very good morning. I could feel the scowl on my face the entire walk to work but for some reason couldn't remove it. The train was incredibly slow and I will probably be at work until ten again tonight. But all is not lost.

I sat across from an Asian man on the subway. He had very small hands. I watched as he flipped through a short stack of photographs. I didn't think much of it until he placed them in a respectively small white envelope with about seventeen foreign stamps on the back. For some reason this made me smile. He looked like he missed someone.

mother father

MY MOM IS COMING TO VISIT ME! She booked her flight sometime last week - on a whim. She arrives in 13 days and will stay until February 12th. I have very little time to squeeze the pulp from my sweet 6 months here thus far and build the itinerary for an amazing NYC weekend. Lindsay (my sister in Boston) will be coming down while she's here. Madelaine (the youngest of the three of us) has her classes at USC and she and my incredible father will be taking a rain check.

I CAN'T WAIT!



mamacita- karen



bambino #1 - lindel

xoxo

One of my girlfriends here is quite a trip. The sort that gets manis and pedis on Sundays and Wednesdays (thank you Mickey Avalon) and keeps her roots as blonde as can be. She has a contagious laugh that can be heard all across the office and is very va-va-voom. Her quintessential boyfriend sends her a dozen perfect roses every few weeks and keeps her fingers dipped in Yurman. She goes tanning in Jamaica (and at her Shore house) and has a serious shoe fetish. Lucky for her, she wears a size 10 shoe - and the benefit in this, is they almost always have your size. We like to "Britney Blast" at work when it gets close to 4 o'clock - to help us get to the end of the day. And sometimes, we even bring out Miley Cyrus before breakfast. Perez has become our mutually close friend and when I glance over the 4 foot cube wall that separates the two of us, I almost get the feeling that we're having an LC/Whitney moment from an episode of The Hills. It would be quite a challenge to get through the workday without several people I can think of off the top of my head - Megs, Brit-Brit and Perez: ex oh ex oh. Teehee!

i didn't write this

this was written by an acquaintance of mine. a wildly entertaining socialiate lion-tamer and documentary artist. in my ignorance, i was unaware his talents extended past photography. but they do, and i am very impressed. i'm positively mad about "thick-as-your-head-gravy". enjoy. :)

"Here in NYC we have Biscuits, Chicken parm, Steaks as-big-as-your-head, Bratwurst matched with real german lager, Cornbread, Mashed potatoes with thick as-your-head-gravy, BBQ ribs (Carolina/Texas style), Spring rolls, REAL chinese food, Cucumber sandwiches, Pizza till 5am, Chicken Cordon Bleu, Shit loads of Seafood, Grilled cheese with tomato, Spicy fries with cranberry ketchup, Hot-wings with ranch, Chicken tikka masala you can order from a taxi cab window, Somali food that you eat with your hands and shots of Gazpacho you purchase with your lips. I'd love to live in another city that offers so much variety in food! ...and served as late as New York does!"

the rain is different there

I could barely see tonight. It reminds me of that salt lady, “when it rains it pours”. Well, usually it just rains. But today it poured. I felt like I was trudging through the downpour, and I could even feel my calves hurting. But in reality, my car tires were doing all the work.

Today when I got up, I decided it was going to be a great day for my rain-boots. But typical me, I changed my mind. For some reason, this monsoon weather was just too much for my cute, puddle-happy wellies. Sometimes I don’t understand myself. Or maybe I just don’t understand my way of thinking in the early mornings. Early morning thinking is always skewed.

It you sit there and listen to the rain, you can tell what kind of mood it’s in. I think it’s angry right now. It hammers down on my roof as if I discarded it there as an outcast. The wind adds a little something to it. Like a whistle, it blows until it turns into an eerie howl. I can hear its voice straining and getting tired. Slowly, she calms down to a drummer’s beat. I think I could take a small river boat out in the streets right about now, but I’ll wait to see what happens. From my bedroom window, I can see things flowing into the gutters. Debris and cigarette butts litter the streets and float along more rushed than they would prefer.

Finally, she calms to a few sprinkles. It seems like the water rushing off the roof is stronger than the water falling from the sky. Then all of a sudden, silence.

a few things you might not care to know about me

• i've been bitten by a squirrel - twice.
• my two sisters and i were home-schooled from 1st-8th grade
• growing up, my mom read us charles dickens novels
• i took piano lessons for 8 years and i'm not sure if i remember how to play
• i have a permanent piece of pencil lead stuck in my left knee
• my kindergarten teacher told me to stop reading the words ahead of the class and guess the pictures
• did i mention i was home-schooled most of my life?
• i sang at my grandfather's funeral
• one of my ultimate goals is to be on the cover of ad age
• i failed psychology 101, my freshman year at USC
• i started going to class 2nd semester freshman year at USC
• when i was a child, i made up bedtime stories for my little sisters - i creatively called it "storytime"
• for some reason - my stories were always about poor people
• watching hot air balloons from my bedroom window in Boise, Idaho was my favorite
• ask me sometime about a really great oxymoron poem i've memorized
• my hometown in South Carolina = population 3,000
• we live next door to the mayor
• one time he caught us throwing a party while my parents were out of town
• and he didn't tell
• and that's the truth.

sleeping lessons

What a facade my lofty expectations have been all this time. I need, I want, I like. The brilliant plumes decorating my fantasy life and spoken desires are most simply an illusion to mask my inner fears. Fear that I am a dependent in this world. I am screaming for freedom from this curse - but repeatedly catch myself before the release. Why? Dependency is best friends with vulnerability. You can't have my emotions - they are locked up deep and dark within the cold cavern that is the physical being we all are. The dust we come from will turn to dust again, and the little time we have on this earth fights heroically against the ground that wants us back. This grim grip of reality results in my own self-appreciation and indulgence. Be beautiful, be young, be famous, be rich. Materialism is simple. Emotional involvement is not. At what point do you let go? When you wake up and realize that the culmination of everything you've been searching for lies in a lonely collection of Fendi bags on your closet floor? Maybe. Or maybe (before it's too late) you stop vainly searching for glossy new Louis' that don't exist - draw the line for emotional bliss, and embrace it. I am quite sure I'm evolving into someone with a backbone. And to me, this is very good news. The Shins say it best..."eviscerate your fragile frame, and spill it out in the ragged floor".