she was getting some peppers

i just saw on the news that rodney king was shot today.

seriously- does that guy have like the world's biggest bad-luck charm stapled to his forehead, or what?

granted, i don't know any of the extenuating circumstances, or much of his history [except the basics], but i mean- c'mon world. even if he has the worst karma eveeeer, i feel this might be a bit much on a universal scale, to say the least.

someone to come home to

i'm on my hands and knees, the floor cold against my flesh, sweat sticking my shirt to my spine and suffering from what i internally refert to as "slime gloves" when i force myself to pause and actually, truthfuly, assess the situation:

it's eleven a.m. on a wednesday in late november, and i- a diploma-welding university gradute- am wearing old ratty shorts and an even rattier sweater, and am scrubbing away at the macktack under my kitchen sink.

i am forced to admit that while this may not be the exact utilisation of of my degree envisaged upon my embarking to uni, it was quite satisfying in its own way.

i mean, no more scary caked on goop under the sink. who doesn't love that?

believe in me

when anna lets me into her house, i'm instantly assaulted by the oldness of the place. and the terribly almost neon yellow-colour of the paint that washs over every vertical surface in the house.

soon i'm introduced to a four different roomates- rocky, and robin, and joey, and some dude from the army who is truly built like two triagles, each point sharply pronounced and a neck that really, is more than a little frightening. we put on music and all dance around one another, making dinner and banana smoothies and tea in a kitchen that rivals my own for dysfunctionality in terms of space and set up.

two bottles of wine and a spaghetti dinner later, anna and i bundle up and search out a movie, settling on the painted veil with edward norton and naomi watts.

beautiful, but it probably would have been much more enjoyable if we had paid attention and not made horrible jokes the entire way through, jokes about cholera and female independance in the nineteen twenties and catholic sweat-shops and everything else -including canned oranges- under the sun.

walking home takes longer than i expect- every surface is covered in a fine sheen of ice, reflecting little noises and making even the slightest movement uncertain. cars slide precarious through intersections and the streets ring with the silence of a city that's long abed.

the moon was full, and despite being far from the dark sky expanses i'm used too, the stars still sang.

as we are all together

peter brought me chicken stock yesterday that, oddly, smelled of almonds so intensely when i opened the container that i seriously thought that i was holding amaretto in my hands.

today is the first day of snow. i'm going to dig out my tights and my winter coat and venture forth to the market in search of a small gift for kate's birthday. i've made a cake and have a dinner planned and bread is rising in the kitchen.

i've missed this.

and i miss my limestone.

i put this moment- over here

my legs are cold and there's buses rattling my house every twenty minutes or so.

i forget, when i'm not here, the kind of magic that this place has. espeially in the sky. the sky here is big, so much bigger than what i'm used to. home is where the sky only makes up half of what your eye can take in- the rest is dominated by limestone bones and deep cold water. here, though, the sky stretches beyond everything, clouds whipping through one another faster than anything.

i saw thousands of geese and blackbirds driving north.

and sun dogs.

every time i come here i see sun dogs. i wonder- i always wonder- if this will continue to be the case.

i been waiting on this my whole life

we found a real ham shoulder in the grocery store today.

i boiled it and baked it and we had it for dinner and i was instantly swept back to sunday dinners at my gramma's house. ham and scalloped potatos and peas. she always poured a can of ginger ale over the ham right before serving it.

i wish finding a shoulder of ham- a real shoulder, i mean- wasn't such a hard thing to do. so old fashioned, and so full of memories, everyone needs some good ham once in awhile.

[god, did i really just write an entire blurb on how awesome ham is? seriously].

see the lights go down

i was filling out a survey on a website i frequent quite a bit and have to wonder:

once you've seen a tribute band, can you ever go back?

i'm inclined to say no. even if said tribute band was hilariously awesome.

fireworks over lake michigan

my mind keeps wandering to summer.

one day, andre and i had to clean bathrooms. not that this was out of the ordinary. it was more that the bathrooms had become so ordinary that the thought of spraying down another toilet or wiping another mirror had reached beyond unbearable- it was pure torture.

earlier in the day, we had been discussing television. hbo came up, and, inevitably, the series that start there and eventually make thier way to mainstream television [or not]. we talked about deadwood especially.

and the language.

every other word on that show is cocksucker. the cocksuckin' idiots cocksuck every cocksuckin' thing they can. [seriously. it's awesome].

so, when delegated to spray more toilets and wipe more mirrors, they became the cocksuking mirrors. and the mother-fucking cocksuckin' toilets. and eventually, it became hard to breathe, between the laughter and the noxious fumes of that wicked bleach solvent we used on everything.

i have to admit that a very small part of me misses those kind of days.