Monday, April 30, 2012

{guys, remember how hip i am?}

this weekend was good. there was a party and some shopping and some music and some baking and some oh henry ice cream. oh! also: i found a bunch of temporary tattoos in the piano bench and when barclay got home he found me in the bathroom putting every single one on. then i proceeded--because, guys, i have a blog--to take those awesome self-portraits where it's like, "oh, hey, i was just writing some deep poetry in my day timer here and someone happened to walk in and take this poetic shot of me with my tattoos showing." because those are the kinds of things you need to do to keep your readers happy, and also to remind them about how hip you are. Photobucket Photobucket {the theme of the party was roller derby and i felt like i needed a sleeve tattoo. surprisingly, a lot of temporary butterflies don't look all that tough. my roller derby name was SHUDDER-FLI. remember how hip i-- yeah, no. no. forget it.}

Friday, April 27, 2012

{part 23}

{parts 12345678, 9 10,  1112 1314, 151617181920, 2122}

am i ready to leap
is there peace beneath 
the roar of the forth road bridge?
on the northern side 
there's a fife of mine
and a boat in the port for me

i'll float away
down the forth, into the sea

there are two bridges from edinburgh, over the fjord called the firth at forth, to fife. there is a space beneath one of them where no one is and where you can sit in the fog for a bit and feel like you don't actually exist at all, if you like that sort of thing.
Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucketbecause when the fog rolls in, it rolls all the way in; so thick you might think you were on fire if you weren't so soggy and cold. it falls apart and you see the tops of things, but they're gone again just as quick. and the sky becomes white and the birds disappear. Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket

Thursday, April 26, 2012

{cork journal}

i read something today. i read that, and i quote, "regular journaling strengthens immune cells, called T-lymphocytes. Other research indicates that journaling decreases the symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. Pennebaker believes that writing about stressful events helps you come to terms with them, thus reducing the impact of these stressors on your physical health." {source}

 this is very good news because i like writing and i can always use some extra t-lymphocytes in my life. i wonder if blogging does the same thing? in either case, i decided yesterday that i needed a pen and some paper in my life once more. and then i decided that my journal needed to fulfill a short list of requirements {interesting looking, some sort of closure, pretty pages, flexible spine, under 5 bucks, etc}, and promptly became discouraged in my journal search.

the ones that had closures were 20 bucks, the ones that were $3 were ugly, the ones that had pretty pages had boring outsides, etc.

 boo and hiss to the journal makers!

 so i gathered some supplies and a friend, and got right to work making my own. i decided i wanted a journal with a cork front so that i could pin notes and pictures to it when i got board of it. we stuck paisley in the corner {she was fine with it} and began cutting and gluing.
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it's pretty self-explanatory. cut, glue, and so on. Photobucket
and so on. Photobucket and so forth? Photobucket cork board is dirt cheap and so were these cheapy notebooks we found in the clearance bin. the whole thing ended up costing about 5 bucks. {and aren't those thumbtacks the sweetest things? i can attach notes and pictures and food...you know, whatevs.}Photobucket what is better than dirt cheap and exactly what you wanted? Photobucket now, if you don't mind, i need to bulk up on t-lymphocytes. Photobucket

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

{let's play a game}

ok.
the name of the game is profile pictures. 

rules: 
1) post your first ever facebook profile picture.
2) pick one photo {only one} from each consecutive year up to the present one. 
3) explain.

*****************

first ever profile picture, 2007 {it says 2005 on the timestamp, but i didn't get facebook til 2007, so.} this is kaiden. my family does foster care, and kaiden is one of my, like, 20 or so honorary brothers and sisters. the day that social services took him away, i was incredible hulk upset. sweetest kid EVER. we still keep in touch, and i keep his picture on my keychain. 

2008: megan & me. the year after college, i moved to a little city that i used to hate but don't anymore. i made some new friends in the produce section of the grocery store and hung out with them all the time afterward. most of them were from england, and i don't think i'll ever see them again. also note how at this point in my life i made every effort to wear every piece of jewelry i owned all at the same time. i had 6 or 7 hoop earrings jammed in each ear and 10 necklaces on at all times. why?

2009: the year of our engagement & wedding & california honeymoon. a very good year. do you not love my mom's dress? i'd wear it grocery shopping if i could. wedding planning hint: paying 50 bucks for alterations on an old dress is cheaper and funner than paying 3000 bucks for a new one. TRUTH.

2010: we were taylor swift & andrew schwab for halloween. sadly, no one could tell that we were dressed up. 

2011: a reunion with old friends. crystal, karz, rachie, & janet. this group of girls hurts my face. you know those people who make you laugh and smile too much and then you go home and look in the mirror and discover new lines around your mouth? 

2012: here's where we're at now. me and my favourite abandoned shop window. i love this shop window. i want to have it. i feel like no one appreciates it the way i do. 

your turn, blogosphere.

UPDATE:
alice played
nova played
a charmed hour played
emma played
holly played
cheryl played
joni played
suzanna played

Monday, April 23, 2012

{emo 2}

today i feel like this. 

Friday, April 20, 2012

{my second ever vlog}

today i did a road trip all by myself, because sometimes it's just so good to drive off down the highway with a good cd and some introverted feelings hugging you like a second seatbelt. i ended up in the small small city of moose jaw where i met up with my friend hannah, and this week, i crashed her crash. that's right, i'm in the vlog.

normally, i leave the vlogging up to hannah, because she is self-assured and has a really great vlog voice, but today i punched my shy, inner vlog-resistant self in the throat and stood on its chest for a good 6 or 7 minutes.

  "what now, america?" -snooki

{emo}




Thursday, April 19, 2012

{what happened to the crayons?}

just in case anyone was actually wondering what became of these crayons...
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i pencil sharpened them to death, and then pressed the shavings between pieces of waxed paper with an iron...
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then i cut them into hearts...
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then i sewed all of the hearts together...
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and now they hang in the front window, casting funny shadows on the walls.

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Monday, April 16, 2012

{part 22}

{parts 12345678, 9 10,  1112 1314, 151617181920, 21}

it was the morning of day 11. my socks were soggy and there was sun in my eyes and i wasn't awake enough to know where i was, but not asleep enough not to care. without looking, i flailed an arm out to either side to make sure i hadn't lost barclay. my left hand connected solidly with something wooden, and my right found the side of his bearded face. oh, good. ouch, too though.

i was wearing most of what i'd been wearing all day yesterday minus my jacket which, with a bit more arm-flailing, i discovered lying in a puddle by my head. i cracked open an eye and stared up at the sky and the birds in it.

the night before had been long, just almost past the point of being adventure and right on the verge of being a royal pain. after finding the bus stop closed for the night, we'd dragged our baggage further down the street until we thought we might be close enough to uncle stephen's house to pay for a taxi with our last two bills. the next disheartening thing of the evening was the call to the taxi company.

"hi, can i get a taxi? i'm at the corner of granton and ferry."

"yes sir, what's the address?"

"well, we're not at a house. we're just at the corner of granton and ferry. in front of the {name i can't remember} church."

"that's not an address. we need a real address if we're going to send out a taxi."

*click*

that made me mad. few things make me mad, but one of them is being hung up on by taxi companies when i'm lost in a foreign city in the middle of the night. i just didn't know it until that moment.

in the dark, we wandered along until we found a house that didn't have vines covering the already-hard-to-see house numbers, called the taxi people back, gave them "our address."

we didn't know stephen's address either, which the taxi driver didn't love. of course {sorry}. but we didn't have enough money to get all the way there anyway, so we had him drop us off at a bus stop in the general vicinity, and walked some more.

it might have been 2, or 3, or 4 in the morning when we arrived at our destination. we fished around in the designated key hiding spot and let ourselves in to the darkened house. we'd been told we could have the attic and that there would be beds ready for us up there any time we needed, so we tiptoed through the hallway, up stairs, around a corner, and up a ladder to a small room where we crashed into the nest of blankets like a couple of airplanes with our wings chopped off beneath the glow of the moon through the skylight.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

{caine's arcade}



i wish i lived closer--i'd cough up the $2 for a fun pass.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

{up and down}

i was sitting on the floor between the filing cabinet and the kitchen table yesterday afternoon, surrounded by newspapers and files and envelopes, digging and sorting and throwing away. i had this song by kathleen edwards on repeat, probably the fifth listen in.

A Soft Place To Land by Kathleen Edwards on Grooveshark



the sun comes into the room at a different slant this time of year. it makes faint patterns on everything and warms up a little circle space on the floor for me to sit. 

so there i sat, digging and sorting and throwing away; old bank statements, a newspaper clipping i'd saved, a user's manuel for a camera i threw away a long time ago. my phone beeped twice and when i picked it up, i saw that i had two text messages from two different friends waiting, both sent at exactly 3:31; one announcing a birth, and one announcing a death. 

i was glad i was alone, because i wasn't sure what to do with my mouth. 

how do you turn the corners of your mouth up and down at the same time? and will your heart blow up if it tries too hard to feel too many things all at once? 

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

{5 motivational speeches i HATE}

motivational speech: a message written to convince listeners that they can succeed.

i don't mean to be a debbie downer, but i have to tell you this: there are certain motivational speeches that are on my little list of pet peeves, and they seem to be everywhere lately, and my eyes are rolling almost out of their sockets and my forehead hurts. {from all the scrunching and scratching and eye-rolling.} they don't need a lot of preamble or explanation, so i'm almost just giving them to you straight. if you disagree, that's cool. i bet pet peeves are called pet peeves because if everyone shared them, they would be called communal peeves or shared peeves or something like that, and would include things like war and nickelback. but the point is not that.

5 MOTIVATIONAL SPEECHES I HATE

1. follow this simple diet/plan/exercise regimen/drink this/don't eat that/whatever and you can lose 20 pounds and have a flat belly and look like a swimsuit model.  {if we all had the same exact body type, metabolism, schedule, genes, and access to cheap, fresh food and a gym, sure. maybe.}

2. don't care about what other people think about you. {to an extent, sure. but there's also something to be said for being respectable & respecting yourself, not riling people up over stupid stuff, having a reputation for being trustworthy, kind, etc. others' opinions shouldn't consume you, but i think it's good and even healthy to consider how you're presenting yourself to them.}

3. you can wear whatever you want as long as you wear it with confidence, and you'll look great. {i've read this on more than a few blogs. it kind of goes with number 1. there are certain people who can wear whatever they want and it looks great. the whole dressing like a little girl/grandmother thing that's in style right now? when i try to do that, i look like i'm actually a little girl or a grandmother, no matter how much confidence i go out with. THE TRUTH.}

4. the only thing that matters is that you love yourself. {do you know what kind of chaos would ensue in a kindergarten classroom if you told the kids that? do you really think it changes that much as we grow up? i feel like, growing up, i heard over and over, "the world doesn't revolve around you, suzy." and now as an adult i keep hearing, "it's all about you and your feelings and your rights, etc." confusing.}

5. follow your dreams. don't go where the path leads; go instead where there is no path and blaze a trail. shoot for the moon; if you miss you'll land among the stars! BE NOT NOBODY! LIVE, LAUGH, DREAM! cheese. shoosh.

in short, a lot of motivational speeches are like hot chocolate made completely out of chocolate syrup warmed up in the microwave. i prefer mine made with milk and cocoa and a little, tiny bit of sugar, because a little sweetness is good, but too much sugar rots your teeth out and makes you fat.

'nuff said.

do you have some loathable lines that you've been fed via the internet, magazines, or people? please share.

Monday, April 09, 2012

{part 21}

Olsen Olsen by Sigur Rós on Grooveshark
{parts 12345678, 9 10,  1112 1314, 151617181920}

"you are the happiest-looking couple of people i've seen all day," said the monk.
"thank you," i said. "we are happy." because that was the truth and everything.
"i'm a monk," said the monk, and he was a monk indeed. he had monkish features and a stack of monk books on his arm. he told us about monk life and then he tried to convert us. unfortunately for him, we don't convert easily--we didn't want to be monks.

we ran into him again, four hours later, as we headed down into the tubes to go home. considering the size of london, i'm not convinced he wasn't following us around because, you know, we just look like we'd make fine monks. we just do.

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we politely declined his monkly appeals, and headed back down under the streets of london for one last tube run. the people down there were not as polite as the serene monk, and barclay kept one arm securely around my shoulders as we pushed through the herd.

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back through the tubes, back into the sun, back into the train station, back onto the train, back to scotland.

in that order, but not all that quick.

we'd been wandering dizzily around the city for about five hours; we'd seen some sights and spent a few dollars on a ring in a charity shop, and that was enough. i'd been feeling a little sick and we were more than ready to go back to edinburgh. we got to the station just a few minutes early, boarded and settled in for a four hour trip on the 250 km/h high-speed train. we'd get back to town at, like, 7:30, and have cheeseburgers. good plan.

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unfortunately, good plans and trains both derail when the track breaks.

i mean, our train didn't derail. we just had to sit there for a thousand years while they fixed that rascally track.

a thousand years. i'm not even exaggerating.

i know because the man across the aisle kept slamming his fist down onto his armrest, cussing at the seat in front of him and making phone calls to everyone he knew about the injustice of having to wait a thousand years for them to fix the track. he made a little scene {even though barclay and i were the only ones around to see it}, and then he made calls to his girlfriend, his mom, his friend {tom}, his other friend {we never did hear his name}, and he made a mean face at the speaker when the conductor apologized for the delay, though i'm sure the conductor was neither responsible for the delay nor could he see out of the speaker. all i'm saying is that the mean face was most likely in vain.

but, a thousand years later, the track was fixed and we were on our way again. the delay wouldn't have bothered us, except that by the time we got back to edinburgh at 11:30 pm {as opposed to the 7 pm that we were expecting}, the hotel that our things were at had given our rooms to someone else and we were given our bags and the proverbial "kick to the curb."

wahoo.

at this point, we decided to hike up the road to the bus stop, and see if we could find our way in the darkened city to barclay's uncle's house {he'd told us where the spare key was in case we needed a place to stay in a pinch. and this, i would say, was a pinch. it was quite a walk from the hotel, but we didn't have enough cash on hand to get a taxi that far, and the restaurant with the atm in it was closed. so we set off into the night, each lugging a backpack and a large suitcase and stopping every two minutes to regrip and catch breaths.

almost needless to say, by the time we hit the bus stop an hour later, the night buses had stopped running for the evening. because, you know, of course. i sat on my suitcase and laughed a little. barclay, who felt the weight of responsibility for my safety and comfort a bit more, smiled, but didn't laugh at all. we were lost and i was sick and barclay was tired and it started to rain and it was all that monk's fault, i think.