August 2010
1 post
the window, insomnia, and other stories
I am trying to close the window. It is just past 5:00am and the morning’s traffic is rushing below our apartment and it’s just cold and just loud enough that good god, why won’t this window close. Alas, no luck. Wide open to the urban elements, and to the Bay fog, and to my sleepless frustration.
I was going to say that I seemed to have caught my fellow’s insomnia but...
July 2010
1 post
dear blog,
Carpal Tunnel is a biatch.
hugs,
L
ps: oh. um, grateful for advil? ice packs? wrist braces? OH i know. Chinese Food! Unrelated, but delicious.
June 2010
11 posts
pride (and the sniffles)
My body is so awesome at telling me to slow down. Really. I feel like my sinuses are one of those beeping alarms that go off in new cars when you’re backing up and get too close to another car or something. I get my engine going and I’m rearing to go and my sinuses are like BEEP BEEP BEEP.
Yeah.
Beep (sniff).
So I’m a wee under the weather, which is a shocker to well, no one,...
tea, please.
How many times can a girl mention English Breakfast Tea in a blog good-GAHD! Ok no, this isn’t about tea.
This is about Kara. Say hi to Kara.
Kara deserves an ode, but because I’m honoring the rule of five minutes HI I LOVE YOU, I’m just going to say this: I love Kara. Because she exudes kindness, warmth, energy, and soul - yes. But also because we were at the hipsteriest...
blueberry! jam! homemade!
SENT. In the MAIL. From NEW ORLEANS. From one of my most favorite people in the world. Thanks, Alison!
(Not pictured: English Breakfast Tea.)
In the simple things,
L
cryptic joy
Hmm, how do I write this and not go, you know, straight to hell. Hmm.
Today I received some very interesting news. I have to say that sometimes the universe delivers karma in the most beautiful package, all tied up with a bow, and even when it’s like, “Wow that’s terrible” it can also be, you know, “Muwahahahahaha.” Yeah. Ok.
So something happened. I am NOT...
sound the alarm
For over a year, my fellow has been getting up earlier than any person in their right mind three days a week. It was for work, and for a program that he started and really loved… but that has all but made him a crazy sleep-deprived pile of exhaustion for wayyyyy too long. So today was his last morning. Not forever, ideally, but for a good long while. So that he can remember what it feels...
yes. now. (redux)
Remember a month or so ago when I was talking about actually recognizing where I am, and being thankful for the present? Yes, now.
Today was another one of those days. I spent the day scoring my dear friend’s short film (made in the last two days for a 48 hour film contest), and now I’m off to a show which I’ll be reviewing for another article this week. I am deeply grateful...
dad.
I was going to write about the banana bread I just made, but realizing that tomorrow is Dad’s Day, banana bread was vetoed for dad. You hear that, Dad? I vetoed my gratitude for banana bread. This is a big deal.
Where do I begin. How do you swallow a love so grand and type it out in minuscule Garamond (that’s this font, apparently - yes, I looked it up). How do you even begin to...
HI I LOVE YOU
Ok, so you know when you haven’t talked to a good friend in a long time, and you keep putting off the conversation because you want to find time for it — like, real time, time to catch up and ask questions and be all up in each other’s lives again? And because this real time doesn’t really exist, the call keeps getting delayed, and before you know it you haven’t...
playtime.
Sunday morning, the weather is sweet…
Yeah, I just quoted a Bob Marley song. And I’m in the Bay Area. And it’s summertime. Sigh. But there are reasons for such stereotypes, you know? One reason has to be this morning — perfect weather, perfectly quiet, and I woke up before my fellow and my zoo, which allows for my most coveted early morning writing hour… that I...
in the meantime
So many lovely things afoot. So much to be grateful for. I look forward to resuming this here blog with regularity in the next week, when things calm the flip down a bit in my world. In the meantime…
bliss.
Living easy,
L
the kiddie pool
Remember last week when I posted about the identity of being busy? And how much I hate that? Yeah. I do. That being said, I’m freakin’ busy. I suppose this comes with “employment.” It’s all quite lovely and exciting work — it is, it is, it really is — but it comes with a somewhat drastic shift in the pace I’ve kept for the last six months....
May 2010
24 posts
WatchWe should all be doing this more often. Maybe with more, you know, “success” in keeping the kite in the “air,” but more often indeed. Hope you all had lovely Sunday Fundays…
Up to the highest height,
L
peonies
You are such a delight. Antique and romantic and springy. Trader Joes is ripping me off but dangit, you are worth it.
Goose is a fan as well.
For the record, I am all over this iPhone app, the “Hipstamatic,” which is a camera setting that makes my photos look far more artistic, vintage, and gorgey than I am capable of taking normally.
Thank you peonies, thank you Hipstamatic,...
day in the neighborhood
I took myself to the movies today. It was crazy raining and I’m still feeling rather celebratory and the vast majority of my friends have day jobs and so there I went, to the theater just down the street, off to a matinee on a Thursday afternoon.
When I came out the sky looked like this:
Sigh. So FOG, am I.
Hearts and rainbows,
L
“If nothing else, please remember, no matter how dark things get, no matter how...”
– Mike Dooley, Notes from the Universe
I have spent the last year in the middle of one big Learning Experience. I say this in the voice of my mother, who coined the phrase in our family to mean, basically, Crap That Sucks. I suppose at one time or another it was her attempt to teach me that there was always something to learn, even out of — and maybe especially out of — experiences that were less than ideal. Tough...
really? REALLY?
I am in the middle of writing another post — I am, I promise, I’ll post it in just a sec — but HALL & OATES are on the American Idol finale.
Really? Really?
Here’s to Mr. Hall and Mr. Oates, “You Make My Dreams Come True” getting stuck in my head for the rest of the evening, impromptu dance parties in my living room, anything that makes my fellow sing,...
teen spirit
There was this funky smell permeating my life last week. Metaphorically speaking. Yeah. It started while I was in Massachusetts and followed me back to Oakland… kind of familiar, kind of musty, kind of like maybe at one point it had been something good but now seems past its expiration. Warm flat soda still sitting in your car cupholder, a week old, in the summertime. Sweet, stale,...
as a bee!
Confession: I kind of hate when people talk about how busy they are. Not because I don’t want to hear about all of the awesome things that my near and dear are up to, but because I’ve found that we live in a culture of busier-than-thou competition. Conversations turn into lists, lists turn into blurs, blurs turn into one consistent white noise hum that hypnotically chants, this is...
ode to emmy
I didn’t have a ton of girlfriends growing up — something about having an older brother, or hanging in a music crowd, I really don’t know — but I never had that gaggle o’ladyfriends experience that I know many women had. I had a few female confidantes with whom I survived high school, and was otherwise surrounded by dudes. Not in a cool-popular way. More like...
mass-a-choo-setts
I’m absolutely terrifically stupendously grateful for the trip that I just made to Massachusetts. I had the loveliest of times and returned to the land of oak feeling refreshed, recharged, and re…mixed (in a good way, not in a crappy dance-jam way). Jetlag — and perhaps a rockin’ concert I attended last night with little time for a disco-nap — has me beat… not...
plbthhh
I actually extended my trip, loves. So I’m just flying through the air today (instead of Monday) and I’ll get back to my daily FOG tomorrow. I promise. Pinky swears and crossing hearts and hooty-hoo.
In the meantime:
This post Bodine wrote yesterday is applicable to my life these days as well — and it’s damn funny (as is also my life these all days).
Vote for...
3 tags
the outernets.
Friends! As you may recall, this here blog was inspired by my dear friend Bodine and her radically awesome blog, radically grateful. I noticed in my daily stalking of Bodine’s work that she does not write on days that she is out of town — she’s never explained this, other than being unsure about internet-connectivity and whatnot whilst abroad — but simply says a quick...
everything's amazing...
but nobody’s happy. (<—click to get to youtube of Louis C.K. Yourtube won’t let me embed so I’m redirecting you, but y’all come back now, ya hear?)
Ok, a few things:
1) This clip is from awhile ago, but it still makes me happy, and yesterday’s miracle of flight and my admitted anger that my personal in-flight television wasn’t working all 360...
grounded.
Ok, I get that there are major laws of physics in play here, but flying pretty much baffles me. Gravity and I don’t really get along (I fall down a lot — sometimes I can mask it as “swagger” — it’s not, I’m just falling) so it seems like I’m really tempting fate to place myself in a situation like, you know, flying on a massive jet a million miles...
yes. now.
This morning I was watching the news and a story came on about a mega-sale that Jetblue Airlines was having — all remaining seats on flights leaving Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were going for 10 dollars. That’s a dollar less than the cheeseburger I had for dinner. That’s $5 more than my happy hour margarita (yes, still drinking those, I’ll let you know when it...
2 tags
oh mama.
For the 27 years we got to hang on this physical plain…
… and the foreverever that we’re hangin’ elsewhere. I am so grateful. Thank you.
I Love You More,
L
leap of faith
I spent the afternoon rehearsing for a gig I have tonight with The Getback, a hip-hop group and artist collective made up of awesomely talented friends of mine. The gig should be a lot of fun because it strikes that wonderful balance of being both casual enough not to make me nervous, but exciting enough to be, you know, exciting. And guess what?
I’M NERVOUS.
I’ve been singing...
2 tags
the rose house
The fellow and I have the distinct pleasure of living in one of the cutest freakin’ neighborhoods in Oakland, and no doubt, the WORLD. Ok, or just Oakland. We’re walking distance to all kinds of cute shops and conveniences, on a street full of diverse families, with neighbors who generally you know, speak to each other. I’ve gotten to know our neighborhood quite well because,...
shaken, not stirred
This blog has actually shifted my way of living. It really has. I not only appreciate the time it takes each day to sit and reflect and write about all that I’m grateful for, but I go through my days thinking about it — I notice. I am more consciously grateful each day. And then I get to sit here with my fur and my fellow and relate all of it to you (Hi Dad!). It’s quite...
fur good: goose
Ok Goose. Here’s yours.
The fellow and I started talking about getting a cat as soon as we moved in together (coinciding with our landlord’s strict rules to the contrary, of course). As previously mentioned, I grew up with cats and missed the attitude of dismissal and disdain only a cat owner knows and appreciates. Otto was just too damn friendly, after all. I needed some fur...
3 tags
winning.
Were you ready for the fur good: goose edition? I know, I know, it’s not fair for Otto to be the sole published pet of my household, but today’s topic is dominating my world more than fur. If that’s even possible.
Tonight the Sharks won the third game of the second round playoffs. In sudden death overtime. What am I talking about. The Sharks are the Bay Area’s hockey...
2 tags
fur good: otto
There’s been a lot going on lately — something’s in the air or something. Transitions. Comings and goings and startings and endings and realizings and you know, carbon-buildings in my engine. Ings. There are many things to be grateful for within all of these -ings, but I have to pause and pay hommage to two particular pillars of consistency in my life. Introducing, Otto...
walkin' on sunshine
Today, and this weekend in general, the Bay Area was blessed with exquisite weather. The kind of weather one thinks of when California climates are discussed, but that actually rarely exists here in the Bay (see “f—king fog”). Bee-oo-tee-ful. It makes you want to go outside and convene with nature and exercise and eat popsicles and garden and, you know, kayak. Right.
...
5 tags
just a day at the beach
So I didn’t go to LA. Here’s my email explanation to my Dad:
“I did not go to LA — of all things, my car actually died and I took it in and $300 later they said I had carbon build-up on the hooty-hoo and had to remove the hooty-hoo and replace it with a new hooty-hoo. Apparently this is because I don’t use premium gas. Go figure. So although it’s fine...
disco-nap!
I am so busy with awesome things to be grateful for that I have very little time to write this post! I am about to go to a show! And what I could really use is a disco-nap! Much like a cat-nap, a disco-nap is a short snooze one takes in preparation for an evening on the town. At a disco. Or, you know, elsewhere.
I don’t have time to take a disco-nap but I wish I did. I am grateful...
April 2010
10 posts
there's a lesson in this
I think the orchid came from my mom’s house. I think. I think I inherited it, along with several other house plants and cacti and boxes of stuff that I haven’t been able to sort through yet. The orchid had four amazing white-purple blossoms and was stunning in the way that most orchids are — startling, almost, that such outrageous beauty exists in nature. They withered at...
3 tags
such stuff as dreams are made on
There’s a reason I have a fondness for shows like American Idol and Project Runway — not just because they are trashy and addictive and, um, trashy — but because they showcase people going after their dreams. And when that finale roles around and whatsherface is crowned with a record deal or a fashion line hooty-hoo, I’m a big blubbering mess along with the rest of...
“I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.”
– Caskie Stinnett
Cabin fever, for me, is never gradual. It comes on suddenly, with a freakin’ vengeance — one day I’m fine and the next I’m suffocating and clawing my way out of town, one discount travel site at a time. The last few days I’ve been trying to work out a sooner-than-later east coast adventure, which may indeed happen in the next two months, but dang. That is not soon...
splash of soy, sprinkle of sugar
English Breakfast tea, how do I love thee, let me count the ways. You wake me up. You smell divine. You are the thing I look forward to every morning. You cost less than coffee and make me seem distinguished (right? right?!). You are a family tradition. You are best enjoyed in my mama’s blue speckled mug, splash of soy, sprinkle of brown sugar.
Most of all, no one in my house likes...
sunday funday
I have always suffered from the Sunday drearies — something about knowing I have to return to work or school the next morning tends to damper my best efforts to enjoy this latter half of the weekend. Jesus and I don’t really, you know, hang — on this day or others — so my childhood Sunday morning ritual was contained to praying to the almighty Sunday Comics. Uplifting...
he changes the soap.
I live with a really, really wonderful fellow. Aside from his striking good looks (which he, you know, is aware of) he is awesomely kind, generous, funny, and smart. And funny. And handsome. And funny.
I know relationships are difficult. Or so I hear. But it’s pretty wonderful to realize, daily, how much more difficult it could be, and how much less difficult it is, with my...
dust on/off the noggin
Today I’m meeting with two hilarious and brilliant friends to discuss plans for a possible webisode series featuring one of said friends and me, directed by other said friend. The premise is quite funny, if I do say so myself, and will allow us to get some more of our music out onto the interwebs. Hooooowever. The series will call for some, you know, acting. This shouldn’t be a...
starting somewhere
I am imagining the beginning of a song that I have not yet written — all I have is the bass line, and some semblance of melody, and a feeling about the beat. Not an idea, or phrasing even, but just a feeling — a facial expression, an I’d-like-to-bop-my-head-like-this. This beginning has been swirling around my brain for just over a week, and I know I’m nearing the...