"Nathaniel, you know there are three things I love in life.
Money,
the pleasures that money affords me,
and you."

-Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl (yes I watch that show, whoops.)

There on the other side of the court yard was him. And for 45 seconds, I pretended not to notice, but suddenly, I am standing in front of him acutely aware of yes how good I look in neon and the way his tattoos stood out brightly in the shade. I had an italian hoagie ($2.95, and a cup of coffee $1.56) and I look down at where he is sitting and say, "Hello, how are you." And he says to me, "Rachel, I can see your headache hasn't gone away, and it probably never will," and I smile because he just knows me so well, but I don't have time to spend the rest of my life with him, as he is pushing up his glasses on his nose. "I have to get to Biblical Poetry and its legacy," I say, holding the king james plus apocrypha. "But later on," and I nod, and he nods.
Sometimes it is easier to have love if the leaves would fall off the tree so I could wear a hoodie.

A moment happened today, which was just like all the moments when I first sold my soul to Starbucks 14 months ago.
I had too much coffee.

Sometimes this is what it takes to survive, but sometimes it is just a drug thing, or an alcohol thing where you say, "I need to feel different in a moment than I do right now," whether or not this gives you chest pains.

Anyway, I was standing at the drive thru for a moment, waiting for the next car, when all tbe sudden it pulls up and I think to myself, that woman has ugly hair. And then I start screaming, because that is not a woman that I am seeing out the window. It is an ugly dog driving the car! And woman-dog is barking at me. So I do another short scream before the woman pulls fully to the window, and I see that is not a dog-woman, that is a woman with Dog on her lap. And I take a step back and scream again.

Well it is at least the hardest I've laughed since Audrey told me the story of peeing on the carpet when she got a puppy.

"One of my favorite things in the world is when I ask somebody if they're hungry, and they are, and I am too."
-Celisse


Today I met Shannon and Tony's beautiful little boy. He looks just like Tony. And they look tired. Celisse and I brought them Este Pizza and smiled a lot and it was mostly like regular hanging out, except there is a baby now, and we were in the hospital. I've never watched anyone pregnant like I have with Shannon, start to finish, so it was pretty great to hold the little guy in my arms and think about how two days ago at Ikea, I put my hand on her belly and felt him kicking at it from the other side of her skin. I can see him running around, future Leonardo. It gives me a little hope in a very unhopeful week.

Things are breakable. And cherishable. And I need to remember my memories.

"I wonder how many smiles I've smiled in my whole life."
-Nick D'Amico

One day we'll wake up the standard. No clicks or malfunctions or sugary drinks. It would be something like the old days but unhindered by tired rubbing of our eyes, and unwritten in Latin.

I don't really know any extra stuff. About anything, or at least what comes to mind. I don't know anything extra about my job, besides what the other people already know, who have been working the same time as me.
It was the same at the bank. I didn't know the extra stuff, unless you were the new guy, then of course I knew more than you. Or the hospital, I really didn't know any extra stuff, unless you were that new girl with freckles and red hair. Then I knew a couple things. She could follow me around and I could teach her a couple things, even though I knew I was quitting shortly, and hadn't told anyone. That is why they let me be a teacher, I guess. But really besides the usual stuff, I wanted to grab that poor little girl by the shoulders and say, "If a man has a blood pressure of 78/45, that is when it is time to tell the nurse. Never forget this, even if you are babysitting and watching Moulin Rouge at 3 in the morning. Go tell the nurse." And this is the part when I would have leaned in closer to tell her, "Don't trust or like Angela. If you hit your head on a TV, she won't even care. Even if you're bleeding." And she would have looked me in the eyes and said, "I have never met an Angela that I liked, yet."

But besides that I never learned extra stuff about how girls do their hair, or what parts of the country are really nice to see, or how to poach an egg the right way. I don't even usually look up my favorite bands to see what they do in their free time, or where they were born and who they are dating. But I hope, when it's all said and done that I know a tiny bit about everything. Like, enough.

"Kaleb, you said you left? And here you are! Are you lying? Are you a liar?"
"Are your pants on fire?"
"Do your parents know about this?"

I have moments, usually near the pastry case, where I forget that I am at work, and I just think that I am always at Starbucks. That I just exist at Starbucks for long periods of time during my week, and for this, money shows up in my bank under my name.

Sometimes it just gets to the point in the day where you say, oh darn it. I've had too much drugs, and where did my arms go?
And then there is a moment where you get a lot of product in your hair, and it looks like you have cut it in the last six months, and you want all your friends to see, but it's gone in five minutes. It was just a dream.
And if you are a happy or nice person where you work, sometimes these people will come back to you. Days on, and you don't know who they are but they are vaguely familiar. A wife will say to her husband, staring, do you know this girl? And he says, "why yes I come through the drive through on Tuesdays and she serves me coffee." And you don't even know that you are part of someone else's schedule, accidentally. Today even, a mediocre woman says to me, "Are you the one who answered the box? My daughter wants you to be her mother. She says she thinks you have a very nice voice and that you would let her get away with things." But either way, when you do all these things by accident, it leads to better tips which is why I'm still here.

I forgot Jessie's laugh. How she sounds a little like Bart from the Simpsons. She came into our store today, and it made me miss a multitude of things, but I miss her silly laugh.

And my questions left over from today are,
where do you go when you are unconscious? It is not sleep, for sure. And it is not dead either. So where is it?

And if you had to die at a store, which one would you pick.

This is how I know, that the twelve year old boy Noah, who lives in my house, is actually my brother and not a baby my parents found in the mountains being raised by wolves.

He comes home from an orthodontist appointment at 8:45am and says to my sisters, let's make mac 'n cheese. And they are saying, Noah, it is nine o clock in the morning, but I almost say, if you make some mac 'n cheese I will eat it.

That, and the fact that I was around when he was born.

This man, today. Well, he hands me his credit card after telling me to write the name "Bob" on his cup. He is maybe 27 or 28 years old, and suddenly I am having a flashback as I run my fingers over the embossed named "Robert" on the plastic card.
I forgot about Bob, and how I sorta thought I loved him.
I forgot about my feelings.
That one day, we showed up on a Sunday, and I'd almost died in the snow on the way to the bank, and there he was, wearing a hoodie, and I'd never seen him wear normal clothes. He was mysterious and secretive, and seeing him wearing normal clothes made me realize all the parts of his life he wasn't telling me from 2:30 to 6:15 each day.

Another day when Tanya insisted to Bob, that he take me as his date to her wedding, and then when I ran to the bathroom instead of letting him ask me to dance.
It was always the wrong timing for me and Bob.

But I think the major reason of our failed romance was that I don't think I will ever like Family Guy.

who led you to this hiding place?

I am standing in so many places, to try to tell you hello.
The things that are already in close proximity to you, become more valuable and your moments with them become less, so that you clutch them so tightly. Your fingernails puncture your palms.

What I mean is, I have been having these moment where I don't feel how hard my heart is beating, I forget breathing, and I am simply alive and in love.

Going to see Neko Case with my dad and family was incredible. Neko is always a good idea. And I get to be back with more family in the green and voluptuous midwest America. I am running, and running farther, and cherishing more.

Also, there is how good God is. How he is love, and we will never understand. How he picks us though we do not pick him. How he holds us and contends for us, and just wants to hear us say hi now and then. And how my arms ache for Him.
I cannot say all the things I mean to say about the trinity, and how warm it is with Him.

the worst limitations on earth

that I will never get to be Russian. Or Jewish. I will never get to live on a small vineyard, and smell the rusty cellar. That I can't go back to being 5 years old, and how magical Barbie commercials were back then.
That I will never get to be a man and marry that cute asian girl that works at Matt's Starbucks. That I won't get to spend a day with Jenny Lewis and make jokes with her. That I won't ever be in the 1800's England, wear those long dresses and meet Mr. Darcy at a ball. (well I met him in a ballroom, but I can't go back there either, it's too long and too late) I won't ever speak French in Morocco or even chop down Amazon overgrowth with a machete.

But I somehow think that heaven will make up for this. That the experience of being with God forever is going to bypass the simple things I will never click out in this life. And I also guess that is why we read.
And then the other thing, is that no girl will ever live exactly in my mind. She won't wake up with 2 hours of sleep and argue with Darrell every morning. She won't shake her hands out cuz they hurt playing my bass. She won't listen to everything on my iPod, I don't think. Sometimes I meet her, close to me, and she is something close to what being in love is, to me.
But she disappears to St. George, or to the arms of a lover.
She disappears to fight global warming.
She smirks, and we are the same but live differently.


What it is, is this: its okay to keep meeting different people who are really the same, and really you, and really lovely.

I worked 11 days in a row without a break, and now, I am sitting here with nothing interesting to say.

I'm starting to think I have carpal tunnel syndrome. I wake up in the night, but my arms are still sleeping.

I am drinking possibly 2 or 3 Passion Tea Lemonades a day.

Celisse and I have exhausted the Redbox, and my arms are tan.

We met often, but never in anything but midnight. And by midnight I mean, it was in the dark.
"Barbara," he says to me. "I do not think you would ever love me if you could see my haircut in the light of day."
But I said, "Kiss me," and I ran my hands through the supposedly uneven hair on top of his head. We would spend the nights doing anything. Once, we sawed open the watermelons in my neighbor's yard. We scarfed them.
One night, we sat on my back porch and smoked 4 packs of cigarettes between us, for a new record. To be honest, I didn't smoke even all of that, but still I loved him.
And even another, we took the dogs for a run, 2 miles in the dark until we lay down in a field of mulch. When I tried to pick up a cactus, he didn't even say anything, and I had serious pain for a day or two.
But that was when I ran into him at the grocery store. I didn't know it was him, but he says to me, "Baby!"
And I looked at him curiously, and he comes up to me close and says low, "Honey, I mean I knew what you looked like. I saw pictures one time."
And here is what I said, I said, "Sid? That is you?" Because, for one, I recognized his voice, although the man in front of me looked like he had seen less better days than a meat grinder and his hair cut. Really. It was as atrocious as he had made it out to be.
So I took a moment to wonder. Does true love come that often? Fanatic love? The kind that makes you run wild in the night and cut down all the tulips in front of city hall when even though there is the Police Station right there? And I said to myself, hell no it does not come that often.
But it was too late because my face had scrunched up into wrinkles that the Botox can't undo, and he sees it with his eyes. Nope, this is not going to work even what with the running wild in the night.
"Sid, what you said. About the haircut," I shrug, clutching my grocery cart even closer as an ocean of bright commercialism in between us.
"I always told you, Barb. And you shoulda called it off months ago," meat-grinder-face walks away slowly from me.
"But Sid," I say to him. "I will always remember the tulips," I giggle. "And breaking into the prosthetics warehouse."
A little smile breaks out into that huge red face of his, and he sighs. But you just don't know til you know.

This is your appropriate and courteous reminder that we're bringing a truckload of something (undiscloseable in this letter) and we need you to fill out the appropriate forms and don't even think about wearing the brown shoes or showing up without the appropriate compensation. You can expect us June 5th, at approximately 4pm, give or take what the traffic lights are doing for us at that time of day. Something unnecessary, but duly appreciated by our truckers is a six pack of literally anything. But that's maybe just if you want to put a smile on their faces. We do not expect to be tipped.

Respectfully yours,

CRSJ INC.

Rachel has a gym membership
Part II
with special guest Celisse Hamburglar

Redbox rentals, cut to commercial break
sleeping in, and recording studio and house church
and basically - commercial break - having a night that makes me remember that everyday is the best day of my life.
Glamor. Semi-charmed kinda life.
But it's the same as it was two weeks ago. I just got happy.

I sat down in the chair, and my neck broke. But I didn't know it was broken until several hours later. If I was ever a kid, I did it in secret.
But this is for the girl that showed up alone to the party.
And this is for that old Native American living alone across America in the oldest bus stations. I see you both hold up your ends of the bargain. Got your distant-photograph-face.
And it tastes like a treadmill.
Continuing walking through weed clouds. Of holding--shoulder jerk and broken arms--the front door open to say goodnight in rainier neighborhoods of I bet you didn't think about lifelessness.
Paint darker pigment into Margaret.

An amazing thing is just feeling good everyday. Or most days.
Not being sick.
Not having a headache.
It was a thing I couldn't remember, and now it is back.

2 days left of school.
Everything is beautiful.

Centrifuge Braking...

I feel like I am just barely getting over a very long weekend (Oh Tuesday I never loved you more) and considering what I have learned after such a huge quantity of Family Time, going to Southern Utah for a day, commercialized Holy Days, and sleeping in forts for more than 3 or 4 nights.

A) In the part of America that I live in, french fries are within walking distance almost always.

B) It is very creepy that Macintosh computers tell you what time it is without warning, and without you asking them. Almost always when you are completely alone, that seemingly innocent Macbook over there (it looks like it's asleep) will suddenly whisper "It's 11 o'clock." And then you scream.

C) I love Jesus, but I hate "Holidays." I'm tired of hype, and really just jealous of everyone else who gets the days off when I have to work.

D) That when I always think I want to move away and start all over, this is completely ridiculous. As homesick as I already am, it would get even worse moving away. I am so grumpy without my friends.

I'm tired from learning. I think I'm going to bed at 7.

You could be thinking "I have my doubts about you," and he could be thinking, "I wonder what's for lunch," but at the end of the day it's still a successful performative when you say "I do."

-My Critical Theory teacher, on successful performatives, and whether or not it matters if you mean what you say (when you're getting married)

"Hey. I was raised by men.



And my mom."

-Audrey

Cute spoon from the Pho restaurant we always go to. It makes me hungry just looking at the picture.

"From time to time I show up in myself just long enough for people to know they are not in the room alone. Usually, these are people who expect something from me--a near future, a not-too-distant future. What I tell them is limited to the people I have already had myself married against. Everything I say is to the best of my knowledge and next to nothing. It comes nowhere close."

-Gary Lutz, Stories in the Worst Way

How Tracy Jordan is affecting my life.

Gertrude. Norma. Maude. Beatrice. Bernice. Judy.

I'm bored from six days of drive through so I just go through names. Only one guy called me on it.
"Welcome to Starbucks, my name is--Maude. What can I get for you?"
"Your name's not Maude."
"Why not?"
"That's too old. And you laughed."
"Yep."
"You should do stripper names next."

So I did that for a little while too. Next time I think I'll go through all the characters on Lost.
This is what I have amounted to.

thought I was layin' in my garden with my fists deep in soil, but I was stranded on an island, shooting flares at your boat

Sometimes I am driving home, and I think, "Oh I should get coffee in the morning on my way to work."

And then I realize that I work at Starbucks.

"Those trailers depreciate so quickly though, like cars."
"Well you know what Tony, they would still appreciate you."
-Bryan

"Maybe when my hair grows long, I will buy a motorcycle."
"Maybe when your hair is longer you'll realize that we have a son together and stop denying him."
"If I ever stop denying him, I'll become an alcoholic."
"Well if you keep pursuing your dream of being on vh1's Divas Live then of course you'll end up an alcoholic. Stop kidding yourself and grow up already."

-a typical text message conversation with Celisse

I am still dreaming about that Saturday somewhere in the future that I get to sleep in. I am exhausted. I am guilty about stuff, but my hands are clean.

Cords and cables. Pumping cold blood back into my arm.

There are doors.


"Ma'am how was your day? Keep your eyes on my face. I want to help you, if you let me."
cold war kids

On the second thought.

Probably like, two months ago I told all my coworkers that I was going to marry a big fat man who didn't care if I was fat. And then I pursued eating every donut and cinnamon roll in our store that I could get my hands on. I filled cups full of signature hot chocolate and whip cream and let it go up my nose until I felt completely happy.

Two days later when it went straight to my love handles, I called upon Mia St. John and the Skinny Bitches. They helped me get straightened out, and I felt so much better.

And now I am in a place of confusion whether I want to eat an entire chocolate cake by myself, or if I want to run for 3 hours a day until I am high off the seratonin and ibuprofen.

These decisions end up making me take a nap.

Best day ever.

Well not really. But its a really wonderful day and I feel obnoxiously happy and thankful.
I missed the first train this morning, but then it was fine. I got on the next one and played Lego Star Wars for half an hour. I made it to my first class on time, miraculously. Somehow I got all the copies of my story (by the way I wrote a story, and it actually has a happy ending!) made in time to just sit and eat with Kristyn. I even got my school i.d. from the lost and found, so I don't have to pay $20 for a new one. I turned in everything on time, and my teacher ended class talking about Lost.
I got a cup of coffee at my store, and workshopped some papers.

I think you could beat me with a stick, and I would just laugh. I'm deliriously happy for no other reason than that Jesus is good.

what I want
Is to sleep in on a Saturday,
eat steaming hot waffles with so much butter that I could hear my arteries clog themselves up, drink Ethiopian Sun dried Sidamo black at the perfect temperature, read my Bible, and then go back to bed.

I believe in this vision. I just believe its a few more months away.

I was really ready to remember a better you that spoke French, even if I take the bus. Even when I fall asleep with my arm on the thermostat, even when I was crying about the older sentences we'd found so amusing, I mean not crying actually. laughing.

They'd take my arms off first and give them to a girl who wanted to hold her child.
They'd take my legs off next and make some girl walk more miles than before she'd been attacked by a shark.
And then I'd feel really sorry. I'd write them letters and say, I'm sorry you'll get bruises now; never figured that one out. One'd write back and say, "I found the burn on your right arm, where you dropped a pan of hot water. The other'd write back and say, "You have flat feet, but some good shape otherwise."
But that would be the end of it, a farewell to limbs.

And then I'd wake up in a Tim Burton movie, or else South Dakota and make a lot more spelling errors than I use to. Better sentences, more amusing.
I'd put Z's where S's go, like I was British.
I wouldn't eavesdrop or drink lattes.
You wouldn't either.
I'd put a note on my calendar when you're coming back, but forget because I'd drop my phone in a boiling river by accident.
It's okay, for a Wednesday though.

tracing the lines in my face for something more beautiful than is there

I like second-hand smoking best. I was standing behind this kid, in front of the door as he was smoking it down to the end, and it smelled rich. Not like the smoke left in your clothes or car. It was smoking and still smelling. Hopefully second-hand smoking won't give me blood clots...
Anyways.
It's Spring today, and I'm thinking about the farm. Dying for the farm. But I'm enjoying life. I'm enjoying sunshine.
Not upset about losing my Train pass, or about guys asking me out, or about my teacher going long, or about all the things that are coming apart at the seams.

Because things are lovely. (I think it's been the 10 hour nights I've been sleeping, and reading the Bible before the sun comes out.)

"Hail to whatever you found in the sunlight that surrounds you. Pretend all the good things are for you. Pretend all the good things are for me too. The weather changes not halfway between your house and mine."
-Rilo Kiley

things you can tell just by looking at her

That she'll easily break my heart.
That the hair in her face is hiding a child I've known all my life, but just met a few months ago.
That she could run my fingers over the scars on her arm until I didn't know who I was or she was.
That she is beautiful and needs to be held tightly til she's not crazy anymore.

And the part that hurts the most is that I can't express to her how Jesus wants her, and wants to make right with God for her. How the nights have hope when to live is Christ.
I'm scared about the explosion.

Ma'am how was your day? Keep your eyes on my face.

Sometimes, it ends up that the sugar in your bloodstream makes that guy look a little familiar.
You think you should explain, "I'm sorry, you look so much like someone I know."
And he is staring at you, thinking, "You are a crazy wacko: hand me my drinks and let me go."
And you think, "No, I brushed my hair today. And if I lean out the window, will you take me in your arms and love me better than he did? Since you look like him, can you just love me a little bit better?"
But you hand him his drinks and don't say anything.
You stop drinking so much coffee, and grow a little older.

"I mean if you smell your hands, they smell like 'hands'...at best."
-Matt Kilpatrick

it's a little like chasing Charles. Only now, a year and a half later, I'm hitting all the red lights--you don't call, you don't write-- and I can hear him singing next to me and I smile because, you are letting your guard down aren't you? Its my arm out the window.
We'd stare and stare, Charlie, and I'm going to come looking for you in Arizona or whatever. If you're going to be there, or Colorado. That's fine too. Grow up cynical on East side or West side, Charlie. Free burritos.
Erase all unread.
Erase meeting men too suddenly.
Erase first dates if he doesn't believe in God.
But keep your iPod close and look at me across parking lot libraries.

It could have been good, Charles.

Uh, I am suddenly in love with tennis. Its all I can think about. I'm finally back into working out outside. I am done with Mia St. John, and the Skinny Bitches (yes, they are really out there, and they are a great workout). And my fingers turn purple and I can visualize my lungs filling up with ice. But it's very spring for February.
God is so good.
So good.

The summer I graduated, Danny came back from the war. I remember driving around Peoria with him and Jackie, singing "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" and feeling the immediate shame.
We were driving to Home Depot.
We got there, and he was sitting on a glider, staring off. Jackie was saying something, there were birds flying around the ceiling, trapped in the warehouse. All I could do was look at him and wonder where he was.
We knew that he had changed. We could feel it. It was like walking on eggshells, and pretending that none of us had felt the terror of gunfire and roadside bombs.
But my grandfather and I sat next to each other at a bonfire one night, and he held my hand because I was weeping. He started to weep with me, even though we were broken in two different ways.
He wept for Dan and how you can't come back with the same innocence. I wept because I felt I was shell of a person, and that you weren't supposed to go into the beginning of real life feeling like you were hollow inside.

We've since been healed, the three of us in different ways, although my grandfather is blind now, and my heart doesn't beat the same way because of what the last three years have done to it. But I think what I mean is that I miss the Midwest.
The holiness of empty fields and eternal sunshine.
The roots you put down one time, and seeing that they still give you a foundation later on.
The only place you ever found unconditional love.

Yeah, the first time you met Jesus.

"It's always a good story if it has tamales. Its just true that everyone likes tamales."
-Matt Kilpatrick

what we need is just what we want

It wasn't that I didn't like Jeff. I just take a really long time to warm up to very outspoken people who try too hard to get me to like them the first hour I know them. So he automatically thought I hated him.
"Can you remember a day in your life that you were nice to me, Rachel," he says to me one day. I pause for a very long time because I am vacuuming coffee grinds. I close my eyes and grit my teeth. Finally I just go along with it.
"No, not a specific day, Jeff."
"Funny, neither can I."
"I don't hate you Jeff. You don't understand me or my humor."
He made me a nice mix tape for Christmas anyway. It had a Vampire Weekend song I'd never heard, a Ryan Adams song and a Pinback song that make me cry, a good Cat Powers jam, a Spoon favorite remixed...and so on. It took me a while to think that maybe I should be nice to him. The Stars song was what did it.
So one day I started a conversation with him about the music that was playing at Starby's. We were talking about the band's last album and how it'd been a while since they'd come out with something.
"It was the end of 2006," I told him.
"Yeah, you're right. It was like, October. Because that was when she told me she didn't love me anymore, and I was foolish to think she'd get excited about me telling her about that album." But the way he said it wasn't like how most sappy guys are trying to go for pity. It was matter of fact. I respected him for that, because I realized he was a deeply sad person, but never shows this. Its always about the dumb jokes. He doesn't open up. I like that.
"Yeah, I remember stuff like that by the relationships too," I admitted to him.

And we still piss each other off. But we kinda don't try to kill each other anymore.

some things I know.

I know its hard to find things in your truck when the overhead light doesn't work for several years. I know that somehow your skin adapts to 20 degree weather, and that the bus driver doesn't remember your face no matter how many times you thank him, with snow in your hair. I know that for some reason old scars do go away after a while, and that this is a blessing. I know that coffee ruins and saves lives. I know that the neater the piles, the more pieces of myself I can find laying around my house, and stuff in my bag to sort out later. I know how to work the washing machine. I know about the other girls the rock star is writing, in the other towns. I know to floss now. I know which things to keep secret in the freezing car, and which ones to admit to. I know I miss medicine, and the race, and purpose.

I don't answer the phone if I do not know who's calling, but I guess the whole point is that we never know really.

no taste for you left, even if my hair grows long.
if that carpet was vacuumed up and the cell phones were charged
We're clean
unhappy
carbonated
and can't find out all the secrets.

Little girl on the bus: "I'm gonna throw snow at my daddy. Like, roll it in a ball and say, "whoops!"
Her brother: "Can I throw snow at my daddy too?"
Their mom: "You can put some in the freezer and save it for when he comes back from California."

I spent a lot of time on Mass Transit today. And went to the mall with my backpack on, which is awkward, especially at a store like Urban, or Lolabella. "Hi, I'm just a crazy weirdo with a backpack on. No I'm not stuffing clothes in it. I'm just a student. Sorry."

Done with:
-5 weeks of school
-1/2 of my total papers due in critical theory
-cafe rio (never again)

eventually our mouths will just turn to dust

I know when I get to heaven, I will be stoked about a mansion and stuff like that, like not having headaches, and hanging out with my friends and peace.
But really what I want, is to just read through stacks and stacks
of
reports.

Rachel , welcome to Heaven. Yep. You died at age 63 of complications of cancer. The good news is you're in heaven now, and we just thought you should know that you:
listened to Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis 18234 times
over the course of your life you used 32424000 rolls of toilet paper
you ate 792 bowls of pho
you went through 46 bottles of shampoo (it would have been more but remember when you were working on dreadlocks?)
845 bowls of mac and cheese
you saved 1200 gallons of gas by taking the bus and riding your bike
You got 1750 bruises, but only 24 were bigger than a baseball
you ate 3 rocks and 2 starfish that were as hard as a rock, and swallowed 9 spiders because you slept in the basement.
Yours truly,
The counters


It would be something cool like that, but more color coordinated.

For some reason, I told Amalia my entire love-life this afternoon before leaving Celisse's house. She gave some very sound advice in her Spanish accent for 20 minutes, and then I laughed and went to the Dentist.
I worshipped God with Jason Mraz the whole way there, but Mraz doesn't know this. With an entirely numb face and a generally optimistic outlook towards mankind I set off into the world.
I'm feeling pretty good from diet and exercise. I haven't smoked in ages, and God walks with me where I go. Despite all of my friends getting pregnant or married and settling down all around me, I feel like the majority of us are on the verge of something life changing (as if those things aren't life changing). Like a balloon ride above the pollution here, only more hardcore. Like where we are going to go.
Perhaps because LOST is back on.