when you are engulfed in flames

Yesterday I had an entire day off. I woke up at Tegan and Sara's and ran to the grocery store for supplies, and then spent the whole day watching the Kardashians make fools of themselves, which is extremely therapeutic. I love them, and think they are so very dumb.
I drank Dayquil all day and tried to get the dogs to not sit by me, but one problem is how deeply and unashamedly they love. I switched from Dayquil to beer at five, and ate a cardboard pizza all by myself and loved it.

It is the first time in a long time that I have said to myself, "This is the life." Its a hard thing to say when you work at Hell, but I said it, because I forgot for a whole day.

I like a good beer buzz early in the morning, and Billy likes to pull the labels from his bottles of Bud

So in this week so far, I woke up stranded in outskirts of the valley. In a residential neighborhood at least a mile from any kind of civilization. My phone was dead, the only charger I had was a car charger and no car to charge it in. The Mombergers' phone was dead. So I just started walking with my Mexico luggage for a long time, and waited half an hour for a bus that never came, and just kept walking til an establishment finally let me use their phone. What a basic yet crappy adventure.

Mac n Cheese never tastes good after 20 minutes of its being produced.

And then one of the days this week, my dad also caught a cockatiel out in our neighbor's front yard, and it lives with us now. At least it is thawing out and lives in a dog crate on our dining room table which is questionable, but only temporary.

"What kind of wine do you like, red, or tequila?"
-Samantha Who?

I should be packing. But instead I took a huge fistful of vitamins (I am trying not to get sick), and now I have an upset stomach and I just keep looking at people's blogs.
I'm going to Mexico for a week, and by Mexico I just mean the ocean, which I'm really happy about.
I want to come back clean and shiny, as Meredith Grey would say. I am excited to be somewhere new and see something new, and spend bachelorette time with Celisse and go swimming. I even bought two pairs of heels today, which I'm going to try to get better at wearing more often, because I just watched the entire first season of Samantha Who?

So cheers to a break from a real life, and considering what I get to look forward in the next one.

older roads
I wanna start over. I want to be with you.

We had our bad look days too. They didn't believe it could happen to us, but we'd be reading books groggily at 3pm and look over at one another. She'd groan, "Maybe we should put on more eyeliner and go out," in Portuguese, and I would nod. She didn't know I knew how bad we looked that afternoon, and the young men looking at our pictures later could think, "There is no such woman as perfect as that," with us, faintly winking at them on the other side of a lens in a far off town. But we weren't perfect-- us. We left paragraphs unattended to. Cookies unattended too. Our fake glasses could fall off our faces when we'd drift off into a nap, but our maid would make sure we didn't burn the cookies. I felt the power of saying no to anyone I wanted to. She felt the power to drink herself away and still get up for the work the next afternoon, no worse for wear.
But once the hours were more gone in the year, I knew. Looking at Sonya, I could know the wrinkles that would probably develop and that you can't go forever on carrots and diet coke.

Gossip Girl is an affair, but 30 Rock is definitely a marriage, and a rock in hard times. Wait, what?

I have a candle in my room that smells like waffles.

What I've learned from listening to hip hop and from Tyra banks is... that we don't really understand what is going on in the ghettos and slums. We don't know what we think we know about prostitution and gangs, and the other things that people in these places face everyday. These songs and music videos make us believe in something glamorous, though dirty, and make white middle class Americans feel like they're so gangsta on Friday nights at the club. But it's not glamorous.

I complain about my situation, when things could be a hundred times worse. I could be poor(er). I could be in Haiti. I could be a sex slave in a foreign country. I could be trying to support 4 kids on minimum wage.

Heart check.

"Billy hates mugs."
"Billy, you hate mugs?"
"I hate all mugs. Except for cool ones."
-Billy and Co.


"Well it seriously can't go wrong, buying a house. Because at least if it goes wrong, you have a house."
-Allison D.

"I gave you a shot, and while your efforts were admirable, I'm bored. You ruined my pants. Goodnight Blair."
-Chuck Bass

I haven't noticed that I'm not in school yet. It might take another week. I spent the last days of 2009 having a long slumber party with Shannon and Celisse, and its weird to even be at home sleeping in my bed. I might even be grumpy about it.

But in other news, I have Tegan and Sara tickets, my darling Megan is coming out for the weekend from FoCo, and I have a brand new handbag that could even rival my coworker Kelsey's ridiculously stylish collection.

"Wait, you are staying the night? Don't you have to come home and...sew something?"
-Amalia, trying anything she possibly can to get Celisse to not stay the night

"I didn't lose my new friend because I mentioned church, luckily. We went to dinner last night. She's a doll. Like, literally she looks like a doll."
-Kelsea

I'm weighing the pros and cons of taking a semester off. Looking at a degree audit report makes it look so smart to go this semester and just get the whole thing over with within a year, but the things that I want to get done in the next few months have overturned the decision.
This is the first Spring of my life (since I was 5 years old) that I won't be in classes. It feels so freeing. A huge weight strapped to a balloon and floating away. I have my big plans, but I also want to do projects. (I just watched Julie and Julia last night). She had such a cool thing, doing all of Julia's French Cooking recipes in a year. I don't want to overtake something so monumental, but I do want to cook and go bike-riding and hiking, and go to the dentist actually, and work on art that I'm always thinking about, and maybe practice my Spanish, and read books for enjoyment (Or preparation. I need to reread Shakespeare, and I feel like I'm behind because I've never read Paradise Lost by Milton. And I'm definitely learning that The Odyssey is central to just about everything in English Literature...)

So here's to plans, starting now. Not the New Year. Although my heart feels good about the future, and walking into open space.

We took apart the car, piece by piece, starting with the smaller ones, and moving on to the larger ones as our muscles grew bigger. Pretty soon we had a yard full of parts, and we grew bored with each other, sipping coffee and pretending.She took careful scissors to the seams of us, until we were separate pieces as well, and had nothing to drive away from the scene, since our car was parts.We erased each other from the calendars in our phones, we smiled brief smiles.
We graduated to a bottle of wine, once the sun had gone down and we were below freezing. With glasses clinking, we froze to the steps, froze in statues, looking at each other, forced to look at each other. Didn't thaw til it got warm the next days, but our hearts were beating slow, so we put the car back together but it took us hours, with intermittent breaks for calls from our bosses, or to renew our books at the library, or checking the mail and such.
It was a larger thing than us, so we sighed a lot.
Communication of sighs to each other for several days until it hurt to keep going that way. Or hurt more than it had, already. She felt a need to sew us back together. Felt a need to say sorry, but only with her eyes, and even the eyes only spoke in Spanish. We linked fingers momentarily, unwilling to admit love or sacrifice. She turned the ignition, I adjusted the rear view mirror but the car didn't start. We had more time to sit and think about what we'd done wrong, and our used books wouldn't sell, and how we had stopped taking pictures a year ago, so we couldn't remember having fun.
You do what you have to.

you keep saying that

I am in the same place that I was a year ago, for the first time in my life.
I am at the same job, same school, have mostly the same friends and enemies.
It is a very strange thing, and I don't know how I feel about it. Usually I do something drastically different every year, and while I love having a routine, I am feeling tied down, like I need to get going.

I'm just nervous and it makes me turn off my radio when I drive so I can think more.

And all of the while, I was dreaming of Revelry.
Kings of Leon

I don't think I understood until this day
the pain
of finals.


I am so excited to say goodbye to Leopold and Molly Bloom. At least for a while.

"I don't really know what's going on, why are we yelling and clapping?"
"I don't know what's going on. I just can't turn down free enthusiasm."
-me, and then Keaton's response

unsatisfied

I'm just thinking about how shifty things are, and how God wants us to be unsatisfied with the world. To long for Heaven, and oh Lord I do.

I have no reason to complain.
I have no reason not to tie up combat boots tighter and say, "Hell yes, I am a soldier, and that's how I'll go down one day."
Through a season of trouble and desperation, I am applying fresh bandages and reloading my gun.

This is all going to burn, and I don't know why I fight for it. I don't know why I worry. It's time. Time to go.

"I looked my demons in the eye, laid bare my chest, said 'do your best, destroy me.' I've been to hell and back so many times, I must admit you kinda bore me."
Ray Lamontagne

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
T.S. Eliot

I just think this is really appropriate where I am.
Waiting, happily with my eyes shut.

In the Spirit of Starbuck's new consumerist slogan of "wish".

I wish that LOST was back.
I wish that there were no football.
I wish that MK would come find me and say, Yes I've always been in love with you, and when we stare at each other across the courtyard, it has made me write a masterpiece.
I wish for A's.
I wish for twelve dollars an hour.
I wish for no headache to keep living in me.

But in general, I am counting my blessings.
Such as the Lord, and how He provides. Such as dates. Such as Thanksgiving break. Such as not starving to death. Music. Health Insurance. Loving glances from girls in pea coats. A father who is a comrade. And brand new socks.

"Every time you blink, it looks like you are taking a nap."
-Emily



Sometimes there are surprisingly good ends to days that started out really awful.

"Yes and no, you have to choose, Romeo and Juliet: the hangman and the noose. You and me would go good together."
-Dave Matthews. Sometimes shared between me and a very good friend.

Ben Dory's dad was J.D.

He still is. He was like, uncle J.D. to me back then, though. He was really cool. My dad would make fun of him, because he had a ponytail. But they were the same age, and I think J.D. wore a leather jacket. But for sure I know he had a ponytail and rode a motorcycle. I remember him giving us rides on the motorcycle at probably midnight. Or it felt like midnight when you're five.
And once, he took Ben and I to his work with him, where he made robots, and one of them started moving towards us while he was in the bathroom and we fuhreaked out.

J.D.'s still married to Lisa, the feminist. Ben's mom. She would let her leg hair grow out and bleach it. Which seems like more work to me then shaving. But one time, she drank some coke on the beach, and a bee was in the coke can, and she got stung.

She cleaned both my mouth, and Ben's mouth out for saying Shut Up to the dog next door. She's a good mom.

I'm pretty nervous to ever leave my room.
9 days left of hell.

I woke up in a hospital, surrounded by men poking at my love-handles.

You are not supposed to believe though, in love-handles, if you work at a hospital. It's just fat. Just surrounding your waste.
Just providing warmth for the winter.
I let my arm fall over the side of the bed, hoping at any moment, they might raise the head-of-the-bed, so I could sit up. CAN'T MOVE. Hope they bring me a Sprite with a straw in it, hope they turn the channel on the TV to watch TLC. Need to know what not to wear.
He kneels next to the bed, one of the doctors, and they could all follow suit, but they watch to see how it plays out for him.
He asks me, respectively, on a date, on downtown to a restaurant I don't know about. So fancy. He is thinking in his mind, "She will be my lunch Ho." But doesn't say it out loud. Or maybe I am thinking the words lunch ho, because it sounds funny, even makes me laugh, even if that is not the phrase he is thinking for me. Scrunch my eyes. Maybe he is thinking girlfriend, by accident.
"I have so many boyfriends," I tell him, still thinking it'd be nice to be a lunch ho, and how long could I keep that up and still get my homework done for class each week.
He's weakened, but not deterred, because he has my chart in his hand. Could tell me anything, and I'd believe it because of dark framed glasses and Rolex watch. Could tell me brain cancer. Could tell me diabetes, which wouldn't be a big surprise.
But instead I stare out the window, thinking of Ben Dory. Racing for Teenage Mutant Ninja cereal bowls in the morning. Lucky charms mixed with cheerios. Forest Fire Fighter. First love. And the doctor coughs. Doctor Handsome I Read Books.
Doctor lock the door at night.
Doctor give me an answer.

But I am a naked hospital gown person. Can't promise anything before morning pancakes.
Can't
promise
squat.

"Sounds like a boring life."
"I hope it last forever," she said.
-Don Dellilo White Noise

college
14 days left of this semester

I walked into her tiny office, should I knock on the door? I stepped sorrily on papers and over books laying on the floor. She finally notices me and says oh yes come in, and I find that I don't have quite as much respect for professors who clean their offices.
"I can't be bothered to keep my office clean," she tells me raspily. I could listen to her voice all day. If I could just lay in bed eating pancakes, and have her read to me....well it would be magnificent to say the least.
But I snap back to where we are.
"I came to talk to you about my paper." I sit with my ankles crossed, like I am at an interview, and her blue eyes engulf me. Wildly, she gestures, articulates. She says what they all tell me: that I have clear writing and terrible ideas. But by the end of the procedure, without taking off my coat, I check something off the list.

[x] See a professor during office hours.

Something I've never done. And a huge responsibility slash weight is lifted off of me as I walk out the door and a man in a hat is congratulating her on the Phillie's winning last night.

I am slowly taking steps toward recovering who I used to be. Or who I thought I used to be. A strong girl who doesn't blanch and shut down.
Moments at a time.

Some days I realize that I am not in love with Kayleigh anymore, and that she was a serious figment of my imagination. But I find her footprints. I hear her echoes.
When my vision starts to get worse, I think about her.

I can't believe how long I've worked at Starbucks.

I start to wonder where my life is going. I'm too mean to these people, or too nice. I say the same things over and over. Will I say fake things for years?
Phony earth, grumpy people...

I miss seeing the vulnerable side of them. I want to get that back.

"If you (wear) a mustache you can come (to) Randal's bachelor party !!!!!"
-Nicholas D'Amico's poorly spelled text to me this morning.

I am having a very nice time on vacation. Once we got home from Illinois I basically started to live at the Mombergers' and watch Celisse make a wedding cake, and slept in for a really long time all the time. And worked out. And colored my hair. And started talking to an old friend, and went with Cel while she bought her wedding dress.

And I'm really happy.
I think it's also related to no school or work. But I'm really happy.

Lying on the floor, chewing a carrot into pulp, I realized, I am ready to turn over a new leaf.
Closure.
Like I finally feel like I can let myself try to figure out what it used to be like to be happy enough for me, and to walk around whole. Normal.

Its a good feeling.

I am usually not one of those people who can easily figure out which part is right and which part is wrong.

I meet Darrell, or Becka hours and hours before the sun comes up. They accidentally peel each finger down slowly counting, one, two, three, four.
And you sort of hope that by accident, by 50/50 chance, you will do something right. Open or shut mouth at the perfect time.
Take down notes
feed yourself lists
remember to set alarm clocks
and you pray, "God, who knows my name, how big thou art. How strong and sensible. How you know where I am and tomorrow, and the next day." And still you forget to take out contacts from your eyes at night.


But then. There is the small glimmering mile by mile.
i-80
highway leading back to joy, to sorrow, to the only real.

In my mind I see the stretches, and for sure, I will do the only thing I possibly know is right.
Get back in a van.
Go back to Iowa. To Illinois. And fall deep into the arms of someone who needs to never let you go.

"And high above,
Through a lit apartment window
Appear the ceilings and moldings,
The corner of a frame
Hung high on the wall
By someone you'll never meet

And you start to miss her too"
-Dave Smallen



I am nowhere, and my bones are melting into a person who used to be more surviveable.
I am in between walls and walls.

I miss the way you'd sigh yourself to sleep

Maybe its corny to admit that the death of a loved one brings you closer to God. Or not corny. But something like that.
But it's kind of true.

Of course I think of predestination. Everyone around me talks about it constantly. But I just settle myself out to think, "Rachel, whatever happens, God already knew it was going to happen, and people did pick it for themselves."
What the heck am I saying.
I think that all this happened at the right time, and for the right reasons, as screwed up as it is.
My grandmother died after I'd been in school for just two weeks. I drove 40 sleepless hours in 5 days. I became ill. I just happened to be taking a course that the main text happens to be the Bible, but taught by a Jew. A smart Jew who knows Hebrew and can chant Song of Songs by heart. She is crazy and wonderful, even though I don't agree with half of what she says. But this class has taught me to appreciate the Old testament.
And
what
I see
is
a God who was desperately in love with a people
(for thousands of years)
that constantly turned their back on him
in the height of his love and abundance for them.
An adulterous nation wearing Prada, sleeping with Chuck Bass, and texting on an iPhone.
And he loved them so painfully that he sent a son to die for their sloppy pitiful excuse of a thing called Loyalty.
And they turned their head and pretended like it wasn't all over CNN and in the New York Times and on Google news.
Gritting their teeth, they rejected a Messiah, long awaited.

Or what I'm trying to think is that the Old Testament means more to me now. And this strange predestination season has a lot of cold dark roads left, but
I've got chicken noodle soup and
crisp thunder storms.

It's fun to close every once in a while, because I usually get to work with this lady Channin. (said Shannon) She is probably in her early 40's, and is really cute because she is sassy.
She uses Starbucks as her screening process for whether a guy is dateable or not. All these guys who usually look the same as the last one, come in and she suddenly says, "Girls," to me and Kelsey G. "I am going on my break." And then she disappears. The funny thing is that there are like 6 or 8 of them. I don't know how she meets so many dudes, but it is kind of hilarious how our store has become a revolving door bringing in many middle aged guys at like 7 or 7:30 at night. I like it.

Originally uploaded by thethingis99

"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.