1) a salon
2) sheer laziness
3) killer bees. like, for real.

also, the vehicle below is an alien disguised as a truck that was sent to save us from the decepticons:

visited david, pat and stu today. it was the first day that the new first years have come to campus while i haven't been a student. a hurricane rained out the beginning of my orientation too, and i thought about that while i walked around with renee and tried not to make "when i was a little one" comments more than five times per second.

i don't really know where the past few months have gone. august will be over in a week or so, and september will mark the third month i've been unemployed and mostly directionless since my graduation.

don't get me wrong--- i have lots of plans. deadline plans, paper plans, plans for things i will be doing, plans for things i have to do before my mother refuses to give me any more money. i would be acting on these plans if i could jerk myself out of the rhythm of the semester calendar, but i haven't been able to so far.

despite the intellectual knowledge that i need to start doing something besides reading comics and eating vietnamese food, i can't stop thinking in 4-month increments. i make complex resolutions to find a job or clean the house, only to get the feeling i should wait for a batch of classes and responsibilities that simply aren't coming. tardily, i chastise myself for thinking about a fall semester that doesn't exist, resolve to go on about my life, and wake up the next day with the same strange feeling that i need to put things off until i get my course schedule.

meh.

(life after college would be wonderful if i could make myself start it.)

i just made plans for an approximately two hour conference call with my mother tomorrow, re: agenda items
-sister
-dad
-insurance
-furniture
-other

she then started giving me a lecture about how talking to my father was getting very touch-and-go so i need to be careful, and i responded that "yeah yeah, i will follow your advice and not interact with the opposing counsel until such time as i can hear the potential liabilities of the situation." she then laughed for the first time i've heard in weeks, and informed me that i've always been her favorite client.

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
i love you too, mommy.

amazing grace is one of those songs that never manages to be any less emotional for me, no matter how old i get. attending the funeral was simultaneously awful and wonderful; so many memories, all bittersweet. i was confronted, over and over again, by the similarity of it all; the eulogy, the whispered conference about what They would have wanted, the anticlimax that is mourning. i kept seeing my grandmother's face in the chapel on the side where she habitually sat, all the while hearing the dead man's name. the same and different, the same and different.

(james' folks are good people. there was no graveside, which was good, because i think i might have lost my ethnographer hat.)

today i am back in SRQ. despite my period and sister craziness and week-traveling exhaustion, it was good to hang out with james for a week and good to go out to ybor with renee last night. drinking, dancing, confrontations of the pleasant sort and playing wingman are all fun.

(i think i am going to spend tonight staring at some kind of media product and willing my emotional batteries back up to somewhere above .05%)

(oh, spam bots. you are full of hilarity.)

though i feel remarkably fine, i guess it's been a pretty intense past three months.
"attack of opportunity." hah, no kidding.
on the plus side, i have never been more confident that i will weather the singularity with a chuckle and become queen of the robots. that, or reach nirvana in the next 15 days. ya know, whatever.

either way, weirdness abounds. i am looking forward to furniture shopping, and adopting a new plant. lemongrass this time, i think.

i can't return my aunt's call because my sister is currently locked in the psych ward of tallahassee memorial hospital. if i call, my aunt will inevitably ask about my sister, and telling her anything about my sister would weaken her already weak heart. i also feel terribly guilty about not calling her, though, not least because her heart is so weak.

fuck.

i spent all day watching my mom cry, which was a little bit like watching aliens descend, park their saucer and begin to serve brunch. later in the day, after a series of epithets the likes of which he hasn't called me since high school, my dad began to cry too. i talked to him about sarah, and at the end of the conversation, he thanked me for "helping him." thanked me. guys, that has never happened before ever. like, ever ever. never. dad thanking me is the kind of thing that would occur in the parallel dimension that the brunch aliens come from, and his crying in front of me is only slightly more likely than the large hadron collider being made of bacon. bacon.

fuck.

of course i am fine--- everything is fine, everyone is fine, this is all going to be fine, this already IS fine, aren't we glad that things are fine right now?--- but i am relieved to be going home tomorrow.

spent all day blowing my nose, reading, and drinking a mixture of orange juice and black tea in the comfort inn's room 227. it was as unexpected as any of the life i've been living recently; mostly pleasant, definitely different.

though tiring, life of maybe has been good to me. since i've always been a planner, illness and accidents have often been the only thing connecting me to the forces of random at work in the world. it's been nice to let the better parts of random in again, to observe the forces of synchronicity at work for good instead of insurance premium.

i need to get in touch with kate. maybe i will go to new york. or maybe i will stay here, and make paintings and have an apartment. inevitable snot aside, i am confident for the first time in quite a while that anything i choose to do will turn out well. not perfectly, but well. maybe. hah.

(really good books always make me smug and satisfied. go get a copy of oryx and crake this second. also, this poem is sweet and makes me feel nostalgic for lunch boxes.)

"Wow. Well... on the bright side, I guess that answers your question about whether you should move back to Tallahassee."

no fucking kidding.
the next time i decide it's a good idea to go there, i think i'll just lock myself in a room and punch my own face for a while.

sarasota has been surreal.

all i've done today is giggle, eat cherry tart and watch trailer park boys and eva. my right knee, elbow and shoulder are swollen and stiff. i danced in the shower. whitney and calvin and i dicked around at sonny's, agreeing that we will never be level 70s in metal because nobody but slayer has the power to promote us. renee showed up and we visited rachel and ate two boxes of triscuits with cream cheese. she forgot my new white belt, but is now asleep on the couch with the space pillow, which i guess means that i forgive her.
tomorrow we will go get donuts.

(if this were an anime plot arc, someone would now burst in the door and dramatically reveal that my past two years were a hallucination brought on by the cryogenic thawing process.)

i would give anything right now for a mattress, a back massage, and a bottle of red wine.

today, as predicted, has been a long day.

on the one hand, not so great:

1) there is no such thing as clean money. there is also no such thing as clean family, which is why i wasn't that surprised when my stepmother who is running for judge called me and asked me to "come up with some songs for a fashion show about job interviews."

her: do you have a boom box?
me: what?? no. i don't.. i mean, i have my car..?? what?? most people have mp3 players now.
her: it's for people who were homeless and are being re-integrated into jobs and stable homes. to become functioning members of society. i have to host a fashion show, and i need a boom box.
me: uhh...i mean, i've thrown a few uh, things... but.. usually event halls have people who..
her: this is a community center on the poor side of town. you've never been there. they can't afford that.
me: ... i see.
her: so i need some music.
me: uh, i'm living on a couch with my nails painted black. my last job interview was at a liquor store. so, ya know, i know absolutely nothing about what to wear to a job interview, much less what kind of music will be necessary to um, set a tone for that kind of event.
her: they also want some like, booty hip hop. they said that after you get a job you go out to the club with your friends to celebrate or something, apparently.
me: ....yeah. well. i don't know anything about hip hop. anything i gave you would be at best outdated and at worse offensive. why don't you just get their suggestions? isn't this a collaborative thing?
her: i don't have time to talk to their social workers, katie. this thing is FRIDAY.

...and people wonder why i can't go back to tallahassee. or politics.

2) in other news, never break up with someone in june. june is full of weddings. weddings are great, except when you have just been divorced, in which case they are a great opportunity to exercise your maturity muscles.
after watching the seeming entirety of my high school class/kindergarten best friends post their gorgeous, teary bride pictures on facebook, i have learned some impulse control. i am also trying my best to not gloat about the fact that *i* don't have to fucking ask someone what they want for dinner, or when they are getting up, or where they are going, or what does their mom think about bla bla bla.

on a related note, i have decided that my next relationship is going to be with a plant, preferably one that grows very slowly. also, i think that marriage is a bad idea--- in principle, though it seems as unpredictable as anything else in practice. (speaking of, rizzle, please remind me that we need to have a squeally, totally irrational conversation about the virtues of the Swiffer WetJet.)

3) aunt is back in the hospital. fortunately, her latest condition exists in normal humans and thus has a name. unfortunately, it's a latin name that means "blood is not pumping through her body and she cannot walk."

on the other hand, i could be on fire:

1) hot robot japan dance party mix is almost done.

2) downloaded leviathan, which i have been wanting to do for a long time.

3) going to the dentist tomorrow to get told that everything is fine and i will not have to have my mouth replaced. ahem.

4) living on a couch and drinking a lot is boring but pleasant.

5) smoking less, cleaned evan's bathroom, have gotten much better at not using my shoulders to downward dog.

also, re: the importance of secondary education,

sitting in all saints café, reading the superficial and people watching. outside, the temperature inches up; there's no ocean breeze, and i can feel every one of the 91 degrees that flashes on bank signs. on the couch across from me, a dyke in a pair of jeans and a black labret is talking to a tiny blonde girl in green bike shorts; their heads rest against the hideously patterned couch, eyes half-hangover-closed. they are talking about whether jessie is just mad because katherine is cooler than her or because of the accident, which no she doesn't want to talk about, unless you promise not to tell. i read about denise richards for a second, and they ask one another whether they are going to the party tonight. one leaves on a bike.

i get up. a tall guy with a full sleeve and a nirvana shirt is toggling the CD changer, unable to decide between black flag and reggae i don't recognize. i ask for a cup of ice, and he asks if i need water; i say no, and wonder where i've seen him before. he smiles at me and i decide that it's just the beard. this place is comforting, mostly because everyone looks like a new college student; mousy brunette with thick black-rimmed glasses, half-buzzed blonde with tiny pattern tank top and gigantic 80's sunglasses. they watch me back, no doubt asking one another whether they've been me around before. they haven't, but the kids who have will be here around 2 am. last time i was here at the usual hour, i had to hear about a guy i used to double date with majoring in philosophy because his mother was addicted to meth and his father killed himself. frankly, these past few weeks have been blur enough. i don't really have the energy right now. then again, all saints is not talking with my mother about the 9th circuit court elections, or sitting in front of the television screen trying not to overanalyze "All Access: Shortest Celebrity Marriages."

can't stay in tallahassee. hat tip to t for the link.

(everyone jokes about me being emo, but i only started liking death cab a few years ago.)

the funny thing about relationships is that you can never forget the ones you'd like to leave the most. i remember the moment i saw brandon: it was one of those times, forever looping in shitty romantic comedies, when i stopped and just couldn't move again. i took a deep breath and said hi; his hair, long and curly, was backlit by the light from the room that fisk wasn't in and wasn't coming back to. i remember the first time he touched me--- grabbing me by my waist, smelling of alcohol and cigarettes as we walked back to calvin's car--- and i suppose i should have seen how obvious my mistake was, how many footsteps i would be following in when i decided to pick up the phone. his arm was warm and firm and i asked about his tattoo and we were dizzy, dropping into the back seat together; i suppose i should have known, then, that i had no choice. the curve of his eyelashes, how he looks when he's asleep; the bitter part of me reminds me that he knew until the day it was over that i loved the shirt he was wearing that night, red with white block print.

he rarely wore it.

when i told evan szumowski that the man i have loved most in the entire world said that he never loved me like i loved him, he laughed. cruel, maybe, but it was perfect; perfect because i knew he understood, because i knew my mother understood, because everyone i've talked to can do nothing but hug me and say sorry and know, on some level, that everyone will be there. i laughed too, and we laughed together, and it was funny. what can you do, i've said a thousand times to the thousand people who've asked; it was here, and then it was gone, and maybe it was never really here in the first place. when i told him that i didn't ever want to talk about it again, and that i would just pretend he never showed up and nothing ever happened and there were no shirts or lights or nights together laughing, what i really meant was that i can never go back to the moment when things were okay. i realize now that i was living in that one breath for years, caught in the moment between when his eyes met mine and he greeted me back; funny, it must be funny, how everything we are is shaped by passing glances.

Dear All,

Is anyone missing a wolverine? You left it in my uterus. Feel free to pick it up any time today before 11 pm. If nobody claims it by then, ask Brandon about it, since I'll be committing ritual suicide to appease the lunar gods that ordained my "death-by-menses-induced-homicide-of-snarking-divorced-bougie-parents" eons ago while weaving the threads of the world.

Thanks,
K.

i am hung over, the kind of hung over that makes it impossible to sleep. my shoulder and back are sore, no doubt from where i hit the concrete. my kickball sunburn is peeling, and i have to be at work in an hour and a half. i am trying to decide whether to be guilty for drinking a lot with my friends in palm court last night. i am happy.

propped up on my couch in a white ribbed shirt, i am reading the headlines. U.S. planning big new prison in afghanistan; famine looms as wars rend horn of africa; thousands flee on china lake bank fears; myanmar death toll soars.

i cannot be guilty for having a party. i don't emotionally understand it. then again, i have never really understood the feeling of guilt at all. i understand whining, and talking with friends, and why people slam their fists into things. i understand wanting to help a friend, or hurt a friend when they need it. i understand having someone hurt me, and deserving it, and i understand hating violence, though i have always had a hard time keeping mine under control. i understand hunger, and anger, and suffering, and how precious little of it we have to deal with. i understand crying, vomiting, laughing, orgasms, all that stuff. i would LIKE to understand guilt, if only because i would probably be an easier person to get along with if i did. but here is where i have always gotten lost, always been on the wrong side of the scandalized whisper: if we are so lucky, so profoundly lucky every fucking day, isn't cultivated happiness the only way we can acknowledge that luck? do we not have some responsibility to do anything we can, EVERYTHING we can, to appreciate our totally undeserved time in a place where we aren't being shot in our classrooms or imprisoned or beaten or dying of cholera for lack of ten pills that are so common they're free in the US? i will never understand what makes someone scream about forms. i will never understand what makes people even WANT forms, or anything that inhibits the expression of amazing humanity that so much blood has been shed for. every day we drive our cars, plug in our speakers, take money from the state, bitch about the quality of our guatemalan coffee, turn our heads to the bodies rotting in gitmo, and i'm supposed to be guilty about a FORM?? about whose party it is, and who has the right to be awesomest, and whether something is a wall or not?

i am probably a fuck, but humanity will always confuse me.

As of 11:02 PM EST on Tuesday May 13, I have completed my final assignment at the New College of Florida. There is literally not another word left to be written and turned in, not a single additional chapter to look over before class, and not one more couch to sit outside of during office hours.

I am done.

"Since 1943, nuclear weapons have been detonated 940 times in the continental United States, giving the United States the dubious distinction of being the most nuclear-bombed country in the world."