I am all about bright sides

The good part of having broken off my printer's tray is that I never have to remember to open it. Like the good part of forgetting to put my watch on in the morning is not having to take it off at night.

junk!

Am tossing around the idea of living the rest of my life in solitary squalor. Oh, but with my best friend nearby. And clean sheets.

better luck

I have identified myself as a tiny cluster of pixels in the back of the photo, and based on the blur, decided that I'm a disappointment.

I probably don't have swine flu.

Probably do have a rekindled love for the feel of a nice thick library book open on my lap. The irony! as someone whose job title is officially 'library specialist'! But yes, I haven't been reading more than blogs and newsfeeds or the odd chunk of non-fiction for sustained amounts of time for months or years or I don't know. It feels good. It's not specifically coinciding with spring, but oh yes, it helps. I have options: front porch. Back porch. Back yard. Tree. Hill.

sad math

novelty + pretty good = applause!
repeat performance + pretty good = eh.

not quite right

I am thinking in metaphors and the current one involves a pot and a lid from a thrift store that fit together, sort of. But not really. And you'd be better off just buying a whole new set.

so give me a few days and I'll be fine

"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."

-Albert Schweitzer

85°

Hello, sun and marshmallow clouds. Stay put and in a few minutes I'll meet you up on the hill.

DUDE, WHAT?

It's spring, which means sunshine and breezes and yadda yadda. Also, means I go through a month of losing a bit of my identity because I suddenly am hearing my name everywhere. Usually not a big problem. My filter is more than adequate. I can almost always tell instinctively the difference between the name April and the word April. But every once in a while, I hear the word, and it sounds like the name. This year I've found an unpatchable hole in my name-defense-system. At first I thought it was a fluke, but it has happened time and time again--the announcer for The Daily Show freaks me the eff out. The way he starts the show by announcing the date... 'April 23rd, 2009...' Even when I'm prepared, even when I'm braced for it, I flinch. He's talking to me. After a week or so of repeat performances I figured out it's because there's something in his inflection that sounds like my mom. He tosses the word out there in the same way my mom tosses my name. It kills me.

firebird

We had a fire at a lodge up at the foot of the mountains, me and my brothers and the friends they've shared with me. It was sort of ceremonial, because they burned old homework and table tennis rules. I was only in it for the orange and the red and the hints of blue and the crackling and tumbling of sparks. Oh, and the cat named Purr. I shouldn't have worn my favorite sweatshirt, because you know, smoke follows beauty.
I love how a bonfire can make the front of you so warm while your back settles into chill of the spring night.
I love how I can come home and the muddy shoes and the ashy bits in my hair and the smell of it all just stays for a bit, keeps the artificiality of doors and electricity at bay. It's a good sort of denial.

my fault

Clearly, it's time to get out of my head when everyone starts looking the same inside it.

I realize that you, and you, and you, well, y'all have the same voice when I'm listening to the concept of you I've created. I've been doing some willful misreading. I hear you, I see you, but I'm interpreting you as A, when you are clearly being B. The simultaneous translator in my head can sometimes be an ass.

a point in my favor

Sometimes my measure of the quality of my life hinges on a simple thing like green lights or fresh coffee or the smell of my back yard. Today, I have a good life because I have an uncle who says things like this: 'I couldn't track a moose with muddy feet through a hospital hallway.'

I'm never going to outgrow fake fights and sincere make ups

I've been at least two people today. One who's glad you don't have X-ray vision so you can't see that the hand in my pocket is holding up a middle finger, and one who just wants to wrap you up in my arms because you are so damn wonderful.

I'm back to a schedule of dark chocolate at regular intervals and the smell of cut grass and coasting to a stop instead of slamming on the brakes.

That's how I know summer is on its way.

ka-ching

'My friend dug a hole in my yard and filled it with water. I thought, he means well.'

wisdom

I accept adulthood as this: the ability to eat leftover birthday cake at 11:00 at night.

while the numbness wears off

I just achieved the trifecta of gross coming home from work. Cold, wet, and muddy. I know the cheap snap-on fender makes it better, so, lord help me, imagine how miserable I would have been.

Nothing says WELCOME TO ANOTHER YEAR like the annual $5 in a card from my grandpa.

I keep seeing dead cats and it is not cool. Passed three by the side of the road.

When I was at home last weekend I spent an evening with two of my favorite old friends. Ok, I can be more specific than that: my two favorite old friends. And they gave me a cookie shaped like a cow and framed pictures of the three of us and we sipped martinis and they were with me when the clock struck midnight and we had someone come over and take a picture of us together. Another year older.

We talked about how we'd all started journaling by middle school. Later I looked back through the stacks of notebooks I'd filled. I was appalling. But I guess we all were when we were twelve. I think perhaps I'll go through them all and bowdlerize the evil out and digitize the rest. And then burn the notebooks.

Sometimes, no matter where and when I am, I have the thought that there is nowhere I'd rather be right then than curled up next to my mom on the couch, watching a baseball game on tv. So it's a good thing I got to this weekend. My parents suddenly have this insanely big flatscreen tv. Why? Well, because someone gave it to them. That's how my parents are! People just give them things! Maybe to the giver it's a sort of, what's the word, the things people used to buy to get them into heaven. Indulgence. If you give your pastor a flatscreen tv, you may get yourself a step closer to heaven? I wonder that sometimes.

neighborhood watch

There's a house down the block that is mauve, and I think that's new, but I'm not the person who would be able to tell you what it used to be. I can convince myself that the whole neighborhood used to be mauve if I try hard enough.

break

I need a change of scenery and a patch job on a tooth so I'm going home.

you missed your chance

I was barefoot tonight, even though it was much colder than it should be, and as I got ready to head back (I'd planned on running the half mile), I got stopped by a flowering tree standing up against the dark blue sky, and then I noticed the full moon, and then it was too late and I couldn't do anything but stand underneath and look up.
I always think, afterward, that would have been a good time for someone to ask me to explain myself! But no one even walked by, so there was no cause to spill out the lines in my head.

vacuum

I'm sure she's perfectly harmless, but whenever she yawns I smell death.

Sometimes it's hard to adjust to a blue pencil instead of orange, or the way the only hands I've touched all day have belonged to a stranger.

I think, my god! I could smother you. I'm surprised you don't feel the air around you tighten when I walk into the room. What I mean is, I wish I knew enough of physics to describe how much you are a vortex.

I will help you write your resignation letter

I think my heart is covered with
inside out duct tape.
It's bouncing on the floor--
the heart--
and if it hits you
it
will
stick.

loophole

I think you've found the only situation in which 'I bet you can't go for twenty minutes without talking!' is a bet I'd lose.

ashes

Walking through the stacks just now I saw a book with the title The Dust Rose Like Smoke. And I stopped mid-stride, because oh, how evocative, a rose made of dust, smoky gray. For five seconds I was pleased with the idea, the off centered words. Then I realized I'd misinterpreted and I watched the rose burst and float away.