gooble_gobble

the news from above the couch. it will probably always be a work in progress, and the progress will end when we stop living here.

this is probably only interesting to me, but i tried to buy a melanie record today at a thrift store. when emily was singing/playing with the river man band they would play "brand new key" and it was cute and charming. the album i thought i was buying was the good book, which does not have "brand new key" on it, but i decided to give a shot anyway because it was cheap. BUT LO! when i got home and put the album on, it turns out the sleeve and record are a mismatch! and the record i actually bought is gather me which most definitely does have "brand new key" on it. thanks, friday the 13th.

i also bought some sweaters, the purchase of one being 49% motivated by the inside tag:



oh hell yeah.

i had a dream the other night where i was at a big mansion party and i somehow became part of a tennis match against a giant russian man. i was taking it lightly and lucking into some points at first, but overall i was terrible at tennis and i lost. then i found out that it was an olympic game and i let down my whole country. and everyone at the mansion party and everyone on the news and everyone in the world was really disappointed in me. at the same party i also found out that justin was looking for other apartments to live in, apartments without me. but just as a back-up plan or something.

last night i had a dream that bob and i were going to dance on stage with the flaming lips, and a girl named disney who stayed with us in chicago in july was in charge of assigning people to dance and passing out costumes. mine looked like a girl scout uniform, but slutty.


in real life we had company stay with us over the weekend-- a college roommate of justin's, and his wife. it is strange and new to be at a place in life that involves hanging out with married people, and having things in common with married people. it makes me feel old and settled and weird, and i don't mean that in either an overwhelmingly positive or negative way. it just makes me think about where parts of my life might go. they left this evening, and that has been nice, mostly in that i don't have to make sure i close the bathroom door behind me all the time, and i can sleep in without worrying that my guests will eat cold pizza for breakfast for the third day in a row. i got to see some new parts of the city that i hadn't seen, and eat delicious foods i hadn't eaten, and i'm thankful for all of it.


i'll be in florida dec 20-26. let's everyone hang out please!

i finally got to see mirah last saturday night and it was great and she didn't wear shoes and it was all very beautiful.

that's all.

last night i was with my family and a bunch of other strangers, trying to travel from indiana to florida. but all we had for transportation were two metal shopping carts tied together, like a train with only an engine and a caboose. it seemed impossible to fit everyone and their luggage into two shopping carts, on top of the impossibility of the carts taking us to florida from the midwest, but i guess it worked out. after a short amount of travel, all of the strangers departed with their luggage, so it was just my family and our suitcases, and a gruff biker dude who was in charge of getting the carts to move. sometimes they had a gear mechanism and could be pedaled like a bike, and other times he had to push or pull us along the highway. i think i sat at the front where there are leg holes for small children legs.

i also took a riverboat ride with ashley stapleton and a kid i went to a movie with once in middle school. it was weird, and at one point our guide had us sneak through trees and different watery paths so we could see michael jordan washing something at the riverbank without upsetting him.

i'm still unemployed, which is good and bad. i get really anxious about money, but i also get a lot of free time to make things, like bread:



and cross-stitch patterns:



and i didn't make this, but i get to hang out with it a lot:




so, give and take, right?

if the number of friends you have in a new city has a direct correlation to the number of moldy cupcakes you have leftover, then five. five moldy cupcakes.

but i think i have a job. and i need to practice my parallel parking. no relation.

-----------------

i wrote that seven [edit: nine] hours ago, but it all remains true. now i'm watching a little princess and the theme song just played and i almost cried. they should really be playing the secret garden after this because i got both of those movies on vhs in my easter basket one year, and i sort of can't have one without the other.

i've been dreaming a lot about segregated water and land worlds and special balloon apparatuses for breathing underwater and giant pelican-like monster birds that dive deep into the water to catch giant fish. and going on bike rides to go on other bike rides near train tracks and later telling dreamcavan about what i thought were sweet bike rides only to be told that they weren't that impressive (thanks dreamcavan). and being intimate with people i'll never be intimate with again. and so many other things that i can't remember anymore.

i think i'm going to knit a skirt soon. or a sweater. but the sweater will be for me because i don't want to curse any relationship i have with anybody by trying to knit them a sweater. you know, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweater_curse

i don't write lengthy entries anymore because they wind up like this, all odd and disconnected. so, see ya.

someone i know from my undergrad started a little art blog, and my exhibition work was briefly covered. see it here: http://www.justcoast.blogspot.com/

things i did in july:

1. said goodbye to my family
2. moved into a new apartment
3. baked some delicious treats
4. self-sufficient bike riding
5. hosted florida friends
6. became cpr certified
7. got my driver's license
8. started drawing for pleasure

things i've done in august (so far):

1. won a game of dice

more to come.

tonight a man in a parking lot who was demanding quarters for coffee wouldn't accept the doughnut i offered him because he said my hands might not be clean.

fair enough.

chicago! new and final nest, dark cave bedroom, cute stray dogs, shitsy cafes, boyfriend who says my armpits smell like ketchup and chicken fingers. and yes, some ups and downs, a little bit of homesickness, but let's not dwell because the ups outweigh the downs by a whole lot.

i've traipsed around georgia, tennessee, indiana, and ohio in the past week or so. now i'm in chicago, preparing for some real serious love and nesting. and living out of a suitcase until the beginning of july when we travel back to florida to get my bike and other belongings.

then, life things: looking for a job, exploring a new city, and hopefully being good at taking care of someone and being taken care of in return.

yes please.

this went up on april third and comes down tomorrow. i sold three of them to the university, but i don't know which three yet. the check is in the mail. can this be my life always?

not the college art part, but the making things and people liking them enough to buy them part.


i took my final class today, and i'm graduating on may 9th. i feel very good about many things.

cavan, i had a dream where you called me this morning and did that thing where a person wants to talk to somebody about something but wants the other person to ask them about it a lot first. we finally broke the barrier and it turns out you just missed orlando a whole bunch. oh hey, come home.

i also had a dream in which i was taking a shower in a dorm-type setting, but also in the shower in the house on banyan. during my shower a girl from my psychology class just poked her head in and stared at me for a little while, and i felt supremely vulnerable and uncomfortable. then she asked me for something of hers from the shower, but then she kept looking for a while before she left. then the water in the shower filled up to the tops of my thighs and that was kind of cool for a minute.


this weekend = <333 + !!! + barf.

this happened:



heart melts, and then the melted parts explode. and then there's this sweater.

i dreamt this:

andrew marvin and i were going to the flower shop/studio to get costumes for a party. they were both full-body costumes with masks. i can't remember what mine was, but it was beige and had giant pockets that extended from my knees to my ankles. his was the grinch, and it looked really great. but while we were in the studio getting good looking it started to rain really hard outside, and the dream-studio had a bad roof, so it also started raining inside. it was a light shower, but it was constant and swelling. the ceiling was bowed and bloated from the weight of the rain outside, and i started to panic about my exhibition work. by this time there were other students and some non-art friends hanging out in the studio, and they all tried to help me find some tarp to cover my TVs. i finally found it, but i don't remember if i salvaged my work. also, the rain wasn't bugging anyone else, or their pieces. just me.

everytime i start to think or talk about valentine's day, i replace "valentine's day" with "thanksgiving" by accident.

hey brain, cut it out.

i had a bad night's sleep last night, but i had this dream. i've told this dream to two people now, and i really like telling it.

i was babysitting a lot of children and one of them was a little girl named tortilla, like the chip. i was watching them all in harpo studios, during a taping of the oprah show. it was just people like me and moms and dads and tons of little kids all over the place, hanging out. then oprah wielded her oprah powers, and a raging snowstorm rushed into the studio. but it wasn't snow, it was small flecks of dry soap. and it looked really cool, but the whole time i kept thinking, "wow, someone is going to get this in their eyes and it's going to stop being fun." then tortilla went missing, and i was in a frenzy. but i finally found her with another little girl and oprah. they were all in a bathtub, and oprah was bathing the little girls. but oprah was fully dressed in the water. and the bathtub was in the house i used to live in on banyan.

and that's all i remember.

one of my favorite parts about being on a bike or on my feet to go places is the etiquette among all the other cyclists and pedestrians. everybody smiles or waves and seems genuinely glad that you're passing by. that kind of intimacy can't exist between cars. there's too much glass and metal in the way, i guess.

i've been people-anxious lately, even with the people i love. but then i see smiles and i smell skin smells and we dance and we yell and we say "i love you" and all my anxiety melts away. and the next day my calves hurt and i'm isolated again at school and the process starts over. i don't know, i'm savoring being alone, but it's taking its toll on the efforts i put into others.

good news, though: last week i pushed two tv paintings through my artwomb. i might actually pull this off.

i feel hopeful and proud today, much more so than i ever thought i would feel. how absolutely tremendous.