mmm...

making a raspberry tart for an intimate dinner party. yummm. it is bubbling up slightly unfortunately in the pan, and might not look as perfect as the America's Test Kitchen Picture when finished (what does, though, really? damn food photographers) but is sure to taste delicious.

i love summer. i don't want to do homework ever again.

another night

My mom says that my cat and I are the same creature when she sees me staring up at the tassle from the found photo album hanging slightly over the shelf in the living room, clearly perturbed. I don't doubt it - except, I hope, for her senility at the rather impressive cat age of 14. Did you know that cats could have dementia?

I wish that my house were air-conditioned only when I am overcome with the desire to drink tea but it is far too hot and sticky, which is actually quite often. The rest of the time, the purring 80's steel fan with the head that twists to cool the whole room is quite fine.

summer day

So, I think I may qualify as a Yeasayer groupie...seeing as I have now seen them twice in the past week.
(Loves)I don't even really blame them for the fact that today's show at the XPN festival was a little less life-altering than last week at Pitchfork, when they literally controlled the weather...the crowd was a little different, by which I mean far, far older and tanner. Their biggest fan today (besides me, the freaking stalker) was perhaps the short, leathery woman in the front row who was wearing a neon pink bikini top and white terrycloth hot pants with a pack of cigarettes stuck in the pockets and a cow-print cowboy hat and playing her miniature maracas on the steel banister. Who can blame them, really, if they ended the show rather non-momentously for this crowd of middle-aged hippies barely swaying along to their music? Although, I continuously promise myself, even though it doesn't matter because it will never happen, that if I ever became a famous or well-regarded musician, I wouldn't become too good for anything. Because it sucks when you see a show where the band's not giving it everything that's in them.

And anyway, hippies included, today was a wonderful, relaxing day spent with wonderful, relaxed people on blankets in a blazing hot field in Camden, drinking mint tea and feeling dirt stick to my grainy, sweaty skin. And there is nothing like getting home after a night of no sleep, after driving home half awake and half-believing you might have seen a lamb on the side of the road as you passed by on the trip back, and changing into a 1996 Celine Dion concert t-shirt and getting into your bed, which feels softer and more comfortable than ever, and sleeping into the meat of the day with the fan whirring in the background of your bizarre dreams.

PITCHFORK: 3 DAYS.

so hype.
must see list:
- Yo La Tengo
- The National
- Beirut
- Matt & Kim
- Wavves
- Yeasayer
- Bowerbirds
- The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
- The Flaming Lips
- Grizzly Bear
- Vivian Girls
- M83
- Women
- Blitzen Trapper

Woo woo woo. Only problem is that half of these bands play at the same time as each other. Music festivals are so hard!
Preparing myself for the epic beer stench/12 hour days of music watching/paying billions of dollars and waiting in line forever for food/majesty of it all.

sore throats and hangovers

so its been awhile...
so i'm now half confined to bed due to an epic sore throat...probably karma/god's payback for the 5 hours combined sleep I got over friday and saturday nights. my house has been restored to a relative state of normalcy - i.e. no longer has the stench of a watermelon filled with vodka and dumped on the floor - but still has cute little pieces of memorabilia, such as the whiteboard calendar in my kitchen, to which events such as "penis day" and "leave for mexicoooo" have been added.
now, the house is quiet (except for my throat screaming mean things at me until I attempt to soothe it with some sugar free ice pops that look like they must be made of 100% chemicals, due to their rave-worthy neon colors), which is a notably weird thing. And I'm making tea and have been lounging all day, wrapped in blankets and surrounded by sickbed items (cough drops, throat spray, aspirin) and missing all those wonderful people who filled up the place so well.

this is what calm feels like

Drinking green ginger tea in a beautiful indian mug and listening to the newest sigur ros album while my mother sleeps curled up on the sofa to one side of me and my cat snores in her little cat bed on the other. someone was setting off fireworks far away, and listening to their little pops and imagining them was probably more fun that seeing them would have been.

For possibly the first time in my life, I did something patriotic! Or semi-patriotic, or at least typically American. my mother and I somehow got kickass tickets to the phillies game and (of all people) we ended up sitting seven rows behind home plate. Like so close I had to get worried about getting hit with foul balls (which I always worry about at baseball games, as a general rule, due to my complete and utter unathleticism, which, as if it had to be proven again, was in fact proven again in a particularly unsuccessful game of badmitton last night, but which this time seemed like a legitimate concern), so close we could judge from looking at the player's faces if they were attractive or not. It was wonderful. And sunny and beautiful. And I ate a delicious pulled pork sandwich and pretended like I knew what all of the many acronyms and statistics on the scoreboard meant, just for today.

Liking it here and missing what is not here, all at the same time.

Victoria Legrand is possibly my new hero.

work work work and play

today at work, 4 hours felt like 40 because my co-worker, a sixteen-year old with neon pink acrylic nails and a forever-open mouth, did too much talking with too little judgment. At first I thought they paid me to do nothing, but now I think they pay me to make fun of people, which is SIGNIFICANTLY less fun when the person you're working with is not in on the game.

then some smoothie drinking and pool wading and "sex decoy: love stings" watching with some special people in the cooling, buggy night.

Mellowing

After working the snack bar for a swim meet (really just an occasion for a large group of very preppy parents to have a cocktail party, which just so happens to be around a pool in which their children are kicking and paddling), I'm resting my body on the sofa and remembering how much I love Devendra Banhart.

Summer days she stays by her window
Her saggy flesh it sweeps the floor
Down her steps and through her hallway
Comin out her door

Ian Curtis is a madman and a genius.

Just finished watching the documentary, Joy Division, about the band. Fucking crazy. Control, a movie about them, came out at about the same time. They are both really good. The concert footage is INSANE. This one woman said their music was the original ambient, not so much music as the sounds around them, a reflection, a lovesong or hatesong for their city, for dirty Manchester, poor and made of rubble. There is something unsettling about the whole thing, the band itself, this tribute to them, the way they carried on, became New Order, after Ian killed himself. But when you listen to them, it feels like you're floating, like you're not quite human or something, and its amazing and terrifying and exhilirating all at the same time.

Memo to a select few Cricket Club fathers (you know who you are)

1. It is not considered "babysitting" when they are your own kids.
2. Pigtails consist of two ponytails. Don't subject your daughter to potential ostracism for her half-a-hairdo.
3. Those sunglasses make you look like an asshole.

coming home

Sometimes there's nothing like coming home, actually being home, to make you realize how much you really missed it.
And its strange, how you've become so unaccustomed to things - to driving, to sitting around a friend's kitchen table with her family, to having to call to make plans - but somehow things still seem to fit, differently maybe, but like its in you somehow like muscle memory, like a sense impression.

Tonight, my windowbox air conditioner is roaring like a truck motor with an accompanying liquid noise. And I have off work tomorrow, away from wiping up ketchup and making milkshakes and serving the entitled. And it is summer and it is finally starting to feel like it and, even if its strange, even if it seems kind of unnatural now, I like it.

Bangs

Woah.

Some Thoughts on the Stomach

So I saw this kind of irritating movie written by the uber-couple of the indie author world, which was maybe only so irritating because it seemed like they kind of intended it to be autobiographical, like the Story of How Our Love Is Better Than Everyone Else's or something. And then afterwards, I went into the bathroom to pee (because I drank several cups of coffee and thus spent a good portion of the movie, say 1/3, thinking of how I had to pee like a mother) and all of the sudden I caught a glance of myself in the mirror in that wretched flourescent light. Which brings me to my point.

I want to be at an age where it doesn't matter if you're fat. Well, I don't know if that age exists, but at least I want to be at an age where you're not expected to be thin, when you're not thinking all the time how you'll never be able to say to your kids, man, I had the perfect body when I was 19, when you can just be a little chubby and wear socks with sandals and have greying hair and its all ok. I wish I were a really talented author, because then it doesn't matter if you're thin, doesn't really matter what you look like at all, because you have this talent that everyone wants or at least feeds off of and benefits from, and you only need a single good head shot in good lighting for the little picture on the back flap.

Endings

Everything feels so sad on the last night of vacation, even if I am generally ready to be at home (and be around respectable members of my age group). The house, even though all the lights are on, doesn't feel sweet or beachy or ambient, but empty or emptying, paper towel rolls and plastic bags of leftover food left on the countertop by Grandma as she packs scrupulously. The family is scattered and separated in their individual rooms, throwing sweaty clothes unfolded from drawers into suitcases, not drunkenly yelling its way through board games. On the last night, the beach is misty and smells fishy, and I see a cockroach scuttling outside the door.

I'm so bad at endings all around. On the last night of college, I laid next to a friend in an emptied room on bare cots, looking incredulously around at the blank space of the walls where signs of life had been. On the last day of summer before I left for college, I threw a party that was supposed to be a happy, good luck, going away party for everyone, and ended up sobbing through the whole thing. I wish things were cut off mid-way, unexpectedly, so that they end on top, like Friends did, and not winding down to a pitiful, conclusive ending.

Highlight of this trip: I saw this, massive sand dunes at Jockey's Ridge State Park.

They killed your legs to walk up, and you had to hunker down and stare at the ground to get to the top, but when you did, you look one direction and see the ocean, and the other and see the massive, calm sound. Its remarkable - the kind of phenomenon that makes you stop all of the sudden and think about how remarkable the earth is.

food coma

listen to this list of fantastic foods we have eaten for dinner so far:
- burgers
- ribs and spinach-onion quiche and french fries
- chicken and beef and vegetable fajitas
- chicken parm and spaghetti and homemade fried ravioli

Coming soon: LEFTOVERS galore. Why does everything taste better the next day?

Surrriously. I'm going to come home 15 billion pounds heavier.

Currently sitting at the big table. My mom and her three sisters are fussing around, cleaning the kitchen, packing up whatever food is left over. My grandmother and Bob are eating still, on top of a lighthouse puzzle they just finished. My cousin and her hipster boyfriend are reading the paper and napping in the living room. Somewhere, a timer is going off. There are all these layers of noise here - the aunts talking, drawers opening and closing, the clink of silverware against dishes, music playing, and, further away, evening birdcalls, pool splashes, and kids yelling, their voices carried on the wind.

third day of family vaca

- shoving my mom with a pillow to make her stop snoring like a fucking boar
- 8 bug bites on one leg, none on the other
- my little cousins blasting paramore on the outside speakers [KILL ME]
- drunkkkk apples to apples (I'm expecting us to get a noise complaint from the police any day now. Good thing we wouldn't hear them if they knocked at the door)
- too much sangria (can there ever be too much? Shit tastes like fruit juice. So deceiving.)
- weird boys from the south in our basement that my cousin met at the deli (can you say shady?)
- waves and kites and preppy people playing bocce ball and fishermen and cool beach stuff
- strangely bombay-themed bedroom
- fajitas! (pronounced FAJ (rhymes with vag)-IT-As)

my family vacation

Playing beer pong with my cousins...a new low? Quite possibly. I am willing to grant you that.

This vacation is a shit show. I'm surprised the neighbors haven't paid us to move yet, after the dining room table was converted into a drinking game zone and various family members continue to yell obscenities between the third floor balcony and the swimming pool like its their day jobs. My aunt gave us all grow-a-something's as welcome presents, which are all now floating in the pool, waiting to grow into planets and enchanted castles and poodles. This will explain the yells, in the middle of the day, from my wasted cousin saying "Someone is molesting my grow-a-pony!". Ok, maybe it will only kind of explain. I would invite you all to this hallowed tradition to see for yourselves, but I value your friendship.

Wednesday Nights

are not fun. Especially when you have to pack. My bed is so full of my random summer crap that I hate - mostly cheesy shorts and t-shirts that I only bring out at family beach vacation time - that I can't even sit down. And every time I look at these detestable articles of clothing, I imagine myself in them and get deeply depressed.

Trying to figure out what books to bring on my vacations is always by far the most stressful and time consuming part of packing for me...should I read Lolita? Or some Hawthorne? Maybe I'll only have the attention span for short stories? I always finally justify it to myself that it is entirely appropriate to bring ALL of the books I consider, resulting in a suitcase that is millions of pounds and filled with just reading materials.

I hate being on the waiting end of a letter exchange. Its worth it never to write back just to maintain that its your decision, your call, just to not be wondering.

catering gig

Today, I served at a house for people so rich that I walked up on these conversation soundbites:
1) [to me, in reference to the hors d'oeuvres] "Oh good, my chef is off this week for vacation"
2) [one white, suited man to another] "Oh, well, if you need another airplane, I've got an extra one that I'm looking to sell"

Things I learned about truly upper-class people include:
1) they drink heavily
2) they love taxidermy
3) they have party houses (a.k.a. houses that exist not for residence but purely for entertaining in), in this case, a massive, two story converted barn
4) they are friends with no minorities, excepting Al, the hired pianist
5) they see funerals as just another reason for a party
6) when intoxicated enough, they like to lean on the piano, hike up their skirts a little bit, and sing Layla on repeat for an hour next to Al, aforementioned hired pianist

Loves

The slide guitar
Seeing Jenny Lewis sing Rise With The Fists live. Seeing Jenny Lewis at all
The modern love column in the Sunday Times
Bubble tea

entertaining

Having people over is way stressful. And in the worst sort of passive, anticipatory way. I feel a little bit like this girl:
I am sitting here. They are coming soon. There is nothing I can do now to assure that they will have a good time, besides getting smartfood popcorn and placing it in a bowl, which is the only thing I could think of to do and already did. My mom is trying to figure out how to get the cable working on our new big tv (one of the many tasks that I did not ask her to do, but that she somehow assumed and then attempted angrily) and it keeps making this little dainty, raindrops falling on fairies noise every time it is turned on and off that's really starting to piss me off. And suddenly there's this unsavory smell of manure or something in the air, which I'm convinced has come over just because I decided to entertain. Ah well. At least we have peonies in a vase and some alcohol. What more can people really ask for?

Media Consumption

I love talking on the phone by accident into the middle of the night. And amazing free downloads from little-engine-that-could kind of small recording companies (for example, this fantastic raveonettes song I'm listening to from a free music sampler from thinkindie). And also all of these new, sad and subtle realist movies (latest addition to my recent viewing history, Rachel Getting Married).
And also day-old sourdough bread with nuts and cranberries in it that's 30% off (note to self: i LOVE bread with shit in it). And green tea ice cream and sushi for at least the third time this week. And when my mom always comes into my room in the morning in short, awkward hand-me-down shirts that I used to wear in eighth grade that I gave to her, looking all earnest and waking me up at noon, and immediately starts talking before I've even opened my eyes. And having a job that is weather-permitting.

Sometimes revisiting the past can be a good thing.

Strange Times

Today I...
stood in line with more middle-aged, bleached-blond women dressed in pink and orange print than I ever hoped to see together in one place at one time (which, for the record, is any number greater than zero).
ate a hoagie from wawa (yesss)
met at a random street corner in west philly with a bunch of people for a catering training session, where they threw us in some cabs that took us out to the back door of a warehouse in Lansdowne...it was all very sketchy. then, consequently, had to practice carrying a tray full of champagne flutes filled with water with one hand in front of like 20 people. not my best experience.
talked to a kid from my high school, who i realized, mid-conversation, as I watched his face move with speech, I had probably never actually carried on a conversation with before.

I don't mean to sound all brooding and self-indulgent, but life is so fucking weird after high school.

listening to: WHY? and Here We Go Magic. Very sweet.

Today I drove a lot

Likes:

• the sound of my car passing other cars on the road at night
• driving with loud music and windows wide open (particularly when due to a faulty air conditioning system)
• the smell of honeysuckle through the window
• dancing cleopatra-inspired 80's dances to New Order and hoping that those in neighboring cars aren't judging you
  

Dislikes:

• driving over cobblestones when you have to pee
• intersections where it seems like no one gets a green light for an unreasonably long time
• ridiculous stop signs
• creepy guys outside of the wawa late at night who say things like, "she rides pretty well, huh?" in reference to your (apparently female) car, which in fact, at the moment, does not ride pretty well at all, but you just nod and murmur "haha, yeah" and get in the car quickly
• accidentally pressing the gas when your car is in reverse
• remembering how incredibly spastic you are at driving (see above)
  

jobs jobs jobs

So I'm a working girl now...(not like that movie with Sigourney Weaver).
Finally got a job...serving rich small children skittles and ice cream, but a job nonetheless. and tonight did some catering for a auction benefit for my hippie alma mater, where I attended pre-school. Lots of women in long, flowered skirts with short gray hair...that distinctive, Mt. Airy type. It was fun though. Got to serve with this professional server named Liz, who came with her own tie and nametag and nails the length of my arms. All night, every time something happened, she would yell "Jesus God!". I'm not sure what that was supposed to signify or accomplish, but it was really funny.

Saw this movie, Wendy and Lucy. It was really quiet and subtle and Pacific Northwestern and good. But I may have liked it primarily just because Michelle Williams was so pretty.


For now, enjoying sitting in my house, which is making pleasant nighttime house humming noises. Summer is nice.

West Philly is beautiful. Today, went to the Green Line Cafe and drank some chai tea surrounded by people I want to know. Then bought a bunch of books from this adorably packed used bookstore. Then got really excited about the deals (A Moveable Feast - $1! Day of the Locust - $2! White Noise - a mere $7.50!). Then felt a little embarrassed for my previous unrestrained excitement over cheap used books, which I think (but do not know intuitively) is classic nerdiness. So maybe I deserved my reputation in high school.

Then I got a little depressed talking to my dad about working. I was down in that section of the city where you feel really out of place on a weekday wearing cut-offs and a plaid t-shirt, because all of these business people are buzzing around you and past you wearing their suits and skirts and "sensible shoes". And my dad was talking very seriously about his company's dress code like it was the creed he lives by - shirt and tie for men, "nothing, you know, low cut or anything" for women, as he so aptly described - but then exclaimed "Friday's casual day! You can wear whatever you want on Fridays!". Is this what life adds up to? Hawaiian shirts on Fridays? I mean, I'm sure all of these busy business people are perfectly happy - they're well off, they have their kids at home, a stable job, which is more than I can say. But there's just something so sad about it. Maybe you're ready for it when you get there. I guess we should all be glad we're not like Benjamin Button, which I tried very hard to watch tonight but could only get 1 hour in before I felt like suffocating. Or perhaps we should all be glad that we have not been forced at knife point to finish watching Benjamin Button. Always things to be thankful for.

What a wonderful day in may

I know that at this point I might be competing for the official corniest person ever award but, taking that risk, I just want to say how incredible my friends all.

that is all.


today, for my birthday brunch with grandma and bob (the classiest of grandparents), I made french toast that looks like this, except minus the fruit salad and plus some orange zest:turns out, french toast is THE BEST when you make it with day-old croissants...sucks in all of the egg or something, I'm not really sure of the logistics of it all, but it is delicious. Then I ate more, since I had to eat some of grandma's cake to make her feel good. Then I ate more, just because I wanted to, with no excuse at all, because your birthday is the one day out of all 365 when you don't need to have excuses. Then I ate amazing cuban foods with lots of unidentifiable, delicious sauces and fancy drinks with sugar cane sticks that I wasn't sure how to handle so I just sucked on them. I think I'm way too timid about food arrangement...probably, if they put it on the plate, it is somehow edible. Otherwise, they'd probably be liable or something. Using words like "liable" makes me realize how little I know about many fields, including but not exclusively law.

But anyway. Tonight it is warm in my room and I have a bunch of new (new/old?) thrift store clothes lying across my couch and a food baby in my stomach. It was a good birthday.

Birthday

On the rare occasion that she reminisces, my mother recounts the story like this:

They wheeled me in, I begged for drugs, and you came out. You were covered in cottage cheese and had chicken legs and I said, put her back in! She's not ready yet! But they wouldn't, so I had to take you home.

Job Hunting

Job hunting sucks. That is the truth of the matter. And it is consuming my existence. I stalk Craigslist like its my job. Literally. I wake up in the morning and instinctively reach over and grab my computer and scan listings for Philadelphia area jobs...including creepy "Summer work needed" from anonymous sources or nanny for 8 special needs children or even (this was completely real) foot models for a company that puts on foot fetish parties. And hear back from no one. I didn't even get an interview back from my application to be - get ready for this - a "toyologist". Seriously?

On the bright side, I have some of the best friends on the face of the earth, who are helping me out in achieving my summer goal to eat ice cream everyday and who talk to me for long, good hours in this new house. Also, I have this one Akron/Family song that I've been listening to non-stop - Running/Returning - that seems to get better every time I listen to it. And pretty nightime light and peppermint tea and lots of books.

Plan

Plan for the summer:
- continue to have ice cream everyday
- listen to while you wait for the others approximately 500,00 more times
- find a job
- not die of boredom
- read books
- remember to take showers
- be the loudest person at the grizzly bear concert singing while you wait for the others
- keep entertaining visitors (not in a sexual way, as I realized that seemed to imply)
- find the perfect pair of high-waisted, bleached jean shorts
- also find stirrup leggings and convince everyone that they are the next big thing. or else just wear them and enjoy them as my own personal secret.