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)