I STEAL: Marigoldie’s Meme
I AM: wearing a tiger-print top that I bought from TJ Maxx, even though I knew my boyfriend would wrinkle his nose at it. And he did. But I didn’t care, because the color is flattering (beige/black not yellow/black) and it makes me feel hungry like the wolf. If anyone comments on it, I plan to say, “I skinned it myself!”
I WANT: to have fun, and to do good things.
I WISH: I had some way of knowing that all my work will pay off, or that I’m on the right track, or at least that my children will have good lives.
I HATE: plagiarists.
I MISS: my children on the Christmases that they go to their dad’s. I miss them so much, it’s like I don’t have a Christmas at all. Also, I will miss them very much starting tomorrow, when they go to their dad’s for the summer. Every summer, I think I should get a cat or something so I won’t be alone… but then I realize that the cat would freak out when the kids returned, and therefore wouldn’t play with them. Also, pets are a pain in the ass. So are my kids, sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love them more than anything else in the world.
I HEAR: Portland’s KIJZ FM, via HD Radio.
I WONDER: how my life will turn out.
I REGRET: not going to Vassar when I had the chance.
I AM NOT: as melodramatic as people may think. I simply prefer to express my emotions in hour-long bursts, and then revert to my normal apathy/stoicism/bored state. It’s easiest that way, I find. Otherwise, I’d simmer and seethe and be sad all year long.
I DANCE: in a very inhibited way, unless I’m drunk. I’m bigger than most people on the dance floor, most times. I don’t want to attract a lot of attention by moving too much. Unless I’m drunk.
I SING: pretty well, and it makes me happy to sing. I sing in my car when I drive to Austin alone. Some songs make me cry, and then, if I sing along to them, it gives me goosebumps along my arms and legs, and an electric feeling in my chest. I like to sing along with Bjork, Liz Phair, and Veruca Salt best. But I will sing anything that comes on the radio, too, no matter what genre or station. I like to sing along with that Toadies song “Possum King,” even though the lead singer of the Toadies was a massive prick to me when I met him in Dallas six or seven years ago. That’s a testament to how much I like to sing in the car alone. Even the songs of a prick are worth singing.
I CRY: during Sense and Sensibility, Spider-Man 2, and Bjork’s “All Neon Like”.
I AM NOT ALWAYS: as nice as I like to be.
I MAKE WITH MY HANDS: beads on strings.
I WRITE: books, blog entries, emails, poems, and outlines… and yet, somehow, I don’t write one quarter as much as I think I should be writing.
I CONFUSE: all the old white guys at my day job (if they have gray hair and don’t wear glasses, they all blend together in my mind), and several of the actresses in the magazines. Sienna Miller, Victoria Beckham, Chloe Sevigny, Alexis Bledel, Alexis Stewart… their faces slip out of my mind and I would never recognize them on the street.
I NEED: furniture. Since leaving my marriage six years ago, I haven’t quite managed to buy a proper household’s worth of furniture. Our apartment is filled with cast-offs and too-small dressers, supplemented by laundry baskets. My mattress and boxspring are still on the floor. I’m about to buy a house, but I have no furniture. I’ll probably have to buy some on credit, just so we won’t look freshly robbed.
I SHOULD: write more stuff and sell it so I can have more money.
I START: thinking up ideas for stuff to write, and then worrying that they aren’t good enough, or won’t sell, or that they’ll be a profitless waste of a year if I sit down to write them. It makes my stomach hurt.
I FINISH: things, once I sit down to do them. Books, necklaces, and arguments. I get them done.
