LaurieWrites

New Moon

December 1st. A new moon. A new month. I hope it's a good one. I hope the holidays are enjoyable, and not nervewracking as they can be. I hope I hope I hope. I suppose that's still a good thing. Without it there's not much left.

I'm Free

September 3, 1993 - GREENBELT, Md. (AP)

"Police used a 3-foot, 480-pound robot to disarm a man who allegedly shotgunned his girlfriend to death and barricaded himself inside their apartment. Prince George's County authorities sent the remote-controlled robot into the apartment Thursday after police were unable in a five-hour
standoff to persuade Craig Smith, 22, to surrender."

So I'm in Phillip's the other day after my eye doctor appointment, getting some lunch. And I'm standing against the wall out of the way of the woman who's packing up condiments like she's feeding a small country. I'm just hanging out, welcoming the minutes of not having to do anything cause I'm waiting for food - no work, no phone calls, no stress and no bitching - and I'm realizing that there haven't been that many moments like this recently and I'm wondering why. There's music on in the restaurant, and I realize that it's not as unnecessarily loud as it usually is in these "fast casual", better than fast food, not quite sit-down restaurants. It takes me about 30 seconds to recognize the song, which I immediately identify as a 90s pop tune, Jon Secada's "I'm Free".

First I think, "What in the hell ever happened to Jon Secada?" and then I remember that this song was important to me when my friend Cindy died - shot by her boyfriend - in September, 1993. And because I haven't thought about her in a while, and because I'm standing against a wall, what I quickly calculate is more than 12 years later, in a restaurant on a lunch break from my job, completely unfulfilled and disconnected from any sense of purpose of my own, the song hits me sideways and the tears start rolling down my face.

"I'm free/ I'm free. Things are only as important as I want them to be/We'll have a breath of sunshine/When the rain goes away/ I'm free/ I'm free..."

"Smith fatally shot his live-in girlfriend Cynthia Wilkinson, 24, and sexually assaulted an unidentified woman who was a friend of Wilkinson's, police said. The woman jumped out a window of the second-story apartment and ran to a neighbor's home to call police."

And the tears come mostly because Cindy was a beautiful person, a woman who didn't in any way deserve to die in the horrific way she did, who gave and gave until she couldn't give anymore to the guy who eventually shot her in the face, who worked and worked at this relationship until she finally decided to break it off with him. A day after she did so, completely bewildered by the concept of living without her support of every kind - financial, mental, emotional, physical - he smoked a lot of green, invited a friend of hers over, held her hostage, and called Cindy up and told her to come on over and fix the situation. Since that was her thing, fixing, and because she likely never had an ounce of fear of him, she went over, and he shot her dead. The friend escaped out the window, and a hydraulic robot that the police sent came in after Craig, found him in a closet, and, blowing out his eye, overcame him.

"Smith was charged with first-degree murder and sexual assault. Evans said that Wilkinson and Smith argued Wednesday night after she apparently told him she wanted to end their relationship. The dispute resumed Thursday morning, and Smith shot Wilkinson while they argued, Evans said."

My friend S. and I had lunch with Cindy at Friday's a couple days before Craig killed her. She'd been sick, had a really bad cold, and was still feeling it when we saw her. But she was finally ready to talk about the fact that this relationship wasn't working out, that she couldn't realize the person she could finally see herself becoming while she was still tethered to him. We encouraged her. We told her it would be great - that this was the best thing for her - that we supported her. And a week later, she was dead.

My friendship with her was interesting, and hard-won. I hadn't really liked her at first - I found her crass, and sort of aggravating. At 21, which was likely when I met her, I was much less tolerant and open, more angry. And one day, while I sat eating my dinner at a back table at the restaurant, she sat down across from me eating hers. She said, "You don't much care for me, do you? You think I'm a redneck." And because no one, NO ONE, had ever been that open about their perceptions of my opinion of them before, I was completely floored, embarrassed and humbled. And after I said something ridiculous like, "It's nothing personal," we talked about it sanely and calmly for a while, and pretty much immediately became friends. She made it her mission to connect with me. We realized that we had more in common than we didn't. And I came to admire a work ethic and common sense in her that shifted my opinions. She suffered the counsel that my closest friends occasionally have to tolerate - my insistence that a verbally abusive, intermittently-employed roofer with a serious drug addiction wasn't the best she could do, that she might could go back to school or change her day job and create a different sort of life. She paid attention to all of us (because it wasn't just me telling her this) and had really begun to believe that it was true. And then she died. And because she'd had the guts to come up to me and ask me just what in the hell my problem was, instead of just ignoring me and talking shit about me behind my back, I lost a friend, instead of just a co-worker.

"After negotiations with Smith broke off, police borrowed a robot that the fire department uses to dismantle suspected explosive devices, said Sgt. Alan Day, a police department spokesman. Transmitting the scene by a video camera, the robot at the direction of a fire department technician opened a closet door. Smith could be seen hiding under a pile of clothes and the robot's mechanical claws reached out and pulled them away."

The day Cindy died I was supposed to go see "Shadowlands" at the Olney Theatre, a play about C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy, who died of cancer, based on Lewis's book "Surprised by Joy". My boss at the restaurant called me and asked me if I'd come in and cover a shift that night, and didn't tell me whose it was. I told him no, that I had plans, and asked him whose it was, again. He finally allowed that Cindy had been hurt, but fudged on just how much he knew. And as I sat on the stairs to my living room talking to him, the news scroll came across the bottom of the television, about a hostage situation in Greenbelt, and shots being fired. He admitted that he knew, and I hung up on him, because he knew she was my friend, and he wanted me to come in and cover his ass, unaware that I was working for her because she was dead. It's still one of the shittiest things anyone has ever attempted to do, to me and to my other friends he called, because it was so weak, and so self-serving. I was in college and was always broke, so thank God I had play tickets or I probably would have said "yes" without a second thought. If I'd shown up to work and found out why I was there, ugly words would likely have been exchanged, and that wasn't the right time or place for that kind of interaction.

The Prince George's County Fire Department bought the robot known as Remote Mobile Investigator-9 RMI-9 for short seven years ago for $45,000. Capt.Victor Stagnaro, a fire department spokesman, said it was the first time the local police had used RMI-9 to catch a suspect.

I ended up at S's house with another friend of ours instead, and we sat in her basement and watched the television news. The story was big news since it was the first time they'd ever used this robot thing to apprehend someone. Once we understood that Cindy was dead, that she was the Greenbelt hostage, we cried and grieved together, and talked about things not being fair. We talked about how she'd quit smoking, a huge accomplishment for her, several months before she died, and the irony in dying anyway. We talked about how he was so much smaller than she was, and how she'd joked before that he'd never dare hit her, because "she'd throw him off the porch." The currency changes, though, when a gun is involved. Size doesn't so much matter. We talked about the Grateful Dead show that she and S. had gone to that summer, and how much fun we had dancing to stupid songs like "Whoomp There It Is" at the 94th Aero Squadron on Friday nights, because she'd started going out with us and she loved to dance.

"When Smith grabbed the clothes back from the robot and began to cover himself up again, the robot fired a high-pressure water gun to knock the shotgun out of Smith's hands and disorient him, said a police spokesman, Cpl. Keith Evans. Police rushed in and arrested Smith."

It was frankly too much to get your head around all at once. Still, we could all agree that our manager lacked a core of compassion (he had called lots of people to work, not divulging what he knew) and that was something else altogether to consider. That restaurant was a second home - sometimes a first one - for a lot of us during those years, and it's a lesson since hard-learned that life tends to shatter our ideals about even sacred spaces. You learn a lot about people by the way they handle trauma, and other people's pain. You learn the difference between someone who will shutter the place for the night so people can get their shit together, and someone who will lie to keep the doors open. I never saw him in the same way after that, although I pretended to.

Anyway, "I'm Free" was all over the radio then. I thought Jon Secada was sort of lame, to tell the truth, but I was full-on in my grunge and metal phase at the time, crazy about a boy who would pick a fight with me the next year about Kurt Cobain's motivations for killing himself, and praying that the Black Album was as light as Metallica would go. But I listened to light rock on my way home from work at night, and it was on a night shortly after she died that I heard it.

"Do you need a friend right now/In the road that you’re going to/ If you get lost just call me I’ll be there/Yes I’ll be right there/ Cause though I may not have the answer/ At least I know what I’m looking for..."

It brought her into full view for me - the attitude of redemption, the desire to be free from a life she'd never dared step out of before, the expansion of her social circle and the resulting crowd of people who were touched by her life and devastated by her death. And now, in a sense, she was free. Our whole crew went down to her funeral service, and it was amazing. Her family didn't know us, and it seemed that we were grieving a totally different person. There was a strained air in the room, which makes sense in the wake of a violent death, but it seemed like our group knew a different Cindy. It occurred to me then that she was a different person with us - a group of people who had no preconceived notions about her, who didn't judge her based on where she'd come from but on what she presented us with in the moment, and what we could see as her potential. And make no mistake - she did the same for us. At that age, I was fairly well ensconced in an attitude that needed to change big-time, and she was a catalyst. She helped me, although she didn't have to, and she probably never knew it. I can just see it, looking back, from the vantage point of my almost-35 self.

When you lose a friend unexpectedly, especially at a very young age, it informs you about the lack of any guarantee of longevity. Sometimes in the years immediately following her death, I'd feel sorry for myself or bemoan my existence, and her face would pop into my head, and I'd think how she would be so thankful for the chance to have another normally shitty day as opposed to lying dead in the ground, and it would shut me up for a little bit. As time passed, as usually happens with even the most painful of situations, I stopped being grounded so much by that thought. When I'd feel sorry for myself or bemoan my existence, her face would not pop into my head. It's a shame, how that can happen. It's a protection, too, because who wants or needs or can withstand the full force of emotional trauma forever? It's the reason some people drink, smoke, exercise, shop, or work too much - to drown out the sadness of a thought that won't go away.

The brain is constructed in an amazing way, though - to allow something like a song, a smell, a season, a tone of voice, a photograph - to take us directly back to a situation or a feeling, something that is important to who we are, regardless of how deep it's buried. This kind of thing can either hurt or heal, or, in many, many cases in my little life, hurt as a sign of healing. After twelve years, it still hurt to remember the death of a woman who reached out to me in kindness, who challenged me to check my own biases, but it was the right time to call her to mind. I still need that kind of challenge, in fact, need it currently more than I have in a long while. I'm grateful for once for the relentless music in stores and restaurants, for bringing someone to mind who I hadn't thought about in a while, whose life touched me. It didn't matter to me that people standing around could see me cry, because some people deserve our most honest expressions of emotion. My friend Cindy was one of them, and it was an honor to remember her, although truly I have never forgotten, even if it's not always conscious.

"Yes I can do without this sorrow/There’s a day after tomorrow/ So I’m leaving it behind."

"Do you see what I see
A rainbow shining over us
In the middle of a hopeless storm
Sometimes I’m blinded by my feelings
And I can’t see beyond my troubled mind
Afraid of what I’ll find
The story of our lives
But there’s tomorrow.

Chorus
Cause I’m free, I’m free
And things are only as important

As I want them to be
We’ll have a breath of sunshine
When the rain goes away
I pray, I pray.

Do you need a friend right now
In the road that you’re going to
If you get lost just call me I’ll be there
Yes I’ll be right there
Cause though I may not have the answer
At least I know what I’m looking for.

Yes I can do without this sorrow
There’s a day after tomorrow
So I’m leaving it behind.

Chorus
I’m free, I’m free
And things are only as important

As I want them to be
We’ll have a breath of sunshine
When the rain goes away
I pray, I pray.

And if you want to share my dreams
Well all you have to do is say it, say it
Let me hear you loud and clear
Cause I need you if you wanna be, if you wanna be.

Do you see what I see
A rainbow shining over us
In the middle of a hopeless storm
We’ll be safe and warm."

Cafe Conversations

The guy at the table next to me is talking about the impossibility of the awareness of the conscious mind. I want to beat him in the head.

My hands are freezing. I'm right by the window because there's an outlet here. I'm going to be cold until April. I know it.

I have so much more work to do and I'm not getting it finished quickly enough. I can't wait for January.

Check out alleganyartscouncil.org

Now he is talking about the truth of creation in the real world, and how he "saw something else going down in the subconscious" and the "radical fog". Wow. I don't even think drugs are involved here. He is so completely into his thoughts, I guess I feel bad for saying I wanted to beat him in the head. I really don't. He looks sort of sweet, and hey, I guess if you've got that kind of conviction, and it doesn't involve hurting other people then it's okay - even if it sounds like complete and utter crap to me.

Another dude just uttered the word "tofurkey". I haven't heard that yet this year, and it would have been fine if I never did.

I want the new Maureen Dowd book. Wealth to  me would be being able to buy whatever hardcover book I wanted.

And They're Off

I'm very disturbed by this article.

The day I'm ever "lunging" under the gates of an Express store before the sun comes up, I hope someone bundles me up and takes me for an evaluation. And there are crowds of people doing it!

Maybe I'm just not a normal consumer. The very thought of waking my child up at 3:30 AM (as it says in one of the photo captions accompanying this story) to get to Wal-mart by 5 a.m. makes me so sad. And there was a person camped out in front of the store in a TENT last NIGHT!!!!

Just completely crazy. I can't even take Wal-mart on a normal Tuesday afternoon. This story makes me want to stay inside until January, which, come to think of it, isn't an entirely bad idea...

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Why don't we ever just fall in love with the one in front of our face who thinks we rock the casbah? What is up with that? Why is that the eternal universal joke?

Tom Cruise buying a sonogram machine for Katie Holmes makes me throw up in my mouth. Aren't sonograms bad for babies? How much radioactivity can one baby - or one mother - take? This story is just gross. I can't even handle it.

I sent a work-related e-mail on Thanksgiving, and I cared about it. I can't wait for 2006.

My godson was with me for the holiday. He is one of the coolest people ever to walk the face of the planet, and I swear to God someday I will set him up with whatever he needs in terms of finances, or a home, or business capital, especially if I don't have children of my own. I have indescribable love for this boy. I guess there is something about holding a baby in your arms and pledging to God that you'll watch out for him always that bonds you to him. I love that he has the shaggy hair that is so in...that he is into computer games...that he gives me big, huge hugs when he sees me. This is why we live - these relationships - I swear. It made my day. Hell, it made my month.

Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's divorce announcement made me sad. What is wrong with people?

I wonder how much it would cost to freeze my eggs.

Life can change on a dime. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not. Even. Kidding.

Thanksgiving

I don't vent on here generally but since it's 2 a.m. and I'm awake again, I figure my few phantom readers will forgive me this exception (and hey, it's my dime, right? No reason you can't skip it.) This has been a rough day. It's just as well that I didn't go to see Rent tonight because I probably would have fallen asleep. I have worked this hard before, but never this much in a vacuum, and never with this much confusion about how I was going to get a job done. It's made the transition to winter more difficult, probably. It's been causing a lot of stress, and leaving me at a loss. I found myself crying - hard - on the way home from work today, and that hasn't happened in several months. Comfort was needed but nonexistent - nothing around but cold and a sprinkling of snow, earlier this year than in several that I can remember. This time last year I was happy. There was pressure but I felt loved and supported in a way that I don't this year. To be truthful, I'm feeling rather adrift. There's pressure too to get into the "holiday spirit". I'm not there yet, and I don't like being rushed. I don't like feeling the external pressure to be jolly, to want to cook certain things or operate on a time schedule that's dependent on other people.

I wish I didn't feel this way. And I wish that I had more of an ability to fake it but I don't. I want to feel connected but I don't know how. Everyone is so busy, running around chasing the tail of whatever this life is supposed to be. I don't even know anymore. I don't recognize it. No one seems to really stop and talk - myself included. The phone rings but it's always planplanplan - where will you be? What can you pick up? When is it due? How much does it cost? I'm sick of planning, sick of worrying about the next thing.

I want a moment back. I want a hug. I want someone to ask "how are you?" and really care, I guess. I want someone to be there in the morning to make breakfast with me and read the paper and check out what I'm up to, and let me know what they're up to, too. I want someone to go to the grocery with me - to read my work - to make sure it's all good. I want someone to look at my photos and give me feedback, without saying "that's interesting" and leaving it at that. I want the impossible back again.

In the meantime, I am trying to take moments with people. I'm trying to remember to do that. I'm trying to see - and act - beyond the window dressing, even though my heart feels like a hole. A friend of mine was in the hospital this week with a serious ailment. She has a chronic disease that causes her a lot of pain. I stopped in last Sunday to see her, because she has been one of the most important people in my last several months and she likes company. She likes to ask about people and see how they're doing. She takes time, and I find myself doing the same for her. And when I went to see her in her temporary room, I found that this kind of unscheduled time to talk, with no distractions, was very unusual, and one of us had to be ill in order to get it. Next time we'll hopefully schedule just another late lunch.

So tonight I wrote a letter to a nice lady who always remembers me on holidays. I went to bed early accidentally - passed out around 10 and here I am, like I said, awake. I'm thinking about how for these reasons and more my life is nothing like what I thought it would be at this age, and I'm not thrilled about that. I work on being grateful, but I have to say that there is more this year that I'm dissatisfied with than last, and that isn't good progress.

Sometimes it's okay to tell the difficult truths.

I did wake up about an hour ago, though, with a sense of peace that lasted for a couple of minutes. The things that had been really bothering me when I closed my eyes sort of lifted out of my head and up and over my bed, finally dissipating just a little bit. That doesn't happen often. Usually my brain is flypaper, and the bad thoughts are, well, flies. Sticky. Sticking. Stuck. So I decided to think about the happiest moments - times when things really clicked, and when my life made sense. I decided to write them down even if that's cheesy to do, because it's important to remember your capacity for joy when it's feeling like it's dwindled. Hopefully stuffing those thoughts in your head will magnify them and squeeze out the space for the bad stuff. Anyway, we should remember moments like this - times when all seemed more than well - times when life seemed to make the most sense.

My sister coming home from the hospital (a new baby)

Monsters of Rock, 1988

Bringing both of my dogs home

College Park graduation

My best friends' weddings - Karen, Angela, Gretchen - beautiful days all

Concerts - Metallica in 1992, Barenaked Ladies last summer, the Cowboy Junkies in Cincinnati, Elton in Vegas, Dave Matthews Band a couple of times, Lollapalooza in the mud with Joe, Girlyman at Jammin' Java, Mary Chapin Carpenter at Wolf Trap, the Indigo Girls all over the place, U2 at RFK

Late-afternoon beach time in South Carolina, talking about nothing and feeling fine

Meeting C. in the kitchen, and thinking, "I'm going to know him forever...or at least a very long time."

Angie's 21st birthday limo ride.

That best-ever nights with Craig driving me home in the ice storm and then at 1470 - the price of happiness often being the knowledge of its absence later (itself an informative thing)

Driving through the Arizona mountains and discovering natural wonders around every curve

Flying somewhere new

An indelible very wonderful first kiss, and its rediscovery years later

The view of the sunset from the Virginia mountains

Holding my friends' babies

The "Maryland Welcomes You - Please Drive Gently", "Ohio - the heart of it all" and "South Carolina - Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places" signs...depending where I'm going, where I've been, and where I'm trying to get to...but mostly the first one. There's something about home.

Dancing to the  Beatles with the dogs in our old, empty dining room

Opening the bookstore

Meeting my boy at the bookstore and questioning love at first sight.

The first time a print I photographed emerged in the developer

Chocolate Chip at the House of Blues

The back room at Ledos on Monday nights

A boy reading me Walt Whitman poetry

"ONCE I pass’d through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met there, who detain’d me for love of me..." Yellow Springs on Saturday

Saying and hearing "I love you" and meaning it too

Sitting by the water talking

I guess I'll stop there. I needed to remember.

Quotes

"Excuse me, sir? Sir? I distinctly asked for a mai tai and they brought me a pina colada. And there was salt on margarita glass, and I asked for no salt. I can shut this whole resort down. I can take my traveler's checks to a competing resort. I can put strichnyne in the guacamole. I can write a letter to the board of tourism and have this place condemned. There were grains of salt on the margarita glass - big grains of salt." - Milton, Office Space

The secret of Leibovitz's success may be her devotion to photography as theater and her deep belief in the truth of appearances. "Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface," she has said, "because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter." ~ Annie Leibovitz

"We're trying to live love and peace, instead of just singing about it." ~ John Lennon

A Tale of...yeah yeah yeah....

Click on the thumbnail on the left for a peek at a weekend of random ramblings around two cities I know a little bit about. But it's really true - if you want to know how much you DON'T know about some places you've been, get out and roam around on the streets for a while, especially with a camera. The thing is, we really don't know that much. Really.

Taking Pictures

The nice thing about photography is that it gets you out in the world. I mean, you see things from every angle, literally, and it opens things up in a different sort of way. I have to admit that after a really crappy year (Yes, I've concluded that it's been a pretty crappy year in a lot of ways. I'm not downing everything about it, but let's just say that things have not FLOWED. It has been relatively CHALLENGING.) it is nice to immerse myself in an activity that really takes me outside of all the thoughts that I think in my head, every day. SO many thoughts, really. SO many, they drown me and confuse me and kick me in the ass, individually and collectively. I don't begrudge myself the ability to think, because it is an interesting gift, and a privilege, and a blessing, certainly. But I guess I'd like things to be easier for a while, or at least less aggravating.

Anyway, getting involved in a creative activity that isn't writing for a change really helps. It really switches something on in my brain that isn't always active without assistance. It forces me to pay attention. It has blessed me with a fall wherein every morning when I'm driving to work, I'm really digging the way the light falls on and between the trees. I'm familiar with the way the leaves have turned, on a daily basis, on my normal routes to work. It's gotten me out of bed and on a hike in the mountains, early in the morning, where I've seen a piece of the Appalachian Trail and realized that the parts of our lives when our feet really touch the Earth are too few and far between. It's given me different views of Las Vegas, Arizona, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., southern Virginia, and my own teeny front yard. It's gotten me together with an old friend for a kickass portrait session. It's gotten me to go to the Mall (the DC one, not the shopping one) with a group of total strangers, lying on the ground to photograph monuments with a fresh eye.

I can't tell you what a nice change this is. I can't tell you how much I need it. And when my mom calls when I'm in Baltimore, and I tell her I'm taking pictures, and she says "I wish there was someone there with you," I can mean it when I say, "I don't". Because I think it's okay to be alone right now. As not-okay as it feels some days, I think it's part of the task for now. And when you're taking pictures, you're not (as uber-corny as this sounds) really alone.  You're necessarily engaged with the world around you, whether it's people or the landscape or an idea. And as I was mentioning to my friend who is a photographer today, people really notice you when you're obviously on a mission to photograph stuff beyond the "point and shoot let's document this trip" vibe. People tend to get out of your way. Sometimes they're a little suspicious. Sometimes they stare. I was patiently waiting yesterday for these parents to take their son's photo with this crab statue that's popped up on the street in Baltimore. I honestly was waiting patiently. And they were looking at me like they were hurrying, like I had somewhere to be...It's just an interesting experience. It's possible to blend in when you want, with all the other touristy types, or you can stand out. It really depends.

I was taking photos inside at an event for work, and this sort of sketchy woman, who always has a snide remark for everything, came up and said, "What are YOU doing?" And I said, "Taking pictures." And she said, "I can see THAT. But WHY?" And I said, "Just because I want to." And that didn't satisfy her at all, but it worked for me.

I haven't done a survey in a while.

...and this one is fun.

[A is for age:] 34. Crap. I typed 38 first. Hello, frightening ghost of birthday future. Eesh.

[B is for booze of choice:] Red wine and microbrew. Wine can be cheap, but I'm a beer snob. I'm so proud.

[C is for career you want:] I want to be a professional student, and I'm not kidding. I can always do stuff to pay bills, but there is so much that I want to learn and do...Work kind of gets in the way. I prefer it when my "life" is integrated with my work, which might sound unhealthy but if you love the stuff you're doing it really doesn't hurt you or the people you love. I'm not sure I can do photography as a career but all of this media stuff will come together somehow, I'm sure. I have a small core of confidence about it. We'll see. Ultimately, whatever it is, I like to be around people most of the time, and to see the world.

[D is for your dog's name:] Punkinheadbestdogever

[E is for essential items for your everyday life:] Contact lenses. Without them I'm completely ineffectual (at least in motion...I can still talk and stuff, but whatever...) and after they go in I can motor myself around and not bump into things and cause all kinds of consternation wherever I go. So yeah, they're essential. After that, there's, let's see...cake. ; ) Music. Certain people.

[F is for favorite songs at the moment:] "Good Day for the Blues", Storyville (check them out - not well known but good), "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes," Hem, "All These Things That I've Done," The Killers, "Good Times", Chic, "The Girl I Can't Forget", Fountains of Wayne.

[G is for favorite game:] Scattergories. They need to provide some new categories, however. We used to play it on placemats at Ledo's...make up our own categories. Can't have that kind of fun everywhere, for free, with a placemat, and a pen. ; )

[H is for hometown:] Silver Spring, maryland.

[I is for instruments you play:] I can sing. And pressing random keys on the keyboard like the synth-pop goddess God intended me to be, suckas.

[J is for jam or jelly you like:] Apricot. Excellent. And then there's apple butter. More excellent...particularly with peanut butter.

[K is for how many kids you want?] This sounds lamer than I intend it to, but I'm trying to not really want that right now. If it happens it's going to be a happy accident (not THAT kind of accident, silly. I'm too grown for that...an accident of fate, or whatever looks like fate) so I'm not applying any numbers to the situation because I don't like dancing with the devil, especially on Friday night.

[L is for living arrangements:] Boomerang situation with my parents for right now. So hopefully very temporary, but I've been in worse.

[M is for mom's name:] Anne

[N is for name of your crush:] This rather tall, oddly conservative guy, but as I type this I realilze that it's sort of passing. It's been fun. Otherwise, all of my Platonic boyfriends who make me smile. : ) And Jimmy Kimmel. Damn you, Sarah Silverman. Jason Bateman - thanks to Arrested Development for bringing him back to me. : )

[O is for overnight hospital stays:] Several, but I barely remember them at this point, except for one when I was 13 that was really terrible. Do NOT get bone removed from your hip. Just don't do it. My hip hurts when it's damp out, just like my grandma's does...Drag.

[P is for phobias:] Being in a car wreck (is that a phobia? I'm not afraid to drive, so it's not necessarily the same.)

[Q is for quotes you like] Lots. Here's one from Patia: "I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation."~Terry Tempest Williams

[R is for relationship that lasted the longest:] If you count up the on segments of the off and on dealio, I guess the last one. Three years? Two and a half? Two? Ten? Haha. I don't know...

[S is for sexual orientation:] I am oriented, yes. And unfortunately I still like boys.

[T is for time you wake up:] Around 11, but dragging my ass out of bead occurs much, much earlier, unfortunately - between 7:15 and 8:15. I can't wake up. Seriously. It's becoming a problem.

[U is for color underwear right now] Black.

[V is for vegetable you love] Corn on the cob. Fancy mushrooms. Green and red peppers. Olives. Or are they a fruit? Tomatos too...I love veggies. : )

[W is for worst habit:] Having high expectations. Snacks. Procrastinating.

[X is for x-rays you've had:] A bunch. My mouth the most...I hate dental x-rays.

[Y is for yummy food you make:] I can rock a grilled cheese like you've never had in your life. : ) Different kinds of cheese, even...Don't be fooled. It's a skill. I also make good chili and chicken stir-fry type things.

[Z is for zodiac sign:] Capricorn.