ciao bellas

I'm going to Disneyworld. With my red plaid shoes and houndstooth cap. Oh and my mom and brother. We'll see how long the need for space abates. Did I mention I'm sharing a bed with my mom? A double bed? Methinks I might be springing for the $15 cot a few nights.

I've never travelled with this much gear before. Most especially a laptop. And most especially with a laptop in the most beautiful carry bag ever adorned with skulls and roses.... ha ha. I seriously love it. So feel free to keep in touch and I promise I'll have fun and rock it out and take lots of scary pictures and dance my face off at Mute Math and talk to lots of people and you all please have a good week and a safe halloween and keep the snow at bay. xoxo.

in the meantime

Frick there's lots to do to spend 10 days in Florida. I'm an old woman packing for this trip, with my comfortable shoes and bran bars. I'm actually packing tuna. My theory is this, though, we're staying at the Hilton IN Disneyworld and we're not going to have a car and I bet you $10 there ain't going to be a grocery store anywhere to be found. And as great as eating out all the time sounds, I know from experience it's not true. And if we're stuck at the park all day and there's a choice between a $7 slice of cheese pizza and my tuna and crackers and almonds? Guess which one I'm going to pick.

Here's a haiku from the past that's in my head these days:

You said withdrawal,
and I misread: needing space
not needing filling.

Think on that, suckers, whilst I ensure my fiber needs are being met.

oh shit

Anyone that knows me knows that I don't do scary. Yet somehow I've been roped (ha!) into going to the Carnival of Carnage at Universal Studios on halloween night. I've been trying to find out as much as i can about it so that I at least have some idea of what I'm getting in to, but basically it all tells me that yes, I am going to shit my pants. There are dudes with chainsaws walking around the main courtyard. They chase you. Yes, I know there's no chains in the chainsaws but still.. wish me luck. If I don't make it out alive please water the plants and find someone deserving for my house...

I sing myself lullabies

It's been an emotional couple of weeks here at chez nicola. All things aligned to leave me in a really familiar and uncomfortable place, hopes pinned and constantly crushed. Ignored not entirely, but just enough to keep the yearning fresh. It really and truly sucked, I can say that much. And I'm not really sure where it came from, one thing led to another and it seems like maybe I fell a little bit in love with his things? With the albums and the low light and the photographs and the staging? Is that possible? It seems ridiculous if it is. But somehow also true.

I hate the fact that I'm fighting a constant urge to edit myself here. Like I'm not allowed to talk about what I'm feeling or who I'm feeling it with. I surprised myself and fell a little bit over someone completely not appropriate. He balked. I balked. I got mad, mad at him and mad at me for being so fucking hurt by the situation. But I also spent hours trying to figure it out. I don't want to ignore or dismiss the wound, I just want to figure a way through it. And apologize the whole time for how heavy it is with old damage.

And I sing myself lullabies to get through it. There are certain songs that will always just make everything ok while they're playing, my repeat button is well-worn. 9 more sleeps till Disneyworld and Mute Math at the House of Blues (FUCK YA!), and tonight I'm going to wipe the snot off my face long enough to learn how twirl me some pasties.

I totally lol'd

the start of something beautiful

Pastie-making workshop? Yes sir. Wine and women and glitter and how big is your areolae? The ins and outs of sequins vs. stones vs. swingability of tassles, beginners vs. tassle weight and holy shit we're all going to see each other nearly naked next week. I stopped myself from apologizing ahead of time. I know there are women with children in the class so I'm pretty sure that mine won't be swinging the lowest, not that it really fucking matters.

I am so sad. I was on the way to class and nearly got hit making that blind left from in front of my house. You know the one. Surprised it's never happened before, but tonight it nearly did and after they gave me the finger I just started crying, driving to class with my bag full of sparkles, pretending that it doesn't bother me, pretending that I'm perfectly fine with absence. Hell I should be, I'm pretty used to it. And I stopped at the offsale on the way home and bought the 2nd and last bottle of Barefoot, bummed 2 smokes from the Iraqis (you remember the ones). Sometimes you just feel like drinkin' and smokin'. And that will be the hardest thing to break.

aka

Friends,

this is the viscous heart I hide from you:
gnashing, polluted, hooked to my ribs
like a burr, stuck there and stinging,
and it's only 4:14 in the morning.

Those sudden shudders my waking alarm,
then the daily discipline of shutting away that heart,
shambling through the house, touching things,
stroking their shapes as if it could help me

not be the Bad Sower's daughter each morning:
the pit from a seed he sowed and left to parch,
and no crows would feed on it. So I lived. I don't
want to explain this further, I'm done with it.

But this for you: on the days I hold your books,
read your letters, recall a gaze, the delicate
dangle of an earring, or the throwing
back of a head in laughter,

it's you seeding the first beat into the heart
I open. And as the sun heaves daylight
into the parched tree by my window,
and rats burrow away, when pigeons come

down to feed on dust and pizza crusts, I thrum
the lit syllables of your names on my sill with all
ten fingers, typing them firmly into the brick,
and counting their beats, counting their beats.

~ Laure-Anne Bosselaar

lately I've felt funny

Things aren't sitting right, and things are certainly not what I would have expected. But you take joy where you find it, right? And it is joy, I know that much is true. But now it's fraught and tempered with the afterward expectations and all I really expect is to keep having the best conversations I've had in months and laughing so hard that beer comes out my nose. I don't expect to be avoided. I don't expect to still be having bad dreams, don't expect in sleep to be reminded why I'm worthless. That could stop any time now, please. And I don't respect the feeling of being afraid to say anything here because history has taught me that people judge, hold judgements, late at night, keeping score on an invisible scoreboard to say "see? she must be a whore, she's talking about a boy," some 7 months after the fact. Yes it's a boy and yes he makes me laugh and no I never expected to like him but the truth of the matter is that I just do. Ok? That's about all.

Apparently they're fall flowers

it's been a long week

So you'd best believe I'm heading to a pal's place with some icy cold beers and my We Are the World record.

the great mofo delurk

Click the link for more explanation, but basically the rules are that today has been officially declared as internationally delurking day. If you read someone regularly, tell 'em that you love 'em. Even if you don't know them. Especially if you don't know them. Go ahead, make someone's day. Maybe even mine.

the little sunflower that could

I vowed to take an active interest in my yard this year and planted sunflowers in the front patch by the walk in... May? All I've seen all summer long are 10 long spindly stems reaching for the sky, with nary a head in sight. Then 3 days ago I come home and am greeted by this guy. Nevermind the fact that it's been below freezing already this year, never mind the fact that I've done nothing with the garden I planted in the back since July, this one sunflower kinda made it all worth it.