Whoops
So a long time ago (try the beginning of June), I made a summer playlist. Which I meant to post. But I forgot. Now summer is over, but the playlist is still awesome. Enjoy.
Summer 2009 – Chillin’ with my peeps and my main man the Monarch
- Hope for us – The Jealous Sound
- Nothing left to lose – Mat Kearney
- Learning to fly – Tom Petty
- Shake me like a monkey – Dave Matthews Band
- Summer hair = forever young – The Academy is…
- Florida – Modest Mouse
- That’s not my name – The Ting-Tings
- On the wing – Owl City
- We are rockstars – Does it offend you, yeah?
- Bonafied lovin’ – Chromeo
- The view – Modest Mouse
- The fear – Lily Allen
- I do not hook up – Kelly Clarkson
- Troublemaker – Weezer
- She’s my Winona – Fall Out Boy
- Never going to give you up – Rick Astley
- I think I need a new heart – Magnetic Fields
- Lovers in Japan/Reign of love – Coldplay
That’s what I listened to pretty much non-stop this weekend. I’m going to be making a fall mix soon…because now it’s fall time. That’s crazy right there.
Spring 2009 mix – this time everything’s different
Here is the mix. Thanks to the input from Pam and Lilo, I think I have it down. By being on my old computer, I’m getting all sorts of things I wouldn’t have used before. This is going to be excellent…
- Starting now – Ingrid Michaelson
- Her morning elegance – Oren Lavie
- Spring provides – Matt Pond PA
- West coast – Coconut Records
- Sex on fire – Kings of Leon
- Reach for the sun – The Polyphonic Spree
- Big enough – Garrison Starr
- Ramona – Guster
- Stay (wasting time) – Dave Matthews Band
- She moves in her own way – The Kooks
- Nighttiming – Coconut Records
- See you on the moon – Great Lake Swimmers
- Sunny skies – James Taylor
- Color of sunshine – Field Notes
- Handle with care – Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
- Jenny don’t be hasty – Paolo Nutini
- Single ladies – Mr. Little Jeans
- Far away – Ingrid Michaelson
- (Coffee’s for closers) – Fall Out Boy
And that’s it. That’s the mix. I think that pretty well captures what this spring is going to be…a season of hope, of new birth, of change, of love. So here’s to spring of 2009 – This time everything’s different
P.S. I would look for a summer mix in a few months. Hint hint
Ugh, weddings
As I’ve mentioned, my cousin Heather is getting married in August. She only just got engaged in December, which caused my mom to just about have a heart attack because OMGZ, Heather is finally engaged. Nevermind the fact that she and her now future husband bought a house together and they’ve been dating for years. Apparently these things mean nothing.
But this wedding? It’s totally going to kill me.
I like weddings, generally. Up until two of my lovely ladies got married in 2007, I hadn’t been to a wedding since my aunt got married back in 1996. I do remember the wedding being tons of fun and me dancing around like a reject. So when I had 2 weddings to go to in ONE MONTH, it was awesome and overwhelming all at once. And I wasn’t even getting married.
Both weddings were lovely affairs, both the brides looked AMAZING and I was more drunk at one than the other. Regardless…weddings.
My cousin called me not long ago and asked me to be a bridesmaid. Since then, she calls me about 3 times a week. We used to talk maybe once or twice a month just because she’s busy and I’m busy and it’s hard to connect. But now? She’s calling all the time to talk about THE wedding or THE dress or THE flowers and I’m at a loss. I have no idea about these things. She doesn’t even know what she wants to do and up until last week still hadn’t picked a place or a date. At least she has those things. And she found a dress THANK YOU JEBUS because I couldn’t take that much more of her calling me in the middle of the day to ask if I wanted to go and look for dresses. At 4 pm. On a workday. I’m sure the places that she wanted to go and look at dresses would never have let me in. I have an ass and I wear jeans and sneakers a lot. I am not the designer bridal dress place’s idea of a good customer. I’m sure they would have locked me out.
The bridesmaid dresses are still waiting to be picked. Heather has no idea where she is going with this. First it was BCBG dresses. Then she wanted short dresses (which is a problem because all of the bridesmaids are different heights) then she wanted some weirdo other kinds of dresses. Every day, she’s got a different idea and it’s EXHAUSTING. I just want to tell her to call me when she makes a choice because I just don’t know what else to tell her. I’m not the girl to go with to pick out dresses. Mostly because I am the fat bridesmaid and really…you don’t take her when you go shopping. My mom decided last night that SHE was coming with us when we go shopping for those dresses. I might not go then. There’s only so much of my mom I can put up with, and her telling me that I’m fat in a dress is not one of those things.
The only good thing that I can see coming from this wedding (aside from the amazing amount of booze that I will drink the weekend of the wedding, hello, awesome times ahead) is the fact that it’s given me a goal to lose another 15 pounds by the wedding. I think I can do this. No. I KNOW I can do this. I needed a time and now I have one. It’s just a matter of getting back into the gym and getting back into the groove of WW.
The other thing I have to worry about – okay, not worry about – is who I’m going to take. My aunt wanted to know why I needed to take someone. I told her that I wanted to because I need someone to whisper nasty things to and it’s not going to be a member of my family. I need someone that I can use as an excuse to escape. I need someone to be there when I’m ranting about how I’m going to punch my mom in the face (I may or may not have said that to the maid of honor last night). I just need someone to be my partner in crime. With Aaron out in Chicago, he won’t be a wedding friend option (he went with me to Karen’s wedding) and I know that A is out and Lee has a girlfriend and that leaves me with…no one.
Weddings, you shall be the death of me. I don’t even think I want to have a wedding with the big white dress or anything. Then I remember who I am and decide that no, I do need to be the center of attention. And I will have the biggest whitest dress there is. Being my normal classy self, I’ll spill something on it too. Don’t you all wish you could come to my wedding?
Springtime…in Alfred!
I need spring. Bad. I think everyone has figured this out, considering my last post about making a spring mix. I’m so done with winter, I’m done with the cold and the snow and the bone chilling wind. I’m done.
I’ve been thinking about Alfred lately. What’s Alfred? Alfred is where I went to school. And I miss Alfred a lot. I don’t know why this happens, but every now and again, I get this hardcore need to go back there. My friend Tessa had mentioned going up for Hot Dog Day this year, but I don’t know if I could swing that. I would love to go up, but there would be no place to stay since I think just about everyone I knew when I was there has since graduated.
Bummer.
I’ve been thinking about my senior year a lot. Alfred is a small town. A very small town. There’s 3 bars in Alfred (or at least there was when I was there) and only one was worth going to. That bar was Alex’s. It was a little gross, very much a dive and the place that I spent a lot of time my senior year. It wasn’t even that I was always drinking, but we were always down there because that’s just where we hung out. I was looking at my Alex’s mug last night and thinking how I need to drink out of it. The mug from Alex’s has 2 dinosaurs on it, both drinking. Everyone decorates their mugs in whatever way they see fit – mine has a sticker from the college radio station, a sticker from a band that my friends are in and some assorted other weird things. The mug was the way to go. On Thursdays you could fill it up for $1 with Natural Ice. You had to think though…was being terribly hungover and crappy the next day worth the crappy beer? The answer was always yes. Any time you could go out with $5 and go back to your room totally wasted was an excellent night. We did that just about every week. It’s Alfred, what else was there to do.
The real reason I miss Alfred is because of my longing for spring. Spring in Alfred was the most wonderful time to be there. Everything really came alive. There were flowers and birds and life. Everywhere! The Alfred winters are long and cold and once it started to get warm, everyone went crazy around there. That’s why HDD is so important – everyone’s out in t-shirts and flip-flops and there’s not a jacket in sight. The sun is shining on HDD and you can’t ask for a better time.
So while I’m stuck at my desk in the cold right now, I’m thinking of the spring of 2006 in Alfred. I’m remembering sitting on the lawn in front of my dorm with some of my friends, soaking in the sunlight and talking nonsense. Games of Frisbee near the statue of King Alfred. People just everywhere. Art stars up in trees drawing pictures of bugs. Flowers everywhere. The day that we found a whole bunch of bumblebees and watched them buzz around the bushes. We would sit on the deck at Cashelle’s house with our feet on the railing, drinking cocktails and laughing. Hike up to Hairpin Turn to look at the stars. Laugh at the kids from Alfred State. We would go out to Palmer’s and have bonfires. There were trips to Pollywog Holler (I missed this but I heard it was a great time. I was meeting Kevin’s dad. Damn!). Our senior trip was a winery tour. I got the worst sunburn on my back and I didn’t give a damn. We bought bottles of wine that we drank that night. We cooked and danced and laughed. Tessa skidded down a hill on her butt. Cashelle drank fruity drinks out of bottles.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive or in control or just…awake than I did that spring. I was graduating, the possibilities for my future were endless and I had the most awesome friends from college that I could ask for. I would just about jump out of bed in the morning. I would dance around my tiny little shoebox of a room, bouncing around in my flip-flops and belt out silly songs. We were all feeling that way. We were all so energetic, so jazzed up. Of course, we were all sad to leave Alfred and leave that little village that we called home. How could we not be?
That last night before graduation at the bar was a very quiet one. My dad and my brother (who was then 15 but was let into the bar anyway) came with me to Alex’s. We ate pizza and laughed and I was surrounded by my friends and their parents and it was a surreal moment. We knew that everything would be different. Yet when all the engineers were puking in the creek before we could all march in before graduation, we knew nothing had changed.
I cried when I left Alfred. I was sad to let something so wonderful go. I knew I would be going back, I knew that I would visit, but it would never be the same. At least I have these memories of all the laughter, all the fun and all the sunshine to make me long for spring right now.
Spring mix!
Here’s a totally unrelated to anything post….excited?
I’m tired of winter. I’m so done with it. I’m done with the snow and the cold and the WIND and the ice and the nastiness. Done. It needs to go away. I realize that saying this won’t make it stop, but I can still think that.
I’ve decided I need to make some sort of mix that will make the bad weather go away. Or at least have me thinking such wonderful spring thoughts that it won’t matter anymore. That’s where everyone comes in. Super awesome why isn’t it spring playlist needs some songs. And….GO!
Possibly an overshare. Be prepared
I don’t do a TMI Thursday or anything, but if I did, this would be my TMI Thursday entry. On a Wednesday. Don’t tell.
You may or may not know that I am addicted to google reader. Like a lot. So far as it might be my excuse to not do work during the day. I’m always finding new blogs and reading them. One of the blogs I just started following is about food. The post today was about Burger King and the fact that their new burgers, called “burger shots” may be inappropriately named. Why? This is what a burger shot is, according to urban dictionary.
And I’ve been burger shot. By A. And I still talked to him afterwards.
A was over at my house while we were still dating. We were playing mario kart on the wii and I was kicking his ass up and down every track because HE SUCKS AT THAT GAME. I also might have been shoving him off the couch. Maybe. So after I had beat him for the 6,793th time, I decided he had been beat enough for the day and we could continue on with our lives. I took his controller and my controller and went to put them on top of the TV. A was still sitting on the couch. I turn to walk back to him. He goes to headbutt me…right in my ladypocket. I’ve asked him why he thought headbutting me in the ladypocket was a good idea. He doesn’t know. Regardless, when he headbutts me…disaster strikes. You know how on your jeans, there’s that part where the bottom of your zipper means the seam in the middle of your pants and it’s like, a little hard nubbin part? That part? Right into my ladybutton. HARD. So hard that my legs drop out from under me and I hit the floor. A starts laughing so hard, he falls off the couch and he’s rolling around on the floor. Laughing. I’m rolling around on the floor in some massive amounts of pain. I think I threatened to kill him. I yelled “WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA??!” and tried to hit him, except my entire body had called it quits. And that, my friends, is a burger shot. It is not fun. I would not reccomend it.
A then went on to tell his friends that he punched his girlfriend right in the ladypocket and she was cool with it. His friends thought I had to be the most amazing person ever, not only because I dated A, but because he smacked me in my cooter and I didn’t care.
It then became a threat. It became “if you don’t do this thing, you’re going to get punched in the pocket”. I started telling other people that I would punch them in their pockets. It was one of the reasons that I listed on A’s Valentine’s Day card for why he was deserving of the card. So when I read about the burger shots today, I IM’d him right away. He was amazed. He told me to blog about my ladypocket punch and here I am, blogging away.
There was also another time when I introduced him to the term papaya stamp. I did not GIVE him a papaya stamp…but I let him know that such a thing existed. The magic of urban dictionary is apparently lost on A, if it wasn’t for me, being helpful and awesome, as usual.
Not so much your traditional Valentine’s Day post
Everyone posts about Valentine’s Day. Everyone. Or mostly everyone. And, surprise – I don’t have a valentine this year. Actually, that’s a lie. I have the most awesome valentine a person could ask for, Lilo. She’s awesome and I’m awesome and it doesn’t matter about boys. We are that cool.
Since the dreaded and yet totally stupid V-Day is all about love, I figured I should say a few things about the people that I love the most and mean the most to me in the world. And I can’t even accurately put into words the love and gratitude that I feel for them. Without them, without MY FRIENDS, I would have already wasted away. I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be functioning. So here’s to you guys…
Karen and Pam – you’ve both been my friends since middle school. We’ve been friends for over half of our lives. That’s a long time! I can’t tell you how important you both are to grounding me. You help me remember who I don’t want to be anymore. You saw me through my worst times. When I lost myself and forgot who I was, you helped me to remember that I was better than the guys that I dated. Karen and Pam, you helped me to pick up the pieces from when my being was shattered and put myself back together as well as I could. More importantly – we’ve had fun. We’ve had so much fun that I can’t even remember it all. The two girl trips that we have gone on have been non-stop laughing. Between me being too silly for words, Pam being overly cautious and Karen being the one that gets us all together – that’s a recipe for disaster. I’m glad that I’ve seen the most beautiful places that I’ve ever seen with you two. I’m so happy that we got to be on the top deck of a boat (sorry, SHIP) in the middle of the ocean at 2 AM, screaming. I’m thrilled that we were on a bus thing, cruising around St. John and could have fallen out at any moment. I’m even still laughing about the downpour that we got caught in in Miami while we were eating lunch outside. And the creepers. Can’t forget the creepers. Karen inspires me to do things that I never thought I could do. Karen is weight loss queen! She’s made it so far and I know she’s only going to keep on going. Every time I see her, she’s more skinny than the last. I want to keep up with her weight loss, but I know I can’t. She looks stunning. She’s amazing. Karen, you rock. And Pam – well, it’s taken her a while to get to where she is, but I’m proud that she did. Pam is one of the most caring and loving people I know. She’s an adopted member of my family and that’s saying something. I don’t think anyone WANTS to be a part of my family. I don’t even want to be a part of my family. Pam gets how my family works, which is important when they are the ones making me crazy. I can do nothing with Pam and that’s just fine with me. When I have no plans and don’t really want to do anything, she’s the girl I call. Karen and Pam, I love you more than words can say.
Then there’s Lilo. She hasn’t known me for that long, only a few years. But she gets me. She gets me in a way that I didn’t think another person would understand me. Through this whole thing with A, she’s been there, helping me to see reason in unreasonable things. She’s got my back and my underpants. Our friendship might have been based on the fact that we owned the same sweater when we worked at B&N. Regardless. We’re friends, we’re buds and nothing is going to change that. I’m glad she’s my valentine. Lilo will truly appreciate the small stupid thing I got for her. It’s nothing special, Lilo, so don’t worry. I like that we have bakemastery, even though sometimes our cupcakes don’t turn out like we planned. We made nothing muffins once, which was weird. We’ve gotten lost together. We laugh about being broken – between our heads and our lady pockets and all our joints, it’s surprising that we can get out of bed in the morning. But we do. We share doctors. We share lip balm. I can’t even explain how much Lilo talks me down on a weekly basis. She’s become a rock in my life. She’s joining Pam and Karen as one of the most important people in my life. I don’t even have to mention the fact that she’s an amazing poet, totally beautiful and absolutely in every way awesome. She’s more than some people can stand. I couldn’t do it without her. Lilo, I adore you.
There are more people that I love. I love Lee even more than when I dated him. I’ve never had such an awesome boyfriend. He was so nice and fabulous to me that all other boys pale in comparision. I shared Alfred with him, which is just as important as any other place. We’ve had our fights, but things always end up right again. He’s my go-to guy. He sent me a valentine last year saying that he would walk through hell and flames and fire and brimstone for me. And give me his organs. Lee leaves me the best drunk voicemails that make me laugh for days. I know if I needed him, for whatever reason, I could call and he would be here.
There’s Tessa and Cashelle – the only two girls that I was friends with at Alfred. We drank too much together. We ate dinner together for weeks on end. They had cocktail hours at their house that lasted all night. We had a big party for all the professers at the end of senior year and made all the food after we were totally trashed. There was pornopalooza! Need I say more? They haven’t seen the growth in me as much as some of my other friends, but they’ve seen me at my worst, without really knowing it was my worst. They kept me up when the death of my grandpa made me crunble. We rocked Boston last winter and Vermont this past winter. I can go months without seeing them and when we’re together again, it’s like things never changed. They’ve both got fabulous lives – Cashelle is going to be an amazing PA and Tessa is going to cook us all wonderful food. They were like sisters to me in college. We shared clothes (well, not Cashelle, that skinny bitch). We might have shared a boy (totally not our fault!). We’ll always have Hot Dog Day, Alex’s, GJ’s and DP Dough. We’ll have the dorms, the hills, the castle on the hill. We will know about the black knight, King Alfred and the ghosts on campus. We shared some of the most important years in terms of realizing WHO YOU ARE together. I won’t be forgetting that soon.
So to my friends – all of you – even the ones that I didn’t name because I can’t name all of you – thank you. So much. I love you all. I love each and every one of you to the deepest degree. You’ve held me together and helped me laugh and let me cry and just let me be me. You have let me make the wrong choices when you know I had to learn from them. You’ve stopped me from being a total idiot when you knew I couldn’t stop myself.
To each of you – Happy Valentine’s Day.
