well.  nowadays, before i get my little biz-cas’ed heinie to the BHC, i work out.  i really do.  on mondays i run in the morning, tuesdays i take a rest day but usually walk the doggie in the morning, wednesdays i swim at the YWCA, thursdays i go to yoga at 6 a.m., and fridays i run.  saturdays and sundays, one day is a rest day and one day i run.  or do yoga.  but mostly run.

when did this shift take place, you ask?  one day, about a month ago, i tried to run a measly two miles in the hot hot heat of charlotte, nc after work and i damn near killed myself doing so.  that’s when it became clear that i was either going to join a gym and attempt to go after work, or work out before i went to real work.  before work won out because i have no moneys to be affording a gym bill, and running on the streets is still free, until the gov’t. finds some way to tax that too.  bitches!  ;)

work work work.  that’s pretty much all i do, it seems.  even my leisure time is spent talking about working on myself, and my personality defects.  i mean, sometimes it’s not, but for the most part it’s sober kids and we all talk about faith, spirituality, character defects… sometimes boys or girls, depending on who’s there.  but really.  it’s all work.

that’s okay, in some regard, because i’ve been afraid of working hard my whole life and now that i actually am working hard it seems to have its own rewards, like sleeping well at night and not gaining weight.   also, it’s good to learn discipline because someday i’m going to want children and i’ll need to teach them that, and if i don’t have it i sure can’t give it away…

on a separate note regarding discipline, i’ve been using the words “no ma’am” to try to dog whisper the haze beast, and it seems to be working a little, but there are still situations where “no ma’am!” is no dice.  like the thumb slice situation from the other day, where she saw the cat… or today, when the two german shepards that guard the auto dealer on the corner of central and club st. started barking at haze and she went ballisticus.  i had her on her leash and harness, and it is good that i work out because otherwise i wouldn’t be strong enough for my dog.  so, i “no ma’am!” and tug the leash and eventually haul her along the sidewalk, all the while she’s barking and lunging toward the yard dogs, and it’s like… this is my life.  my foaming at the mouth pitbull, who was so sweet and asleep half an hour ago, is now the bane of my existence.  but, we recovered and i got her home, and yeah.  the rest is history.

**note:  ben pulled his back out, and i feel bad about not going over there to baby him, but not bad enough to skip the one NA meeting i go to a week with phat daddy.  maybe i should feel bad?  i’ll ask sharon what she thinks.**

Who are you?
“put on a gown that touches the ground,

float down a river forever and ever,

emily, emily”

-pink floyd

Are you male or female?
“a beautiful girl

a beautiful girl

can turn your world into dust”

-radiohead

What place do you love best?
“and if you don’t return by the summer i will know

you’ve found a home in colorado

and you’re doing fine in colorado”

-jackson browne

What do you look like?
“pretty eyed

pirate smile”

-elton john

What do you want to say to your best friend?
“and now there’s you understanding why i do the things i do

knowing that you do them too makes me really happy”

-moldy peaches

What’s your best quality?
“you say that i make no difference,

but at least i’m fucking trying!

what the fuck have YOU done?”

-minor threat

What’s your worst quality?
“she’s the kind of girl who puts you down

when friends are there, you feel a fool

when you say she’s looking good she acts as if it’s understood

she’s cool, cool, cool”

-the beatles

Where do you see yourself in one year?
“i see the future and it’s all mine

i want to be perfect, i’m taking my time”

-talking heads

What’s your secret?
“she wants to know

why she’s given half her life

to people she hates now”

-velvet underground

Something you like about yourself
“i’m not sayin i’m number one

oh, i’m sorry, i lied

i’m number one-two-three-four-and-five!”

-krs-one

What does love mean to you?
“love comes to me

love comes and all

it’s my hands, my heart, my lips

that is all”

-bonnie prince billy

What would you say to the one who got away?
“i’m so hard to handle i’m selfish and i’m sad

now i’ve gone and lost the best baby that i ever had

oh i wish i had a river i could skate away on”

-joni mitchell

What makes you angry?
“you’re always talking talking talking talking talking shit now

but you will talk yourself down”

-fugazi

What makes you happy?
“i love my dog as much as i love you

but you will fail and my dog will always come through

all she asks of me is the food to give her strength

all he ever asks of me is love and that she knows she’ll get”

-cat stevens

What makes you sad?
“divide and conquer, well that’s an old game

divide and conquer, used again and again”

-really red

How do you feel when you think about your biggest mistake?
“but wherever i have gone

i was sure to find myself there

you can run all your life and not go anywhere”

-social distortion

Some words to live by
“so toss it up, or pass it round

pay mind to what you’re carrying around

oh keep it close, hold it while you can

there’s a little bird of heaven right here in your hand”

-reeltime travelers

this was fun, and it took up a lot of time that i would’ve been wasting improving my already stellar crossword puzzle skills.  or my already stellar tetris skills.  :)  yay, only 18 minutes left of this heinously boring friday!

oh, and happy anniversary nic!  one year, ow-ow!

“Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you.”

i went to yoga at six o’clock this morning.  yup.  i’ve been exercising in the mornings before work because it’s just too much to try to work out after work with all the other stuff i have going on… sponsees, meetings, etc. etc.  i like morning workouts too, they make me feel accomplished.  plus, ben says they burn more fat because you have nothing in your tummy so you’re working off stored fat.  if he is right, that is genius!

yoga was good, as usual.  we did a lot of high plank, low plank, three point, down dogs which was okay, except i swam yesterday and my arms hurt really really bad.  i have a cut on my thumb still, and that didn’t feel too awesome either, but before the wahhh-mbulance gets here, let me just get this off my chest… this is haze’s next halloween costume.  she is going as a silly rabbit.  yay! :)

mom sent me some new yorkers.  she said there are some good fiction stories in them.  she’s responsible for my knowledge of the poem at the beginning of this entry.  i love my mom so much… just in case you didn’t know.

it makes sense that crazy people call me at work, i work at a mental health facility.  i probably shouldn’t be using the word “crazy” to describe our clients, i would probably get in a boatload of trouble were my big bosses to know that i called our consumers crazy.  of course, bill d. did see the 13 on my neck and didn’t really say anything about it, so maybe not… maybe we are more punk rock than i think we are.  we’re not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, though… no straightjackets or Nurse Ratchetts or rubber rooms.  none of that.  no Girl, Interrupted.  nopeso.  sorry to disappoint.

anyway, i talked to my best friend sam from colorado last night.  golly, i miss him a LOT.  he is one of those friends that no matter how long we go without speaking, we’re still cool.  just pick up where we left off, y’know?  he was taking his boxer, kaya, to the dog park when i talked to him… he is a dog lover.  when we were still teenagers, we used to walk around old town in ft. collins and pet people’s dogs.  just random folks out strollin with their pooches, sam and i would ask to pet them.  most of the time people were pretty happy about us wanting to pet their dogs, but we got an occasional rejection.  it’s alright though, the ratio of dogs petted vs. dogs unpetted is like 5:1.  so… that’s pretty good.

haze dog accidentally sliced my thumb yesterday.  i guess, since i am the human in this equation, i should take responsibility but i still kinda blame her.  we’ve been working with the phrase “no ma’am”, so when she pulls i stop her and make her sit and say “no ma’am!” in this very serious voice, and so far it’s going okay… but, she saw a cat and just went bananas and her leash was around my wrist, and all the “no ma’am”s in the world wouldn’t have mattered.  so she jerked the leash, and my thumb got sliced on the car door.  i was going to spend an hour or so beating her last night, but i was just so tired.  i had an epic headache which stuck with me and attacked at 2:30 a.m. and i still have it now.  serious boo-ness.  i don’t think it’s a tumor, but it might be.  i didn’t go to yoga today, so i’ll go on thursday.  i’m swimming tomorrow, which is lovely.  :)

to recap :

1. i work at a job where i talk to mentally ill folks.  i really shouldn’t call them bats.

2. i miss sam, but i am so glad we got to chat last night, even for just a minute.

3. my dog is poorly trained, which comes back to hurt me via sliced thumbs.

4. i have a headache and am sleep deprived. 

5. i am swimming tomorrow and going to yoga on thursday.

that’s all.  no more.  quit trying to intimidate me for more information, jeez!  oh and sorry there were no pictures, sorry sorry.  i’m sorry.  :)

The metaphor works like this - I have all these different things going on in my life, different stuff I’m doing or stuff I’ve done or (mostly) stuff I want to do, different people and situations, different events going on in the lives of those I care about, yadda yadda yadda, and the only way they ALL connect is me – I am the jello, they are the chunks of whatever that’s embedded in the jello.  That actually sounds pretty gross and really self centered, but in my head it made a lot of sense and didn’t sound nearly as conceited as it does when I re-read it.  That’s how it tends to work most of the time, really – if it sounds good in my head, I should probably ask someone impartial and find out if it sounds good out loud.  Oh well, too late now.

**sidenote – my friends and family and other “chunks” are way important, more important than me by far.  Just a quick disclaimer so that the 3 people who read this know I’m not a total douche.**

Instead of trying to wade through my jello-y self to get to each individual chunk (ewww), I just wanted to talk about my sister.  I hope she doesn’t get offended that I want to write about her under an entry titled “Sometimes I feel like my life is a jello salad.”, I don’t think she will.  She might correct my punctuation on that last sentence, I think it’s wrong.  I don’t care enough to go back and fix it, but I care enough to make a point to mention it.  Funny how that works. 

Anyway, my sister Dondi is three years older than me.  She has a birthday coming up at the end of this month.  She is a Leo.  She is the same height as I am, but that’s sort of a new development in the last 5 years or so… when we were little, I always felt like the short, chubby, ugly one and I always thought my sister was so pretty and slender and tall.  She wore all the cute clothes, and my clothes never seemed to fit quite right.  She dated boys like Zach who were blonde and handsome and played sports, and I dated boys that shall remain nameless, but were decidedly not blonde, handsome, and athletic. 

We used to fight like wild animals when we were both adolescents.  I don’t know if sisters are more vicious to each other than brothers, but we were brutal.  I remember a spike in physical violence among us when we both started to use the phone a lot… this is before cell phones, and our mom never got us separate lines, so the cordless house phone was like God after school.  Man.  There was one time when I wanted to talk on the phone and she was on it, and I stole the cord that linked the base of the phone to the jack in the wall, then ran up to my room and locked the door.  It took her all of 45 seconds to figure out what I’d done, and then she ran up to my room, kicked my door in (it was hollow core – the girl’s not Hercules), and I threw the cord at her in hopes that she wouldn’t throttle me.  She didn’t, as is evident by the fact that I am here writing and we’re friends today. 

It took a while for us to get close, though.  It took a lot of heartbreak for old wounds between us to heal… we still aren’t Hallmark commercial close, but we are certainly friends today, as well as sisters.  When she calls me, I call her back or I answer, if I can.  When I call her, the same thing happens.  We text.  We email.  I send her stupid surveys and she dutifully fills them out.  She takes care of our mom now, and that is so huge.  That used to be such a sore spot for the two of us, and I’m so incredibly grateful we’ve gotten past the whole “Mom loves you best” fight.  I think that Dad dying had a lot to do with that, as well as me being in Charlotte (2200 miles away from the madre) and her being in Boulder (50 miles away from the madre).  She listens to me whenever I call her freaking out about a boy, or something physically wrong with me, or missing Andy or my dad.  She comforts me and lifts me up, and she never makes me feel bad for the decisions I’ve made.  She gives me running advice and tells me how to better lengthen my stride.  I know that if I ever needed anything, she’d be there in half a second, and that if I ask nicely, she’ll probably let me borrow her sparkly eyeliner.

I think I might have more tattoos than her now… maybe.  ;)

i used to say “must be nice” to my old roommate marisa whenever i was jealous about something that she got to do that i didn’t, and it’s maybe the brattiest thing i had in my vocab.  i can’t even really say it today without feeling ill… like i’m wishing bad karma on someone.

i’m going to take back “must be nice” to actually mean what the words are defined as, and be happy for folks in situations that must be nice.  like people heading out on vacations or eating grilled pimento cheese sandwiches or dogs that are on walks or kids who get to go to the pool in the sunshine today.  and it must be nice for me to get to enjoy positivity after a day like yesterday, when all i had were dark clouds.

i have an organic lemon lollipop.  must be nice.  :)

let’s just get through the crud first, before beach photos, shall we?  every so often, i get snagged up by these pangs of grief.  little tripwires of missing my dad, never talking to andy again, mourning, sobbing in savasana… i’m bounding through life, completely unaware, when BAM – i’m on the ground, tangled up in a memory that just has me floored. 

it’s okay, of course.  i know how to get untangled  and today i know how to take care of myself.  i don’t have that necessity to make it so much worse before it can get better.  i also don’t deny it anymore.  no glamour, no lies – it’s there, plain and simple, and the quicker i look at it and go over it, the better off i am.   my grief is just like anything else – keep it a secret, it keeps me sick.  i miss my dad and andy, i miss my mama, i wish that i could’ve done something different last year to somehow stave off this heartbreak, i miss catherine and being able to go to her every day… i have so much longing, but you know what?  catherine’s the one who said to me “emily, andy is dead but you aren’t.  you’re alive.  so live!” 

i have to remember that, lest i forget and keep myself in some sick, sad vortex.  thank god for sponsees, because at least 3 days a week i am committed to someone other than myself.  i have meetings and runs and yoga and friends.  i have a pitbull named haze, sunshine, swimming pools, beach trips, two library books, movies and music and ben jones.  my life is full.  a less formal version of a gratitude list, more of a reminder than anything… still beautiful.

pictures?  yes.

let’s see how this is, i’ve never used the gallery function before.  anyway, ben, amy, amy’s BFF reneé and i all went to isle of palms to stay in ben’s mom’s amazing condo and eat cherries and swim in the ocean and get suntans.  it was really fun, and i learned a lot about myself and when i turn into a brat and how to not do that.  i learned about acceptance and how lame it is to front seat drive.  i saw hangover which wasn’t that funny but had the song “13″ in it!  i went running and kept up for three miles, until amy turned into superwoman and did sprints while i just tried not to have my lungs explode (i’ll have to write an entry about the toxic black mold situation we’ve got at the house).   it was a lot of fun, and a lot of picking on each other and silliness, with some AA and an impromptu visit to a beach dog park, which haze would LOVE.  rawr! 

one day, i really am going to share in strictly grateful dead lyrics… keep on truckin!

kyle told me that social distortion used to play 7 and 8 dollar shows in san diego when he lived there.  he’s seen them 20+ times.  i’ve never seen them play, except for when i watched Another State of Mind which is a social distortion/youth brigade movie with a little minor threat thrown in toward the end when the tour ends up near d.c.  anyway.

i took mona and haze on a walk yesterday, after i went running.  i figured i was already sweaty and nasty, might as well take ‘em out for some fresh air.  we were walking down roland st., which is the street em dub lives off of, and these two girls start walking toward us.  well, the dogs start to get excited and just as i’m saying “don’t worry, they’re friendly”, this little dog who was off a leash raced out of nowhere and started yapping and sprinting in circles around mona and haze and i.  oh.  my.  god.  haze is only ever aggressive when she’s on a leash, and she went BALLISTIC.  mona too, i swear… man.  so, my dogs are going absolutely crazy, these two girls (both were about eleven) are screaming at this little dog and trying to catch it, and the little dog is racing around and around us, barking and snapping.  haze had run through my legs and gave me a nice leash burn on the inside of my right thigh… that felt good.  it’s enough to make me never walk them again, even though all three of us know i’m going to walk them after my run today. 

ben and i are going to an engagement party tomorrow for people i’ve never  met.  i hope i find a cute little sundress tonight, something to wear there.   i’m debating about whether to go to target or forever 21.  ben is the best, btw.  for reals.  i’m also going to a treatment facilities committee meeting and getting j.r. to look at my car.  if it stays sunny, i’m going to try to lay out and get some sun.  lazy lazy day for miss emily.

that about covers yesterday and tomorrow.  present moment… i’m about to eat an orange and i’m thinking about my dad.  i really want to talk to him about catherine and ben jones and all these things.  about living with sarah and kyle, about staying sober for three years, about college and becoming a teacher, about car mechanics, about doggie doctors and obama being the president and iran’s election and all kinds of things.  i think he would’ve liked that i got into ACC basketball last year.  he would’ve been thrilled about the giants’ winning the superbowl in 08.  i’ve just been missing him so much right now.  myabe it’s a timing thing, since it was around this time last year that andy died.  well anyway.  here’s my dad, on his 67th birthday.

he never looked as old as he was until after he got sick.  anyway.

here’s a picture of me and andy -

i don’t know if andy and i would even be friends if he were still alive… i don’t know what he’d be like.  i don’t know if he’d have gotten sober again or if he’d be a strung out junkie or contracted hepatitus or AIDS or become a dealer or what.  i don’t know if we ever would’ve spoken again, or if we’d have become really close again… i like to think that he’d be really happy that dave is tattooing me.  i think he’d like the koi on my shoulder, and he’d be super stoked about the 13 on my neck.  no matter what, i know that at one point, we were best friends on this earth, and i feel like this picture really shows that.  i miss him, but it’s an odd kind of missing.  i don’t miss his illness or the pain he caused, i don’t miss being with him… but i miss knowing that he’s on this earth, because he got me through my dad’s death and i’d like to talk to him sometimes. 

well anyway, enough living in the past.  today is today for a reason, and whatever that is i might as well make the most of it.  i really hope that target has something cute and relatively cheap because i don’t wanna spend more the 40 bucks on clothes today.  i am a cheapskate.  sarah says so too.  :)

because life IS a highway, and i’m GONNA ride it, and i should really be riding it on a bicycle such as this.  this is a creation of republic bikes, which manufactures track bikes and you can customize your own based on the colors they have in stock.  and it’s AWESOME.  and i want one really really really really really really bad.  my bike (also awesome) is back in colorado, because i am a genius and brought my snowboard with me out here, but failed to bring my bicycle.  obviously, a snowboard will get much more use than a bicycle when you’re in charlotte.  obviously. 

thinking about that, that’s one of those moments where i’m not sure i’d be friends with me if i wasn’t stuck being me.  y’know?  like if i met me on the street, i’d be like “whoa bato, no dice.”  except i wouldn’t say bato because i wouldn’t know what it meant.  or maybe i would, who knows who i would be if i wasn’t stuck being me.  is that a dr. seuss book?  it should be.  whee!

okay, back to business.  fundraising to buy emily a bicycle has met resistence so far (jen said “yeah, okay” while laughing, so i don’t think she was really serious about lending me the 400 dollars i need to buy this bike), but i’m going to persevere and see if i can get enough of my friends and family to give me money until i can buy this bike.  or i could just save my own money, but who are we kiddin here?  this goes back to the last paragraph, and i really don’t want to get into the whole one fish two fish red fish blue fish speak again.  no time for that.

on a completely separate note, haze has an appointment on monday at the doggie doctor, and i’m excited because it means that my poor ole mangy dog will finally be 100% healthy again.  not that she’s in poor health (unless you want to send money, but be warned it will go toward bike funds, not haze funds), but she’s acting all ear-infectiony again and i know her paws are jacked up because she’s licking them compulsively again.  and she might have fleas.  jesus.  i really am glad i only have a dog though, because i don’t think i could handle having anything you can’t feed on the floor.  let me see if i can find a picture of haze dog.

well, i am a bad mom.  i only have two pictures of my dog on my computer, and they’re both incredibly small.  haze looks kinda like a hippo, but with pointed ears.  she is grey, but has a kinda copper tint in the sunlight.  all four of her paws are white, like socks, and her chest has a white spot too.  she has a little pink heart on her nose which i just adore.  when she pants, she smiles.  she is the very best dog in the entire world for me.  i absolutely must put a picture of her on here and then the world will understand.

another completely separate note, i’m going to see ben jones tonight and i’m excited cause i haven’t seen him since sunday and on sunday little kids were busy chicken wrestling on our shoulders, so yeah.  he got his hair cut, and i plan to comment on it within fifteen seconds of laying eyes on him.  i think he might’ve bought me frozen waffles, which makes me happier than it probably should.  yes.  :) :)

arrr… part pirate, part hopelessly stuck in self sometimes.  tha seas be harsh in emily’s wharf, yarrr…

no really, it’s like when am i gonna learn that we are not interchangeable parts?  i’m the agony aunt for my friends, but i can’t ever listen to myself or take the advice of women (and some men) that i love and trust!  wtf?  really?  seems quite unnecessary.  i know it’s all on a learning curve, but i would love to just shut down my brain and reboot sometimes. 

on a completely different, and wayyyy more interesting note, this is blackbeard -

blackbeard, or edward thatch as he was named by his mama, was a pirate of the caribbean.  he also sailed up the atlantic side of the continental u.s.a.  he blockaded charleston, s.c. and ran two of his ships ashore  in what is now known as the beaufort inlet.  used to be the topsail inlet, but these things happen. according to legend, blackbeard was a pretty raging badass, however it appears that he never actually killed anyone… he didn’t have to, he just showed up and people were terrified.  he was pretty sketchy looking, so i can see that as making sense.  anyway, blackbeard was a pirate in the 18th century and there’s a whole lot of infor about him and he was pretty punk rock, what with the whole scaring other ships out of their liquor and resources instead of actually chopping their heads off.

now then, this is a blackbird -

blackbirds are a member of the thrush family.  they apparently don’t like slug repellents, because on the english country garden website it said they stopped using slug repellent and the blackbird population thrived.  or maybe they eat slugs?  anyway, the whole point is that these two words sound quite alike but are so entirely different it’s not even funny.  you know what else isn’t really that funny?  i’m more freaked out at the idea of blackbirds than i am by blackbeard.  blackbirds have the Z factor of flight, at least i know blackbeard would be stuck on terra firma with me.  yarrrr!

i suppose i should be practicing faith now more than ever, since i’ve got all these stupid letting go “issues”… ÜBER LAME.  but i guess i need to just love myself, as dysfunctional and adorable as i am.  :)