they're all pairing off;

i used to be surrounded, suffocated by faces;

and one day i woke up asleep and alone,

and i've been asleep ever since.

this slumber dredges deeper;

i dream of myself sleeping,

wake up to find i'm dreaming,

wake up to find i'm still asleep.

i travel light these days--

weary eyes impersonating grey-blue,

lips imitating half moon,

oxygen echoing in and out of lungs.

sun barely set i clamber to mattress,

blanket to chin,

so that i might soon fall asleep

and dream about awakening one day.

not a single thing

the problem is, i haven't found my calling yet, even at twenty-seven.

nearly everyone i know is great at something; i'm kind of good at some things, but don't excel at a single thing. i'm indecisive about further schooling because i can't narrow down my interests into a specific field. i don't see myself doing any one thing for the rest of my life. it's why i thought i would die early, because i never saw my future self, never dreamed of what my life would be like in the near or distant future. i still can't picture it.

this wasn't a problem ten years ago, but it's becoming a problem now.

on hallmark

often i buy birthday cards and don't send them. the intention is always there, but when it comes to writing in them, i realize too late that i'm not a birthday card sort of person, and i stop myself.

sometimes Roy writes in his blog and i think,

hey, i should write in my blog too.

I always cook dinner enough for two; only enough for one ever eaten.

4:32 am

my late twenties are proving to be pretty miserable.

...

...is distracting her feeble heart with textbooks and coffee beans these days.

what i have to do:

-daily cafe manager tasks

-work counter every day so my payroll numbers stay at the right percentage

-attend class

-actually pay attention in class

-take last exam

-if final grade is below a B, take optional fifth and final exam

-pack entire house

-move into new house

-unpack into new house

-make sure dog doesn't stress out over the move too much

-hang out with out of town friends whom i haven't seen in a year

-hang out with friends who are moving out of town who i won't see in another year

-dinner with friends that's been planned for weeks (who knew i had so many friends??)

-register for fall semester

-get a haircut

-laundry? really?

-band practice

-write songs so we can actually have band practice

-walk the dog daily, to alleviate squeaky toy abuse

optional:

-go fucking insane due to stress

-drink heavily

-sleep

time i have to do it: 

one week, three days

begin panicking: NOW.

balancing act

sometimes Bucket sits only halfway on the couch; front paws on the ground, rear half on the couch. and she'll sit that way for a good amount of time, like it's no big deal. it's so strange, but i just found myself sitting in a similar position, most of me off the couch, but balancing precariously by my rear end, hunched over my laptop that's sitting on my coffee table. like right now, typing this. 

huh.

on birthdays

oh, dear blog, July has been the worst. 

amid the struggle to keep my mind focused and awake, my stomach digesting properly, i've recently had a bout with a staph infection big enough to repulse the surgeon's assistant. i currently wear a wound an inch long, deep enough to hold a full roll of gauze, that drips like a leaky faucet every time i get out of the shower. in fact, it weeps all day long, still. i'm at war in my own home with cockroaches as big as my hand. my current conundrum at work involves a friend on the brink of termination; a once decent employee who's now bringing the whole team down. i'm in love with someone whose feelings are mutual, but now is not the time for us to be together. and the icing on the cake, quite literally:  tomorrow is my birthday.

this is my agenda:

-take my antibiotics

-suffer through an hour of statistics in a class where no one cares to know my name nor understands what's going on

-go to two doctor's appointments

-forget whether or not i actually took antibiotics; recount every pill in the bottle to make sure

-probably walk the dog, maybe watch the last disc of My So Called Life

-attend a two hour statistics review session

-attempt to sleep (the harder you try, the less often it's successful, trust me)

oh, i suppose it'll be one of the better birthdays i've had.

i'll also be participating in my yearly ritual of avoiding all phone calls, listening to the messages, and feeling really old when my relatives tell me how old they feel that i'm getting this old. let it be known that i don't normally feel old, and won't the day after tomorrow. only my parents, brother, grandma, and maybe an aunt will call. my one aunt (mother's sister) will sing a terrible rendition of Happy Birthday on the message, and then laugh and laugh because she's such a terrible singer. this happens every single year. she's already called to assure me that she's been practicing. [for the record: one grandma called already today because she's in Las Vegas and will probably be "too busy to call" tomorrow.]

dear August, please hurry.

pants

you'd think running would help my coordination, but i just fell over trying to take my running shorts off.

ain't callin' me baby

i played my first show when i was sixteen years old. with my punk rock band. in a church. i spent the following ten years consistently playing shows, increasingly so in the last few years. 

A DECADE!

the last time i played a show was last june. over seven months ago.

after that last show, i went on a three month hiatus from guitar playing. every time i looked at a guitar, i'd have a dream that night-- dreams about playing, about forgetting my parts, facing the wrong way on stage, having bad practices-- and i couldn't bear to pick up any of my guitars. a few months pass, and i'm randomly thinking about playing again. i think about how it used to feel when i'd pick up a guitar. my first guitar. feeling my fingers on the frets. feeling everything around me fade into the background when i'd focus on playing. wondering when it stopped feeling good. wondering how to get it back.

today, there was a drum set in my living room. my amp turned up until it squealed.

& by the way, Destiny's Child sounds really good through headphones. i'm just saying.

waffles

perhaps this blog will be about the contents of shopping carts at sam's.

six boxes of eggo waffles, each box containing sixty waffles.

blogging blog blogs

maybe i'll blog about blogging.

zen and the art of grocery shopping

blogs are strange.

i tried to search for a few that i might be interested in reading, but couldn't find any. there are thousands of people with thousands of blogs, and not one caught my eye. then i imagined a stranger coming across this blog, and i can't for the life of me think of a reason they'd want to keep reading about what i'm about to type on grocery shopping. i feel like unless you know me, this will be very uninteresting. and not funny at all. but come on, i'm funny! right? okay.

ANYWAY. i love grocery shopping. i'm embarrassed to say how many times i find myself at kroger during the week, but i love it. i've gotten into the habit of making small trips, that way i can go more often. i can't explain why i enjoy it so much, but i know it became apparent the second i moved out of my parent's house over six years ago and i began shopping on my own. i think it's the freedom of buying whatever i wanted to eat whenever i wanted; oh, the possibilities! oh, wow i'm so lame!

shopping with other people's money is also exciting, for instance, i went to sam's club yesterday, ERC money in pocket. it amazes me that normal people shop there. rather, people shop normally there. i saw a man buying only a gallon of milk and a gallon of ice cream. granted it was a BUCKET of ice cream, but still, you can buy those at a regular grocery store that doesn't charge a yearly fee. am i missing something? playing the "guess what they're buying for" game is entertaining as well. as much as i hate when people stare at my cart overflowing with gallons of milk ("someone's thirsty!!" "got milk??" "does a body good!!" HAR.), i love staring at the contents of people's carts. the only time i was stumped was when i saw this lady filling her cart with five gallon cans of chocolate pudding. nursery? retirement home? octuplets? pudding wrestling contest at local gentleman's club? i should have asked.

thirsty?

the back of my jeep fits twenty-six gallons of milk perfectly. 

a shopping cart at Sam's holds twenty-four gallons perfectly.

at some point i've had any or all of the following in my trunk:

thirty five gallons of milk, 

a tub of sour cream,

four bunches of bananas,

boxes of trash bags,

two five gallon cans of applesauce,

and

a bundle of seventy-six black ink bic pens.

just so you know.

a great start < / sarcasm >

hello blog, it's now 2009.

i've decided to continue this journey with my blog friend here, though as of yet, we are unsure of where we're headed. what started off as a tour blog is now just a whythehellamidoingthis blog, but maybe i should think of it as a whythehellNOT blog instead. i'm constantly thinking about writing, and i never do. i don't want to count the number of blank journals i own, just sitting there waiting for the scribble of my pen, because then i'll get overwhelmed at the number of pages i have yet to fill. trust me, there are enough words in my head at any given moment to fill a hundred thousand books, except for when i pick up a pen. when i do, i've suddenly forgotten all words in the english language. all words disappear. or maybe there are so many of them, it's like a traffic jam on the highway from brain city to pen-in-handsville, and everyone's honking, but no one is moving an inch.

ANYWAY.

i will not be capitalizing my letters, though i will be using proper grammar. mostly.