Odd Habit

Lately I've been reading obituaries before I go to sleep.

I don't remember exactly when this began, or why.

I'll choose an obscure state (last night North Dakota) and spent almost an hour reading obituaries from a small town I've never heard of.
I haven't started to try and figure out what this means -

Quote ofthe Day

Now he is gone

as you are gone.

But he belongs to me like lost baggage.

-

Anne Sexton

“Letter Written During a January Northeaster"

The Way it Feels in Your Mouth

I'm standing in line for the bathroom. The bar is crowded and the line is long. A loud, deep, beat is shaking the scratched stall doors.
The girl behind me sloppily compliments my boots then starts listing off all the reasons why she hates how she looks tonight.
She mentions how all her good clothes got left behind in "the move". I ask where she moved from.

Oregon, she states while waving a hand in my face, The ring looks SO much better on a right hand don't you think?
I try to look at the big diamond that's scraping inches from my nose as she goes on to slur,
I broke up with my fiance and moved back home.

Before I can say anything three other girls wave their hands in the air holding papertowels, suds sliding down their wrists, shrieking Me too! I just broke up with my fiance too! My fiance and I just broke up. Me too!

My friend and I later wondered how many were telling the truth.

I've been prone to choose specific wording while talking to strangers in the past because I like the way I feel reflected back. I like the way the sentences feel coming out of me.

I'll tell a barista: My boyfriend wants his decaf.
When the woman next to me on a bus asks why I'm so tired: The man I'm sleeping with twitches at night.
The person in front of me at the post-office asks what the package is for: I'm sending my ex-husband his favorite tshirts cut up into little pieces.

A girl in the bathroom at a sweaty bar tells me her fiance just broke up with her: Oh my gawd, me too!

Quote ofthe Day

"David and I met because he was performing in a play based on short stories I'd written. He was playing a character I had invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love, it's always like this, isn't it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place."

Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat,Pray,Love

Defined.

I recently discussed nature vs. nurture with some of my friends who are currently teaching and/or studying to be teachers.

We came to no solid conclusion.

But let's just say as a baby I preferred to propel my small body around the floor of my childhood home upside down.

Using only my toes I would slide around our brown carpet on the top of my head, upside down, creating a distinct bald-spot, and earning myself the nickname "Scooter."

I've come to no solid conclusion

but I have my hunches...

(Me. Age 4. Post Watermelon Massacre.)

...figuratively, not literally.

I gave my favorite photograph of myself to someone who couldn't even see me.

I mean that...

It is a Little

known fact that I.....

... have seen While You Were Sleeping over 72 times
... took ice-skating lessons at Charles Schultz icerink and would see him drinking his morning coffee
... haven't finished reading a book in over six months
... have a nightmare at least once a week
... hate Nicholas Sparks yet almost always want to see his shitty shitty film adaptations
... suffer from memory-loss about significant moments in my life
... dislike most poetry and poets
... once pet a porcupine
... get scared very easily with the right amount of nighttime + scary stories
... have a crush on Tom Hanks.