I say sexy things to myself while I'm dancing

Look, I know I'm super-behind in everything, but my roommate's boy pal--he's the best--just hipped me to this YouTube video, and I can't stop loving it. 1) That looks like my cat, the Whore, Mary! Whom I love very, very much. 2) That song is a jam. You know it. I love this picture because Mary loves scissors--not staged--and because I am wearing my FAVORITE sewdown outfit and watching a trashy movie while embroidering. Welcome to Saturday night, friends. Me + cat + sewing = awesomeness.

Hey friends! I want this job. Can you sort of send a beam of light, in the shape of my realized dream, out into the Universe, specifically the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, IL? Much appreciated.

Remember when I wanted to do Teach For America, or the Philadelphia Teaching Alliance, or the job in West Chicago for the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect? Remember how the Fulbright fell through and I was prone and spastic on the steps of the Whipple apartment and coined the term "crlaughing"? Oh man, disappointment is a magical thing. I mean, I want this to happen, but if it doesn't, you know, I have perspective, I have perspective at least after the first hour of agonizing pain and crlaughing. Anyway. I won't blame you if it doesn't work out. Please just shoot some love their way, rays of love from your sweet little tummies.

Look back in love not in anger.

Hey hey! New font. Little Sis edited my cover letter and changed the font, convincing me that I shouldn't use Garamond because "it's too fancy for you." She thinks Courier is more my style. I also like Century Gothic. Both have better names, as well--Garamond sounds like an hor d'oeuvre or complicated dessert. Courier has the zip and sass of a Renegade while Century Gothic evokes the weight of modern Sainthood.

The weight of Sainthood, at this precise moment, feels offset by the exhilarating weightlessness of doing crazy things. Or thinking about the doing of crazy things. I signed up for another Unicorn camp, this one so much more insane than the last, and it's shear terror mixed with the certainty that it will be worth it, whatever the cost and effect.

Things I have learned since the last post:

1) I do not enjoy enormous outdoor concerts. The music is not loud enough and there are too many people not responding to the music the way I want them to be responding to the music if they are going to be all up in my personal space. Even if the ticket was free, I should have stayed home. Wait: maybe not. Stephen Malkmus performed two songs from Slanted and Enchanted. He also wore an adorable hot pink shirt. He is edible.

2) The dude I had a crush on finally put the nail in the coffin. I mean, it lingers, but he literally seems to pop up and disappear like a whack-a-mole, and what must you do to win at whack-a-mole? Hit them with a mallet until they don't pop up anymore. Hey, Up-For-Anything Burnham, remember that rubber mallet I got you for your wedding? I need that back for a minute.

3) Don't Look Back indeed. A suggestion got me reminiscing and suddenly I was looking way back to the Neil House days. It makes me dizzy. So much love and pain and post-adolescence crammed into a year-and-a-half span. I wrote Mike Thorn! I want to run into Scottie Nieman on the street! I am remembering more than the potato cannon, finally. The whole time I was living a life in the center of some scene, I felt totally peripheral; and it took not having any connection to that world at all before I could look back in love not in anger. It's punk rock choir's fault--there is no call for proving anything when I feel like these songs are my songs. This is the upside of 30, then...you can't prove this wasn't my life. I have the zine to prove it. And a recording of Elliot Smith playing my living room!

Enough of Mom Blog. I mean, we get it, right? It's sad.

I went home to Ohioland for five days and was so happy to be back in Chicago that I felt guilty about it. It's not Ohio's fault. It's me! It's not you, Ohio! It's me! The thing is: if I don't start realizing how much people like me, I'm going to end up a nutball. So I'm working on it. That was a nice life lesson. Also: I finally sustained a (minor) fireworks injury. It is about f'n time. Piece of some poorly constructed "Super Rocket" burrowed into my foot. Yes, I was drunk. No, my cousins--all, what, 14,000 of them?--did not intervene on my behalf. Sure, they yelled "Run away! Run!!!" but I was drunk. What was extra fun is that my role as primary fireworks lighter was passed to the much more physically fit Jake, and he can drive a car! He can also make bad choices and have friends who are in jail. I remember when he was a chubby baby and Little Sister and I would fight over who got to hold him. Now he's sick buff and somehow an Irish Dancer, Gangster, and Super Funny Dude! Probably because I held him more than Little Sister held him. She would have made him a giant fashionable dork. Instead, the renegade cool rubbed off.

Seriously, though: my cousins are magic.