the dream life

How I spent my fall vacation: day two

Last night we ate giant popcorn and watched Dracula, which made me think of this:

which made me think of this, the inspiration for my ankh-wearing of 1985-89.

This morning I threw away another couple of bags of stuff (still can't tell a difference in that room), did some dance club dancing in the privacy of my own home, and made the agave nectar vanilla cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

The afternoon held within it the most delicious adventure; I went with a friend  to a party at the home of a an artist I admire. Oh, it was good in that inspiring-remind-you-things-about-life-you-may-have-forgotten sort of way.

From there, we headed to marching band practice, and after that Tracy and I went to my parents' house to celebrate my brother's birthday (the reason for the cupcakes).

Johnny and Baby's last dance

Jennifer Grey remembers.

The last dance.

Hollis tells it like it is.

In the groove

Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.--Rob

Yesterday, I watched the movie High Fidelity. This is not a post, however, about John Cusack or how I have decided that he is my generation's actor or how one day I plan to write a screenplay for a film in which he will star, which will lead to us meeting at least once for coffee. (Don't worry, Tracy is fine with this, he will be off somewhere having coffee with Chrissie Hynde.) This is not, I promise, a post about how when I'm tired and it's rainy and all of my plans fall through and I don't feel like doing anything I just go get my stack of John Cusack DVDs, which are kept together in their own special section, and decide if it's a Say Anything or Being John Malkcovich or Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity sort of day.

This weekend

I've gotten into a habit of saying about my weekends, I did nothing, I did nothing. It's because each Friday I have this wonderful fantasy that loops through my mind about all of the things I'm going to do and how much energy I'm going to have and how, on Sunday night, the house and yard will be glistening and ordered and all of the clothes will be clean and put away and the refrigerator will be stocked with food for the coming week and I will have spent hours writing and making things and on and on.

When Sunday night comes and I haven't accomplished these things, I feel that I've let myself down, that I've failed in some way. Tonight I decided to remind myself that while I may not be a wondrous cyclone of achievement, I do do things with my weekends. So, a run-down.

On Friday night, Tracy's niece was in town and we took her to eat Indian food at Masala. Yesterday morning, Tracy decided the cough that I'd given him warranted going to the doctor, so he did that while I straightened the house and did a load of dishes. Later, I went to Whole Foods and got stuff to make soup and an aromatherapy diffuser for the love altar in the bedroom.

Last night, I had dinner with my parents and grandmother. After we ate, we looked through a photo album and I brought it home so that I could scan the pictures, pictures like this one of my parents taken shortly after their fourth wedding anniversary 

 

and this one of me and my brother taken at my grandparents' house. 

 

I remember wearing that dress. I loved that dress. That's a book under my arm, but it looks strikingly like my beloved MacBook.

On Friday, I decided that I would rededicate myself to the 100 Day Reality Challenge and begin a new season on October 1 (with daily videos). In preparation for that, I spent this morning creating a manifesting movie for my intentions. What I mean is that I chose inspirational photos and wrote affirmations and put them together with music that makes me feel empowered and created a little movie to watch every morning and evening. Even though my Friday afternoon mind loop is not a good example, one thing I know for sure is that visualization works, and I'm excited about my new creation and the changes it will bring about.

I thought about cleaning but instead I prepared a birthday present to be mailed this week, which including burning a super groovy CD, then went on a walk where I encountered the most gigantic raven I've ever seen. I took the raven as a beautiful, powerful sign of transformation.

This afternoon, I found Woody and Tracy on the couch and the three of us watched Annie Hall

 

and I uploaded drafts of the first four chapters of my novel for my writers group.

Now, we're watching Emmys red carpet coverage and I've already spotted Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, my very most favorite Hollywood couple ever.

There's organic chocolate chip cookie dough in the freezer, and I just might bake some Sunday night award show cookies.

See, self? Not nothing. Not nothing at all. 

Unplugged

Recently, Tracy and I watched an episode of South Park, the premise of which was the Internet going down. No one could get any Internet for online dating, shopping, chatting or surfing and they pretty much went crazy. Everyone loaded up and headed out west to Internet refugee camps where they lived in tents and lined up for their forty seconds of rationed Internet a day. Oh, it was funny, but it was funny in that way that hits really close to home because even though you know something is absurd, you can also relate to it.

And then, last night, our modem died. And that wasn’t very funny. Tracy called our Internet provider and they said they would send us a new modem in a couple of days and he said, “Dude, we’re already at Best Buy, can’t we just buy a new modem?” and they said, “Yeah, you can, but we won’t support it.” and he said, “But it will work, right?” and they said, “Yeah, it will work, but we won’t support it,” and he said, “Fine.” And we went in to get our Internet back.

But on the modem shelf there was only one and it was for “exclusive use with AT&T and Yahoo.” I was ready to give up at this point and drifted off to watch Entertainment Tonight on the plasma TVs, but Tracy wouldn’t give up. He was convinced there had to be a high speed DSL modem somewhere in the store that was compatible with any Internet provider. Sure enough, in a few minutes I heard the sound of In Your Eyes being sung across the appliance aisle.

Our new modem claimed to be easy as pie to set up and sure enough, the directions were super simple. I plugged everything up and presto…no Internet. Tracy worked with it and made phone calls and worked with it and made phone calls for hours, but nothing could be done. There would be no blogging, no checking of e-mails, no tweets, no facebook.

This morning as I left for work, he was still struggling, which is truly mad, deep, love because Tracy doesn’t really care all that much about the Internet. He knows I’m a junkie and he’s trying to get me well.

It looks like we’ll have to return the modem we bought and wait for one from our provider and then struggle with getting that set-up, so my Interneting will be of the rationed variety for a while. When I’m back to my regular schedule, I’ll tell you all about the books I read and the stuff I got done while unplugged.

Jessie & Woody

Here's Woody with my yard sale purchase of the day. I took it straight over to my niece, of course, and she was pleased. Jessie was outgrown by our sweet neighbor girl, but she immediately moved one street over and took up residence with a whole new little girl. That's the magic of a yard sale for you.

Back in black

While I recognize the problem with using a person's image to sell a product after she has died and can't voice an opinion about it, I love this commercial.

Rockford

As you know, I’ve been walking every morning. I usually walk for about an hour - I get all hot and sweaty and it makes me feel like I’m doing something about my weight and my health, even though I haven’t really curbed my eating. I like walking. I look forward to it.
This morning, I set out and knew immediately that it just wasn’t going to happen. It was too hot; I was too slow; my stomach felt funny (hunger). I walked for about ten minutes then had to just bring it on home. I guess it’s time to pull out the old Pilates DVDs and get physical with the aid of air-conditioning.
Or maybe it’s just all the excitement in the air. You see, the new Cheap Trick record comes out today. This means a great deal to Tracy (and, apparently, Woody).
Tracy bounded out of bed this morning, playing air guitar, and announced, “I’m gonna go get it, and ride around listening to it while I drink a big pop!”
Some things change in life and, thankfully, some things do not.

"Family," Tracy just said to me and Woody, "I'm going out into the world to rock."

Stars

I love celebrities. I don’t know why, and I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t think famous people are better than non-famous people, but I do get a little thrill when I see them in the flesh. It’s a simple pleasure, really.
I stood in close proximity to Steve Zahn today and it lifted my spirits considerably.
Other celebrities I’ve seen out and about in the real world:
Madonna
Susan Sarandon
Patti Smith
Robert De Niro
Martha Plimpton
Eric Stolz
Leonardo DiCaprio
Uma Thurman
Ethan Hawke
Lily Tomlin (Maybe...yeah, I think so.)
Rick Springfield (Walking to tour bus.)
John Mellencamp (Walking to tour bus.)
Sam Bowie (Does he count? Yes, I think so.)
Walter Egan (He totally counts.)
Loretta Lynn’s brother Herman Webb (Hmmm. Probably doesn’t count.)
I also once worked with a woman who shared my love of David Bowie. She told me a story about running into David and Iman in the East Village and how they very graciously shook her hand and stood and talked with her for a while. The story is so vivid in my mind (Oona was so earnest in her telling of it) that I sometimes feel that it happened to me, which of course, it didn’t.

*update* Tracy says "walking to tour bus" doesn't count because waiting by someone's bus isn't the same as a chance meeting. I have to agree. He also says that Sam Bowie doesn't count, but I'm not so sure.

Still pink after all these years

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about Pretty in Pink and a while is long enough. Recently we drove past an apartment complex that was obviously built in the mid-seventies. The architectural details screamed seventies, and we admired that fact then noticed that the building was also in a shabby state of repair. It had seen better days, for sure, and it looked as though the owners were beginning a complete overhaul of the property. I actually thought to myself that the building was sort of new to be looking so old then I realized that 1976 was thirty years ago. Even though I remember 1976 with a delicious fondness, I was only in the first grade. So, while thirty years sounds like a shockingly long time (Carrie came out in 1976, as did Rocky) I can cope with that. I was still wearing Sesame Street characters on my clothes in 1976 (Remember those tweedlebugs who lived in the flowerbox? I had a dress with those guys embroidered on the smock) so while I perceived myself as an adult at the time, I clearly wasn’t. (Full grown people do not usually attend the first grade.) The fact that 1976 was thirty years ago, however, got me to thinking and I realized that 1986 was twenty years ago. Now, this one is harder to accept. In 1986, I was a junior in high school. When I think of my fashion sense in 1986, I think of those Madonna mesh t-shirts, black rubber bracelets and one particular dress. It was a turquoise blue and made of a thick clinging jersey. It had a mini skirt and fit tight at the hips. The top had long sleeves and sort of bloused out over the waist. I wore that dress with black tights and old-fashioned looking black granny boots. There’s nothing about that outfit that seems funny to me. People, Pretty in Pink came out in 1986. Pretty in Pink is “vintage.” This is troubling. Andie is still a pillar of style, in my opinion. I still think leggings with an oversized men’s suit jacket is a great look. In fact, I wear men’s button downs all the time and I don’t think of myself as looking weird or dated or even retro which, of course, I must. But that’s not really my point. My point is, what is this crazy thing with time? How is it that years are flying by with such a swiftness? I think one source of my disorientation is the fact that I remain essentially unchanged. I know more than I did at sixteen or seventeen. I’ve traveled more, read more, experienced more. Hopefully, I’m a better person. But while the scope of the sort of music I listen to, for example, has widened, I still crank up Small Town when it comes on the radio or If You Leave when it pops up on my ipod playlist. I still think the Smiths’ Please Please Please Let me Get What I Want is one of the most haunting beautiful songs ever. I’m still turned on by David Bowie’s glam years and Stevie’s spins. I still love what I love, without irony. I sometimes fight the urge to paint my fingernails black and I’ve been known, as a woman in my...ahem...mid thirties to cut the feet out of my tights because, well, I still need black footless tights whether they’re stylish or not. I have no idea if this is normal. My mom, who is a very youthful, fun-loving person does not resemble the teenager she once was. Her tastes have changed as you would expect them to do. As I look around and women my age, I wonder. Does your sixteen year old heart still beat in your chest like mine? Are we all just wrinkly teenagers driving around town wondering what the future holds? I don’t think my seventeen year old self thought about thirty-seven much. I don’t think she could fathom it. I’m not sure my thirty-seven year old self can’t either. Sometimes as I go through my day, doing adult things, it seems almost comical or other worldly. Other times, it feels completely right and exhilarating. Always, though, underneath whatever it is that I am saying or doing or wearing, Andie is inside of me sewing her pink prom dress. What do truly young people, people just beginning their twenties, what do they see when they look at me? Do I look old? Do I look eccentric? Do I look like a mom? I love that scene when Iona is dressed for her date and says, “I look like a mom.” I love that scene and hate it, too, because I don’t want Iona to change her appearance for a man. I don’t want to think that we evolve away from letting our wild minds choose our wardrobes, expressing ourselves through spiky hair and torn things which, of course, we do. I write stories about teenagers and hopefully, one day, they will be read by teenagers. This is the material that I am drawn to. The is the world that my storyteller’s mind likes to inhabit for whatever reason and it doesn’t really matter to me what that reason is. I suppose it could be argued that I, at my age, am too far removed from this subject matter to know it well, but I don’t think so. Backdrops and slang change, but the truth of being human doesn’t. Maybe I lost something back there, in my youth, that I am trying to find. Maybe there are still questions to be answered, voices yet to be heard. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. The “why’s” I mean. They don’t matter. One day, and it won’t be long from now. It won’t feel like a long time from now, I will be a crazy old lady. I will have long flowing white hair to go with my pink Chucks and I will have to turn my Psychedelic Furs way up so that I can hear, and to much of the world I will look as worn out and dated and useless as a 1970’s apartment building, but to my beloved (who will still be wearing Cheap Trick t-shirts and a pony tail) and to a select group of my peers, I will just look normal. And cute. And right in step with fashion. Because time is so strange. It numbs us, takes the edge off, smoothes our corners. At sixteen life pulses with an urgency, everything is so important, the consequences dire. At thirty-seven we know that things will be okay, or they won’t. Things will just be. We’ve come to expect this passage of time, this flowing river of time, this movement and lack of movement, this oddity. Even though I said I remain unchanged, that isn't true. I'm quite changed, indeed. Just not all of me. Just not the core. As a teenager, I never felt that people could know me based on my outward appearance, and I guess that’s still the case. One way or the other. There’s always something hidden. Pretty in Pink Wallpaper