When You're Not Looking

I've been looking at wedding cakes. That's not incredibly new. I've been looking at wedding cakes since October of last year. I don't know if I ever stated so on here, but when Josh went to Iraq, we of course had to push the formal ceremony back. The next possible time is May 2005. So, we'll have been married for a year or so before the formal one. Of course, we thought about not having it at all. But I really want the cake and the dress and all of my family. It's like my Grandma said, "Weddings are such a great way to bring everyone together." Plus I get my dress. Yes, I know it isn't the dress or the cake or blahblahblah. I mean, we're in love...and we're already married...so this is like the bonus.

Plus a wedding is right up my alley. I've loved dresses and dressing up when I was a little girl. Ok, I still love dresses and dressing up. After I helped Morgan get ready for prom this year(I really didn't help...I watched), I went home that night and tried on all my old prom and homecoming dresses. And I love desserts...adore desserts. At family potlucks, I headed plate first into the dessert table (ah! the dessert table!). Usually I'd tried every dessert, and then I would try all the other food. Why is it when we're little, we are so indestructible?

Looking at these cakes reminded me of my 2nd favorite cake, death by chocolate cake. I think the first time I ever had it, we were on vacation. I would guess I was about 8 or 9. And I remember eating it ever so slowly, waiting and wondering. Could you die from chocolate? Sitting in the restaurant chair, kicking my legs, I imagined a dead me surrounded by crowd of people.

One woman saying to another woman ( one had a hat, the another a blue peacoat): What happened?
Peacoat Lady(quite dramatically): Death by chocolate!
Hat Lady shudders: So young! So young!
It pans back to me dead, which looks like me sleeping only with a smile on my face, and an empty plate.

Isn't it odd that as children, we don't really know things like what a dead person looks like. So we imagine it two ways. You're either sleeping or you're a dripping, limping, moaning zombie.

posted by molly @ 1:15 PM 0 comments

Another magnificently drab night here in New Bern...

I just read/sang my way through all of Les Miserables, which would be fun if there were other voices. I have a horrible "man" voice. Actually, I could say that I have a horrible voice. 5 years of singing with Freese, and then I let it fall by the wayside. I used to be able to breathe from the diaphragm naturally, and now I have to remind myself. Oh well, it was fun. I just felt silly, because I started crying during my "performance".

I've tried to search out New Bern's figurative Square. All I've heard so far is that there's nothing to do here. That has to be bullshit, right? I mean, we always said there was nothing to do in Taylorville, but we all knew there was always something to do, legal or not. Maybe it's just the mindset of a military area...

Here's a question to all of you people who knew who knew about Ani DiFranco in high school: why didn't anyone ever tell me about her? One relatively drunk night, my roommate Monica and I pondered this with some depth. How did we not know Ani when she's such a big part of our life now? We cleaned to Ani; we drank to Ani; we dyed our hair to Ani. She (Mon) would say, "I listened to Tori Amos in high school! How could I not know Ani?" I just said, "I listened to....crappy music...in high school. I didn't know about Dashboard until the very end of my senior year." I think that was the end of the conversation. If it wasn't the end, it was prolly drunken repetition. I tend to repeat myself when drunk in Champaign. I can't say about Taylorville. I'm guessing it makes me feel more sober while prolly making me look and seem more drunk. I think I'm going to miss Champaign more than I thought. I'll miss our absolutely tiny apartment that was always dirty. I'll miss our crazy drunken nights in the kitchen with the bunny/bunnies. I'll miss the random times i went to jazz night at zorba's and the random times i was around for a random theater thing of tessa's. I think they were so much fun, because they were random. You know, pleasantly surprised. I love surprises.

I'm sitting in my bed, getting butt-itis from surfing through wedding sites...and wearing my "yoga pants". They really shouldn't make these so comfortable. I don't want to do yoga in these, though I should, because I haven't today. I want to veg with my Cheddar & Sour Cream chips, my green olives, and my ever present Mt. Dew...and listen to whatever my computer shuffles up.

This place could be a breeding ground for insanity. Ok, that's a little dramatic. It's just the apartment; it feels so disassociated (is that even a word? i don't feel like looking it up) with the real world. Keely and I used to talk about this bubble (this bubble, because in my mind, it is always the same bubble) we would periodically be in. We only talked about the bubble when we thought it was in place. Then, we'd do something or say something outrageous to see if anyone noticed. They never did. Well, my experiences conclude that it's fun to be in a bubble with someone...and it sucks alone. I spend so much time in my head that when I do speak, my voice surprises. I mean, I don't really sound the way I sound in my head...just as how I'm often thrown when I see pictures of myself next to other people. I mean, I'm definitely not that short in my head. I think that if I didn't usually spend this much time in my head, just thinking, before I came here, I would already be on my way to crazy. Well, a different kind of crazy.

posted by molly @ 8:11 PM 0 comments

By Saturday, I'll have been in North Carolina for a month.

During this time, I have:

...kinda learned how to cook.
i made some pretty good lemon chicken last week...
...checked the mail 3 times...every day.
i'm pretty self conscious about it...i kinda sneak out to the mailbox...which is like 5 ft. from my door. though i don't know why i'm self conscious...no one's ever out there.
...painted 2 paintings.
i managed to get paint all over me as usual. i think i'm going to try again on both of the paintings. i'll just say that they need a little work.
...thought a lot...usually about things that don't matter.
i've been writing more and more on the education system and teaching, two completely different things...i'd really enjoy interviewing some high school teachers on the subject. other than that, it's the usual poetry and one-liners. one day, i'll make a book just full of one-liners...because i can never make it past that.
...started doing yoga.
i think i pushed myself too hard the first time. i spent the next day, wanting to curl up into a little fetus-ball. i never knew i had muscles in any of those places, and ignorance was bliss.
...handed in 15 applications.
i've been horribly choosy about where i get a job. i kind of have that luxury right now. i'm so done with the food industry. i've paid my dues.
...been here 5 or 6 times thinking about writing and obviously decided against it.
my last night in champaign...hilary and i talked about how it was easier to write in notebooks than in journals that you get from, say, barnes & nobles. you don't feel anxiety on post-it notes or in ratty notebooks. i feel almost the same way about here. and here, i can't doodle, and i do some of my best thinking when i'm doodling.

doodle? that's such a weird looking word. i've been doing that since i got here...seeing words in print...and being perplexed. is that really how you spell heart or yell? it's kind of like when you say a word over and over till it loses meaning or when you stare at your face in the mirror long enough till it isn't your face. the longer i looked and questioned the spelling, the estranged i felt from the word. i guess, words like that are so common we don't think about them...its like breathing and walking.

i really have become one of those word-lovers, prolly from all the philosophy books i've been reading. i'm sure there's a better word for it than that. meh. ironically, i wrote a paper last year, stating that rhetoric hindered true philosophic thought. do i still think so? absolutely, i still find words paltry. words are like using an axe for brain surgery. but they are pretty much our only tool. so, they'll have to do.

I finally have my dsl instead of going to the public library every day. I'll still prolly go to the library, just not every day. They have Montaigne's The Essays. And I'm not sure if I can get a library card...because I don't want to change my residency. I won't have established residency long enough to vote here if I did change. So, I'm definitely not changing until after the election. And then, maybe when someone says that I have to change my residency, I will. Till that time, I will happily stay true to Illinois.

posted by molly @ 4:26 PM 0 comments