T-day

I found out last night that my mother, bless her heart, will have a total of 15 guests at Thanksgiving dinner. 2 18-pound turkeys and a ham. Neighbors, co-workers, and family. Her house is only about 1000 sq feet, if that. It should make for an entertaining holiday at the very least. I went to Trader Joe's last night and took the pussy way out, buying crackers and various dips and a cake for dessert (ew, pumpkin pie. Gross!) Danny, Kaleb and I are planning on getting heavily lubricated and playing poker all afternoon. I'm curious as to how the day will turn out...

Words that rhyme with art.

I was walking up some residential street on Queen Anne the other day, and I passed an apartment building with a bunch of amazing paintings in the window, graffitti/Picasso-esque characters that were so mindblowingly eyecatching. Luckily, Mr. John Osgood posted his website in the window as well.

I'm hoping *bess and I can go catch the Mark Ryden exhibit at the Frye today. He's so good, like get all up underneath your skin good. He did a collaboration with Paul Frank about 2 years ago that turned out as a little hand bag shaped like a pork chop. They sold out so fast...I was way bummed. We ended up getting the change purse at the store, but it just wasn't the same. I'm thinking I need to get prints from him, Sam Flores, and Maya Hayuk so I can start some semblance of an art collection. (I don't need the originals, I'm low-budget.)

Storytelling...

From age 14, my "type" (and this can probably be traced back to my father and whatever lingering male abandonment issues I have) had always been tall and thin with a big nose, preferably wiry and crazy hair. My dad is 6'2", has been a runner his whole life, has a prominent Roman nose, and let's just say in my parent's wedding pictures the boy had a wafro. But I digress. I have realized in the last few years that I don't notice the tall thin ones anymore, instead I'm more inclined to guys my height, a little stockier, with dark eyes and facial hair. And I know that that's because of who I have spent the last few years of my life with. Three years ago today I seduced a California transplant into watching a meteor shower from the backyard of my house. Luckily for me, he stayed when the shower was over and we began the story of us. He drives me absolutely crazy most of the time (as I do him), but we really do speak our own language and I have yet to find anyone with a heart as huge and forgiving as his. He lets me be who I am and who I want to be, but also holds me accountable for the consequences of my actions. He is my absolute best friend. I adore every inch of him and feel so luck that he's been in my life this long, with more to go.

Happy anniversary, Danny. (Sorry, Iain.)


Me and my man.

Unleaded profundity loafbread

I grew up in a on a tiny island in Alaska. I left when I was 16, and have been back three times. The first time back when I was 18, I vowed never to return, telling anyone who would listen that the town had "nothing left for me." The next time was for my 21st birthday, and unfortunately I spent most of the weekend drinking instead of spending time with my family. Neither of these times, though, did I spend any real time interacting with the people I grew up with. I went back again this spring for my brother's graduation, and it was a little different this time. The guy that every girl had a crush on at some time throughout out childhood was now a barfly, getting drunk and hooking up with random underage girls (although he can't really be faulted for this, as it is the M.O. of most twenty-something men in that town. People learn by example.) The guy that no one ever thought twice about, who always seemed to hide on the sidelines, was now a handsome architect. The girl who (platonically) broke my heart in 4th grade after becoming best friends with me in 3rd and then turning right around and heading the "Anti-Bailee Defamation League" along with the aforementioned barfly the next year, gave me a huge hug the day I got into town and we spent the better part of one night catching up. I wanted to ask if she remembered the fight we got in on the front steps of the school, where she pulled my hair but I technically won because I made her cry first by kicking her in the stomach. But, time heals all wounds, and I'm starting to realize, and I know this isn't the most astute, profound thing, but those defining moments that etch themselves permanently into our memories are all so relative. While in Alaska, I ran into a guy who I would have called a friend in middle school but looking back on it, was really just an acquaintance. He was telling me about how he'd gotten addicted to crystal meth and had moved to Oregon for awhile to be with family, and I said, "Oh, that's right, you're from there." And he looked at me with a half smile and said, "Man, Bailee, now I'm starting to remember how things were." How what things were? Honestly I had forgotten about this guy until I saw him again, but apparently he had much more intense memories of me than I did of him. And I can just start listing all the people that have passed through my life, that I felt I had some acute, fleeting, connection with and still remember fondly, that I'm sure haven't thought about me since the last time they saw me. And I know the same is true for everyone out there. I wish I could just harness all that wasted fondness and direct it towards the people in my life right now, at this moment. But, Uma Thurman mentions in Paycheck, and I've heard this before, something about how as people we are a sum of our memories and our experiences. And I think that's a really good point.

Hear, hear! (or is it Here, here?)

The Urban Archipelago. It's the cities, stupid.

Literary Enorma

I was feeling ambitious a few Sundays ago, and I bought Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's almost 1,100 pages, and man is it hard to get through. There are certain passages and paragraphs that are riveting, but then there's so much wordiness that I get lost. In a Salon interview, DFW himself said, "I mean, this is caviar for the general literary fiction reader." And it's true, the book is so rich that I can only handle a little at a time. But I must persevere, because I made a winter reading list, and it's long:

• Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
• High Fidelity, Nick Hornsby
• Handmaiden's Tale, Margaret Atwood
• Diary, Chuck Palahniuk
• How We are Hungry, Dave Eggers
• Future Dictionary of America (not necessarily a sit-down-and-read type book, more of a coffee table book)
• No One's Even Bleeding, Lenny Castellaneta
• Best American Non-Required Reading 2004
• Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

I also want to read some more David Sedaris, and read Everything is Illuminated again before the movie is released.

Any other suggestions?

In Honor of the Day

Last night I told Danny that if he didn't vote today, I wouldn't have sex with him until the next election, to which he replied, "Then can I practice by stuffing your ballot box?"

This is a good article. Let's hope it helps. It might be too late.