"it won't be long before we'll all be there with snow-oh."

By the way. John (dear boy) left for work around 11AM. So. Because I always sleep way too late, I took a shower alone in a house full of hammer-happy maniacs.

That was my ever-so-melodramatic lead-in to this awesome memory I had in the shower...

When my numb hands went under the water, they got that burning feeling little hands get when put near a heater after playing in the snow. My family used to have this big, ugly, wood-burning heater that took up, like, 1/4 of the room. When my sister and I would come in from playing in the snow, which didn't happen all that often, we'd put our mittens and/or gloves (depending on the year) on top of it to dry off. There's nothing like the smell of snowy wool gloves drying on top of a stove. We'd change clothes, then both squeeze into the big arm chair beside the heater, sideways, so our feet would dangle in front of the heat.

I wanna make a snow angel.

huge holes in my house.

Okay, so, for a while now our apartment complex has looked like a war zone because they're kicking out all the current tenants and turning the place into fancy-pants condos. It started with the roof. These workmen would come at what felt like dawn to take down the shingles and plywood from the roof...and then they'd fling it down to the helpless ground below. Woke me up every day.

My dad came to visit then. It was raining and those fools were working like mad. Damn straight. Fix my roof, fool. When we were leaving to go have dinner, we opened the door and a huge sheet of plywood landed about four feet in front of us. My dad clung to the side of the building, like any smart person would, so the eave would cover him up.

Now. Now they're replacing our windows. They told us they were doing this yesterday. That's right. Not even 24 hours of notice. I'm sure glad we were home.

But this is the best part: they're taking out the old windows by scoring them with a super-duper-cuts-glass-like-butter knife...and then breaking them. The guy who's doing the breaking went upstairs first and John and I were downstairs. Then I hear what I'm sure is him banging up our bedroom window with a hammer. Luckily, it is a bit more systematic than that. But only a bit.

So I give you this wisdom: it can get really cold inside a house that has two 5'x4' holes in it.

He's working in the kitchen now. Beating the living crap out of my window frame. Oh yes, I didn't mention that. When the glass is gone, they beat the frame and all that's left out of the building with a hammer. A hammer, people. Talk about scaring a poor country girl into wanting to go back to her native land and hide under the kudzu... I want to go take my dishes and put them in a safe. Take a hammer to my kitchen, will you? Screw you, buddy.

I'm freezing. And I can hear his twangy country music coming from his too-crazy-loud headphones. Over the hammer. God, protect me.

Gotta stop typing, the breeze is numbing my damn fingers... Great. They're outside freaking out 'cause it might rain. Oh. Don't I know it will.

headline: new marketing makes eighties kids old overnight.

That's what vintage Care Bears sheets look like.

whine. whine. whine.

A girl I know was accepted to grad school. And I know she deserves it, which makes me want to punch myself in the face. Hard. Here I'd been telling myself I didn't want to go to grad school and yet, simultaneously, not really planning on doing anything else. Did I secretly want to reach a point where the couch was grooved to fit only me? Or am I afraid of actually getting in and finding out that all that slacking off I did in undergraduate school will make it impossible for me to do anything but fail? Who knows? Not me.

i wanna be captain planet.

Yesterday afternoon John and I went to see Ralph Nader speak at GSU. He spoke only about the environment, as he was participating in the 2004 Georgia Environment Organization Summit, and said nothing about his campaign.* Like I told my mom, it made me want to go clean something. John and I already want to buy a hybrid, but we won't be able to do that for years. Years. I was sitting there listening, thinking about someday having a house with huge solar energy panels on the roof. And maybe a windmill in the backyard, just for good measure.

It's hard to explain. I remember when I was little there was this organization called Kids F.A.C.E. that was all about saving the planet. It got really big. I had the bed sheets and the comforter. My family recycled. I still cut up those plastic things that hold six-packs of soft drink cans together because I get this image of a fish tangled up in them every time I go to throw one away. But then, why is it I automatically assume that my garbage still has any chance of ever getting near a live fish?

I don't know where I'm going with this. I just want things to be cleaner. I dunno, maybe I just want to feel cleaner. This country makes me feel dirty. This city makes me feel claustrophobic. I need to get to the ocean and feel salt and wind and something bigger than myself before the whole place gets too gunked up to swim in.

*For the record, I still have not drawn loyalties to any presidential candidate. John has. I pretty much just know who I'm not voting for.

clumsy fool.

I just fell down the stairs. Well, technically, I slid, flew, and slid some more. I screamed (in mid-air), causing John to come running to my side, where he helped me up. And asked, "Where does it hurt?" I had to answer, through my embarrassed tears, "My butt." Holy crap. I'm glad this boy isn't going anywhere because he freaked out when he heard me scream and didn't laugh at me once.

If you don't know me, you will learn, because I like to talk a lot, that I fall all the time. ALL the time.

laura loves john.

Last night we saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Best movie I've seen in so long. I wanted to be Kate Winslet. I don't think she's ever looked so amazingly beautiful. I even thought Jim Carrey was hot in this movie, which was a completely new feeling for me.

And, of course, "we" means "John and I." So at the end of the movie he turns to me and says, "It's nice to see a movie that makes me appreciate what we have." At which point, I just kinda hugged his head, since we were still in the stiff theater seats. I got a bit emotional and he said, "I said something good, huh?"

Yes, pretty boy, you always do.

they called me bunny.

this girl doesn't run.

Up way too late last night, I'm walking around like a zombie this morning. Which reminds me of Dawn of the Dead and how much I hate the idea of running zombies. So perhaps I should specify, I'm walking around like an old-school zombie, not one of those gross running things. In fact, I think I'll start moaning, just so no one gets confused. uuughhmmm.

in step, but behind.

I’m the girl who is always in step, but on the wrong beat. You know. I was in band. Maybe you were, too. Maybe you weren’t, it doesn’t matter, the metaphor isn’t that hard to get. Everyone else seems to be on 4 and I’m still on 2. I take two more steps, but they do, too. In step, but if we were playing any music at all, it would be horribly obvious that I’m behind.

For example. I didn’t buy Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes until I was a sophomore in college. My friends all had it when they were 14. The only thing I knew about Tori Amos in high school was that there was a picture of pig sucking her breast in the liner notes of Boys for Pele. I was friends with the A/V guys, who always managed to have stacks of CD’s that belonged to basically the entire senior class. (Minus me, of course.) So when I saw the Tori pig picture while hanging out with them, namely the-one-I-thought-was-hot, I pretended it didn’t completely gross me out. It did. I was only vaguely aware that those very A/V boys wanted to touch my own nipples. Like I said, I’m still on 2.

I got super excited last week when I “discovered” Beth Orton. I went to the mall to buy her CD simply because I wanted to have it in my possession while I told my friends (scratch that, my husband and a friend) about her. I would be on 4. Totally. Screw that, I’d be up to 6. (Which makes me feel like a geek, even more, since whatever band I’m in seems to be playing in 6/8 time. Jeez.) So I’m in the mall and I stop by to see my husband’s friend’s girlfriend, who works in Godiva. I mention I’m looking for (with the intent to buy) a Beth Orton CD.
“Don’t bother going to FYE,” she says, “They have a really bad selection and their CD’s are, like, $20.”
I reply. Whatever I said was obviously meaningless, as it has now totally left me.
“I actually found a rare CD at BestBuy,” she tells me, “It was Erin McKeown, this girl me and Jim listen to.”

And then, wham, I’m back at 2. I’m married. John and I do not have people we listen to together. We occasionally have music going while we’re together, but we don’t have anyone, not one person, that I can say is someone we listen to. He likes rap, for one. And this person, who I thought was a band, called mcchris, who produces what may be the most annoying music I’ve ever heard. Ever. And I listen to. What the hell do I listen to, anyway? Well, obviously I climbed onto the Tori Amos bandwagon somewhere along the way, even though I’m starting to think that out of the five CD’s of hers I own, Little Earthquakes was the only one I really needed. (And I think I left it at my sister’s house.) There’s John Mayer. And Sheila Nicholls. And Gordon Lightfoot, because he makes me think of my dad. That’s music that shakes me up. And the Mamas and the Papas. My CD collection is tiny because I can never come up with anything else I want. Because I don’t know where people hear about musicians.

Which brings me to the show. My friend and her brother, who live in Nashville and who are really into some local Nashville bands and go to local shows quite frequently, came to visit us while they had spring break earlier this week. They had found a show here in Atlanta. A band called Broken Social Scene. We go to Echo Lounge, which is much dirtier than I’d ever imagined, and I notice that I don’t feel incredibly out of place, like I do at Nashville shows, which all seem to be full of high school goth kids. And she says to me, “This crowd is a lot more interesting than the one in Nashville.” And suddenly I feel. Cool. Me. And then John comes back from parking the car, almost immediately telling me that the place weirds him out because he feels like he’s back in high school. Crap. I’m back at 2. I didn’t go to those shows with him, even though, by the way, he was “the-one-I-thought-was-hot” and am now married to. In fact, it is probably because of those things that I didn’t go with him.

So here I am, this college graduate with no job, hanging out in our apartment all day playing free games online instead of being intelligent and/or productive, getting fatter by the second, and still wishing I’d had more friends in high school. Perhaps I’m now totally out of step. Now, to be fair, I graduated college a semester early. With honors. Summa Cum Laude. And I did have at least eight friends in college. But isn’t there a saying somewhere about how you shouldn’t judge yourself on what you used to be? There should be. At any rate, I needed a break, I know, but this is ridiculous.

So why don’t John and I have music we listen to? Let’s think about this. We’re married. That’s a pretty big thing to have in common, I’d say. We’re both artistic, depressed, and overweight. We really don’t need to share that much more. We’re enough alike without sharing a playlist. That’s not to say that I don’t like his music, of course. I usually like everything he plays. And I think he likes my music. I really don’t know. At any rate, I think I’m just supposed to be at 2. I looked like the people at that show because I was like them. No one my age has it together. The past doesn’t matter anymore. I’m the graduate. Plastics and all that. I’m not planning on sleeping with an older woman, but I did get married. I’m hanging out at the pool. And yes, I like Simon and Garfunkel.