Interpol and Me

I hadn't really planned on posting one of these today. The aforementioned blog post is still lingering behind me (thank you for the supportive comments by the way you two, it meant more to me than you know), but I feel it is slowly fading. I chose Interpol because they seemed fitting for the place I'm in right now, and when I found them, they were fitting for the place I was in then...

We were all dressed up for a funeral.

I think this as I look at the men behind the band.



I was 17 or 18 when I really got into listening to Interpol. Usually they followed the 3 Tylenol P.M.'s I had grown accustomed to taking in order to silence my over thinking mind and my angry body and finally drift off to sleep. I put "Turn On The Bright Lights" in my combination TV/DVD player (it also played CD's) every night. I didn't need Dashboard to hold me at night or Amanda Palmer (of The Dresden Dolls which is next up if I can just find the right words) licking my wounds, I needed these men, dressed in black, to make me not care. Just try not to care.

I was practically living alone at the time. My parents harbored their own secrets in separate houses at that point and my flawless intuition was telling me that the boyfriend I somehow thought was the saving grace in all of this was having a change of heart. I can feel things like that happening the way they say some dogs can smell cancer or how cats can predict natural disasters.
And the worst part about it all was that I couldn't really blame him. His father had just died and he needed to deal with onslaught of changes and grief that had been dropped on his head with a weight that few know or should have to deal with. He couldn't babysit me anymore. Couldn't make sure I was okay, check my arms for more bandages, help divvy up the load of sadness in my ever unfolding depression. Once for me and twice for him. We needed to do some soul searching. I didn't know that at the time but he was right. I only saw the onslaught of more hurt.
"He's going to break up with you today. You aren't going to know how to handle it. You wont even know how to pretend to handle it," I thought one day. And indeed that afternoon, I was crying on the shoulder of my friend, smoking the last of her cigarettes because I had forgotten my own. It is almost insult to injury to be without cigarettes during a breakup. I made sure I was never without cigarettes for at least a year after that day. Nor was I without Interpol after that night.
He wasn't there anymore to tell me what I wanted or needed to hear, but Interpol was.

"I had seven faces
Thought I knew which one to wear
But I'm sick of spending these lonely nights
Training myself not to care
The subway is a porno
Pavements they are a mess
I know you've supported me for a long time
Somehow I'm not impressed"

A few weeks after the breakup we went to my senior prom together. We had planned on it shortly after we began dating and he wanted to stay true to his word.
"How noble." I thought, reeking with bitterness.
I put on my $350 gown that we had picked out and I called Samantha before he picked me up.
"I feel like a bride left at the alter. What's the point of this gown, this dance, this fucking charade? I'm going home alone tonight. Everybody is getting lucky and I taking my ex to the prom."
It didn't get any easier after the pictures were taken. I counted the times we looked at each other with questions we didn't want to ask yet. Eight. I awkwardly answered the questions of my classmates who asked me "oh, so this is your boyfriend?!" Five. I counted down the hours until my carriage would turn into a pumpkin. Until that glass slipper was no longer mine. Seven. And by the end of the night I took three and went to bed.

"But you cannot safely say while I will be away
That you will not consider sadly how you helped me to stray
You will not reach me I am resenting a position that is past resentment
And now I can't consider and now there is this distance, so..."

The pattern was much the same for a good couple months. Combating bitterness, chain smoking, etc. Until I met Greg. And he stuck around. I didn't make it easy. I did everything I could to push him out the door, testing him because "what guy ever stays." But this guy did. And these guys receded.



I don't want to make my experience with Interpol sound bad. Like they were merely the instrumental to my misery, they weren't. But they were there for me when nobody was. My bodyguards and lullaby creators. And perhaps if they weren't there for me on those lonelier nights, something else would have been, something that I couldn't take back. And I'm grateful they were, and even now as they play in my car and I see a smiling toddler in the back seat, miles away from the place I was in five years ago, I tip my hat to them.

"It's up to me now, turn on the bright lights."

Shiny Happy People

Whatever.

I'm not in a very good mood today. Disappointment abounds with people, opinions, ignorance and to quote Dashboard (if I'm going to get all "emo" here) "it's left me feeling tired and exposed."

Perhaps if I delete them from Facebook my mind will clear a bit, out of sight out of mind right?

...If only it was so simple.

Perhaps if I just skip over the negative comments.

...Why are there so many these days?

Maybe if I just don't care as much?

...Ah, but you've tried that route before.

I feel like I need a Xanax or something. A forcefield. An island. More wherewithal to not be so...altered...by stupid things.


So please excuse me as I take a few breaths. Take a time out and try to regroup. This is a negative post as it is and I don't want to bring too many more so I need to fix myself before I get to posting on the regular again. But first, first I needed to vent.

Step one accomplished.

Fiddle Faddle

A quick update on the mundane-

1. I've been on this new form of birth control (Yasmin) since Sunday. The first couple days were fine and I thought I was going to get away scot-free...until two days ago. It seems like my body isn't what it used to be when it comes to the onslaught of hormones. When I was in high school I got on the pill and everything was, in fact, sunshine and rainbows. No mood swings, no nausea, bigger boobs and no weight gain and no babies! Now, well, lets just say I feel like I'm reliving my pregnancy all over again. I feel lethargic, nauseous although I'm not outwardly puking just feeling exhausted and unable to eat anything for fear of upchuckery, slight headaches, and although the nausea is there all I want to do is eat Eegee's. Anytime I crave Eegee's this hard I fear I'm pregnant because in Tucson Eegee's is kind of like the pregnant woman's holy grail for that first (hell, second AND third if you're me) trimester. Every woman I've known here that's been pregnant can attest to this fact. So here I am, the girl with the phantom pregnancy. I'll be calling the gyno and scheduling an appointment for Paragard. Because hormones are the devil and I can't afford, both financially and physically, to eat at Eegee's three (or four) times a day.

2. Jack is actually using some words now! Finally. He's also discovered that he can open the fridge and we've had a few instances lately where one of us will be doing something, turn around and there Jack stands with a pack of Tillamook cheese slices hurting for some sharp cheddar and we're like "wtf?! How did you get those?! Oh yeah, you're getting smarter. Like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park."

3. I'm on the job hunt...and it sucks. In case you've been living under a rock, the pickin's as far as jobs in this economy be slim. I'd like to get a job at Buffalo Exchange because well, duh! Except for the fact that Greg pointed out- "you'd probably just spend your whole paycheck in the store anyway." But I feel that's selling me a little short. It would probably only be about half of my paycheck. I may write this in the application. "This would be good for the both of us."

4. Our AC went out yesterday and today it's been told that the temps are going to climb up to 101 degrees in our dear desert town. This makes me a sad panda.

Here's a song

An Ode To Eliot

I was going to do another decor inspired by something, and it was going to be T.S. Eliot but it ended up sort of going in about nine different directions. So instead of just a decor I just decided to throw in everything that I saved in my folders that reminded me of him. Here you go-

First, the man-






The interior stuff-

I want a bookcase/hutch like this (found at Etsy) so bad it hurts! I love the look of books behind glass and a place to keep the random treasure/knick knacks you find along the way.

In practice, these look really awesome-

See. (Anthropologie)

A desk lamp for all those late night musings (Anthropologie).

Doorknob (I think changing the knobs/handles on something instantly perks up whatever piece of furniture/cabinet/door lacks in character).



I WILL have a gramophone one day. And if not, I WILL have one tattooed on my arm.


The Clothes-




The Toddler-

The Shins and Me

I had a hard time deciding which band I'd choose for today's "________ and Me". I have so many that I love and when I think about them I sputter off like an over excited or over romantic idealist. I've waxed poetic about Morrison and found love and existentialism with Radiohead, but I must keep reminding myself to save the best for last (a method I've used since I was a kid in the lunchroom and people looked at me funny for scraping the cheese off of my pizza and only AFTER eating the crust, devouring the marinara laden cheesy goodness). Anyway, this Friday I've decided to love on the Shins.

I'd like to say I was different from about 89% of the population and discovered the Shins in an independent record store, but like nearly everybody else I was turned on to them by somebody who promised "it'll change your life." That person was Natalie Portman. I sat in my room on my 17th birthday and watched Garden State and ate copious amounts of Chicken McNuggets, while my parents worried if I was delving more into my fluctuating bouts of depression ("are you sure THAT'S what you want to do for your birthday?"). But I wasn't upset or depressed in that moment. Quite the contrary in fact, it was comforting. I was watching a movie that expressed so much of what was going on in my head and when Natalie plugged Zach Braff into her world with her headphones, when "New Slang" became an audible revelation, I was hooked.
The next week after I got paid from my minimum of minimum wage job of slinging grinders and iced fruit beverages at Eegee's, I got out of school and decided that I needed to buy the album. I took the city bus downtown and found that album in that independent record store.

Punk lifers manned the cashier and looked at me like I was the greenest, most precious little girl in the shop, with my short mousy brown bob and my lack of tattoos and life experience. I fingered through local punk LP's, the alternative and blues sections and after about a half hour or so I found what I was looking for.

I had my friend Samantha (see Pixies and Me), who came along with me, help me choose between "Chutes To Narrow" and "Oh, Inverted World". And being girls who spent their free time scrawling poetry in composition books we based our decision on the only thing that meant anything to the hearts of day dreaming girls- lyrical content. To this day I think the Shins lyrics read like poetry and it's what sets them apart from any of the other bands in my c.d. case.
Like the Pixies my moment came in the back of the city bus (I hold a soft spot in my heart for public transportation, but that is another post entirely). I watched the city morph into familiar neighborhoods and once my stop came (all too soon in my opinion) I spent the remainder of my day listening.
That weekend my family went up to Phoenix to visit more family. A dear friend had passed and we all came together to remember and celebrate a life that brought us so much laughter and memories. It was a peculiar trip. Remembering a life, celebrating a new one (my cousin had semi-recently given birth), relishing in family from out of town, sharing secrets and inside I felt a shift as I watched all of the adults in my life and some of my peers. I couldn't explain it and but I knew inside that something was changing. Everybody around me was in a new stage of life and there I sat, senior in high school, nothing new but the thoughts in her head. I decided that this would be the last of my carelessness. I was growing up and I was okay with that, I was ready to change from the youngest girl in the family to my own woman.
That week when I got back I lost my virginity. I started making my own decisions of what I'd be dong with my free time, with my high school career, with my friends.
The Shins were there for those months of changing. That album marked a sort of spiritual puberty where I decided to make so many of my own decisions and deal with the consequences.
Those lyrics that I sought out based on just what I read changed into feeling. I understood them so much more. I went back to Toxic Ranch to buy "Oh, Inverted World" and this time the clerks didn't look at me with smirking eyes. I was cultivating my own life experiences, without prompting from friends or parents or Natalie Portman.
"one wound up punch of intuition
lays flat my whole take on us.
you're the girl on the wing of a barnstormer
the tidal rabbit who came of age before her time."
The Shins were a gateway drug for my mind. They changed the way I looked for music, the way I listened to it. My writing started to change. I wrote more and more poetry and it was actually good (I was given pamphlets to colleges that were concentrated in poetry and writing by a local published poet who told me to "follow this through"). And later on as I went through heartbreak, they caught my fall.
"I find a fatal flaw
In the logic of love
And go out of my head
You love a sinking stone
That will never elope
So get used to the lonesome, girl
You must atone some
Don't leave me no phone number there"

But they caught it in a different way. Instead of feeling too sorry for myself, playing the victim, the more I listened to them the more I realized that this is just life, filled with heartbreak and growing pains, revelations and the mundane. The best you can do is carry on and maybe, just maybe you can turn it into art, a song, a poem, a melody.

"lucked out and found my favorite records
lying in wait at the birmingham mall.
the songs that I heard,
the occasional book
were the only fun I ever took.
and I got on with making myself.
the trick is just making yourself."

Yes, perhaps the trick is just making yourself. I'll always love the Shins for showing me that.

But this one is for you Ms. Portman. You were right.

One for me...

and one for my homies.

Amanda's Rules for Surviving an Arizona Summer

I've been an Arizona native my whole life (born in Phoenix, moved at 6 to Tucson) so sweltering summers are all I've known and yet the heat manages to donkey punch me every time it arrives. I've learned a few things through living in the desert that I've had to learn the hard way:
1. Ease into your car if it's been parked more than ten minutes. You will burn your rump if you're wearing shorts or a skirt otherwise.
2. Avoid playground equipment or your child will burn their rump and you'll feel like an asshole.
3. Heat stroke sucks.
4. Snakes come out a lot this time of year (I almost stepped on a baby rattlesnake during a jog a couple years back).

So if you plan on visiting Arizona during the summer or if you actually live here and just want to commiserate here's Amanda's Rules for Surviving an Arizona Summer.

1. Wear Sunscreen

This should pretty much be a given. Out here you get sun exposure sitting on the toilet, so it's inevitable that without sunscreen you will burn. And burning/sun exposure/UV rays equal skin damage and skin damage equals premature aging not to mention the worst possible outcome- skin cancer. I don't mean to diss the sun so much, the dude has his benefits in moderation, but you should protect yourself before venturing out around here (or anywhere for that matter).

2. AC, AC, AC!

If you have to go out to get the kids out of the house or if you're getting cabin fever yourself, venture out into places that blast the AC. Most cities have indoor play areas which I'll be using during the day more than the actual park (see #2 of Things I've Learned the Hard Way). We visit The Tucson Children's Museum to get Jack's wiles out. It has indoor and outdoor play areas, interactive activities and in the summer the outdoor activities tend to be water play related. The membership fee is a pretty good deal and it's tax deductible. Check it out!


3. Wear As Little As Possible

Now is the time to start exercising your right to wear sundresses, sandals, shorts, skirts, tanks and tunics. Overload on the clothes and it's going to be boob sweat city. Wear light fabrics.

4. Get Your Hair Out Of Your Face
Right now is about the time that the ladies of Tucson do the annual shearing, lopping off their hair due to the oppressive heat, which is actually a pretty good strategy if you're in the market for a shorter do. However, if you're trying to grow your hair out, I'd recommend putting it up. My favorite angle on this is the messy bun.


It looks cute, relaxed and chic. You can make it more casual for day or gussy it up for night, add a side braid or a barrette or headband and viola!

5. Burt's Bee's Lip Shimmer

I recommend this because it has flattering shades for everybody and the peppermint in it gives you a quick little pick me up on your lips that's pretty refreshing. Watermelon and rhubarb are my go to's

6. Otter Pops

I've been down with OPP (Otter Poppy Pops to make that pun work) since I was but a young lass and now that I've got a Costco membership we buy those suckers in bulk. They last about two weeks around here.

7. Pools and ice water
Because if you aren't IN a body of water or drinking the equivalent of a body of water evaporation may occur.

8. Getting Wasted Again In Margaritaville If all else has failed and you've put the children to bed and are left thinking "it's still effing hot and I'm about to lose it", well, there's always the power of a margarita with lots and lots of ice. Or pina coladas. Or mojitos...or...


So stay cool, stay calm. Fall is only about 4 months away.