My new answer to everything

Lately, whenever anyone asks me to do anything, all I want to say to them is the following:

I'm supposed to be writing my novel right now.

Which, when translated means (roughly):

No, i can't do that, bite me.

O Weekend

I remember you so fondly.
I remember the good times we had,
writers' group, they gave me really good feedback and a cigarette and a glass of wine
doing work in the garden, there was sunshine and the smell of rosemary
the kitten running around showing off for me
We went out for a nice dinner
I had apricot stuffed chicken and a lovely white wine.
I slept in past 10!

O Weekend!
why did you have to go?
What did I do to offend you?
Do I smell bad?
Because I can fix that!
I could smell better if it would make you stay.
Did my dinner suck on Sunday?
I'll never make mushroom paprika again!
Did Oliver bite you?
He meant it in a loving way, really!

O Weekend,
let's us never fight.
If you would only come back quickly
I would name my next kitten Weekend
I would name my first born Weekend
because I miss you, Weekend
I miss you a lot!

turn off the lights!

when i was a kid, sometimes my teacher would turn off the classroom lights and tell us all to put our heads down. i remember that i usually found this to be intolerably boring, but sometimes, especially if the classroom was warm and the blnds were drawn i would drift off into the a beautiful hazy half sleep.

i wish it was still acceptable to do this as an adult. i wish i could drop the blinds and shut off the lights and tell everyone to just put their heads down for 20 minutes. maybe somebody could read to us in a soothing voice as well. in the third grade my teacher read us the indian in the cupboard i wouldn't mind hearing it again.

something good, sort of

this story both renews my faith in humans and revolts me.

while it's awesome that these two bartenders were so quick witted and saved this woman from almost cefrtain rape, i am appalled at the guy who kept dropping pills in her drink.

they are super cool, he is gross as hell and i'm glad that the article names him. i hope he is treated as an outcast for the rest of his life

the rock and the roll or apologies

We saw The Arcade Fire last night and it was an awesome show.

They've got French Horns and a hurdy-gurdy in that band, among many other instruments. My best friend in high school played the French Horn and she always bemoaned the lack of melodies provided for her in high school band music. Except for the music for the theme song from Shaft

(yes, it was part of our field show during football season and yes it did just showcase exactly how white all but about 5 members of the marching band were but so the fuck what, it was the theme song from Shaft! At least we weren't trying to get away with Smells Like Teen Spirit like Northern did, now that was bad news. I'm pretty sure Kurt Cobain rolled a few times in his grave over that one. Whereas, Richard Roundtree would have been totally behind us if he had known! Enough about the politics of high school marching band music)

the French Horns were heavily featured in the theme song from Shaft.

Anyhow, this best friend and I got into a huge fight during our first year of college and we no longer speak. If we see each other around we'll say hi but not much else. We even lived in Chicago at t.e same time and never looked each other up. Never hung out. never did anything. The cut was too deep.

So watching the French Horns during the show last night I found myself thinking about that fight. I won't go into the details here, suffice to say I was in a bad place and took offense at an offhanded comment she made and I totally 100% lost it. I blew up and over reacted and then couldn't see past it. We spoke about it a year later and I insisted that she was just as much to blame as me. I was wrong and still hurt and being stupid. In the last year I found the emails that caused the whole thing and saw how fucking horrible I'd been. I burned them because I never wanted to find them again. I never wanted to bump into proof of how horrible I was at 18 ever again. But I know, I was a total brat when I was 18, who wasn't?

But I was thinking about it all again last night and as they played the song Rebellion (Lies) all I could think about was how sorry I was. Actually I was thinking a small half poem:

French Horns at a pop concert
we never would have imagined it.
I'm so sorry.

So, yeah, Heidi Petersen, former best friend of Carolyn Kohl, if you ever google yourself and you find this, I just want to say I am sorry. I fucked up and it only took me 11 years to figure it out. I don't expect you to care anymore, I know not everyone is as nostalgic and mired in the past as I am, but I know I was a dick and all I can say is that I've learned to step back since then and I've gotten a lot better at directing my anger in the right direction. I just had a lot to learn about letting it out then, still do probably, but that's not the point. The point is, I'm sorry I if what I said all those years ago hurt you and I wish more than anything that I had never said it. I wish I had thought it through, I wish I hadn't torn our friendship apart like that. I was wrong. I'm sorry.

hey everybody!

quit sucking, okay? i need a lot less suck in my life so just stop it. because, seriously there's only so much time i can spend here while i try not to think about the suck. kittens can only do so much.

so, yeah, quit it.

thanks.

i'm starting a club

Growing out of issue number 10 in my last entry and a conversation I was having with myself on my walk home from my knitting group on Sunday, I've decided to start a book club!

It won't be some trendy book club for current hip books. Oh no! It will be a book club featuring the books that I really should have read already. I sent out an email to friends today and so far I have three takers, only one of whom is married to me.

It's going to be totally nerdily awesome! Now I have to figure out which classic to read first. And what to call my club. Every club needs a kick ass name, maybe the Tigers or the Rocketeers?

Shameful Confessions

1. i seriously considered buying a pair of Crocs to accomodate my messed up toes
2. i want to buy that gnarls barkley album. i know it's been out forever and crazy was totally overplayed, but i want it.
3. i miss my weekend reruns of the golden girls like mad
4. i watch the delayed episodes of american idol every weekend even though i never watched the show in america
5. i cannot believe that sanjaya didn't get voted off last week! i was actually upset by this occurence and said out loud "what the hell america?"
6. jeremy and i are seriously considering naming our next cat Dawg. we think this would be pretty funny.
7. funnier even than our original plans to name oliver Innit in homage to our cockney brethren.
8. i've been reading romance novels again. they're like xanax when i am feeling anxious. i read once that episodes of law & order help people suffering from depression feel a little bit better because they have a firm structure (conflict, resolution, punishment or in more basic terms beginning, middle and end) and that helps people focus. i think my romance novels do this for me.
9. in particular, i am fond of the julia quinn bridgerton family series. the covers do not feature anyone who looks like fabio and the dirty parts are okay if a bit vanilla and the characters are likeable and funny. they are easy books, but that's okay, sometimes when i am feeling like a spaz i need an easy book.
10. i have never read a lot of the classics ie moby dick, wuthering heights, a room of one's own, jane eyre, heart of darkness, the inferno, paradise lost, and many many others. my english degree could be taken away for this reason along with many crimes against punctuation at any point

trying not to be such a brat

i never used to delete things i wrote online.

i used to post them and leave them, no matter how horrible or bratty i might sound.

lately though i am second guessing myself more and am generally more desirous of showing the world my better, less bratty side. so in the interests of helping everyone understand how awesom i am, you should know the following.

even though i had what can probably best be described as a panic attack in Hoxton last night and ended up leaving early to come home on the bus on my own (because riding the bus through sketchy neighborhoods at night is way less panic inducing than a crowded pub, seriously, it is) i still managed to do my civic duty by reporting a crime in my neighborhood!

while walking back from the bus stop at about 20 after 10 i saw two guys leaving the warehouse on the corner through a broken patch in the fence while carrying an i-mac. the walked quickly over to a small white van and sped off. i pretended not to think they looked totally fishy, even though they did, and memorised their license number after they got into the van and then called 999 as i was unlocking the door to my house.

upon calling 999 i was put on hold (way to go emergency services!) so i hung up figuring someone might be dying and i could give up my place in the queue for that, and looked up the southwark met police branch number in the phone book. sat on hold for about 7 more minutes and then reported everything i saw to a very nice telecommunications officer.

it turns out somebody else reported everything too and the police were already on the way but they were happy to have a second report. two police men came by at about 11:30 and took my statement. it turns out the van used has been reported in other thefts in the area . one of the police men kept saying "okie kokie" all the time. this seemed like a very un-policeman like thing to say. but what do i know.

it all makes me feel bad for singing "fuck the poe-lice" with jeremy while we were taking the vespa to greenwich market earlier in the day while we were stuck behind a slow mnoving police van. even if 911 really is a joke in my town, because they were actually very nice.

The scariest conversation I've ever had

Scene: Jeremy has just returned from a business trip and he and Carolyn are about to fall asleep, just before dozing off the following conversation takes place


Jeremy: The other night I had a dream that you were pregnant and I was really happy about it.

Carolyn: . . . Really?

Jeremy: I wouldn't be though.

Carolyn: Oh, thank god.

There is no way to describe the fear that entered my body after that first statement. The whole idea of bearing and then raising children, still fills me with the greatest dread. I don't know if I'm just a selfish jerk, lacking maternal instincts for anything other than my cat, or in denial. But the whole idea of making babies continues to freak me out. It's something I need to start thinking more seriously about as I near my 30th year though. My child bearing years are growing ever more limited, if the mainstream press is to be believed anyhow.

I know it's okay not to have kids and I know I've always said that I didn't want to have any, but I have also changed my mind about marriage, bell peppers, most nuts, Ernest Hemingway, and Morissey, how am I to know what I believe anymore?