wet hot american summer

so remember when you were younger and you'd start back at school in the fall and everyone would have all these stories of how amazing their summer was and all the things that they did and all you really had to say was that you watched a lot of tv and maybe went down to the community pool once or twice? or that your brother maybe put you into a garbage bag or locked you in the basement for a while? nothing exciting.

well, i think i finally was one of those people that had the amazing summer story. or maybe i just figured out a way to look at things in an "amazing summer" kinda way. either way, as it's now settling into the autumn season here in chicago, i figured it was finally time to sit down and share my little summer story.

unlike most students, I didn't have the summer off from classes. oh no, i had made the decision to spend the next two and a half solid years of my life in school. it was summer! time for the beach and drinking profuse amounts of alcohol. not time for books and tests. additionally, school was already becoming a pain in my ass. i was starting to wonder who the hell decides to go to art school when he's never had an art class in his life? i started to believe that people were just being nice when they told me i had a decent amount of skill. like when you ask people if they can tell you've put on fifteen pounds and they say, "of course not," even though it's written all over their faces. i wasn't feeling artistic at all.

the funny thing about this summer was that it never really felt like it started. chicago usually has three solid months of great weather. june, july and august. june kinda just appeared without any warning. there wasn't a time when the clouds opened up and let everyone know that it was summatime. it stayed pretty mild the whole thing through. i would've been fine with the mild weather had it also been sunny. but it wasn't really sunny that often either. but we kept on truckin'. making out barbeque plans and our holigay weekend plans. school didn't really put all that big a hinderance on things since i only had class three nights a week and it didn't seem like homework was that heavy. perhaps that added to me not really feeling all that much like a student. at the end of the quarter in july i had made plans to head south for my one week of vacation a year to spend it with the kentucky krush.

worst. plan. ever.

i have no idea who i went to see in kentucky, but he sure as hell wasn't the kentucky krush that was in chicago in january. i felt like an emotionally neglected wife from the moment i got there. perhaps i can be a bit needy sometimes. and these neediness is often accelerated when alcohol is added the the mix, but this was just a disaster. he was danny zuko and i was sandy, and this was definitely not summer lovin'. i can't say that i went to kentucky with any big expectations of what was going to happen, but i was hoping that he'd at least be excited to see me. and i'd like to say that it even exploded into something, but really i was the only one yelling and he just couldn't be bothered to even show anything at all. he couldn't even phone it in. on the day that i cut my planned eight-day trip short to four, i think he said a few sentences to me total and that was it. i haven't talked to him since.

i came back from kentucky and my friend picked me up at the train station and we ascended upon my apartment with two bottles of wine and sex and the city on the mind. the heartache reminded me of my early twenties so we indulged in the behavior of our early twenties. and i was glad that the kentucky krush was six and a half hours away. it made it a lot easier to get over it without having to worry that he could be lurking around any corner in the city. my friends were very supportive too. although even now it seems silly that i got so worked up over some kid that wasn't ever a huge part of my life anyway.

my birthday came and i spent the weekend ringing in twenty-nine by dancing it out like old times. there was a time when i could go out and dance from eleven to four in the morning on a saturday night. but in gay years, twenty nine is when doing things like that isn't really possible. or if it is, shouldn't be undertaken for fear of a straight-up shit show. and with everyone and their mother having a digital camera these days? it just gets scary.

the birthday weekend lead to meeting what i've fondly looked back upon as "the biggest mistake of the summer." and by fondly, i mean not fondly at all. if the kentucky krush debacle wasn't enough, i decided to pour some salt on the wounds and accept a date with a friend of friends. i ignored the fact that he was four years older than me and still had no aspirations beyond the bar manager job he had had for years. i ignored the fact that even all his friends told me it was a bad idea. and i ignored the fact that everything in my head was telling me no no no. but when had i ever listened to my head? and it was summer! i was dying for that summer fling.

and a fling it was. it didn't last more than a solid week and it, unsurprisingly, ended just as everyone had predicted it would. those butterflies in my stomach quickly took flight and left me with this feeling of contempt. i wasn't surprised. everything had always ended up like this. i also wasn't surprised that i left myself get sucked into the dramatics of it all. i was bound and determined to have that summer fling and if i wasn't going to get it, then i was for sure going to set fire to it. this little mishap partnered with the kentucky krush disaster still so fresh proved to be a little too much and so i drank. and drank. and drank some more.

all the love bumps and all the holigay weekends of pride and fourth of july and market days were turning me into a drunk. and what was worse, i had already realized it long before i figured out that it might be a problem. and i was a sloppy drunk at that. it's funny how a realization can hit you the minute you wake up in a bush.

a funny thing also happened during the last month or so of summer. i was starting to feel like an honest-to-god art student. i was getting the hang of the whole digital art thing and i was actually liking the whole process. and i finally knew that i was an artist when i got the whole can't breathe feeling when putting something up for a critique hoping that someone, anyone, would be able to tell that i had ripped out my heart and slapped it up there on the board for everyone to see.

it almost sounds like this summer sucked. it didn't. it was great, actually. i had a blast. i'm not always the best at relaying the stuff that didn't suck, but i'm working on that.

01 angels & airwaves - adventure

02 kid cudi f/ mgmt & ratatat - pursuit of happiness

03 little boots - new in town

04 kesha - tik tok

05 simian mobile disco f/ beth ditto - cruel intentions

06 la roux - bulletproof

07 yeah yeah yeahs - heads will roll

08 cobra starship - wet hot american summer

09 love grenades - genius of fun

10 gossip - heavy cross

11 ladyhawke - my delirium

12 dragonette - pick up the phone (richard x remix)

13 basement jaxx - raindrops

14 cute is what we aim for - time

15 stars of track and field - end of all time

16 quiet drive - into the ocean

17 switchfoot - mess of me

18 hayley williams - teenagers

19 brakesbrakesbrakes - oh! forever

20 the noisettes - never forget you

when you've had a better day than yesterday

successfuly done with the first week of classes. actually, i was done yesterday but i was too tired to write anything. sadly, it wasn't fatigue from school. it was fatigue from being me. from obsessing about stupid shit and about every little other thing besides school. classes themselves were good. it's a little annoying that the one class i was most looking forward to (my two dimensional design class) is full of kids that really don't want to be there but i'm sure it'll get better as the weeks go by.

yesterday was beautiful. it's really beginning to feel like spring. it's been pouring all day today and it's supposed to be back to freezing weather this weekend, but at least i had yesterday. yesterday during the day it felt like my head was clear and focused. like things were going in the right direction even though i didn't exactly know what direction that is. usually i can judge what kind of day it'll be when i exit the backdoor of my apartment building. yesterday i opened that big metal door and the sunlight and warm air hit me in the face and things seemed like they were right.

today was just rain. and to be honest, i never left my apartment. it's at least not freezing because i've got the windows open. but the problem is is that i've got my head all open too. it's not focused on what it should be focused on and it's got all this other junk just swirling around in there. just not the stuff that it should have swirling around in there like school. it's got stupid crushes in there. i honestly hate dating. i hate every part of it. why? because i can go months and months and months of being completely okay with myself and being with myself. and then in pops this crush and all that goes to hell. i get obsessive and neurotic.

the worst is when it just feels like i might explode from all the crap racing through me. or when i just wanna light the fuse and blast off. because what do you do with that? i mean, it doesn't even really make sense.

maybe none of this really makes sense. actually, i think it does make sense. i think that feeling of wanting to blast off comes from wanting to be a blip on somone's radar. wanting someone to get even a fraction of the neurotic i get. wanting someone to understand that i want to be alone and together at the same time. that sometimes i'm so human that i could explode. someone to show a little fire for me. someone to show up in the pouring rain just to see how the first week of school went. to just show a little explosion of their own.

so human:

01. yeah yeah yeahs - zero

02. sohodolls - i'm not cool

03. cast of spring awakening - the bitch of living

04. phantom planet - do the panic

05. black kids - love me already

06. peter bjorn and john - let's call it off

07. lady sovereign - so human

08. hot chip - ready for the fall (smoothed out on an r'n'b tip version)

09. maria mena - sorry

10. maggie gyllenhaal - i can't wait

11. kelly clarkson - all i ever wanted

12. kate walsh - tonight

13. shivaree - i will go quietly

14. broken social scene - i'm still your fag

15. grizzly bear - on a neck, on a spit

16. lenka - trouble is a friend

17. belle & sebastian - the blues are still blue

fly around in circles

it's almost amazing how sometimes you can go and royally screw everything up, isn't it? like, you were just truckin right along and all of a sudden you realize that everything around you in in almost complete chaos. what's worse is when you realize that you put yourself in that position.

i start school in less than a week. it seems like it's been forever i've been waiting for this to happen but now that it's here i'm doubting everything. what if i just screw it up again like i did ten years ago? what if i never find a damn job and i have to drop out and i lose my apartment and i end up even further in debt because i made this choice to go back to school? and what if i can't hack this accelerated coarse load and burn out before everything is said and done?

right now the only thing i know for sure is that i have entirely too much time on my hands. the first few weeks after not working i was still getting up early in the morning, still going about my day and still doing projects. now i'm lucky if i'm up before eleven and sometimes it's a major accomplishment to even shower and get dressed. i even lie and tell everyone that everything is great and i'm using my time to figure out what i want to do and how i'm going to handle school. what's worse is that in the past three days i've picked fights with both my mom and the kentucky krush for no reason whatsoever. my brain has been cycling through things non-stop and it's definitely starting to crack around the edges.

it's just that i always seem to get into this rut. this place where i feel like i'm always trusting my gut and always watching this go wrong because of it. where i let myself rip my heart right out and wear it out right on my sleeve and wonder why i always have so much damn dirty shirts. chasing after some idea or some feeling or some plan or some him.

i'm just waiting for that moment to come to me. that moment when the supporting character has this epiphany and realizes it's their time to spin off onto their own hour-long drama. when the decisions don't seem so hard to make and the self-doubt subsides. i think i just need to be so busy that my head slows down a little bit and has to focus on one thing at a time instead of a million different things whizzing around. and i need to clean my apartment. it's a wreck.

chasing pavements:

01. ani difranco - you had time

02. patrick park - something pretty

03. duffy - hanging on too long

04. duncan sheik - out of order

05. adele - chasing pavements

06. joseph arthur - even tho

07. pete yorn - same thing

08. aimee mann - little tornado

09. kate walsh - tonight

10. the weepies - old coyote

11. jeremy fisher - goodbye blue monday

it's all worth waiting for

i met the kentucky krush about a year ago when he was here in chicago for a visit. he was in a relationship that was pretty complicated and tricky, but we somehow managed to stay in contact through facebook and instant messenger and texting and calling. i honestly never really thought we'd actually physically see eachother again, so it was a pleasant surprise when he told me that he'd be on vacation at the end of january and he was coming up to chicago again if i still wanted to spend time together.

i picked him up at the airport last saturday and we were together for a week. we didn't really do a lot of activities because it's been pretty ass-cold all week and i don't have a job to really pay for a lot of stuff. he assured me over and over that he really was just there to spend time with me and get to know me better and that he didn't care about doing this or doing that.

the whole thing was really simple actually. it all just felt really natural to me and nothing was forced and we just enjoyed eachothers' company. i loved having him here really. it was nice to have someone to talk to besides the cat. and he even tamed the him! that cat is mean to everyone and there he was rubbing up on his leg and letting him pet and play with him. he had me laughing the whole time and just wishing the week would go on forever and he wouldn't have to leave. kentucky krush is humble and gentle and sweet and funny and caring and somewhere in this week i fell for him. hard.

i found myself just relaxing and i really only got neurotic and in my head a few times, but i suppose that's natural. he was so easy-going the whole time.

the goodbye at the airport hurt. my stomach has been in knots all day and i miss him already. i have no idea what's going to happen now that our lives are going to go back to normal and we won't be together. my head says that things will move on and that'll be that, but my heart's all tied up around a boy that lives six hours away. and the only thing i want to do now is be back laying in bed with him where our bodies just fit together. the apartment feels extremely cold and lonely and it's killin me.

i suppose that this has all served as a reminder that there's still a heart beating in my chest after all and that i'm still able to fall for someone and not be so totally guarded. i wouldn't trade this past week to give up the knoted stomach at all though. i'd go through a lifetime of knoted stomachs to be with him.


back to me:
01. maria taylor - song beneath the song
02. seabird - falling for you
03. howie day - brace yourself
04. kings of leon - manhattan
05. black kids - hurricane jane
06. the kooks - sway
07. augustana - stars and boulevards
08. paul weller - thinking of you
09. rosie thomas - since you've been around
10. jon foreman - the cure for pain
11. maria taylor - time lapse lifeline
12. the all-american rejects - back to me
13. a fine frenzy - ashes and wine
14. linda ronstadt - kate
15. toad the wet sprocket - windmills
16. stereophonics - you're my star

i was always set to self-destruct though.

so a lot can happen in a month. right now i feel like one of those tv show episodes where it picks up a month after it left off the previous episode and you have to solve the mystery of what happened off-screen in that month.

i didn't really intend to be "gone" for that long. it just kind of happened. it's snowing a little outside and it's really windy. one of those winds that just blows in every direction and it's just a mass of swirling white. i feel like that snow right now in this moment. just kinda loose out there trying to make it to the ground.

the holidays were a bit of a blur. they went really quick and i don't think that i even realized they were here and gone until a couple days ago. i've never liked christmas because bad things always seemed to happen around christmas in my family when i was younger. but this year i really did try to just enjoy it for what it was - time with my mom and my brother. unfortunately, my exhaustion from working so much caught up with me and we ended up arguing like we haven't in a long time. i picked fights and i don't even know why. the only thing i really do know is that it felt like i couldn't breathe the whole time. not literally, but mentally. emotionally. i just felt trapped the whole time.

new year's was ... interesting. i lost my job. right there on new year's eve. crazy, eh? maybe that's why i felt so out of it the whole month of december. because i maybe knew it was coming. the thought of thinking about it again now is exhausting. it was just stupid salon politics and when you're not the boss, you lose your job. sometimes when i try to wrap my head around it all, i forget that it really is just as simple as that. i had to stop thinking about it. what was i really expecting anyway? to start a revolution in the beauty industry? get real. that industry is fucked.

school, however, is going full-speed ahead. well, maybe not as "full-speed" as i'd like it to, but still chugging right along. a few days into january i was set up for my financial aid meeting and i really really really didn't wanna go. i didn't want to hear them tell me that there was no way i could go to school without having the money to pay for it. honestly, i was just terrified to be disappointed again by myself. i've figured out that's what i've been the most scared of this whole time. with everything. that i seriously can't stand to let myself down again.

it worked out though! because i'm older and listed as an independant, i got more free money. so, naturally, i just want to start now now now but the new quarter doesn't start until near the end of february. and i'll be going for two straight years, no breaks. what was that about exhaustion?

so now i'm just kind of in a waiting game. watching a lot of hgtv and food network and reruns of house on usa. the earlier seasons - i don't really care for the newer ones. lots of projects around the apartment too. i've repainted the bathroom window, deep-cleaned everything and even squeezed in a failed attempt to hook my ipod up to my tv.

so that's what happened in the month-long hiatus. it feels like so much less when it's written down doesn't it?

self-destruct buttons:
01. snow patrol - if there's a rocket, tie me to it
02. the republic tigers - fight song
03. lily allen - the fear
04. cary brothers - the last one
05. headlights - everybody needs a fence to lean on
06. bon iver - skinny love
07. the kooks - sway
08. jon foreman - the cure for pain
09. glass pear - last day of your life
10. the poems - ballad of a bitter end
11. the weepies - can't go back now
12. love and rockets - no new tale to tell
13. the bravery - believe