everywhere you go

Holiday Open House in Worthington, Ohio is my favorite day.

again

I'm gonna kick tomorrow

Earlier today I drove the kids into the city to hit COSI and grab some food. Driving we listened to Jane's Addiction rather loudly and sang along. I pretended that I was alone and kinda blocked out the backseat because the landscape, when it changed into tall tall buildings, held my gaze and pinpricked my memory. Laveck tower, the only lovely building we have in Columbus, dilated my pupils.

Driving through the Short North just always makes me broody for my friend Keith. Keith and I grew up in cow town together and traversed the Appalachian landscape as teenagers barely surviving.
The winter makes me think of all of the Christmas breaks spent back there with him during our college years. We were much freer then as he had come out and I was desperate to be myself.

We would drink heavily at the only real pub in town. There are other bars, but they are places that hold their own urban legends of prostitution, racism, and seediness. I didn't know anyone who went to those other bars. I only knew that everyone went to ----.
The place that held such mystery to me until I started going in regularly and found that people when intoxicated, including myself, could be very disappointing and ignorant.


But some of the best times with Keith were when we would just drive around and listen to the best music. We would park our crappy cars somewhere in the woods and talk and laugh our asses off and forget who we were and where it was that we were from.

I can't get through a Thanksgiving without thinking about the time we smoked up and sat somewhere on my parents land until we were so hungry that we had to go back to my house to eat. We walked into my house and my mom was standing there in the small kitchen clutching her chest. She had on a Laura Ashleyesque nightgown and her face was bright red with the huff of asthma. She looked so relieved that we walked in, waving frantically to help her. My father was at work and she couldn't find her asthma inhaler. Keith held her by the elbow and sat her down at the kitchen table and it was all that we could do to hold back the insanity. There was to be no emergency when one is stoned. She motioned us back outside and said the inhaler may be in her car trunk. She said it was in her purse.

This was during the time that my mother was a career mother with a hot little insurance agent job, complete with car phone that was the size of a football and had it's own carrying suitcase. It was also during the time that my mother(god bless her because she is a fashion plate now) but then- oh then- she matched her handbag to her outfit nearly every day.

That night is so frozen in my memory.
Keith and I opening the trunk of my mother's car that has always had personalized vanity plates, and finding a sea of pocketbooks.
Like it could be a scene in a movie.
It was that crazy.

We searched through at least forty patent leather purple purses, yellow canvas satchels, white clutches, and on and on -and my mother is dying in the kitchen and we are in the driveway nearly in tears from the frenzied laughing of the absurdity of our lives.
Keith keeps me from climbing in the trunk and giving up, he slaps me with an orange Dooney and Burke and we find it. It was in a granny bag, brown and boxy, and we ran it inside to her and she was fine moments later and then it was like it always was.
She turned lovely to us- thanked us and made us food and we sat there with magenta eyes and sore stomachs from laughing and she just pressed her beautiful hands down her nightgown and we walked back outside with a one hitter and took back to the life we knew.

But in that frosty November night we both knew it had been heavy.
And we also thought it was a flashing foreshadowing to our adulthood. We were so weird that we people never assumed we were stoned. Just us.

In our crappy car on the gravel road by my house, we pressed the memorex tape back into the pioneer stereo and looked at each other only moments before the snow started falling so hard on the countryside.

We knew that someday years and years later we would think about this night and perhaps all the others and know that even when you are very young and full of shit and there is nothing to define you except the things you don't want- we knew we had made a good choice in walking through the world tethered.

I don't see Keith enough in my grown up life. But he knows I love him. He knows it and when he rolls on the downtown pavement and Jane's addiction randomly comes from the radio and he opens his mouth and all of the years fall off his tongue


Jane says
Have you seen my wig around?
I feel naked without it
She knows


and he knows it like I know it and
all of the misfits of the world's ears burn

feed here. xo

angel in sawdust

Even on the holidays my Joe Joe works.
Yesterday he started the revamp of the playroom/office.
Storage seating and a high work table and some shelving I pray soon.
I am running this company off my kitchen table and something's gotta give.
He is an angel in sawdust that man.

P.S. Little Alouette has some good steals over in the shop this weekend. xo

I had to divert my eyes from the other mothers

(originally posted on 11/6/07)


I signed Finnian up for a Whole Food half pint cooking class for this afternoon. He was brimming with enthusiasm all morning to cook. Finn loves to pull his little wooden stool up to the counter and assist me daily in some form of cookin creations and we were so exited for the class today. We left an hour early to enjoy sampleville that is Whole Paycheck. I love that you can eat yr way around the store...you know they are so damn awesome there that they will open a wine for you to try! They are the loveliest type of store...
So, the class was loud and rowdy as expected...we made turkeys out of gelato containers and then filled em with organic popcorn and then sampled a smorgasbord of fall treats. The whole time Finn kept asking when we were cooking and I just kept pushing organic milk and cookies in him. We walked out and he said this:
(loudly)
Bollocks I wanted to cook

I bit my tongue and ran out into the blustery cold air, pushing the cart as fast as I could.

pub music spits out just what you want to hear

"Half of the time we're gone but we don't know where,
And we don't know where."

I think KISS said it best

I am going to NYC next week.
Any tips or suggestions?
xo Merci.

photo via concierge.com

Worthington Inn chats

The other night I had the pleasure of meeting a brand new resident of my village.
I got to have big girl drinks with some pals and Suzy Ultman.
Yep- We now have another famous and amazing artist to hang out with!
She is adorable (like eat with tiny spoon cute) and insanely talented.
It was funny because the next day I looked her up and realized I had seen her work on Holly's blog and loved her already.
Swoon!
I love it when people step outside of my computer and into my local pub. xo

lambic beer is instead produced by spontaneous fermentation

The family had dinner with some new pals tonight- SUSHI dinner!
Vanessa and her awesome brood had us over for make yr own sushi night and I kinda fell in love with the process of making sushi. I think I have always been intimidated by the process before, but tonight it was simple and fun for all. (There was even some chicken nugget sushi being made!) I discovered that I love seafood salad, have a very hard time resisting Jeni's ice cream, (OMG Cherry lambic orgasm) and am a natural roller when it comes to the sushi!
OK. Hints to my family. I may like to have some sushi making tools for Christmas!
Check out Vanessa's blog. She's a keeper. xo

The recreation center has tiny crap crammed in plastic containers and they cost a quarter but they make Finn beam

It's just a quarter.
So I give it to him and he places it in the silver slot and cranks with the strength of an ox and a little perfect squeal comes out of his body and he jumps a bit as the small plastic container bumps up against the door. He retrieves the tiny capsule and pops the top to find a wee martian made from unknown origin, but it is his and he has found the way to make time stop for a moment.
He skips around and sings my praises and the sun shines all around him.
Little vending machines. Little bubble gum machines.
I hope they never disappear.
(Like my kids will never know a phone booth)
How odd.
It really is the little things.
I just wish my crammed full brain could recognize these moments as they happen and not hours later. I wish I could pause life sometimes.
Must live in the moment.
Must live in the moment.
Must live in the moment.

I will always linger round the reds

I love a lot of things about late fall and winter.
Red flipping lipstick is at the top of that list.

Get me delivered to yr email xo

key lime pie

Sweethearts - Camper Van Beeth...

It shoots straight into my ears and tunnels to a place that doesn't even exist anymore but I can feel the way it wants me to forget everything else but THEN.
I acknowledge it and hit repeat.

But the fighter still remains

I jumped rope today like a boxer.
(I had flashbacks to this mean wretched older boy on the Logan High School varsity track team. I would run by on the track and he would stomp his feet and make sounds like rumbles, like my massive body weight was somehow shaking the track- moving the land. I was a flipping size 12. Whatever. He was unfortunate. He married a really nice girl too. Shocking. I don't think kind things of him even now.He would not have changes I bet)
Anyhoo, I felt like the world might be shaking I was jumping with such insanity. My friend Karen jumped with me and OMG it's a workout. I am sure it won't help me lose weight though, because even with my ridicoulous dedication I have not lost much weight. I probably have some sort of junky thyroid or am one of those people that sleepwalk and eat massive amounts of calories in the deep of the night. I don't know. I am trying to stay positive. I also pulled my back a bit today. Ouch.
But I did jump rope like a boxer for 30 second intervals.
And that was a good thing.

Kirtsy takes a bow. Book day!

I am so flipping over the moon to have a piece in the new Kirtsy book, “Kirtsy Takes a Bow – A Celebration of Women’s Favorites Online” that I have been floating around all day. I am more than honored to be included with all of these amazing women. It spins my mind. I remember the beautiful face of Laura Mayes when she told me about the project two summers ago in San Fran. She and all the Kirtsy girls have become really wonderful friends to me. I hold them close to me. And all of these women and these voices- it's pretty amazing.
Another gal to think about today is Katherine Center- my dreamy novelist pal.
She's talented and thinks about all the things that matter.
She's someone I want to know better in my life.
I wish you could command folks to become yr mentor or BFF. :)
I adore the trailer she made Laura. Check it out:



I will be a the Kirtsy Book party in NYC on Dec 2. I hope to see you there! xoxoxo

Well not crazy enough to do much anything about it.

I did drive across the United States one time. It was a very long drive.

I was with Julian Simpson from England and my friend Bryan. We had just been released from our shackles of Presbyterian church camp counselor servitude. It was August and someone that I loved had just died and it seemed like the thing to do. We drove from Chapin, South Carolina to Los Angeles and back home to Cowtown, Ohio. I was just thinking about how I hate to drive nowadays. How I am prone to panic and angst on long journeys in my adulthood. I am not sure when the little screw fell out and took me to a yucky place with driving, but it happened.
Back then I would roll down the windows and my long hair would slap my eyes and I would love it. I drove across Texas all night with Madonna and fast through the Nevada desert with Metallica where the sky hung low and purple. All around me were scenes from movies that had not yet been made and songs unsung. I think looking back- that trip was meant to be escapist for me in theory, but all the way as the tires spun round and round, I thought of how sad I was to go back home to a place that now was missing someone I truly took for granted.

I remember with my back against the sticky seat of the Toyota Corolla cultivating the uncanny mind sweeping thoughts that now take up most of my days- thoughts that it has to be easier for other people to get through this life. That not everyone can think this much and at this intensity all the time. That I was cursed with the internal equivalent of a mosh pit. That I just wanted to stop feeling so much. That the sun was somehow brighter on my face than anyone else in the car and if I opened up my mouth and told you the startling esoteric whispers that hid sneaky in my throat- you would laugh at me because that's what people do around me. They laugh. I think I learned in a startling catechism with myself that summer that I was indeed an artist -and not crazy. Well not crazy enough to do much anything about it.

I heard Metallica today and it did indeed jack my head up for thirty seconds or so as the day spread out before me and the kids were like beyond the fourth wall and I was back there and looking at the me that lives now. I waved at me and she waved back and it was like there was a little peace. And later in my minivan rolling down the main drag of my town I sunk low into my captain's chair and rolled the window down and shook my bob. I shook my hair and told the boys a little story about America.

my eyes bleed red

I will read the shampoo bottle ten times.
The back of the flax seed oil bottle until I can recite it like a soliloquy.
I have been spending all my spare time reading this weekend.
Not writing but reading. Not waving but drowning.
need need need
Some Stevie Smith. Some Gary Snyder.
Some Pirsig. Some Faulkner.
Some blogs that make me weak and fevered.
Some blogs that make me think hard.
Some blogs that excite me for the promise of text.
My eyes bleed red and I collapse into my bed.
Spent. Wasted on words.
God I love it.

I am going to read this tonight.
It's been years.

candy for your soul

Have you been over to the sweeterie yet?
My sweet friends started this new massive inspirational gem recently and I just want to go into the site and live there. Mercy!
Get thee there now.

don't you?

I love pub night. I love slowly drinking beers or spirits until life shakes the fear of sharing away and you just open right up and tell those beautiful girls things that make the whole bar laugh heartily with Newcastle shakes.
I love the infinite capacity of forgetting why it is that you might want to hide away the parts of you that don't make sense anymore.
I like being that lady that laughs hard and talks loud.
I like citron and soda on perky fall nights. Don't you?

workout grumbling

I look a fright and sound like a freak. But here it is.
This is what I am dealing with. grrr.

they all start to learn what love is not

originally published on 2/9/09
Twice a week I am going to throw down some reposts for nablopomo.


When I was in college my most lucrative job was that of a singing telegram/flower & balloon delivery girl at Milo's balloons.
I would dress in either a giant chicken or gorilla suit and bring joy to kids, convalescents, and rowdy men in bars.
I was thinking about it the other day because there was an ad in the paper about balloon deliveries for valentines and I wondered if high school kids still send flowers and balloons to each other. I'm sure they do. When I was in school it was hot shit to get something delivered to the school. I was thinking I could reprise my role in this bleak economy and be the local chicken or gorilla lady during the major holidays of teenage loins (Valentines and Sweetest Day- which by the way I have never understood...just another bad day for poor men.) I could advertise and have some local pals drive me around in a rented van for a cut of the profits. Kids will spend money on proving love and coolness. I am sure that has not changed. Anyhoo. This could be a real idea for a part time job for me. I have no shame.

Valentines day was my best day ever back then when I worked for Milo's. I would ditch my real job and all classes to be driven around all over Southeastern Ohio in a seatless van that was stuffed to the gills with balloons and 10-dollar cheap rose vases. I made a lot of money that day and it was all paid to me in cash. My favorite.
The parts that sucked were the nursing homes and the so very old and listless. It was almost ridiculous to keep singing or holding out a gorilla hand as they just stared up at me with cloudy cataracts and blue veiny skin, most likely- terrified. I also hated the mean girls at the sorority houses. I wanted to punch them in their perfect faces as they feigned embarrassment or pretended they didn't like the attention.
But the real bad always happened at bars. Like the one day in particular my friend Meg was driving me around on a Saturday for deliveries and I had to deliver a dozen balloons to the owner of the Smiling Skull Saloon. The bar is about as charming as it’s name. It was dark inside the place at 2pm and as soon as I walked in I knew I was in trouble. From the inside of my itchy stiff gorilla suit I could smell the bourbon and beer and smokes hanging heavy in the air. Bob Seger was playing on the jukebox and a bunch of men in assorted leather looked ready to rumble. I started getting knocked around a bit as soon I walked to the bar and my paw holding the balloons was shaking and at times it just wasn’t worth keeping in character. Around the third slightly hard punch to the shoulder I ripped my Gorilla head off, and shook out my long golden hair. I screamed, “I’m a girl you asshole!”
I stomped my feet and shook my fist.
And just like that I shocked a bunch of men nearly sober.
The bartender fell right in love and for the next year my waitress friends and me would go to the Skull every sat night after our late shift and get a free drink before we headed up to our bar.
The bartender wore wranglers and never had a chance with me.
I was uninterested in things that were not foreign or artsy.
I was only interested in weird men who treated me badly and so I used the bartender for free drinks and I think he was ok with that really.
Just like I would like to start that local business of balloon delivery to high schools so that kids could give me money to send sentiments of love to other kids. So I could deliver small heartaches and drop off tiny tears. So I could make some money while they all start to learn what love is not.

David Sedaris and Dylan Thomas inside of my mouth

It's like I say we have this tradition of me reading aloud to him in the car, but it has only been the last two years. But the tradition is beginning I believe. It has been David Sedaris the last two winters. The tip tops of the Southeastern Ohio trees stark against the sky fly by and I trip giggle over the amazing essays of the person I want to be when I grow up. I rest my head against the cold window and my mouth unhinges and tells Joe all the things written in tiny type and he laughs hard in the car. I introduced him to David Sedaris. I also made him read "On the Road" and "The Catcher in the Rye" and he kissed me so many times because of those.
He gives me gifts too- like appreciation of British punk music.
I get it now. After a decade of resistance.

I have read "Holidays on Ice" twice to Joe and we both enjoyed it immensely.
I like to read to Joe and have started to share chapters of my novel with him.
My voice is shaky and sometimes I even cry a little because let's not pretend that beginning writers don't weave some of their own shit into the mix.
Let us not pretend I am not raw and open in parts of my book. I know it. I wrote it.

This year I think I am going to read to Joe "Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voice" by Dylan Thomas. We will be bundled up in the truck and driving down the stretch of highway that rolls right back in time to a place I try and filter through me now. We will have the radio on low and the kids will be clutching new toys against chests and faces crusty with cinnamon sugar morning and we will be happy and I will tell him things.
I will read to him and the tone of my voice will wrap around his heart and pulse it all day long.

Thanksgiving Boot Camp at The North Market

I was super lucky to be chosen to attend
the North Market's Thanksgiving Boot camp this weekend!

I had the pleasure of being a pupil of Robin Davis (Dispatch Food Editor)!
She taught us how to roast a turkey, make perfect gravy and finish it off with a delectable pumpkin pie. (from scratch!)

I had a blast with my friend momo and met wonderful new friends at this hands-on class. It was amazing to learn how to construct a meal that seems too complicated and stressful (in my mind) at the hands of an amazing chef and teacher.
Robin hails from The California Culinary Academy and was assistant editor of Bon Appetit magazine! She was a restaurant reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and has written two cookbooks. She is smart and savvy in the kitchen and also a gorgeous person who made us all feel comfortable in the kitchen.(she also has an adorable hubby who helped us today! And she wears Doc Martins! Love!)
We learned about brining a turkey (and got to take home giant brine buckets!)
and the essential steps to creating gravy that will make you weep with love.
It was all too perfect. I made a pie crust from scratch. My granny would be proud.
We all sat down together and had a lovely meal at the end of the class. Perfect!
Local ingredients!
Local cool folks!
Local talents!
Awesome day.
Thanks for the fun!
I feel way more confidant about Turkey day now.
The North Market has awesome classes all year round. Check it out!

For if we don't find/The next whiskey bar

It's my my sis's birthday and we are going to the pub!
❤❤❤❤What should we drink?!
Happy Birthday Sweet Vics!
(and holla to my other gorgeous UK sister Sam's birthday too- We are having one for you!)

I just love a Saturday night.

Sorta Teal

Twice a week I am going to throw down some reposts for nablopomo.
(originally posted on 2/3/09)

I would like to define it
When it comes creeping around
Give it a name
Or a reason
Explain it like a bad Rachael Ray recipe
Like the argument unresolved at midnight
Like the way carob tastes
But all I do is sling it over my shoulder and carry it around
Keenly aware of the way it feels
But unsure where it comes from
All I know is my mojo left town yesterday
Hitched a ride to some other lucky bastards house
Where he floats around the room telling stories
And making them all laugh
Heads thrown back
Where he takes the lady into a back bedroom and shows her
Most of Copernicus's truth
And then later makes art
Out of nothing at all

blogging notes

I love that my friend Kelly is starting to blog for Working Mother.
I know she loves the blog world and is dipping her feet in it now.
She's here.

Check her out.
Leave her a comment? You know how it feels to get one. :)

And btw- Working Mother is a fab mag.
I read it the other day at the gym. Um. Love.

And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head.

It took me about 10 song shuffles to find my groove while working out tonight.
I was on the bike and peddling like a wussy until I found some Dylan and then I just snapped into it. "Hurricane" came on and I rolled right back to the early nineties, back into a dark faux wood paneled living room in a jalopy of a house that I shared with several cool girls.
We would sit in slumpy lumpy old chairs that we rescued from the curb and listen to Dylan.
Books would be open and dinner would be cooking and we would be smoking Meigs County gold and the world was pretty darn slow.

I can't even think about that song without fury.
I can't even believe I was so old before I started thinking about social injustice.
I was busy trying to pretend I was reading James Joyce and stalking long haired boys and then I had to realize how wide and deep and awful the world was.

I think I only started paying attention to history well in to my future.

Me and my friend M would sit with our constant Diet Cokes and sing in that junky living room.
We loved the song. We loved to nod to each other like old men during our favorite parts and take long drags of our Parliament Lights in unison.
I think we made silent promises to make the world a little bit better.

And tonight I found that the song makes me pound out on the bike. I rode like a banshee and for one small moment I forgot and sang out loud for a line or two- all breathy and low.
had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
And the old guy beside me with the running shorts so scant I saw his ass cheek looked me right in the eye and nodded.

Old man nods are my favorite.

sudden silent trout

"Now she need not listen. It could not last, she knew, but at the moment her eyes were so clear that they seemed to go round the table unveiling each of these people and their thoughts and their feelings, without effort like a light stealing under water so that it's ripples and the reeds in it and the minnows balancing themselves, and the sudden silent trout are lit up hanging, trembling."
-Virginia Woolf
To The Lighthouse

It's not even freaky or scary anymore how Virginia Woolf has visited me three times this year. In the deep of the night. She's rough and not at all chummy.
She stands at my bed, at the foot of my bed, and screams in languages that sound like bubbles-but all at once I wake up and know that she has really sang to me sweetly.

A song that women have heard all through time.
A song that is not much different than a war cry.

Go write it down.

just the same

Twice a week I am going to throw down some reposts for nablopomo.


"A heart can be broken, but it will keep beating just the same."

(and btw- my friend is fabulous. She is doing fine. She rocks.)

I hung out with some pals Friday night. It was one of those nights that heavy talk was hanging in the air like fog because our friend is going through a divorce and you know she just needed to talk. She needs it and her heart requires it and we were there and it was good. Women are magic when it comes to communication. Magic and sparkle and light. I know she is going to be OK. I know it. She is beautiful and smart. She has that resilience that some do not have inherently and must grow like a reptile skin over years- she has it now, so she is lucky.
But no matter it is sad. I know next year this time will be different and her light will shine even more and she will glow again, but I am deep for her. And of course the talk got more interesting as the wine came and all I could focus on is the moment two people fall out of love. And does it happen in small steps over time or in one big night full of fighting and broken dishes. Is it the same for everyone at a base level? Is there is a switch in our hearts that hang from a very long cord and we just pull it like a madman one day? We just pull it and change our lives?

It freaks me out, kinda like the obsession I had as a child of listening to my grandfather tell me about heaven. My grandfather, the Baptist minister, instilled most of the scary thoughts in my head surrounding the afterlife. If I don't think of fiery pits of hell and burning flesh with the demons I think of the way he would tell me stories about heaven.
Heaven was described in all of the typical hurrah fashion, but then at some point they must have told me that it went on forever. And at a young age I think forever was burnt into my brain as me walking on these dirt roads and it just went on and on and I was all alone and no one was ever there with me and forever meant I was not alive anymore and I was dead.
Even today if I think about those images and the monotony of walking on and on and it is forever and that whole thing makes me feel ill.
Just like thinking about love and the way it can so easily, with such confusion fall apart.
God it scares me.
I set fire to my cord last night.
The one hanging from my heart.
I set fire to it and blew the ashes across the floor and they spelled out lucky.

Get me delivered to yr email xo

We make a little history, baby every time you come around

I am going to do NaBloPoMo because I need one more thing to do like I need a hole in my head.
One year I posted every day of the year.
That was nuts.
I like NaBloPoMo bc this lovely lady posts everyday and that is cool.
So yeah.
Everyday.
Some little morsel of me.
I bet you are on the edge of yr seat.

It's been a Nick Cave kinda day. Welcome November.
I like the "er" months the best always.