last night, after a long day and a rather unremarkable homemade lasagne, liam took me for ice cream.

we meandered through my green and chirpy neighbourhood to the local homemade parlour. it's called Lucas and a family run little place with an upstairs for kiddie parties and penny candies strung from the counter. it's so cute.

and i even got to splurge on a praline parfait with hot fudge. it was in a little plastic stem cup like an old school diner sundae and i was so excited. long handled spoon, holding hands in the sunshine. there is nothing better.

until, holding this stem cup from the bottom, the base and the body proceede to seperate in my hands (like those shitty champagne flutes in college) and the ice cream, hot fudge, nuts and whipped cream spun - literally spun- through the air and directly into a muddy puddle in the middle of a construction site.

we both laughed (but mine were covering tears). and poor liam went and got me another one, which was obviously even better.

and then we went to sit on a garden bench in a tiny hidden green around the corner and smell the honeysuckle.

sometimes it's like a fairytale, just with more comedy value.

death be not proud

In an effort to set a good exmaple for the thousands of wee ones going to walk through my gates soon to make tiger masks, fairy wings and all manner of glue laden paraphanalia (not to mention I get self affirming glow of do gooderyness and a decent reputation) I am trying to make our workshops as eco-friendly as possible.

The pots to hold crayons are made from potato starch and are biodegradable in just 180 days. The scissors are made from 100% recycled stainless steel. The pencils were once plastic cups. It's a beautiful thing.

Plus, the recycled craft warehouse I joined to get second hand tissue paper, buttons and corks from an arts council development project was possibly the funnest morning I've had in ages. And of course all their staff are work placement training for people with learning disabilities. It's one big happy family of tree huggers and life affirming community development.

But in my extensive research into available reused recycled, biodegradable, nontoxic and renewable resourced supplies, I have stumbled on some scary things.

Like say, 100% recycled coffins.

scottish cliches

thirdly (and lastly), my life here in scotland is complete. i have seen the media incarnate of this nation in the flesh as any true tourist could only dream of.

sitting in one of the posh alfresco bars of george street for an afternoon meeting over martinis (raspberry stoli, pomegrante juice, champagne, some floating rasperries and a twist of lime), we were looking out the window as the world went by, and who should hobble along using his yellow striped umbrella as a cane with a miniature blonde on his arm but sean fucking connery.

seriously. the scotsman of scotsmen. the icon of generations. the man who has signed a headshot in every restaurant in town meandered past my window.

i openly stared obviously, to make sure he was real.

and he paused, looked directly at me for a minute, nodded a little (either in acknowledgement or a simple gesture of 'yeah i'm him, leave me alone" I don't know) and continued on his merry way.

sadly, i have no major news to report, though the rest of the evening i had Queen's Highlander anthem in my head and wished he did a better spanish accent for the good of mankind.

the horror!

also, i thought i would share a parting photo thought. taken months ago in Bologna, this almost ruined my childhood forever.

i don't know if you can imagine walking arounda fair completely dedicated to kids books with not a kid in sight. it's already a surreal experience. but when one happends across dearly beloved old friends and their masticated and demented offspring, it's truly horrific.





...one of these things is not like the others
one of these things just doesn't belong
can you tell which thing is not like the others
by the time i finish this song...

isn't it freakish?

this is seasame street unlimited. selling the licence for the show, books, dvds, whatever around the world. instilling everyone with the belief they too can be happy in a nondsecript new york suburb.

but due to cultural differences, media squabbles and the opportunity to adapt the best seller to the home market, new characters have been developed in a country near you.

Witness the glorious twisted appeal Abelordo from Latin America and below, Googli from India!

some things i've been meaning to mention

not that anyone is regularly disappointed in my unexplained silences, but i feel as though I should run through some highlights montage style.

firstly: the big news, kate is engaged.

other than the she will now be called mrs. kate cadenas and her children may well be called things like hood and harper cadenas, i couldn't possibly be a single ounce happier.

secondly: the lesser big news, liam and i are moving in together. which i know isn't really news to anyone who has been paying attention, but it feels rather more serious all of a sudden. we went on our sunny sunday afternoon to see the place one last time. taking pictures, drawing floorplans (i am officially my mother, carring a tapemeasure in my purse), discussing what bed we will buy.

i think it irked him i felt buying a bed was a bigger committment than moving in together, but i said ' i can always move out, but investing in furniture is for life. i mean, who would get the fourposter?'. i am not sure he appreciated the wit in the way i had hoped. that or he secretly hates mahogony.

in other news in no apparent order:
- I went to the poshest two parties of my life in London. One was an exclusive hire of the Tate Modern with London's 400 best literatti on the gallery's uppermost floor- a bar with floor to ceiling windows across the whole room affording panoramas of both sides of the river. Followed by a roof top terrace press launch and celebration of the children's book award of children's book awards atop the British Library. Who even knew the British Library had a private rooftop garden which seemed like a green haven in Bloomsbury?

- I also watched wimbeldon, which is slowly winning me over every year. the legacy. the whiteness. the crisp british grass and that john mcenroe still commentates. sigh.

- attending a mad hatters tea party certainly ranks. everything you imagine was there, and more. even the catepillar's hookah.

- i have been drunk off of pomegranate and raspberry martinis on a working lunch and picnicked in the sunshine with my lover.

okay, i am waxing a little poetic. all of these things have actually happened, but they are essentially the highlights of the last 6 weeks which mostly consisted of working on spreadsheets of crayons, buying dinner, cooking dinner, eating dinner, washing up and going to bed tired, sore, crabbby and uninspired.

but that said, i have recently made:
- mushroom and thyme risotto
- steamed asparagus with balsalmic vinegar and parmasean
- honey oatmeal cookies so dense they are like scones
- strawberry shortcake with whipped cream
(*small aside: so there is no cool whip in britain. even the aresol reddi-whip is scarce. instead, you buy approximately a yogurtsize tub of 'whipping cream' then proceed to beat it vigorously by hand for like 15 minutes. it is the most labour intensive cooking i have ever done. but god is it good.)
- homemade smoothie and pancake breakfasts
- i could go on, but i am getting hungry.

and now ive found a recipe for blue cheese and rocket penne plus a fantastico looking flatbread which are totally on my agenda now.

and yes. i try not to worry about my patty duke like domesticity. i kind of like it. (so long as he alwsys does the dishes and at least half of the shopping.) so i am resolved to be happy this has replaced my general addiction to cathardic baking of lard filled baked goods, as sometimes my cooking even involved vegtables. it's healthy stress relief! what a comfort.

it's just such a shame nice ingredients like good balsalmic vinegar or my new penchant for rapeseed oil are so fucking expensive.

there are so many more important things to tell.

but life is moving too fast for me to keep up.

in the stead of real life, here: http://www.theherald.co.uk/misc/print.php?artid=1473853. I'm famous. well, a little.

the man

so my job is simultaneously the best thing that ever happened to me and the most frustrating and debilitating curse of my life.

as liam so eloquently put it last night "your job promises to be ultimately rewarding yet at every turn you meet with prejudice and difficulty. you pour your soul into it and are still continually trodden on". well, something to that effect. I was too busy tearing up at his ranting on my behalf after the past week.

We launched the programme you see.

And it was fantastic. Terrifying and weird, and full of fancy receptions and press conferences and I was even on tv! And had to have my portrait taken for the papers and lots of ritzy things. But it doesn't mean it's easy or fun or even effective.

I guess what sums it up best is the features editor (not the children's supplemental, not the books editor) from the national newspaper came up to me after my 5 minute rant about the importance of childrens literature and our seminal position as a valuable experience for young readers and said "I'm X from Y. Normally we don't cover the children's programme but do you mind if I ask you a few questions?".

And yes, it's wonderful we'll finally get coverage. Yes, it's fantastic one person heard and believed me. But I can't fight this war one ignorant journalist at a time. And I shouldn't have to.

And now, my baby, our programme, you can download a copy from the website, but therein lies the problem.

For all the work, and all pride I have in pouring my heart and soul into the damn thing, I still hate it sometimes.

It's hideous. It's ineffective. It's a hopeless document meant to inform the few and ignore if not completely shut out everyone else. And for a job that I truly believe is about sharing stories, loving literature and helping young minds grow, I constantly am disappointed and appalled at the snobbish, shallow litterati and their ignorance and dismissal of anything but the alan bennets and joyce carol oates of the world.

not that their work isn't magnificent. but it is not the only work that matters. or if it is, then just admit this is a middle class british institution to celebrate itself and don't pretend we are openminded and encouraing new audiences and believe in the power of words to unite people.

because you use my truth as a lie and it is slowly killing me.

etiquette isn't dead after all

walking down the road one often passes scruffy homeless people. more often than not they ask you for money. but never in all my homeless transactions have i been referred to as milady before.

Sark-y Comment

and also, I'd soliloqize about some idiot burning down the Cutty Sark, but I probably know more about the Edmund Fitzgerald (admit it, the song is totally in your head now too) than the fast clipper ever sailed.

besides, who names their ship 'little shirt'? in scots no less. my country of residence shames me.

may I just admit before you all I was heretofore unaware of the Golden Age of Bulgarian Culture.

I will argue until the end of time Sunday afternoons in bed con laptop are essential to my mental edification and sense of wellbeing.

it's the calm before the storm.

this week is insanely busy. then next week it's june. mother fucking press conferences and london speeches june. and then it's go time, with just under a month to see to every minutae of the summer's madness. like hiring my staff and making sure there are enough marker pens for the kiddies at the peter rabbit birthday party.

and august will be an utter and total blur. on site by 8 to give the staff a briefing, authors arrive at 9, gates open 9:30, first show at 10, last show at 7 sometimes 8. in between manage the interviews and photo calls and books, ignings and madness and try not to nip into the bar too often. then prepare for the next day, clear up the madness, and head home (if not required to make an appearance at a sponsors do, publishers dinner or reception for the politician of the day) do it all over again. 7 days a week, all month.

and of course, three days after i close the gates, we're moving. i am moving in with my boyfriend. not a gesture to really be tacked on at the end like that if i had my d'ruthers. and by then it's midseptember.

oh, and did i mention his mom and anika and her beau are coming to visit for the first time in august too? ace.

i seriously will have no life for the next 4 months. but then, when it's private bashes at the british library then catching the sleeper train home and dinners at restaurants you have to book a year ahead for, no life is better than some lives.

i just wish there was more time for me.

my sister is better than you.

I'd just like to state for the record, the Entertainment Weekly Must List (a top ten of things you must do/see/own for the week) recently placed my sister's dvd at number 5.

Better than Tyra Banks and just shy of Casino Royale.

In the top half of things all of hollywood wannabes and pop culture savvy peoples should know about is her work.

She is so better than you.

impersonating the insane

Today I thought the perfect sunday afternoon would be a stroll to the stationers to splurge some lovely paper. you know me and my addiction to crisp stationary, and using my fancy fountain pen set doesn't have the same effect on notebook paper that still has the sprial-fringy bits attached. But sadly, I wandered down to bruntsfield only to find both the little shops I adore closed on sundays. alas alas.

So on my meander home in the sunshine, I was surpised to find a new custom stationary place right near my house - and it was full of people. The woman inside the door smiled and I thought this was serendipitous indeed.

As I walked in the door, there was harpist in the corner and champagne on offer. Total score, I thought, this must be an opening gala of some sort. The nice welcome-girl handed me a bag of goodies and I was all smiles. "help yourself to the magazines, and there are some other vendors displaying in the back".

I of course look at the massive stack of glossy mags at her feet entitled "Scottish Bride" and "Real Life Weddings" and realize exactly what I have done. My smile faulters but I figure dashing for the door would be unsavoury, chicken shit and no free cake. So what can it hurt to be nice?

I swan about looking at their sample invitations, watch the atrocious mini-make-overs, sample the fantastic cake and mostly feel so completely out of place I wonder if some is going to scream and point "intruduer!" they don't though. everyone is so full of bubbly cheer and sychophantic kindness they don't see me breaking out into a rash.

I ended up perusing the beautiful fancy papers for ages and ages. The guy who owns the place came to help but I wisked him away - "oh, i am just browsing for inspiration" with my best fake-bride-to-be smile. But managed to slip in I was intersted in buying some test samples before commiting to a whole invitation batch (sneaky sneaky). "we don't have sales facilities today, but if it's just a couple of samples you're after, go ahead and take them with my compliments". I swear he almost winked . If there had been consortial nudging, I would have died I think.

But still. Free handmade paper! I spent the next half an hour co-ordinating paper weights and subtle shimmer. I kept slipping in some weddingy looking ones (like the handmade rosepetal monstrosity) just in case anyone caught a glance of my sensible chocolate browns and linen weaves was suspicious.

And yes, I must confess although I did end up with a tasteful set of papers (and coordinating envelope!), it did flicker through my mind what I would do if I ever needed wedding invitations. The second that thought it my psyche though, I headed for the door. Just in case they were contagious.

So now I am at home, reading inspiring accounts of Aileen's Big Day and eating the free handmade choclates I found in my goody bag. My only regret is I didn't have the guts to milk it for more.

Is it evil to impersonate a bride just for the nuptual freebies? I hope not.

anonymous is obnoxious

i have way more important things to be writing about, but my griveance for today must be aired.

classmates.com

it's one of those pre-facebook/myspace/beebo/(remember friendster?) registeries which promised to keep you informed of important goings on i.e. high school reuions and not much else as far as i am aware.

and of course, being 4 months out of high school and lonely and scared and facing the entire world and my entire lack of identity, i registered thinking for a brief moment i could at least connect that was the semi-hell of high school. it may have been shit, but at least i was the mad yiddish woman or the ap chem lab partner or somebody. anybody really.

and of course somewhere in college i probably thought to write something pithy and a little bit edgy in my profile to prove i'd moved beyond the high school wallflower prep which would almost definately be really embarassing and sad if i read it now. i am pretty sure the phrase "drink like a fish" is in it somewhere if i remember correctly.

but now they have taken to emailing curtsey updates notifying me someone has posted on my profile's messageboard - and i can see who it's from and read their highly promising Say Anything confessions - for only an upgraded gold membership of five dollars a day for the rest of my life!

what a bargin to find out one of my pseudo-friends from spanish (aka the cool kids who were also in remeidal languages and only deigned to speak to me because i was more interesting than senora valencia) or possibly the kid who cheated off me in algebra 3 think we should have a reunion bonfire somewhere in east lansing this summer and drink pbr and bitch about okemos. my life is complete.

i don't know what would possess me to subscribe, and i pray to god i never cave, i will so regret it.

but that promise of the unknown is fucking hard to ignore.

unimportant but vaguely amusing things about today (so far - the japanese tea ceremony at this rural castle on the shore this afternoon promises frolicking and weirdness):

- my flatmate is reading a book called "in the swil of the waves: the life of otters".

- we found a flat. we won't move in for awhile yet but it's fantastic (and you can see the castle from the bathroom window, which incidentally has toile wallpaper)

- while discussing said flat i bear witness to the declaration "we can spend a whole weekend decorating and make it our own.". le sigh.

- i have packet of cookies next to my bed for emergencies. usually this just means i procrastinate with the breakfast getting and then am so starving i need a cookie boost just to stand up.

- yesterday morning (well, noon) i woke up to mail! not only that, but it said i had a package waiting for me at the post office (oh the beaurocracy, i tell you.) - but it was only open for q5 more minutes. so i dashed down and got a schamncy box from my sister! woohoo!

i wouldn't let myself open it until i tidied my room though, which took ages. and inside was every good thing like cookies and trashy magazines and the best of all - animation stills from Carmen Sandiego, that sort lived noirish cartoon based on the best gameshow for kids (and as we've established, the sexiest villain) of all time.

she is the bestest.

en route to the japanese tea blossom festival at lauriston castle gardens, i am so buying a phone card. joy!

mystique and achilles sitting in a tree...

so as you may have noticed, i've been in a bit of a funk lately.

not only because spring is not the endless joy and relief i had hoped due to work pressure, living tedium and the worry and doubt that comes with life-altering decisions. but because i am a little bit in mourning and a little bit homesick

and also because my hormonal overdrive has reared it's ugly head again. i'm managing to eat this time, but the bleeding and pain are back to their usual tricks and i've barely made it to work the last couple of days.

but, just because my vision is tunneled to the horrors and sorrow, does not mean daily life has not been without pleasant surprises, domestic bliss and incidential joy which i will now catalgoue for your edification and to cheer myself up.

...

and i warn you now, this is will most likely be sickening displays of affection and googlyness because i seriously am desperately in love with someone who is good to me and i relish every minute of it (except when it's really crap, and even then a little bit).

oh, and they are probably totally lame too.

ahem.

- my friend catriona (katrina to you, weirdo scots and their gaelic spellings) just had twins. they are perfect little packets of brown squshy joy - not that i have squished them or anything. just oogled them on flickr.

- hot scot has resurfaced. went to a poncy gig of his last week. he was disappointingly smarmy on stage, but one of the bands was good so liam and i danced in the shadows. i've had a quirky little song in my head all week. if you're on myspace, look up zoey van goey and listen to "two white ghosts".

and i can't pretend i didn't get some small joy out of him seeing me happy with someone else, but mostly i just realized how i was having a much better time giggling in the dark and tickling in the corner than i would have keeping up the banter and the drinking and the twittery maybe-babying up in front until dawn. (plus, new gossip tells he's just been caught in a stationary cupboard fucking one of his creative writing students. how cliche and slightly sad. still, he is a nice guy, and a bit of a laugh and not at all a bad writer. i'm just glad i didn't sleep with him. )

- "sara m. grady you have unsuspected depth". not only does liam quote the philadelphia story in bed, but my god, i am profoundly deep because i have psychically ascertained he strong desire for toast with honey on, and acquired said breakfast unbidden.

- saturday night, ill and decrepid (okay, i was bleeding and he was hungover. shut up.), somehow we ended up doing online quizzes. but i filled one out as him and he did the same for me. As an ultimate greek hero he is Achilles, but I am guessing more in the vengegfully brooding but slightly sombre brad pitt way rather than the proper bad ass but totally gay way. And as a supervillian I am apparently Mystique -although sometimes motherly, this deadly vixen is not to be triffled with. ace.

- he confessed he likes when i inadvertently whisper 'i love you' in the dexter voice.

- in the same conversation my mother tells me uncle richard died (although to be fair, she never said. it was more
'i have something to tell you'
' i already know'
' oh. oh dear. how?'
' i can hear it in your voice'
' oh (sob). i'm sorry. i've been trying to be so...')

we also discuss how i hated her for making me move schools as a kid, how happiness is an unlikely companion, and how we feel about our family.

i also tell her liam and I are moving in together. and although she does say "so as roomates or friends or is this like a romantic thing?" at first (sigh), but she 1, does not give me a lecture 2, does not get quiet and judgemental 3, does not grill me within an inch of my existence. it was nice.

sidenote: i think liam is relieved i've told them (i think he secretly finds my unpredictable, utterly mad and slightly traditional parents and dauntingly large tightknit family a bit of a stress. i've promised him we can stay in a hotel when we visit america if they still insist on the seperate bedrooms business. we'll both need a cuddle after that day, no matter how well it goes or how nice everyone is.)

anyway, it was two hours of chatter while i sat alone in a dingy pub eating a juciy burger, a pint of lager, and proper thick cut chips thinking it was the perfect time for both of those conversations. and secretly i am glad i have told them now too.

i know she misses me. and i miss her. and we'll talk again sometime this summer probably.

- on sunday, we went to the beach. a shady little seaside town on the edge of the city, but i needed to say goodbye properly. the summer before i moved here was the last time i saw richard. he was already with a cane, but his eyes still sparkled. and as we played our last hand of gin he told me of the time he had a day's shore leave in Edinburgh when stationed in the north sea for the canadian navy. about seeing the city and remembering it's coastline, and his first step on land in so many months.

so i went and watched the waves and ships. the sea and sky and sand that have remained unchanged. watched the unfaltering skyline of mountains and castle and remebered him the way i loved him. distantly. but deeply, and fondly. and it felt right.

- everyday i walk home through the tuliped castle gardens and cherry blossom orchard. it's a hour detour out of my day, but i come home feeling so much better than had i got the grimy old bus past the strip clubs and betting shops.

- and i know you don't want to hear this, it's the last one. and it sounds a little crap, but last night, in violent pain and sickening delirium, i tossed and wailed and tried not to utterly breakdown, throw up, or otherwise cave to the mounting war in my body and all he said was "we'll get through this you know. i know you feel you're at odds with your body. i know this is hard. but your my sara. and you're not a burden. let me take care of you." and held my hand. and brought me my stripy hot water bottle (whom we have named Isobel), and sat me between his knees and said "i read it's helpful if i massage your ovaries" and rubbed my tummy until i fell asleep in his arms. and when I didn't want to cry from the pain anymore a little piece of me wanted to cry anyway because of the gentle kindnesses i've been given. because i feel loved.

sometimes it's so easy to drift away.

i don't just mean not writing my friends or absentmindedly glazing at the computer, though both of those seem to be trouble at the minute as well.

but not connecting with my life. disengaging from work, avoiding friends and social engagements. not talking to my sister in months. generally falling into an oblivious haze and foggy hollow I always regarded with contempt in my mother.

losing my sense of self and feeling completely at odds with the world.

it's a lonely stupid place to be.

i wish i was someone else.

or better yet, i wish i was me.

richard harper

death is a funny thing.

not so much funny ha-ha, but funny change-your-life-in-the-blink-of-an-eye.

it changes nothing. it's always been there. the ultimate truth revealled.

and yet.

isn't it always a surprise? a shock. a table-turning, stomach-churning blow.

it's a beautiful, chaotic, dangerous thing. powerful, terrible and peaceful.


and it's odd really, because it hasn't even happend yet. or it has and i don't know. but it will. and soon. and i am inexplicably happy and proud. happy for him i suppose, and proud to have known someone so wonderful. and having had the chance to tell him so. saddened too, that the world will lose such a light. and sorry he won't be there to dance with steph and ang and sam the way he did with sarah. but not mournful. or melancholy. that came before. in the dark lonely night, far far from home. but it passed with the dawn and a reassuring whisper. as the darkest of times often do.

awed perhaps is now. at this shocking revelation that he is quite possibly the best man i have ever known and i didn't even know him that well. that people like that exist gives me hope. that he has lived his life so completly, inspires. and that this weekend, when i stand on the shore he sailed into 55 years ago as a young man, I'll say goodbye to the sailor, the santa, the husband, and the saint and wish him well and hope out there, there are more like him.

i hope he sees anita again.

busy bees

Things feel remarkably light for all the massive tumultuous nature of life right now.

Let's do a slight recap shall we?

1, Last week we went on holiday. To a cottage in the mountains. Us, wilderness, the sea, a castle, a cozy fire and a big bed - all I wanted really. And somehow it was much more complicated than my idyllic dream. More discussion and panic and big important us things. I was looking for escapism and found commitment. Go figure. But I feel the better for it. Grounded somehow. Like I've come home.

Plus, someday remind me to tell you the story of trying to by the morning after pill in a remote mountain village. It's hilarious. And kind of sums up the embarassingly human and intimately weird sort of week we had.

2, The day after we returned I went to work, suitcase in hand, destined for Bologna. The international trade fair for children's books is about twice the size of the MacNamara terminal with thousands upon thousands of new books in ever conceivable language being bought sold traded and auctioned. And although any anglicized or european nation was more than eager to chat (and foist upon me their brillant life shattering work), trying to explain via a translator to a tiny taiwanese publisher of watercolour picture books what a book fair is and why i would pay someone to come was a complicated, taxing and ultimately rewarding experience.

Plus, finding the best picture book of the year in Japanese only to realize no one has bought the english rights, so it is completely impossible for me to have much less market.

Not to mention the mad amounts of hobnobbing. Fair enough it's quite a glitzy sort of industry. But glamourous people with fountains of champagne who want nothing more than to discuss how Pippi Longstocking changed the face of childhood in the mid20th century. Oh, and did I mention it was in an ancient cathedral turned trendy bar in the heart of ivy covered terra cotta old town Italy? yeah, it's that good.

And now I am home, full of adrenaline and not much else.

While I was away much has happened at work I am not happy with and although I am elated at the future potential of my programme, this year has fallen sadly short due to neglect, misunderstanding and naivte. It's good. It is. And it's strong. But it's risky and it's badly designed so I have little hope of cresting the wave I had hoped for next year.

Which is fine, but I take it far too personally when I've made all these fabulous connections and the first piece of my work they will see is not something I am proud of. It's kind of sickening really.

But that is just one tiny little down turn in a world full of cherry blossoms, freckles, lovely books and joy. So I can hardly complain can I?

ps - should you ever need a self esteem boost, buy a ticket to italy immediately. sure, you know the reputations of the stallions with their catcalling and piazza vultures. But this one takes the cake.

It's my first night in town, and the only couple of free hours I have in the whole affair. I decide to take a sunset walk, perhaps find a cafe. I end up of course, skirting industrial estates and highway exchanges. I was never one for maps.

And in my wandering, a car was pulling out from a drive. He looked at me as I walked past and said the usual Ciao Bella. And when that got no response tried french. and german. and english and even spanish. I smiled in my aloof retreat.

So I was highly surprised when ten minutes later the same car returns, turned around from the other direction and pulls over. he gets out and is all smiles and "i'll give you a tour of the city" romcom novel on me. To the point I know about his family in northern Rome and his academic asiprations and he prays my flight tomorrow will be cancelled and I call the number I can't figure out how to refuse. And no it wasn't the green eyes or dirty Jesusness, but the downright simplicity of chatting by the side of the road that seems so utterly surreal and yet entirely domestic. And somehow completely nonlecherous, which in and of itself is a feat. It puts a spring in your step regardless of the weirdness factor in an odd sort of way. I highly recommend it.

Italy, for all your ego stroking needs.

Read A Gathering Light. Now.

i am in love.

being away makes me know what i have.

and i won't deny the appeal of man from a town that agrees dinosaurs are cooler than unicorns. behold the maidstone crest, home of the first discovered iguanadon in the world:



fucking sexy eh?

Swiss Miss

Things you should know about Switzerland:

1, beer + flat sprite = best summer beverage ever. seriously.
2, cheese should be a deity (possibly in the holy swiss dairy trinity with chocolate and ice cream)
3, paddleboating rocks
4, why visit a museum if you can buy shit on sale in the giftshop and then just leave?
5, that said, shot puts are ver ver heavy
6, hills make the world picturesque.
7, ...just not pedestrian friendly
8, horology is the study of clocks
9, texmex can make you sick (but zorro can make it better)
10, shutters are essential to a happy home

karma

last friday Julie and I had our first congregation as SMEC - the secret meat eaters club - at the Buffalo Grill (a kitchy place with Native American chief portraits on the wall and the best peppercorn steak this side of the Atlantic). In our revelry, we shared fantastic ribs and decadent desserts to top it all off. And in the communal feasting she totally gave me a hideous virus. the bitch.

Serves me right for gorging on animal carcasses in Liam's pure vegetarian absence I guess.

But worst of all, this does not bode well for my Saturday morning flight to Geneva for a weekend getaway with Jennie and Chrissy.

Lord knows I am not missing out on a minibreak holiday to the continent though. Especially if I spent $500 on a two hour flight. Europe is fucking expensive and I am not wasting it god damn it. So I am taking every herbal suppliment and drug in the cabinet on a complete overhaul.

If I don't overdose into a coma, I'll be sipping beer on a mountain this weekend. Hallelujah!

it's been a longtime since I had internet goofing off as a hobby.

but lately, facebook has made a resurgence in my evening routine.

perhaps it's because all my immediate family and half my considerable number of cousins are all on now so everyday I've got another silly message or photo to accept. it's kind of like texting just to say hi, but a little more sophomoric and usually much more entertaining.

plus my dad's version of me on heritage's celebrity-look-a-like scanner says I am Martine McCutcheon, Kristin Davis and yes, DJ Tanner, like Carrasco always dreamed.

such frivolity also allows jack and i to keep up the banter when we haven't seen each other since November and he lives half amile away. a perk for lazy people like us.

But trolling around through old friends and ugly photos can also be quite sad. Like when you see one of your (i hesitate to say closest because of retrospective clarity and possibly missed chances) high school friends just completely a different person. sad, lonely and unwell when a few years ago the brightest, funnest and most in-demand kid on the block. it's strange how much we can change and weirder how much of a sham some of it always was, I just didn't know.

there you go. my facebook induced wisdom.

i am going to go cook like a good wife for my newly returned man. i missed him, so sue me it comes out in domestic kindnesses and cheese platters.

I feel like I can breathe again.

With deadlines as they are, I've been working 16 hour days (including half day saturdays), then go over to Liam's for a rushed dinner and then collapse into bed for a restless night of worry for the last couple of weeks. Add his chronic illness and course ending simultaneously and we've pretty much been a wreck.

So I'm holed up in bed, on my first real day off, with a fabulous book and my chocolate bunnies (left for me to enjoy in Liam's absence, he's away to Kent this week) while i recouperate. Mostly involving ice cream cones, sunny walks and organizing the lipsticks I never wear by shade as a cathardic excersize.

well, that and fantasizing about my fantastic mini-break weekend excursion to the continent with Jennie and Chrissy and then an easter holiday to die for. Did I show you yet? We're going here: http://www.uniquescotland.com/rock/index.html . Just us and the wilderness. I'm counting the minutes.

sometimes i just revert. i have to.

i spend all day in big important business meetings. i answer my phone every time it rings. and am nice to the person bothering me. i remember peoples names and am tactful to the loons and twits around me with the greatest of efforts. i have office banter and chair meetings. i offer to make the coffee. i even wear eyeliner. it's a big fucking deal.

so when i come home today, i put away the books and the paperwork. i refuse to login into my office network.

i make a quesedilla. i eat a bowl of ice cream. i swear at inanimate objects. i watch scrubs. twice. and i go to bed.

my life is one hell of a party.

babbling about bottles

so we all i am big pile of girly mush deep down. i've hidden it well. the masculine tentendcies and need for power certainly help. but sometimes i just want movie ending gushy kitten cuddles and pretty dresses.

which is why i perhaps didn't make a thing of valentines. 1, it is lame 2, i don't understand it as a holiday and 3, god forbid i did manage to convince myself it is both valuable and the epitome romantic, i'd never live up to my own expectations and that would be pathetic. like stab my own eyes out sad.

so i couldn't really be bothered or disappointed when I opened a hot water bottle.

the hot water bottle is indeed and archaic british thing, and new ones do smell a bit of institutions and clean rubber.

to be fair, as water bottles go, it's cute. if gap made a perky stripey one this is totally it. but they are so old ladyish I felt kind of blah to be honest. (dowdy is a good word.)

but now, a couple weeks later I am here to sing of my conversion.

I take it all back. The hot water bottle is the bestest most romantic valentines gift ever.

lordy, that swashy warm goodness wrapped up in cheerful knitwear on a pms day is the best thing. ever.

Its kind of like when a baby all cuddles into your side like a warm gooey happy thing except that if you roll over, you can't kill it. Plus, I feel gross and unmanagable and completly unfit to be near human life, but the bottle doesn't mind. It just let's me spoon it with it's cheerful pompom ties, radiating calming warmness and watch Persuasion again until the pain goes away.

It wasn't immediate, this love of mine. And it's not always necessary. But when things are bad, and I feel my absolutely worst, it's there to take care of me. soothe away my ickiness and i feel better. It's a rainyday, chips are down, end of the world sort of reminder. And I love it.

Liam is a fucking god.

relief.

I have never been so glad to bleed again.

poetry

I am 21 days into lent. I have read 16 poems.

Part of the problem is cataloguing them and having one handy especially as I have been away at the weekends or staying at liam's a lot more. But enough excuses. I am going to write down my list here to keep track.

Done:

1. The Relic, Donne (Isherwood)
2. Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, Eliot (David)
3. Notes from a Deprivation Tank, Grady (James)
4. The Road Not Taken, Frost (Melly)
5. Prufrock again (Sonja) - does that even count?
6. R. Harper, Grady (Bill)
7. Tea, Duffy (Amanda)
8. Timor Mortis, Gluck (Liam)
9. All The Trees Of The Field Will Clap Their Hands, Sufjan Stevens (Cecilia)
10. Oh God Where Are You Now? Sufjan Stevens (Cecilia)
11. Holy Sonnet 6, Donne (Kate)
12. Holy Sonnet 5, Donne (Kate)
13. The Sunlight on the Garden, MacNiece (Jules)
14. 426-0619, Bukowski (Jill)
15. Non-sequetur, Wilberg (Bill)
16. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (B. Reid)

Left:
Scotland, Reid (Lois)
Blue Song, Williams (Liz)
Happy Were He, Devereux (Liz)
Love Arm'd, Behn (Janet)
The First Step, Cavaty (Patrick)
One Art, Bishop (Hillary)
Night, Montgomery (Mandy)

oh and:
Unspecified Dylan Thomas (Dylan)
Unspecified Pythagoras (Tom)


Easter is still weeks away. I think I'll have to do some hunting of my own. Perhaps I'll read Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture beginning to end.


PS - since when did Sundays not count? How did I not know that in all the years deprived of pop and ice cream and swearing? I think I have earned a spare lent in all that overtime.

does this mean I am going to be alien scientologist housewife? or secretly black?

too busy to breathe

there is something wonderful about seeing your work in print. even if its unfinished, even if its imperfect, a tangible delicate rendering of so many hours is precious. i love my job. (though i am glad it's only the first proof.)

though, work is taking over my life. in on saturdays, working all night sometimes. it's a big thing.

and i am to the point i can't go on like this. i am unwilling to give up everything, though i am proud to do what i am capable of. glad to give what i have, but refuse to let it take more.

so i'm cultivating some time for just me. while i sort out a lot of things. about me. about us. about who i want to be and how.

wednesday i took the day off and went to alnwick, a tiny town just south of the border in england. the kind of little place with a mercat cross in the cobbled square and a norman city gate still in tact. a castle in the gardens and all that.

and the most beautiful bookshop ever. the victorian train station is now rows upon rows of old dusty volumes in which to lose yourself. giant iron grated windows and a tiny waiting room with red velvet buttoned couches.

i read some of Sir Walter Scott's epic Marmion, dithered in the youth religious section over edwardian primer books of saints and reveled in childish amusement at the hidden "spicy" section wraught with James Bond type soft porn. Mostly russian nypho spies and wanton women of the civil war. It was positively hilarious. who knew their was retro manly romance novels?

i was going to write how you know you're in a couple when you stay home from work sick and you go to put in a favourite dvd, you have to eject Civ III and it makes you smile.

but not only is that a grammatical disaster, sadly unfunny, it is also a vaguely Jeff Foxworthy type cliche.

but i still think it's sweet.

missing: my life

it concerns me i have managed to lose my life. somewhere under couch cushions or perhaps down one of those weirdly long and useless pockets in the back of my handbag.

i just went to reach for it without even looking, like you'd grab a cookie while glued to an E!True Hollywood Story, and it was gone. lost. MIA.

what has prompted this sudden awareness? the oscars happened and i didn't even notice.

let me repeat: I (as in me, the closet celebrity gossip whore) forgot (as in didn't just miss them because we are a 8 hours ahead of LA, but actually didn't realize they were happening) the Oscars (a holiday on several of my past calendars).

Although a bad week or lack of wearwithall for a season is fine, I couldn't even name the nominees for Best Picture. I can assure you they were half deserved and the winner blew pretentious schlock out it's ears, but still.

I am grossly uninformed, sadly lacking sparkly denouncements and without my witty dressing down of red carpet fashion. what small talk am I going to make for the next month? More importantly, if I missed the Oscars, I probably have no pressing social engagements in which to deconstruct them because I HAVE LOST MY SANITY.

That said, I was whisked away for a quaint cottage weekend of rose gardens and castles as a brithday treat instead, so maybe it's okay. It was glorious.


...Oh my god. I am replacing my life with romantic rendez-vous and mini-break weekends! I don't know whether to feel glamourous and fab or one of those completely insane couple-blinded freaks.

a sigh on the breeze

today i am 25 fo the first time. one of the great 'beginning of the ends' is noticing your age before it fades into the near past.

and to be honest, nothing much has changed. it's the same life, the same me. but i like to use these obligatory and slightly irrelevent markers to take breath and really notice.

my birthday began with a hazy morning. slowly waking up to an odd, unfamiliar flickering light and distant soft sounds. as i adjusted to consciousness, i found it was the glow of 25 candles and the humming of happy birthday in my ear.

chocolate cake for breakfast is not to be scoffed at, but an antique typewriter is one of those rare gifts you never knew you coveted badly.

it was one of those simple moments, one of those mornings to remember.



i feel old often. the aching joints, the odd turn of phrase.

but regularly i feel infantile. too young for this. overwhelmed and slightly ecstactic. like wearing your grandmothers high heels for the first time.

it's an odd mix, this adult but not grown-up. and the newness constantly surprises me.

but i am optomistic. i always thought 32 and 36 would be my years (i don't know when or how i chose this, it's just a thing i have always known), but 25 is starting out on a high, if unexpected, note.

like those tones in indian music halfway between two keys. not any part of the western scales but somehow not outside the nodal truths my ears recognize. a limbo, but a calm, somehow sweet one. like a hibernation den for the soul. hiding in the margins of here and now.

i'm spouting shit now, i can't deny it. i so often am without the words.

but i am content.






...and maybe slightly tipsy.

looking back, moving on

last weekend something possessed me to label all my old entries into a series of vague usually useless categories no one else will ever use.

i think my OCD tendencies played no small part (my co-workers have begun to notice i clean my desk every night before i leave and systematically tap the desktop while composing important emails). but more than that, i was in the mood for a little retrospective.

suddenly i catch myself so completely enraptured this life. a life that i never imagined or could possibly have thought was mine not so very long ago. little moments where he tucks me into bed as he gets up so no drafts get in. or as i quickly sign off on my taxi account in the back of a cab, late for a board meeting. or when i tell him i love him and know that i mean it. fleeting moments of some other pretend life. like scenes from a movie or more appropriately, some other twenty-something with a job and a partner and none of the things i ever really considered to be part of my reality.

from the outside it seems so unlike me, so impossible to be here, that when i suddenly see it, the shock is overwhelming. and it never completely disappears. or it hasn't yet anyway. i do realize 5 months isn't really a forever by any means. frankly i have my doubts about me and forever too. but i guess that's part of my point. when i am suddenly jerked out of this misty haze of contentment and day-to-day and see myself from a distance being comfortable with a hand on mine and giving presentations without my tell-tale right knee quiver, I see someone else and wonder how I got here. How i can still feel and be me and yet have grown into something I never could have dreamed for myself.

i guess it's that i've so quickly become accustomed to a life wholly unconnected with what came before in so many ways. that i already take it for granted when only six months ago i was the same, but everything else was different. and that necessitates admitting i have no idea where the next six months will lead.

so, in this oddly worrisome and yet entirely unburdened mood, i wanted to look back on how i got here. as if seeing my moody scratches would give me a retrospective map of my path to her and now. to shed some light on what has become an utterly unbelievable journey.

suffice to say, i didn't tell me anything i didn't already know. i did grimace and wonder at the things i used to say and feel about him and me. i am still uncomfortable with our awkward past i guess, but better at now and trying to undo the things i did then. it's a miracle we happened the way we did i think, but somehow i am not surprised i did that backwards too.

and it's easy to see how desperately unhappy i was at my old job, as it slowly ate into me and my tone. and worrisome how the content changed from friends and escpapdes to a chornology of coupledom and ranting. and a relief to see the trickling away of wild desperate adventures just screaming out. clutching at need. and doubt.

i don't have any reason to be writing this. you don't care gentle reader. frankly, whether you read them or not, it's all still the rubbish in my head at the end of the day.

i guess suddenly the newness of it all struck me this morning. timely, what with my first valentines just past and our birthdays both next week. i'm marking time, noting change and assessing. like always, i overanalyze. the content may change, but the system stays in tact.

Middlesex

" persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if i keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar."

today seems like a day of trivialities.

of french pastry and mangoes in bed.
of languishing naps in the afternoon.
of kissed scars and bruised secrets.

and perhaps the silliest thing of all, i got a friendster update in my inbox. the kind you get every two seconds and promptly delete. i think i was last properly on friendster somewhere in 2005 , but it was my cousins birthday and i thought i'd drop him a line.

and while i was in , i did something daft. i changed my profile to state "in a relationship". a pointless excersize, possibly even a curse, now a ticking timebomb over this little love affair of mine. but somehow i wanted to see it in print for a minute. to claim him. to declare us. it's nothing really. a pointless act. a silly impulse. frankly i might just go change it back because it makes me uncomfortable, us being out there in that stupid slightly sad context.

uncomfortable. perhaps just a gesture of proper acceptence i've avoided. friday night we were out with a mutal friend and it was weird. that is to say, i was weird. it's still not right; being out in the world and being the us we have cultivated at home. like i don't fit in my skin. feeling watched and judged. and somehow finding the space for the rest of the world in my vision means i lose focus of him and we fall apart. or i walk away, i'm not sure there's a difference.

it's strange it only happens out with friends. sometimes i think we could have sex in front of strangers and i'd be unphased (rest assured, the v is not wholly dead). but somehow people knowing us before means i have trouble being us now. of marking the change. of performing this role for them. for me. for us. that somehow it's none of their buiness. it shouldn't affect my other relationships. it's so apart from the rest of life.

like i am proving there is still a me outside of this. but who am i proving it to?

it's cruel a little i think, being so seperate out there. like i'm hiding. like it isn't a big deal. like it can wait. mostly that i feel so awkward and distance myself for refuge. like i can turn us off. as if being with him is so segregated from my normal life i am incapable of doing both. it's something we still fight about. this otherness of ours. my lack of concern for us when others are about.

and perhaps today i am just deciding, in a virtual tickbox fashion, i want to be there. to be comfortable enough with me and him to exist together. here and now, no matter what the context.

like i say, a trivial thing.

someday

I'm getting pretty crap at this.

The oh so glamourous career move has (temporarily?) put a damper on my social life, my sleep patterns and my ability to while away entire evenings on the internet.

Mostly all I live and breathe is logistical nightmares and trying to get my head around the burocracy of arts funding in the public sector. It's a completely other planet.

But all that aside, it's starting to be those crisp clear winter days that make me happy to look out the window, but loathe to leave him in bed. One of these mornings when he begs me to stay I just will, damn the consequences. Oh how I miss the casual schedules of student life. Carpe Diem feels a world away lately.

I just keep holding my breath for the day we can hop in the car, drive to our cottage, and unplug the phone for a whole week. A holiday in the country seems idyllic; all long walks and cozy nights and bright stars. Cable knit sweaters and babbling brooks. Homemade soup and log fires. It's like an 80s Lands End catalogue, except the whole dirty sex part.

(Of course I want to stay in an ancient cathedral turned flat in the wilderness because that's fabulous and weird (and has a gothicy wrought iron bed), but his Catholic sensibilities make it difficult to do what I plan to, there of all places. le sigh. But perhaps the private island scenario will work out after all. There no one will hear me scream.)

But today it just feels forever away.

More than 2 months. More than 300 miles. More than a list of print deadlines and proof reports.

More like a lifetime.

being left alone has some odd consequences (or, the return to greece)

so in an effort to regain some sanity (and mostly our own individual lives) liam and i are spending our first night apart in a month. it feels like longer.

but the whole constantly moving house/scared to be bothering flatmates/don't get anything done because all we do is hang out with each other/lack of personal space has left both our lives in absolute shambles.

so, i am home in the big empty quiet. and decided some life maintenance was in order. things like bagging up clothes for charity. throwing away the flowers he gave me weeks ago which were v. dead on the dresser. neatly stacking the book pile by the bed. etc etc.


which slowly dissolved into sorting out the collage pile. let me explain:

the sofa in my room is in a massive bay window. so around the sides and back there are large person-sized gaps between the angled walls and furniture. they tend to accumulate person-sized piles of crap that need regular purging.

the whole lefthand side became the collage pile because i used to stack old magazines or calendars or things that would come in handy for crafty projects and wrapping paper and the kinds of useless modgepodge related activities i fill dull evenings.

part of me is still 6. i know. just be glad it's the part that likes to paste things for fun, not the part that likes to eat paste for fun.

but so back there became home to magazines, newspaper clippings, postcards, flyers, photographs, ticket stubs. anything pertaining to craftiness, preserving memories or vaguely arty went down the blackhole behind the sofa.

and today was the day i craved bare floor, so i started sorting.



it was like a trip down memory lane.

notes from my dad, a weird and hilarious letter form my uncle james, sonali's wedding invitation, my carmen tickets. a postcard from spain, my pass to turnberry, my diploma.

some were hilarious. i found a rhinoceros card from phil from when we first met. back when he had a crush on maggie and when he ruptured his eardrum in a violent flu we went and took care of him. in his drug induced haze, his mother (back in canada) convinced him to send us thank you cards. i found one slid under my door with a mom and babi rhino on it reading:

"sarah -

(prewritten text) May your day be very enjoyable and the year ahead bring everything that means happiness to you (crossed out: HAPPY BIRTHDAY) (end prewritten text)

Thanks for all your help with tea and soup and stuff. My mom was relieved to know I have a few girls taking care of me.

- philip

ps I didn't know this was a birthday card when i bought it"




and of course the icing: the greece book.

in the tradition of the road trip journal of 2001, i took a little notebook with us on our fornight tour of the greek islands back when i barely knew mandy and had the money to jetset europe on someone else's dime.

it is a highly detailed account of our trip written mostly drunk in diners, bored on ferrys and hungover on beaches. that is to say, it's mostly games of MASH, diagrams of six degrees of kevin bacon and our all time best "NCAA double elimination finals" (aka bracketing all your male friends into a tournament of who you would sleep with in a table of either/or pairings leading to the ultimate fuck buddy; usually written with little hearts around it)

and a lot of stupid quotes of our insanely witty selves. i seem to remember us being giddy from sunlight, lack of sleep and too much greek beer pretty much all day. i shall record here some of the most brilliant for posterity, just in case the book falls behind the couch for another year (or twelve):

- "is loitering in god's house a sin?", mandy

- in response to a spotted pigeon: "why can't you mix a black lab and a poodle and get a dalmatian?", sara

- "we are swimming against the grain", sara

- "taste the water. it's like goat cheese or some shit", mandy

- "it's like a vermeer gone wrong", sara (on a picturesque mandy in yellow turban)

- "shafts of light sounds dirty. unless you mean like Samuel L. Jackson Shaft. SHAFT! (insert showy kate hand gesture)

- "is jesus gay?", a drunk us

- "that's fucked the fuck up", mandy

- this is heavy as fuck. it's a fucking baby", mandy (on her heavy and overpacked purse)

- "don't use that swear phrase", sara

- "everyone will be so happy to have us home. you're the crux of their social existance and i'm really fun too!", mandy

*** i am coming to realize (a little late) we sounds retarded. like kirsten dunst and michelle williams in Dick retarded. but i am really really amused so fuck off. ***

- "What the Christ?!?", sara

-"I'm getting so dark I don't even recognize myself. I look like a black lady!", mandy

- "so hold on. i am going to give you the short version of my near death experience with dolphins.", mandy

- "at worst i am my own 12th cousin", sara (on the grady-grady incest possibility)

- on a beach campsite, bored, drunk and with no tent "we don't need no stinkin' tv see? we got a cat. we just need a mouse on a string", mandy (to be fair, there really was a cat)

- "if you have'nt picked out your song what defines you as a couple?", mandy

- "because i'm a beer whore", sara

- "you could find a real mannequin with man-bits", mandy

- "back in the habit man, like sister act 2", sara



and in case you care, I am going to marrry Gerard Butler and drive a mercedes 320 in new zealand with no kids. i had a salmon wedding dress. And Mandy wed Matt Dillon. They'll have 'the square root of pi' number of children and live in North Dakota.

Our hottest friend by far was Maria's boyfriend Dave (think Chris Martin but actually attractive), I spent 787.35 euro (which at the time was £527.52) and lost my virginity.

it was a good trip.

stranger than fiction

life is at its best when you see the cogs turning.

when you can feel the hum of life, the ins and outs and ups and downs that made today, right now, what it is.

my mother always told me it took 14billion years to make me. Every evolutionary step that could have been to elsewhere. Every sperm down the line that was the one, bringing me here. As I am to this place and time and life instead of someone else.

and in the moments I feel its truth, this unending string of conincidence and luck and choice and reason that go back to the beginning of time whichhave made my life what it is today, is such a gift rather than the burden it sometimes seemed as a child.

Today, where I can lie in bed and run my fingers through his curls. Today, where I can have cookies for breakfast because we can't be bothered to go to the kitchen. Today, where I can see the shadow of my brother in the cinema. A year ago, a world away, but it's a hazy grayness of him that makes my heart skip a beat. Today, where I can fret over laundry and argue over dishes. Today, where I can feel ready for tomorrow.

It truly is remarkable I've been given this life. An odd one, a mad dash, a random collection of incidents, an unknown. But it's mine. And it's a wonderful thing.

conundrum

it has occurred to me, considering the number of nondisclosure agreements on my desk, perhaps being interviewed in the paper complaining of government neglect in the visa programme i applied for may not be in my professional best interest.

the question now is how to do i tactfully and discreetly cancel the interview without marring my reputation with the press i will soon so desperately need?

a conundrum indeed.

i am going to implode. the amount of information i have consumed in the last 8 hours is folding in on itself and my brain will shortly collapse into a blackhole, sucking up everything in its path.

that said, my first day was brilliant. well terrifying and so incredibly out of my league i dont even know where to begin. the main phoneline doesnt even ring on my desk (the IT guy says I am too important to field calls from the public) and the secretary asks if I need more tea.

i have a beautiful desk (with french windows looking out on trees) and a fabulous assistant (well, he is only partly mine but is fabulous none the less) and you should see our glorious georgian building with gated elevator and cobbled street! not to mention my perfect tweed pencil skirt and wingtip heels.

the job is already a dream and the life that goes with it is so close I can taste it. last night as i drifted off all i could think was how perfect my life was. well, or how perfect it will be when we have a place of our own and i can walk along the river to my wonderful new job and come home to someone who loves me.

suddenly it all seems to fit.

and i know that's naive. and i know you are sick of my gushing. but i dont remember the last time i was happy. was looking forward to something, not just the end of something. ive always been ready to move. to finish. to go. and now i feel like ive arrived. it might only last for a minute, but i am going to enjoy it damn it. and remember what it felt like to be alive.

i have become a domesticated british octogenarian version of my mother.

so i'll give you the little update:

new years has come and gone. we spent it curled up in bed with champagne and cheesecake. it was a shame they cancelled the fireworks here due to destructive weather, but all in all I think it one of one my best in it's simplicity.

i've left my old job (which i could rant on about, but frankly it's over and i am glad) and begin a new one on monday (which i am not really ready to face with all its lifechanging big step exciting terrifying butterflies of death connotations).

so i'm revelling in a long weekend of limbo

this morning liam and i went for tea and scones at a cafe overlooking the castle...and to see a flat. i am not ready to move in together. but still, the temptation of looking in other peoples homes is overwhelming. i love househunting, especially when i have nothing at stake. so we went for the fun of it and found the picturesque riverside cobblestoned village of turreted flats and windowboxes we may someday move into. (good lord don't tell the gradys.)

tomorrow i think will be a jaunt to a watercolour exhibition and possible the shore, fitting for our drippy gray skies and my fluid lackadaisical moods.

and that my friends, is about all i've got. not thrilling, not even news really. but there you go. i'm here. and it's a little bit random and a little bit odd and usually quite scary and weird, and sometimes just so very perfect. and i am okay with that.

so lots has happened, and yet i've still done nothing.


christmas eve with the cousins was cuteness and awkward and disgusting baby pangs at dinosaur hide and seek the almost 2 dominic. creepy.

then christmas day was tom's family birthday. rocky balboa and junk food. thst feel good kind of grossness.

then boxing day laziness with jennie (nicolas cage and crazy bread. ooh baby. american glory.), a visit from sonja, and one from anika and much festive preparations because kate and jimmy got home at last.

then today was christmas. highly festive and fun. dad subjected us to more kareoke and i introduced christmas crackers - the musical kind. i played sign language conductor. woohoo.

the presents were a bit on the random side, but still some jems. mom's gifting theory is a bit beyond me at this point, but what can you do? it's the season of giving and much happiness was exchanged, what else matters? we're all here. there is a plethora of indulgences, and only a couple of days until i am back home, an ocean away where i'll misremember and miss all of it all over again.

so happy grady christmas world. carpe diem.

Hello world.

Let's see if I have any news.

Well, after whirlwind leaving of home (before any of the festivities really even got underway), I came back and lost like 3 days to sleep and readjusting to the familial weirdness.

Then Tom and I went to Columbus for his 21st, where we dressed in three piece suits and drank martinis (siberian huskies thankyouverymuch) at the shady Little Bar and spent the next two days on the couch watching a voyager marathon interspliced with scrubs on dvd. a little pot, a lot of pizza, and we were back home a couple days later all the better for it. Well he wasn't, but then his ambition was a drink an hour for the 24 hours of his birthday. Shocker.

Then I had a huge icky day at the doctor with prodding and poking and a lot of "hmmm" because there is nothing wrong with me. at all. except the whole bleeding fainting unending pain thing. that is unexplained and hopefully new hormones will sort me out. and get this - the miracle feminine regulator is called Portia. I find that highly amusing, but then I am a nerd.

(addendum) Oh, and totally cool weird thing: I had to have an ultrasound - but no jelly on the belly, no crazy camera thing I always thought looked like a commerical address stamp - no, it was a newfangled internal ultrasound - which was essentially a sleek industrial dildo with sensors inside. Not only that, she had me insert it myself for comforts sake. Talk about awkward.

And then the annual cry and fight fest with mom this morning and now am christmas crafty goodness.

oh, and I totally got the job. I now run the biggest children's book festival in the world. how fucking amazing. merry christmas to me!

Cruella

i know i should write about how i am home.

with the family and the cousins and the christmas joy. how i hate the noise and the bright. how i miss him already.

but at the moment i am shocked the psycho ex-flatmate actually bothered to remove me as a friend on facebook. she wrote me a letter once. for "closure". to say i am the worst person she's ever known.

she really does hate me. and it's such a shame she wastes here life on that kind of thing. who has time for that?

nothin much

I just keep thinking I should say something.

Now we have the internet back I keep logging in and thinking "I should update the journal" only to find I have nothing to say. No wisdom to impart. No tales of insanity with which to amuse. Or maybe I do, I just can't think of any right now.

(Or perhaps more likely, I think back on my week and mostly I go to work, hang out and do stupid things with Liam, we go to bed, i get up and do it again. It's completely boring and I don't want anyone to know how lame I have become.)

Generally I check up a couple of other people, and then re-read my last entry. I think it's supposed to inspire me by seeing how long ago I wrote last and remind me of something terribly interesting that happened since. But mostly it's just boring and slighly sadistic.

So sorry.

Here, I'll give you some at least halfway amusing things
- there are pigmy deer in the forests of argentina who are small as house cats and the males horns are like chopsticks
- there are trees in the tiga over 5000 years old. Older than Jesus. Older than the rockies. Older than the pyramids. Older than pretty much anything on the planet. I bet they have thrilling conversations in the frozen wasteland.
- don't you think michael palin is a little bit sexy in a dorky old man kind of way?
- i am wearing scary fuzzy electric blue socks my grandmother sent me for my birthday. i hate socks. (well, i hate wearing them, as apparell goes they can be quite cute. but not these things. no tasteful ann taylor argyle here. no dainty AE flower prints. these are great beastly things dreamt up in a cotton swathed coke dream.) but it's fucking freezing so i have decided keeping all my toes in tact is worth looking like cookie monster from the calf down.

I am, for once you may say in recent memory, in a good mood.
.
yes, it's 8pm and i am still at work. yes i think i am allergic to potatoes. yes i didnt sleep last night at all and havent even started christmas shopping.
.
but i just spent a couple hours ranting about childhood literacy and influential fiction, which always gets my engines revved.
.
plus for some reason i feel okay. not because of eyeliner or sunshine or my salary.
.
i just do.
.
and i am going to revel in it. (and by revel in it you know i mean go have sex)


ps - i really will change this hideous layout. i promise. i think i need an online makeover. my profiles are dull, this thing is a blight on blogging everywhere (if such a thing can exist). perhaps it's like a weirdo dorian grey thing. or maybe the reverse. i'm not sure. but i know there is some philosophical literary illusion to be had here. i'll get back to you on that one.

i thought i could

i just keep thinking things should be perfect.

here i am on a sunny blustery morning sitting in my favourite turquoise nightgown on my boyfriends bed. He's feverishly writing an essay due friday with his curly hair still damp from the shower. It's my day off. I have toast with honey in my hand and two weeks til I go home for Christmas.

And I am supposed to be working on a serious job application. One I feel is way out of my league, but have been recommended for by people at the Book Trust and other influential and important artsy places. I am flattered they think I am capable of running the book festival, but it scares the shit out of me even if I didn't hate the self aggrandizing sycophantic balance of the job hunt proper to begin with.
.
So here I am, in what seems like the best of all possible worlds and am paralyzed by doubt and dread. I just have to keep telling myself it'll get better. But sometimes I don't feel like the little engine that could anymore.

so it's been an upy downy kind of week. i am reveling in the small things and blindly ignoring the horrors of the big picture. okay, it's not that bad but i didn't get the job and work is unbearably bad and my stomach has gotten worse - something i wasn't sure was possible a week ago.

but, possibly as karmic balance for such ick, my regular life has been beyond compare.

thursday night was a brilliant thanksgiving. even though i still managed to fling a mixer of cheesecake batter all over myself and sonja and over bake the sweet potatoes. but i did make the best stuffing of all time and the soporific effects of turkey soothed my ragged self.

and this was the first weekend liam didn't have to work sunday. so we had a lie-in and cafe brunch and wander through a beautiful graveyard holding hands at sunset. granted, not the normal sunday for someone else but so nice and so right for us. especially when he got creeped out i wanted to crawl into a crypt. but still, a lovely sleepy sunday.

plus yesterday was the scottish childrens book awards so i spent most of the day blathering with friendly publishers and librarians over too much champagne. ooh, and a 2nd grade class acted out the winning picture book which was so cute it almost made me cry. suffice to say it was a cowboy cyotote who "bumped his bottom" on a cactus. ridiculously cute if badly written and a little psychotic. (ps the baby pangs are fucking scary. start worrying. )

actually, total baby related sidenote; sunday night (while moving furniture in a fit of coupley domesticty) we started naming babies. right now he is inclined to the classics while i am rooting for oddment words. so far kaleidoscope ann and anemone fugit will be joined by the twins rampart and meniscus in my mad lady house over run with scary children probably in pinafores. it is a frightening future. thank god i am on the pill.

I am still in my pjs at 7:49 pm. Thank god for sundays.

In other news, yesterday I checked my email at work. My mom had CCed me on an email to Grammy about how yes, our family was coming to Thanksgiving, yes she would bring cookies, and yes green bean casserole was desired.

I almost cried. Seeing in no uncertain terms they'd all - even Doug - be there cozy, together and eating food I don't really like suddenly made it true. Two days ago I didn't miss thanksgiving. I didnt really need it and have vague plans to maintain the movie-going tradition alone, but otherwise content to be home in a month.

And all of a sudden I was aching for handprint turkeys, balsa wood planes and unidentifiable fowl carnage.

Wet eyed and wobbly I tried to explain how something so silly can suddenly seem so important. And Kate decided then and there I was having Thanksgiving. She's bringing pie and I need to call my mother for a stuffing recipe. She may have been driving me up a wall lately, but when the chips are down she is such a dear.

So apparently I am having a dinner party. With butternut squash risotto and a hodgepodge of brits. Liam has already promised to make sweet potatoes and Kate's called pumkin bread.

It may not be bird platters and saturday night at the Grady's, but it's the best I've got and they've already given me something to be thankful for.

it's 16th of November. the trendy generic bistro cafe across from my desk is playing muzak christmas.

i am covered in blue glitter from bundling baubles into groups of three to then be placed 2 inches from the end of the garland branches around gondola unit 3.

i want to stab my eyes out with a biro.

progress report

i don't even have the nerve to check my stat tracker i've been so rubbish about updating. but i seem to start every entry these days with apologies or excuses. enough of that. here are today's headlines:

- job interview at the book trust. not a sure thing, but a step forward and a dream gig. am afraid to gush too much in case i build myself up for a fall, but suffice to say i'd be planning author tours to go all over scotland and then them. like take the words on wheels van (it's bright yellow and possibly has a giant bookworm on the side) to orkney to phillip pullman can talk to the children of the isles. how brilliant is that?

- home is suddenly very soon, not soon enough and entirely unplanned

- it's fall. in all the blustery rainbow ways. it's perfect. if only it didnt make me break out like a 13 year old or blow my perfect pleated school girl skirt over my head.

- i keep dreaming of babies. my baby. and she looks so much like steffie and mom it hurts to wake up.

- it's been ten days and i am bleeding again.

- jack and i are distant these days.only partially on purpose. mostly just out of neglect. i filled out some stupid myspace quiz he sent on just as a general update. it was the first time i wrote down i wasn't single. it's such a tiny thing, but for me to be taken is already big, and for my best friend not to know is even bigger somehow.

- starter for 10 is a brilliant british john hughes a like. you should totally see it. especially if your name is jennie.

i think that is all i have to say for now. besides, liam is just out of the shower.

news

so things are the same.i hate my job, my inards are having a battle of epic proportions (although the doctors say i am fine), it rains all the time and i totally have gross out dry skin.

but somehow it feels okay.

this is in no small part to my employment prospects (there are two jobs i totally want up for grabs). or that i am on new meds and can see a real highly paid doctor in america who might be able to fix me. or that i will be home in six weeks (i think tom and i should go away for a few days before chrismtas - perhaps to neferiously scope easternseaboard schools? don't tell him i said that. if only kate would be home too). or that my mother has totally joined myspace (which i find endearing and completely weird). or that i am addicted to cheese on toast.

and of course, it does't hurt i had an amazing weekend. in three days liam and i managed to do nothing but somehow the kind of nothing that makes you feel better. and gives me hope. maybe we're not so broken as all that.

it's funny how playing domestic and having regular naps can change the color of the world.

Seasonal

I know it's been awhile.

We've been without internet, and frankly life is simultaneously too fast to substantially record and so unremarkable and trudging I don't have much to say.

Without sounding cliche, the coming of fall and the impending winter find me rather cheerless lately. Things are just a little flatter, duller. And it takes more and more effort to bother with the day to day.

But enough. Today I am going to make a concerted effort. So, here I am. And as always, I will be probably descending into a vague and varied list form at any given moment.

Liam and I are still rather up and down. But we're on the same ride. Together. Which feels like progress. Actually, things have been quite good in all honesty. But last night he whispered "why do you like me?" and I dont yet have a satisfactory answer. I just do. We are trying to decide where to go on holiday. Probably to a remote cottage in the Lake District.

In other news, life is turning fall. There was the musk of fox this morning and red leaves litter the street. Jules and I are making lamb stew and pumpkin cornbread tomorrow to celebrate.

Oh, and I've started eating cheese. Nibbling a platter at my sister's began the long decent to normalcy and dairy loving madness. Monday night I couldn't be bothered to cook so had cambazola on charcoal crackers.

It's the first fall of my life where everything is staying exactly the same. And I don't like it. So yeah, I am okay, but ready for change.

some things

so it's been a while.

i know. i got distracted.

and this morning i woke and instead of jumping into the fray of uncertainty, i refused to get out of bed until i'd actively thought through some shit and now i feel better. on this list, with no concern for importance are the following:

- i hate my job
- ergo, i will look for a new one
- i miss school
- therefore, i will pursue the long awaited return to academia. for real.
- (i can't wait)
- i am glad i revamped my fall wardrobe in california with pencil skirts and lace. It's a nice look with tweed.
- i miss home. in a big way. like maybe i won't stay here forever way.
- i kind of have begun a relationship which simultaneously freaks me out, makes me retarded and has the potential to take over my life (in the best and worst senses)
- i am coming to realize i adore him. (not only because he says he will move to boston with me to do my phd.)
- jane eyre part two is airing tonight. things like this make life worth living.
- cheese platters are a new found source of happiness. it's good i am growing out of my food phobias. i ate an olive this weekend, to an aghast liam who lauded my bravery. i ignored the condescention, but welcomed the congratulatory kiss.
- i am coming home for christmas even if it means quitting my job. i'd like to hope by chrismtas i wont be working there anyway.
- i miss my siblings more after i see them.
- i need hobbies. my sanity cant take the silent meaningless tranquility of retail
- i am ready to settle down. not like barefoot with babies or anything (though can it be far off?) but, like, get a job I want to have. for a long time. invest in real estate. buy china. have a life i made, not just floating around. and it really wouldn't hurt if that life had an upper middle class income with a partner, a brownstone, and possibly a volvo.

Arrrgh

pirates are awesome.

a pirate musical extravaganza of participatory dinner theatre (with coconut monkey drunk holders) is heaven.

that is all.

the glory of the gradys

i am in LA.

i love my siblings.

i am drinking miller high life light with a screw top lid.

we are going to a pirate musical extravaganza not unlike medieval times.

i love it.

done me in

so i've finally crashed. all that stuff that's been freaking me out? well, it ate away at me until there was nothing but acid and bile left and last night i almost fainted in a jacket potato shop.

rewind. let's review shall we?

monday was tired (sunday day with liam then midnight roof picnic tuckered me out) and had a goodbye with mandy. she left for greece and now her room is empty and i miss coming home to bitch together and watch costume dramas.

but, then had fabulous bookfestival party. lots of champagne, amazing dress and everyone i know. in fact, ended up with keith and hot scot, like so many nights before, where keith decided hot scot's girlfriend, who isnt george glass of leeds after all, is so not good enough (she is a little on the dowdy school teacher side) and his personal mission is to do her in and convince him i'm much better. which of course i am, but it is still sweet of keith to say it. still, another night of no sleep.

tuesday was work. wretched. it's become so corportate we are no longer allowed to carry pens that aren't blue black or red. seriously. soon i wont be able to have decent novels either.

then that night had to have people round to see the flat. seriously, i had to advertise online and everything. it blew. but they were all nice and sonja came for emotional support and apple crumble, and now Catriona is moving in next week to grow herbs in the garden and take walks with.

then liam called (his family is in town and that stress of hosting plus incongruous limbo of tourism at home freaked him) so he came over and we cuddled until we both felt better. better than sleep, but still, no sleep.

wednesday work was equally crap and i didnt feel well. i rallied tolerably for girly movie night (newsies!!!) but when we were watching the extras after and he called, i suddenly wanted to be home in bed more than anything.

so jules and i left, i called him back, he came over and we spent all night curled together whispering secrets and feeling the edges of each other.

but, i was so stressed about leaving and movings and work and kate and everything all at once my brain was going a mile a minute. plus the added anxiety of someone next to me. to feel my every move. to ache to hold. generally i have been of the up and out mentality and this whole togethering thing threw me for a loop and rest illuded me.

and (and if you ever tell anyone this i'll deny it) in the safety of the dark i admitted the only thing that makes my brain shut up is really loud sex. and although we had decided we aren't ready for full on sex, he was certainly more than obliging. i almost screamed and after that felt much much calmer.

i called in sick to work thursday. i hadnt slept, my stomach was being worse, i might be starting my period, i'd just spent the night on pretty much a mental roller coaster and the last thing i needed were more office dramas and corporate bullshit.

i slept and made lists and lolled about in bed. in the afternoon he came back, better rested, and we napped and goofed off and planned on going to a friends leaving do.

we were hours late. we hadn't eaten all day. i was feeling worse.

with kate and julian we decided to get dinner. a foursome i've grown accustomed to. one i will miss now he is leaving. but i looked at my jacket potato with vegtable curry and was ill.

my hearing went, my vision was spotted, i blanched and couldnt hold my head up.

i went out to the fresh(er) air of cockburn street and liam rubbed my back and plied me with water until i could see straight.

i said my forever goodbye to julian with my head between my knees and his hand on my shoulder. it was ridiculous. but overly dramatic and retarded seems to be my calling card. they went on their way, back to his party, and liam stroked my back until i could stay upright.

then we caught a taxi where i slept with my head in his lap, until i got home. he put me to bed and insisted he go get bread and important things i will need. he came back later with beautiful flowers and my favourite juice and rubbed my back til i fell asleep.

he says he loves me. and he's been so wonderful i am inclined to believe it for all of our weirdness. and i woke up this morning missing him.

i don't pretend it's not weird. and broken. i know we both really need somebody right now in all the ever changing mess. and have no idea if it will stay this way when he goes to school and i sort out my bullshit.

but it is so wonderful to have someone to hold and to hold me. and the promise of us is so very very good. so, i know i'll deserve flack. but right now i am happy. like it'll be okay.

so wait to shoot me for being blind and mushy. wait until i'm ready to give this up.

the berenstein bears' too much fun

for once i'm not writing because i have too much to say.


my job is rubbish, and i can't even get an interview, though i keep applying elsewhere.

my flatmate hates me and probably won't ever pay me the money she owes (which is a lot) and it has become some fucked up passive agressive battle.

i am going to visit my sister in a week. (!!!!)

i haven't found someone to fill the lease and i've got a week to sort something or i'll be liable for rent.

i can't say i've fallen back in, but liam and i are something. something new. something maybe.

the book festival is all fancy parties and 4 course dinners and too much name dropping and celebrities and all round party hopping madness. this is my first night in a week, and the only one for 4 days to come. i never thought i'd see too much champagne (or meet Sir Angus - the antiques dealer, castle owner, and orange turban wearing dirty old man at a fancy dress Sultan's Bazaar party). i just keep hoping all this networking leads to a job.

j

in honour of jennie's birthday (and in recompense for not shipping malteser packing peanuts this year), i'm going to do that horrible thing where i make lists of references no one will understand but is infinately fun for me in remembering. in no particualr order, the random moments of jennie currently in my head, a tribute:

- lying on her bedroom floor at kingsley, furiously finishing the cd party cds, in all their deco glory. two computers, three women, a papercutter and she was still ridiculously late.

- lolled on my freshman futon, fairylights above us, listening to billy joel and pointedly not talking about joe.

- standing in my parents house, her first visit, in front of an open fridge. hungry and bored, she grabs one of the many unlabed styrofoam boxes , finds some congealed mac and cheese and begins to eat straight from the box. a look of distaste crosses her face, she puts the rest of the clump, until now precariously skwered on a fork, back in the box and shuts the fridge. my eyes scan the room, my sibling stands in the doorway, aghast at this stranger eating our food and then putting it back, an act she has yet to live down.

- sitting in the michigan theatre watching some merchant ivory film. i think it must have been house of mirth. and she began pulling apart that curl behind her left ear. running her fingers through it over and over, making an incesant like shhhhinkth noise. the first time i could hear her bored and uncomfortable.

- nintendo, waffles, and beanbags. what should have been a tradition.

- waking up in u towers, giggling about buffy, not knowing what time it was, when we fell asleep, or why we were still on top of the blankets, with all the hay sticking out of her hair from our jaunt to the cider mill the day before.

- posing, arms spread, silly cap askew, in that blasted tweed coat, in the frosty scottish countryside while i snap a photo. a boring, fruitless, three mile walk to "town" became a photoshoot and goat quest. only with jennie.

- but one of my all time favourite moments, is leaning our backs on the vatican, waiting for the sunrise and her quiet amused silence at my stupidity:






this isn't all. this isn't even some. probably if i thought about it, it isnt even a fair representation. but today, this is her for me. fragmented and fondly remembered.

missed.

happy birthday bitch.

i just checked my email for the first time in days.

mostly it was freecycle posts, the random promotion from amazon, and the film festival update. but in amongst the rubble was a casual reminder of my 10 year middle school reunion.

there is no way we are having one and there is certainly nothing on earth to entice me to go, but it still felt really weird. like remembering something you didnt know you forgot. a concrete reminder of someone else, some other place and time and life. like some other me.

ten years ago i stood, poised for high school, in britain for the first time. i had
- newly minted teeth,
- eyes unshackled by lawyer glasses,
- was fresh off the track team,
- was deserpately and secretly in love with anders
- and was wishing more than anything to be an academic for the rest of my days.
i also wore pleated cuffed shorts in colours like sage.

and now, i live here, where i decided i belonged that summer
- my teeth are stained and false,
- my eyes are (finally?) open,
- i've the bones of a geriatric,
- i am sadly smitten and trying to grow out of it,.
- and wishing i knew what was held in the rest of my days.
my fashion may be slightly better (in a neo-prep ironic/retro way), though only time will tell.

and most of all i find i miss the surety that came in those days before high school. i remember the ultimate contentment life held when there was the promise of a future far away and every possibility i would eventually get it right. the belief in someday.

but it seems i have no talent for certainty.

but i guess that is okay too. there is some comfort in having come out of that shell, that isolated existance where there was nothing outside my immediate impulse and no one on earth who saw me.

i am drifting away now. it must be the whisky. but anyway, all i meant was that seems like a lifetime ago. and i wonder if i am really at all any different. i suppose i still believe in someday.

canucks are good for something

last night i had one of my weird adventures.

no, i still haven't gotten laid, but i did not loll about, and more importantly i went out and met new people.

see, garbage liz (as in the first party at uni was "dress as someone scottish" and she came as shirly manson from the band garbage and nobody knew if she really did fishnets and minikilts or if it was a costume and the name stuck) joined the peace corps and moved to lesotho (as in that dot of a country smack in the west of south africa i totally thought was a lake) last year.

and out of the blue emailed to say a friend of hers was headed to edinbugh for a couple days and wanted to mail his plane tickets to a UK address, would I mind?

I said sure, and we emailed and he seemed nice and vague and Canadian and named Jamie. I figured I'd milk him for a pint or two in exchange for doing absolutely nothing and go on my merry way.

last night we met up for said pint and not only was he hot, he was fun. So instead we got ridiculously stoned off some weed we scored from a chav outside the pub and went to see a high school rendition of 1984 at the fringe festival. Afterwards we had nachos and had to finish the weed (since the absolute lameness of the play had killed our buzz) and went our merry way many hours after i had planned with me in a very happy place.

but it was good. i am glad he and his girlfriend are moving to town in the fall, they will be fun. better yet, he can play eucre.

though, important things to note on why a cute, fun potential new mate front:
1, he is canadian
2, he is a total druggie
3, he is way too political (in the arrested at protests way, which i suppose of political bents, is one of the better options)
4, there is the girlfriend, who i am destined to like. she is trailer trash from minnesota.

it's nice we have these clear boundries at the beginning.