autumnal. august 24th.

well, i figured out what to do with chalk.

i'll face the music later.


i booked a hotel room for saturday night. so the middle two days of his visit will be spent in the king suite at a comfort inn. it's not going to be classy. i can't afford classy. this is kinda pushing the limits of what i can afford. but i figure that he's shelling out all this cash to come up here. and i want to do something nice.

so we're going to the mountains. it will be about a two hour drive, north. and by some miracle, they had a suite with a jacuzzi tub for two available. at a decent rate, considering the next rate up was $295 a night, with a two night minimum stay.

it's hard for me to imagine people spending that much money for a hotel room for a night. i mean, honeymoons, yeah. i get that. but aside from that, i wish i had that kind of cash to spend on a mini getaway weekend.

some of the rooms were over $500 a night. i mean, really...a champagne glass shaped jacuzzi tub, several feet above the floor? insane. just crazy.

so i learned a lot. some resorts are all inclusive up there. and you get wine and massages in your room. that makes sense.

but i'm parting with a chunk of money. and i'm really really excited about it.

i was excited when i was looking. just seeing the rooms and imagining the fun that could be had in them. it made me wish for lottery winnings.

but everything does lately.

i found a brewery in the town, so we will go there for dinner that night. he was pretty excited about that. we'll need an excuse to leave the room. and i passed out for the night before finding a diner to have breakfast before leaving for the city.

it was funny, i told him about the mini roadtrip. and about the hotel.

and he said something about 'so i'll get there. have sex. have dinner. have sex. sleep. wake up. have sex. drive two hours. have sex. get in the tub. have sex. have dinner. have sex. i think i'll be dead by saturday night. you're going to kill me.'

sounds like a fun time trying.

and i don't know what we'll do around the town in an effort to enjoy our surroundings. i need to figure that part out. i think one activity should suffice. something to take up a couple hours we might otherwise spend napping.


i thanked him. for giving me an excuse to do something nice for myself.

this is really going to be my first real vacation. i've stayed in shitty hotels and motels before, with ever, during the move up here from florida, and a couple times for events that we went to for his work.

but we never went anywhere together. not like this.

actually, in writing that, the sun did take me on a vacation once. we slept in his hippie van in siesta key. it was hot as balls in the thick of august in florida. and i had the worst cramps of my life, probably brought on because of a lack of bathrooms nearby and comfortable sleeping arrangements. still it did resemble a little vacation.

i can't think of another though. it's been twelve years since that one.

and even though it's only a one day thing, it will be nice.

my cross country trip counts, in a way, but not in another. because i was not with a boy who i liked/was sleeping with. that was a vacation. i stayed in four hotels that trip. and they were mostly decent, too. a hotel in new orleans on night one. a motel in germantown texas on night two. a hotel in arizona on the mexico border for day three. buy one get one free night in the grand canyon for days four and five. and then i was in tahoe.

so, yes. that counts. but saying as i wanted to kill the boy i drove across the country, who didn't help me, i'm un-counting it.

was there another? i never went anywhere with dub. i never went anywhere with my tahoe boyfriends (who i dated for like a month each). i never went anywhere with my high school boyfriend, aside from a hotel near busch gardens. but we were just friends at that point. friends who liked hallucinogens. and nina was there, too.

so, final answer: one mini vacation with the sun. not in a hotel.


this is going to be nice.

i'm sure it will mean that it's not the last, either.

i have a feeling that there will be many more like it. where a boy isn't flying anywhere to see me and will drop the cash so i don't have to think about it.

and it's giving me something to write about that isn't work.

yay.


but now that i mentioned it...

the other new girl is now in the fold. ashley. luckily she is happy with part time work that is opposite everything she applied for.

i'm quite pleased with myself.

and i think i did a good job with hiring.

and i feel a billion times better than i did this time last week.

which reminds me of why i don't like to say things to kenna until time has passed. because the stuff i said to her in the thick of my stress is mostly irrelevent this week.

i always do that. and i have learned from it.

at the same time, part of why i feel better is because i told her enough to let her know where i am mentally.

in any case, lauren was so thankful for her frosting. and she asked if i brought a spoon.

which cracked me up. i didn't think to, so i went and grabbed one for her from the cafeteria. and told her not to have too much fun on her last night of closing.

i love that girl. i hope her three month bike ride to austin texas is a huge success.

she deserves it.


aside from that, today was delaware day.

and let me just say, this mix is fantastic.

i made it through almost the entire thing in my day of driving. and the flow is good. it's mostly upbeat stuff, because it's mostly stuff that kit has played for me that i have latched onto.

i was in this great mode last night of finding new music. kit told me about this guy from iceland, who is somehow sadder than sigur ros. which i didn't think was possible. i couldn't make it through any of his songs. they were just too sad.

but he is gorgeous.

and from listening to him and balmorhea, i found more bands. and aubree's girl sent me a song by vetiver, which i thought was okay. and somehow that led to other stuff.

so, a long time ago, when i first met jay and matt, they were obsessed with joanna newsom.

and i can't remember ever hearing more than one song by her ever. because her voice killed me. so i couldn't do it.

but last night, i tried repeatedly to find something that i liked. and i found one.

it was a live video of her playing a show here. and what's crazy is that it was one of the first, if not the first show that kit went to when she moved here. i sent her the clip and she said she was at the show.

but it's this song called 'peach plum pear'. i have to hear it again as i write this.

the music is just incredible. so beautiful. and the words are nice enough. her voice still kills me. i want to move her three feet away from the microphone so you can only barely hear her.

she gets points for originality. but her harp. ugh. so incredible. it seems like someone else would have run with this idea a long time ago. it makes me want to look up people who are harpists.

i hope i can get past her voice so i can listen to more. because that song is so pretty. the ending makes my heart sing. when she isn't singing.

i'll just watch all the videos from that show. and see if i learn to love it.

i think that maybe i already am.


what else did i find?

i don't know. balmorhea is sad, too. there was a day that kit and i didn't feel like being alone, so we sat in silence in her apartment writing, with them playing in the background. and it was so quiet and calming and perfect.

and i predict that when i go see them in september, that it will be a similar experience to when the sun took me to see ida with pedro the lion in the very beginning of our relationship.

i was so embarrassed, because we walked in talking. and the bar was completely silent. and ida were playing already.

but the thing was that every single person there was so beautiful. every sensitive boy with beautiful skin and light eyes and perfect noses. including the one i was with. and i felt so awkward, like i shouldn't have been there. like they shouldn't have let me in. and all the girls with their long hair and their perfect glasses and pretty mouths and flawless ensembles. everyone was just perfect.

and i think that balmorhea will be the same way. i think i'll fall in love 85 times that night. and leave for dark sky two days later.

sigh.


i alluded to falling and fall the other day. i wrote about it a bit in paper journal.

i love the chill. it was in the sixties today, just dreary and perfect. i cannot wait for the weather to shift permanently, though it's nice to have a little taste now. in august.

and i know myself well enough to know what is coming.


pretty soon, i'll have the urge to uncover journals and recount. i already have here, a little. summoning the ghost of the sun.

which makes me sad now. i wanted closure with him. and i guess i got in, in textbook form. he said that he didn't have negative feelings toward me. or residual.

and it's so much easier to remember only what you miss about someone than to remember why you stopped having them by your side. he just didn't love me enough until it was too late. but what a beautiful person. i bet he is a stellar man now. and making some woman very happy.


and coffee resurfaced for a minute the other day. thanks, facebook. but really, it's been this time every year for the last thirteen that i think of him incessantly.

and it's going to be strange to not do that this fall.

or to think random thoughts, but not have that feeling. i wonder if i can pinpoint it. it's a sinking feeling. i'm getting it right now, writing this out.

but it was this other feeling that i'll probably never get again, not from him, due to scarring.


it felt like someone being out there. for you. made for you. waiting for you. wanting you. pining like you are. at its cheesiest, it's like the song from an american tale. where they're wishing on the same stars. just thinking that maybe he was out there. wandering around. having random thoughts of me. or wondering if i was staring up at the same time he was. or wondering if he saw the same shooting star i did. or if he missed me. if the weather made him feel it, too.

there were so many aspects to it. so many feelings. i was full of heartbroken hope. because of ever. and because he was the perfect one, so far away. and so completely unavailable to me.


and i know that thinking about all of that into the winter, beyond the fall, is what helped me out of my house. a little life preserver. hoping that he'd be on the other end of that bitter line. or someone like him. but preferably him.

and now that it's all gone, blown clear out of the water, just a faulty memory, what can fall after this summer possibly feel like?

can it be something considered normal? where i don't lay awake obsessing sleeplessly cool nights for him? where i don't imagine myself running off to pour my heart out to him?

it's going to have to be different, because i don't think those things anymore. i don't feel them like i used to.

it's foreign to me. even thinking about it. i don't feel as crazy as i have at different times in my life thinking about it. like i was making myself crazy about it.

and maybe he'll always be my one that got away. but i never had him. and i won't. i won't say never will. but i don't think that i will in this lifetime. and what's funny is that i'm glad to have seen him with smarter eyes, because i don't even want it anymore.

there's this reflexive part of me that will probably drum him up sporadically. but everything else in me? not happening.


i usually think about the sun, too. it never lasts as long as coffee thoughts. maybe this tonight is the extent of it.

i look at his picture from time to time, to see how he looks. if his hair's getting longer. if he's smiling. if he looks happy, really happy. what he's wearing.

i looked at him last on his birthday. in the last week. maybe that is the single event that kicks off this backflush every year. it starts with him and ends with coffee. months of coffee.


i've now listened to the entire joanna live show. and i think that maybe i love her. funny, it's a bit like beer.

really wasn't a fan for a very long time. and never understood how people could say 'oh, it's an acquired taste', because that sounded like a crock of shit. but then i started drinking beer. and now i love beer. most likely, entirely too much.

it's kindof like that. i tried her on. and her voice doesn't sound so harsh after a while of listening to it. she settles into it through the course of the show, and plays with a band for most of the songs in the middle.

watch this, see if you agree:

http://www.youtube.com/user/peachplumpeariffic1#p/u/15/EzCuOP46kpM

if you hate it, suffer through it. get through the whole thing. i'm telling you. the end of this song. goddamn.

and then, watch marcel the shell with shoes on. lauren sent it to me the other day. and it is the cutest thing i've seen in a long time. and it's taking over the interwebs by storm. it's everywhere. and if you haven't watched it yet, here's the link. do it. right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TL3oaHKCko


two hours of writing time tonight.

pretty impressive.

i need a cigarette. or after that marathon of writing, maybe more than one.

and a beer.

yes, i'll have one of those now, too.

i like all of my acquired tastes in one sitting, please.