every song i sing once was currency

you know what is really satisfying? doing laundry. being graced with--or cursed with--living all but one of my years in my hometown, i spent most of my post-adolescence doing laundry at my mom's house. easy. simple. free. replete with interesting stain-removal products and plenty of good, expensive, brand-name detergent. plus i got the added bonus of raiding the fridge and catching up on family gossip every sunday when i went home.

then my mom moved out, and now my aunt is moving in, and now it's just sort of weird to go home. but that's not the point. the point is, that for the first time (with the exception of germany, but it's different when you pay in euros, plus the washing machines are way weirder over there, and i never really knew what the hell was happening to my clothes, i pretty much would just guess at what the dial was telling me and picked a different setting every time), i am washing my clothes in my apartment building.

i have a cute little basement-y area with two washers and two dryers, right next to our little storage closets (one for each apartment in the building). it makes me feel like i am living in a city. not to mention, how great do laundry rooms smell?! especially when they are large storage areas and the warmth has room to grow and spread into the corners like sweet icing on a cake. the smell of fresh sweet detergent and warm, heavy air. concrete floors and sudsy sinks. admit it. you love it too. i hope when i own a house i have a huge laundry room with vents everywhere that leak the scent into all the other rooms. maybe i'll just have one big room. mmm.

and now it's almost 3 am and time to curl into blankets and nestle myself to sleep. another nice thing about laundry is even if your day was boring, and unstimulating (read: 9 hours of work), you go to bed late and feeling wholesome, healthy, clean, warm, and productive. my mother would be proud.

omelets (omelettes?)

have had a lovely beginning to the new year, and came up with a few resolutions to boot. #1: find a new job. i've been saying i'm sick of my jobs for years. it's time i actually got off my ass and did something about it. the catalyst for this was not, in fact, the new year, but my first (!) firing ever. that's right. fired. i've had this job managing subscriptions for the not just for kids theater series at the michigan for about a year now, and i've hated it for about 11 and a half months of that. it's a boring, thoughtless job that requires me to come into work three times a week for about a half an hour at a time to check voicemail, mail out tickets, and, well, manage people's subsciptions to the series. (they can buy individual tickets to each show, or they can "subscribe", save money, and get a ticket to each of the shows plus a free movie or two. fabulous.) so i admit, i started slacking a bit, and a few people in the back office got a little tired of having to field furious parents (furious for absolutely no reason), which i can understand.

so the meeting of dread with tara re: the not just for kids program and my disregard for deadlines/upkeep of the voicemail, finally occurred on wednesday. i stepped into her office, she pulled out a chair, and said, "so...i don't think this is really working out." i agreed, we called it a day, she asked me for suggestions for somebody else to fill my tiny slacker shoes, and that was that. then i spent the rest of my day finishing up work, mailing out tickets, and following up with people. without clocking in. i didn't ask tara why she didn't want me to do it anymore. i don't really even care. i feel a bit guilty about letting it get to this point, and i did learn a valuable lesson--no matter how mismanaged a company is, that doesn't mean you should respond in kind. i love tara. she is the best boss in the world. she is exactly how i want to be, if i ever do anything similar to her. and it is not her fault that the not just for kids series sucks so hard. i'm just glad to be done with it. parents are so angry, all the time. sheesh.

the point of this post was to note that i spent a wonderful evening and morning in the presence of two quite wonderful people, in the home of one colette alexander, who is a fantastic cook and an adorable hostess. we stayed up all night, drank cheap wine, and sang along to comcast karaoke (who knew?) till 5 am. then we awoke around 10, and there were omelettes frying, farm bread toasting, and fresh squeezed orange juice pouring into three glasses. my toes barely touched the floor and i crunched down on my toast with fresh apricot jam. i felt like a kid and an adult. it was so great.

i think if i can have mornings like that, it won't matter if the rest of my day is spent behind a desk, or a concession stand, or a podium. i like feeling like it's worth it to wake up and taste the sweetness in my mouth.

dear society

it's me, carol. how have you been faring these past three months? i have been doing quite well, happy, in love, all that. i hear things haven't been going so well on your end. all those lonely people, where do they all come from, eh? wot wot and all that. pip pip. keep your chin up and just keep on keepin' on. those poor people will get the hint sooner or later.

i suppose that's about as far as i can take that without getting fairly cynical and bitter to the point of nonsense. so, i'll stop.

i'm sitting in the computer lab at eastern michigan university waiting for matt to come back and pick me up. i am so at ease in educational settings it's stupid. i really miss being in school for some reason. it's just so easy to have a narrow perspective in school. it isn't good to have a narrow perspective. but it's easy. i can figure it out. i can live in the educational society and excuse myself from civic duty because i have a paper to write. because someone is encouraging me to think about something, a school of thought, a piece of art, the environment, whatever. i get to suspend the reality everyone has to face and exist only for the deadline, the double-spaced formatting, and the primary source. that sounds so wonderful. the syllabus. imagine if there was a syllabus for every week fo your life. this week's work: go to grocery store, purchase five items, construct meal, consume. suggested reading: the new yorker, fiction, page 87. also recommended: the la times crossword puzzle, tuesday, thursday, sunday. pay attention as these vocabulary words will be on the test.

i suppose i could construct that for myself each week. but then maybe what i really want is a teacher, a professor, an advisor to watch over me and monitor my progress. "good work today," he'd say. "you really developed your sense of group involvement and your communication skills are getting better by the minute. but where is your work on culinary arts and domestic finances? did you think i wouldn't notice? keeping up with that is critical to your success! you can do this! apply yourself!" etc. etc. i need an encourager. i need a coach. i mean am i really supposed to be my own? is that how this works? are my friends supposed to step in? if that's the case, i have been droppping the ball on them. a big, leaden ball of flakiness. plop. right on their toes.

if you read this for updates on my life (hi jeff), here we go. i have been offered a part-time teaching position at rudolf steiner high school, teaching theater during the day. i already am the assistant director of the drama program, but that's just after school. we just finished up the fall play and it was lovely. hilarious. but there's no work between the end of that one and the beginning of the next one, which is in april. so this new position would mean more money, more consistently. i said, hell yes. but they still have to look into their budget. welcome to being a teacher, i guess. in other news, or related news i guess, emerson also offered me a position teaching a third trimester elective in the spring. march-june. i can pick the topic. it just has to attract at least ten kids. i thought of doing a shakespeare comedy class--we could talk about his identity, how he's been translated into modern culture, and maybe perform something at the end. meh? i don't know how to teach, that's the funny part. i have no credentials at all save three years of experience. oh and they want me to teach a week-long camp in the summer. haha. awesome. do i wear a big sign that says, "will work for no money, love kids, please exploit my university education"? what the hell am i doing? i mean, don't get me wrong, maybe this is what i want to do. i do love kids and i will work for no money. but you know? i would really just like to not be stuck in michigan anymore. i would like to travel, you know, while i'm still *young* and all that.

and also, did i mention i'm a rock star? i've been playing more music in the past three months than probably ever before in my life. i love it. i love listening to my friends play. i love getting mistaken for someone who knows what she's doing. it's fun. it's impractical. and if i was a teacher, i probably wouldn't do it. going to shows, staying out late, while budgeting time and money? and not drinking? hmm. (i have cut wayyyy back, just so you know.) but i feel like i couldn't ever drink at all if i was a teacher. teachers are wholesome, practical, mom-like entities who plan ahead and expect your best and never get bored and are always enthusiastic and coming up with fun ways to show you the world. am i that? me? the girl who wears paperthin dresses over ripped jeans and doesn't shower often and sleeps in dirty beds and forgets to eat? the girl who at one point would drink twelve beers and three shots and then go to the bar? the girl who can't seem to remember to pay her bills on time or stop needing her mother's money or pick up any clothes off of her floor?

am i disgusting? probably. but to tell you the truth, i haven't been this happy in a long time. and it's not necessarily that i was so unhappy before. but it's a new kind of happiness, a contentedness. i'm relaxed in my life. i enjoy the challenges being thrown at me and i like that i have to think about them so much. i don't think my life needs to change right now. i don't need to get back into the game, go back to school, launch my career, right now. i think it will be okay to take things slow, take a few part time jobs, see how i like it. save money. plan a trip next year. smoothly, softly, make my life the way i want it. what i want will change, it changes all the time. but if i can make myself happy now? why wouldn't i?

my dad once said, the key to raising a perfect garden isn't taking care of the plants, it's taking care of the soil. perfect your environment and everything will thrive. so if i just focus on the big picture, i.e. my own satisfaction and happiness, even my cleanliness will improve eventually. when i want it to. i'm not perfect but i feel great. isn't that what we all should be striving for?

matt's here, finally. i leave you with a few upcoming events you should all know about:

thursday, december 8: dabenport, dreamland theater, 8 pm, ypsilanti.

friday, december 9: Margaret Elizabeth Burns Gray turns 15. Peter Louis Woiwode turns 23. descent of the holy ghost church turns 9 months old and plays at the lagerhouse at 9 pm. detroit.

saturday, december 10: pete's birthday potluck, complete with rummy, yummy, spiced cider, amaretto hot chocolate, and cutting out snowflakes, at 439 Third Street Apt. 7. 7 pm.
also, matt jones plays a solo set at the ugly mug cafe at 8 pm. if you aren't going to pete's birthday party you should really go see matt. he's unveiling a few new ones.

love peace warmth to you all.

somnambulatoritizationality

the descent show last night was....really cool. the lagerhouse is this DIVE bar in corktown (that's detroit: michigan ave and trumbull, for all you outoftowners) and we played second on a bill with great lakes swimmers and akron/family. the former sounded like elliot smith talking in his sleep and the latter sounded like clap your hands say yeah on acid. those are sort of compliments. i liked about 3/4 of what i heard of both. in fact the same goes for us. we were pretty good. 75% fucking awesome. 25% off key, offbeat, and generally just off. but overall, we were pretty tight. i finally FINALLY finally got a mic! it's actually a bottle cap with a wire coming out of it, electrical taped under my fingerboard, but i was loud and people heard me! people even said they wished i was louder. i think i'm doing all right by this band. i love playing. it still felt soooo much just like a performance. no rock and roll mythos left in me, i fear. and i definitely hit some wrong notes. but i'm learning that you can't get hung up on that. i mean i take it seriously. trust me, i take it really seriously. but enough people i trust and admire have told me i sound better when i just play, balls out, without worrying so much about specific missed notes, that i've started to actually believe them. i barely even get nervous anymore. is that a bad sign? i think it comes from hanging out with matt so much.

by the way, i have a story to tell you. it's a long one and it's not pretty. it's sort of blown over by now, so it's not so immediate. i posted a blog about it for approximately 15 minutes and then decided i didn't want to risk certain people googling themselves and finding it. so i deleted it. but i emailed it to myself. so if you want it, let me know.

i don't know why i titled this blog the way i did. i am so dirty right now. i haven't bathed, shaved, or brushed my teeth in at least three days. i have no clean clothes left. my closet, pete commented this morning, looks like it vomited all over my room. there are fruit flies that will not leave my dresser alone for some reason. i scrubbed the damn thing with bleach and they won't leave! maybe they're confused? anyway, i'm going to take a shower and go to work. love to you all.

only have enough gas left for the beer can to the bowl. what can you do but go on?

...hmm?

While wasting time this morning, I found this gem on gradschools.com, for Southern Utah University:

"The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in arts administration seeks to provide a practical interdisciplinary education that develops well-rounded generalists."

Well-rounded generalists, eh? That sounds great. But why bother giving the degree a title? I mean isn't that too specific? We don't want to get all nitpicky. I think "Master of Whatever" would be appropriate. Maybe "Master of Things, Like, You Know, Stuff". God knows we have enough specialists in this world without going and giving them a degree that might actually help them hone a certain skill or two. Expert, schmexpert.

11 days deep, 4 years later, 2 years 8 months 8 days and counting

yeah, it's going well. no, i haven't faltered. yes, i feel a lot healthier. no, the football game didn't depress me enough to make me drink. the only times i've come close have been times when i've been cooking. i made a delicious fresh tomato sauce the other night and all i wanted was a glass of red wine to go with it, but i steeled myself. not that it would really be that big of a deal to have one glass of red wine with dinner. but i am sticking to my guns on this one. only three more days to go. even then i'm definitely gonna cool it.

been listening to way too much folk music lately. i've been introduced to an amazing group of people over the past month. so many fantastic musicians and gigs and hearts. it's sort of funny that i never knew these people existed before. but now they are all i want out of this town. check out how cool brandon is, for example. in my opinion he is singlehandedly reviving good local music.

descent played at arbourfest. that was fun. i actually got heard by most of the audience, and while our reception was lukewarm at best, afterwards everyone was quite complimentary. it is lovely to play for people who really love music, and wonderful-er to play WITH people who love music. you know, who play just for the sake of playing. luckily there's one of those in my band. it makes it all worthwhile.

by the way--and maybe this should have been the subject--where were you four years ago?

i woke up around noon to pat calling me, saying he was coming home from work, saying there'd been a horrible accident in new york city and his office had shut down for the day. i didn't believe him. ten minutes later i had the tv turned on and was watching in utter shock as the buildings around the towers collapsed and people ran screaming for their lives. i called my father and made sure his family in new york was all right. everyone was fine but they still hadn't heard from my cousin, carolyn, who lived blocks away from the towers. (later that day we received word that her building was almost untouched.) in the days to come we'd all witness these scenes, over and over, in photographs, narratives, and live reports. there is no way i can describe the utter sorrow i felt for, well, humanity. i felt sorry for the innocent people who had died, i felt sorry for the people who had flown the planes, who had felt like this was the only way to get their point across. i wept for them all. it was so surreal to be walking through ann arbor those days and see incoming freshmen look around at the campus as if these buildings were either the only thing anchoring them. a few looked as though they expected everything to collapse in seconds. some were waiting for the punchline to a horrible joke. and eventually a lot of that grief turned to anger at what happened to our country, and is still happening. historians will look back and say the reaction to that event shaped the future of american politics for decades. bush has been able to get so many of his idiotic ideas across by taking advantage of a country void of a asinine sense of security. at the time, however, i was relatively unaffected by all of that. at the time, i didn't know what i believed, and i didn't really know what it meant to suffer the way so many were suffering. 17 days later, my father was hit by two seizures as suddenly as the Boeing 747s hit those towers, and everything that i felt for NYC was eclipsed by my grief for him. i will always wonder how my life would be different, as i'm sure everyone in new york, let alone the country, wonders. pretty much all i feel now about both tragedies is a hollow sense of loss, and the belief that that's just a part of life. i don't mean to sound callous. but i'd rather focus on the lives that are still being lost--right now--domestically and abroad--because of the two huge demons of war and disease. what are we doing, right now, that is empowering people to bring peace into others' lives? how can we do it better? that's what i think about today. that's what i think about every day.

autumn is almost here and it brings with it a solemn sense of remembrance. this year is going to be different. there is a whole new kind of sadness in store, with my mom and margaret being gone and all. but i feel incredibly supported and buoyed by mle, pete, and everyone else i know. if you're reading this, man, you should know...that i thank you.

three days and counting

ok. so some of you who know me well know that i frequent ann arbor bars. and some of you who know me better know that i can drink many people under the figurative table. i like drinking. i like drinking beer. i don't do it out of any special motivation to get totally blown out of my mind, i don't like to be so far gone i can't feel my legs, but i like the high and the freedom from social awkwardness i get when i'm drunk. things just...get easier. and naturally this is quite unhealthy, and there are many other ways to not feel so socially awkward (for example, hang out with people who don't suck), but drinking gets there faster. it cuts out all the bullshit and you can just start having a good time almost immediately. plus, and here's where it gets heavy, sometimes i get a little lonely, and sitting at home by myself doesn't quite cut it. sitting at a bar, where there are people, with a good book and a good beer, is seriously one of my favorite things to do. lots of people think i am nuts because i love to do this. but really, the scariest, most lonely feeling is the one you get when no one is watching you. (someone once told me that life was like a movie, only the thing you had to realize is that nobody is watching it but you. you can't wait for someone to applaud or nudge someone else and say, "i loved that part." no one is watching but you. in a way this can be comforting, in that you really just need to make yourself happy in order to feel fulfilled. it's your life, and no one can really criticize you for how you choose to live it, because it's your damn movie. but it is just so nice when you do have people watching, isn't it?) so i sit at the bar and let the bartender bring me what i want to drink, and i smoke cigarettes and enjoy the hell out of the evening.

here's my big announcement, though. i'm trying to not drink so much. lately it's been pretty ridiculous. i'm tired of waking up with a hangover all the time. i'm tired of passing out on couches. i'm tired of not remembering what i did the night before. i'm tired of the people i drink with. i'm just tired. tired of running away from settling the score. i just need some time off. i need a vacation from my habits. i need new habits. i want some new friends. i want to make up with old friends.

what does all this mean?

carol catherine is pulling herself onto the sobriety train and riding the freight car to freedom. freedom is 11 days down the road. we've been riding for three days now and we're starting to get restless. when you're sleeping on a gunnysack and pulling on a corncob pipe, the days get stretched out like the wichitaw skyline.

all right enough of that. yeah, so i'm quitting drinking for two weeks starting september first. i want to know what it is like to really be sober for two weeks. so that's now three days down and counting. so...if you want to be my sober buddy, let me know.

did i mention i love you?