I Wanted to Be Hollow

I wanted to be as hollow as a thrown out bottle

So that you could pour yourself in

Filling my glass walls to the brim 

Like a child collecting sand in a jar

All your small grains and fragments of stars.

I wanted to be as light as a bird

So that I could feel the wind and the water moving through me

Whistling and singing in my empty space

Ruffling my feathers as blue as morning

And rocking me forward and back as I nestled down in the bushes to sleep.

I wanted to be shiny and new as a clean penny

So that you would see me glistening on the sidewalk someplace

And pick me up

Examine me in the palm of your hand

Check for a date

Slip me into your pocket for good luck and I could be with you the rest of the day.

But instead I feel only heavy

Wet all the way down to my soul

And laden with sorrow

My confusing temperament

My melancholic disposition

My need for your unwavering attention

Your undying devotion 

Leaves dark circles below my eyes that I carry all day long

It tangles my hair

It soils my hands

And I feel neither hollow, nor light, nor clean or free or suited for anything.

I drink the ink from my own pen and turn in circles in bed

Listening to the birds and the wind and clear night sky

Outside my window 

All mocking me. 

Understanding in a Rainstorm

"I want to know what it feels like to be understood." She said, maybe only to herself, as his steady hands held the wheel and rain washed down the windshield in thick rivers of falling water.

She liked the rain.

The way all the colors outside looked deeper and richer with the violent sun turned down to a muted grey, and the sky turning from heather to charcoal to black.

The thunder and the lightning excited her.

Woke up her insides and made her want to talk and kiss and get lost in a reckless abandon with someone who was crazy about her.

Who would follow her anywhere, even on her restless thunder driven adventure, just to be close to her and her ever turning sea.

"You don't think I understand you?" He asked innocently, as if the answer wouldn't bother him, but she knew him well enough to know that her statement alone had already bothered him.

Anything she said now wouldn't make a difference.

She could reassure him that she knew he did, but then have to explain why she would say she wanted to know what it was like to feel understood, as if no one did, and no one must include him because he was someone.

Or she could say that sometimes she felt like maybe he didn't, and he would pretend he understood, and say something about how people are hard to understand, but she would know it made him feel sensitive

and a little hurt

because he would go on to tell her how he tried to understand her

how he cared

how he did his best.

But she knew enough by now to know that understanding a person has nothing to do with good intentions

or love

or how hard you try.

It seemed to her that when you understand someone completely, it comes naturally. 

Like it's a gift you have, and have always had, and were waiting to meet that person so you could finally use it.

Everyone understands someone, she thought.

Some people understand a lot of other people.

But you can't make yourself understand a person.

You can know them.

You can accept them.

You can give them your love and your kindness and your unwavering devoted acceptance all you wanted.

That's what friends do when they love their friend but don't quite get them

That's what parents do when their child turns out to be something other than what they planned for.

But no matter how much you learn, or what you accept, or how much you love, 

Understanding of another complex and intricate human being either exists, or it does not.

She felt lonely as she sat beside him wondering what to say.

She knew no matter what her answer was it would come out all wrong, and she would never be able to take this moment back.

She settled further back in her seat and watched the rain

Feeling the cold seep inside her chest as she thought to herself that there was one undeniable fact in this world:

Alone is, and always will be, the difference between being accepted and being understood.

Flowers

If you unbuttoned my shirt

One button at a time

And looked inside

With quiet eyes

You would see

The flowers blooming beneath the cotton

Their blossoms like pale faces

White as the moon

Straining upward

Pulling against my bones with vines and roots

Growing beneath the heat and light of your gaze

Flourishing in the warmth and consistency 

Of your love for only me

You would see how they grow in a pattern that spells your name

And you could pluck their petals from my collar all day long

Until you have ascertained without any doubt

That I love you

As simply and as truly as I can.

Meet Me

Meet me at the edge of the sea

Where the water's frayed edges meet the shore in white sheets

And I will find you there.

You will look beautiful against the backdrop of a charcoal sky and rolling clouds

With the ocean lost in it's perpetual dance with land behind you.

I will collect wild things in my hair

And smell like the wind.

You will look at me with your steady gaze and know my name

Because I am part of you

We have always been together, even when we were apart.

Even before we met when our names were still foreign to each other and there was nothing but a possible future between us.

I met you in my sleep

I knew you in my dreams

And when I saw you in the flesh for the first time

When you reached your hand out and took mine

The eyes of my soul snapped open and my heart exhaled softly and whispered

"Oh, there you are. Of course it's you. I know exactly who you are."

And all it has been capable of doing since, is loving you.

Young

My earliest memory of my father is of him working on a car. 

I am 4, and we are living in Northern California, in a house with a garage and hard wood floors, small blue flowers on the kitchen wall paper, and one of the walls in the living room made entirely of those big glass bricks that look like huge jewels all stacked up.  

I am running through the house, listening to the way my new shoes click on the wood floors, and I am looking for my mother. 

I know that because I have that frantic tightness in my chest that I get when I can’t find someone, and when I was little it was always my mother that I couldn’t find. 

I fling open the door to the garage, hoping she’ll be out there, and there is my father, bent over the front grill of some car with the hood up, examining it’s insides like a surgeon looking at a patient on his operating table. 

Tools spread out all over the floor and one arm lost up to the elbow inside the car’s guts. 

He looks back at me, smiles and says “Hi.” 

One word. Simple. 

The way my father always greets little kids that surprise him. 

Calmly and sweetly, as if he was expecting them.

 I panic because he’s not my mother and shut the door without saying anything, but I have to stretch to reach the handle again because I’m four and too little for everything. 

The smell of motor oil wafts into the house in a puffy cloud when I close the door, and I start crying.  

I Love You Like

I love you like I love the beat of my own heart

And being able to breathe.

I love you like I love a good book

And white wine

And poetry at bedtime

I love you like I love clean blankets

And new socks

And the rain

I love you like I love watching my children sleep

And black bears

And the smell of cold

I love you like I loved my dragon shaped birthday cake when I was 8

I love you like I love a million things

But more

And stronger

And better

And forever

Because it's you.

Then....

I remember when I used to fall in love with anything.
A boy, a friend, a poem, a song
The singers in bands I listened to, people I saw in the cars next to mine at stop lights.
I fell in love with the sky, the dawn, the night and the trees.
I fell in love with empty roads, piles of books, blue eyes and the moon.
I fell in love with the feeling of falling in love
The way too much sleep makes you tired.
And love became tired of me.
It started to bruise me,
Scraping my knees as I crawled after it,
Breaking my ribs as it reached in to retrieve my heart once more,
Tangling my hair with it's restless hands and hot whispers
Then soothing me
Cleaning the wounds that it created
Ringing me out and wiping my face
As if to say "There now. I might have hurt you, but I also made you feel better in the end. I'm not the monster here."

In the end I began fleeing from love,
The moment I saw it approaching.

Date a Girl Who Reads

Date a Girl Who Reads by Rosemarie Urquico

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has

problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she

wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her

bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out

when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a

second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when

they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug,

the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the

 author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. 

Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship.

Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound

intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, and for

anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton,

Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the

difference between books and reality but by God, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her

favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other

things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who

understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin

again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like

characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her

chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she

will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while,

they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick.

Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest

yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She

will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the

winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow

off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful

life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then

you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

Remembering to Forget

It was then, 

As her face swam toward his in the darkness of the car's interior

That he began to lose track of the meaning of his own thoughts

They all melted together into a mess of color and abstract shape like ruined crayons

And her lips met his without warning.

He kissed back timidly

Unsure what to do with his lips, his hands, the silence swimming around them

Until all the overwhelming thoughts and feelings uncertainty and fear were too heavy

So he just put them down.

He unloaded the heavy weight of consciousness and let his hands drift up to her hair as if they were weightless

Filled with Helium.

He drifted into her and thought of nothing

Allowing himself for the first time in months years

To exist in only one moment in time

With one person

And only one sensation:

Her lips on his

And then night rising up to meet them.

Letting the Love Barrier Down, or Cutting the Bullshit

I read something today that made me think.

I kind of hate that.

You are doing perfectly fine, thinking your life is great and you don't need to change or do a Goddamn thing, then all of a sudden you read something, and you think

Shit.

Totally happened to me, just now. 

I read a blog written by some random person I have never met, while I browsing different blogs, because I am lame and I stay up late browsing blogs.

Deal with it.

The blog post was about "Letting down the love barrier" and really being honest with your partner.

At first I thought "Holy shit that sounds dumb. I mean, how corny is that? Letting down the love barrier. Psssht."

And then I read the post.

And holy shit. It brought fucking tears to my eyes.

{Nobody makes me cry my own tears. Nobody}

The whole post was about how when we love someone intimately, we don't always show them our complete selves, the way we would to our best friend or certain family members. 

We don't want them to stop loving us, and intimate, relationshipy type love always seems more fragile than the love we feel for our best friends, so we try to appear more perfect in order to maintain it.

With our best friends, we fear no rejection. We know that they will be our friends no matter what, and we tell them everything. All our secrets, all our fears, all our insecurities, everything. 

Who do you call when you're flipping out about something stupid, or crying for no reason, or just having a really shit day and need a little love?

Your best friend.

Because you can say to them "Oh my fucking God, everything has gone wrong today this week, and I am such a bad mood, and I'm hungry, and tired, and I just need you to tell me I'm awesome and I can do this before I snap and straight up cap a bitch."

Ok, maybe y'all don't say it like that, but I do, because I'm a shade or two more crazy than the average bear.

But you know what I mean. 

You call them, you spill your ugly crazy guts, and you know they will say exactly what you need to hear. They might laugh at how silly you're being, or give you a little shit later for being such a huge vagina, but they will love you.

They won't judge you.

They won't break up with you.

They won't hang up and think "Wow. That chick is damaged goods. She's obviously a hot mess of crazy and I better keep my finger prints off that trainwreck" and then mysteriously stop returning your calls. 

That is what I want in a partner.

I want a best friend.

I want someone who I can show everything to, who I can allow to know me completely, someone that I can trust with my real, true and honest and imperfect self. 

To do that, this other blogger says, you have to let down the "love barrier"

You have to stop seeing them as your lover, this person who you must impress and woo and seduce constantly, and see them as your life partner.

Yes, it is still important to give a shit, y'all I am NOT sayin this is license to stop shaving your legs, or doing the little things to keep the romance and spice alive in your relationships.

I'm saying, that in the interest of really knowing each other, you have to put down the pretenses and the romance, and see them as your life partner.

Your best friend.

The person you have decided to embark on forever with, and understand that if that forever is really meant to be, or has any hope of lasting, it has to be built on trust.

Trust that you can be your true and real and imperfect self

Trust that you can really tell them anything, even the shit you normally only tell your best friend

You have to communicate your needs, your fears, your hopes, dreams and secrets as honestly and openly as possible,

And TRUST that they are going to respond with love, understanding and acceptance. 

That they will be tender and gentle with your true self, and love you stronger and harder at the end of the day because they know and understand you better.

In other words, cut the bullshit, and let your freak flag fly.

Share.

Share from the deepest, darkest, most bottomest part of yourself, because y'all, love that does not reach every corner and crevice of you, even the dark and scary ones, just aint a love worth living.

This life is too damn short for anything less than complete and honest love.

There are so many mediocre things in the world, your love shouldn't be one of them.

It should be bare, honest, real, complete, vulnerable, and passionate.

That is what I want.

And if that means letting someone see my insides, all naked and under bright lights, then so be it.

Because I am not spending time on anything less.

I am impulsive, irrational, emotional and insecure. I doubt myself. I get anxiety when I buy people gifts because I think they might hate them. I can be really clingy, possessive and jealous. Sometimes I want someones FULL attention, RIGHT THEN. And I feel hurt if I can't have it. Sometimes I miss someone terribly, right after I talk to them or see them, and I want them to miss me just as much RIGHT THEN, and if they don't I get scared that it means I am too easy to live without.

The list goes on and on.

And I have become over the years, a pro at downplaying, apologizing for, and downright hiding these things about me, for fear that they won't be loved and accepted. That they won't be good enough.

But I was reminded tonight that they are a part of me. 

The whole me.

And I will never know if anyone is capable of loving them, if I never show them to the people I love.

So I am doing just that.

I am "letting the love barrier down" or cutting the bullshit, and opening up to my dearest, as if I were talking to my best friend. 

And trying to have faith and trust that I will be received with love and kindness, and a stronger bond that has the chance to last a lifetime.

Restless Thoughts on Thursday Morning

I worry endlessly that you will tire of me.

That all my complexities, eccentricities and habits will wear on you with time

And you will retreat even further away.

I worry that even the smallest things will begin to bother you with time.

The freckles above my knee

The way my nose crinkles when I laugh

The smell of my hair

The sound of my voice

And I will feel you pulling slowly away

The way people do when they no longer feel at home beside someone

When resentment takes the place of constant desire and adoration

When convenience and complacency overtake compassion and tenderness.

And I will be left there

Not knowing what I did wrong, 

Just knowing simply

That you're gone.

The Taste of You

I remember the way the alcohol on your lips burned mine

And how your leather coat smelled like the cold.

I remember feeling nervous and excited around you

Like a kid holding a firework for the first time

Something explosive and beautiful that lights up the night sky

And makes your stomach feel like you're sinking to the bottom of the sea.

I remember laying in bed and looking at my hands

Useless without you there to explore

You came and you went so easily then

It was always me waiting for you to come back.

I planned our future

Daydreamed impossible things

Roadtrips with the windows down

Dinner together in a house full of kids

Listening to you talk about your day while I washed dishes.

But you never stuck around for long and when you'd leave

There was a frantic bird in my chest that wanted to follow you

That wanted to be still in the passenger seat of your dark car

Going anywhere.

I wish it wasn't so easy to live without me.

A Conversation in Dreaming

"Are you always this charming?"

"Are you always this skeptical?"

"Only of you."

"And what have I done to earn this privilege?"

"You always leave."

"I'm here now."

"So you say. This might not even be real. I could be dreaming."

"I could pinch you."

"That's a very stereotypical way to talk about dreams."

"If so, you're wasting our reality."

"What else should I do with a happiness so temporary? So fleeting and inconstant? Celebrate it?"

"Enjoy it."

"But I could wake up any moment. You could be gone. Maybe not even a memory."

"Would it matter to you?"

"Do you want it to?"

"Yes."

"Then...stay asleep."

Would You Get Off the Plane for Me?

Have you ever heard the expression "Getting off the plane for someone"? 

Maybe not, probably because I'm pretty sure I made it up. 

Have you ever seen the movie Garden State?

(If you haven't you need to. Right now)

Anyway, Garden State is an amazing, sad, sweet movie about finding your real self, and falling in love. At the end (spoiler alert, sorry) Zach Braff tells Natalie Portman that he has to go back home to California, from New Jersey where he met her, while he was visiting his hometown for his mother's funeral.. (Weird, I know, try to stay with me). While he had been home, they'd fallen in love. She was understandably upset, and didn't want him to go, but he was convinced he had to. He had issues, and felt like the best way to work them out was on his own. He was determined to go back to California, so he leaves poor Natalie Portman alone in the airport, ugly crying her eyes out, and he gets on the plane.

As he's sitting there, he realizes, he's leaving behind the only person who he's ever really loved, the only person who's ever made him feel alive and real, and who understood him. 

And what does Mr. Braff do?

He gets off the plane.

He goes running through the airport.

He finds Natalie, ugly crying in a phone booth, and he tells her he loves her, and she's all he wants. 

And they kiss. 

And y'all, it is magical. I mean, brings tears to your eyes, warms your heart and makes you hate your life because nothing that beautiful and dramatic has ever happened to you, magical. 

The point of all of this, is that when I first saw this movie, I totally hated myself and my life because I had never experienced that kind of love and devotion. No one had ever "gotten off the plane for me" and I was left thinking that men just don't do those things. That NOBODY gets off the plane for you, and it was more of that stupid Hollywood romance bullshit, and I was crying over an imaginary idea. 

And sure, maybe in some ways, it is over sensationalized Hollywood bullshit, but in some ways, it's not. It's exactly what everyone deserves. Not just girls, guys too. 

Everyone deserves someone who would get off the proverbial plane for them.

Someone who loves them enough to choose them over what they thought they wanted. 

To stand up, and put their love and their relationship first. 

Relationships don't survive just because two people love each other.

They survive the little stuff, the day to day stuff, and the occasional not so little stuff, because one of the two people in the relationship will choose to put love first, put down whatever they were stupidly clinging to, and "get off the plane" for the sake of the relationship. 

If no one ever did that, simply loving someone wouldn't be enough. 

And the relationship that love made, would wither and die.

If you're not with the person who would get off the plane for you, no matter what you're telling yourself, or how good things might seem, they're not your answer.

62 Things I Want to do With You

1. Build a fort and watch movies in it.
2. Stay in bed for an entire day.
3. Wear fake mustaches to a party and give no explanation as to why.
4. Take a road trip out of state.
5. Go camping.
6. Jump off a cliff into a lake/river/the ocean/some large body of water, holding hands.
7. Go photoboothing.
8. Get up really early to drink coffee and go yard saleing 
9. Spend a week at sea.
10. Leave the country.
11. Go dancing at a country western bar.
12. Take a hot air balloon ride.
13. Ride a motorcycle out to the middle of nowhere and have a picnic.
14. Have a black and white movie marathon.
15. Write handwritten letters to our grandchildren.
16. Build something.
17. Make a cheesy scrapbook of our life together.
18. Learn a language together....or try to at least.
19. Write each other notes on the bathroom mirror in magic marker.
20. Go people watching and make up a life story for the people we see.
21. Crash a wedding.
22. Make boozy hot chocolate and walk around to look at Christmas lights.
23. Carve a pumpkin.
24. Get dressed up and slow dance in the living room.
25. Drive separately to the same place, pretend we don't know each other and try to pick each other up.
26. See a play.
27. Do a scavenger hunt.
28. Take a last minute weekend trip somewhere.
29. Watch each other's favorite movies, and read each other's favorite books.
30. Ditch work for a day to go bowling.
31. Wrestle.
32. Make each other handmade birthday cards.
33. Play elaborate practical jokes on each other.
34. Read to each other before bed.
35. Throw a dinner party.
36. Take way too many pictures.
37. Babysit someone else's baby for a day.
38. Go to Mardis Gras in New Orleans. 
39. Tour a vineyard.
40. Buy tickets to a bad movie, and kiss through the entire thing.
41. Bury a time capsule. 
42. Get our palms read.
43. Make a huge Thanksgiving dinner for both our families.
44. Spend Christmas or New Years in a place that snows.
45. Teach me how to do something you're good at.
46. Research our family histories.
47. Make awkward family Christmas cards and send them to everyone we know.
48. Draw each other's portraits. 
49. Invent our own way of communicating with each other using hand and eye signals.
50. See a baseball game during the day. Eat nachos, drink beer, and cheer for the away team.
51. Do a karaoke duet in a bar.
52. Spend a weekend in a cabin with no electricity or cell phone signal.
53. Ride jet skis 
54. Go para-sailing.
55. Go scuba diving.
56. Test drive a car we could never afford.
57. Take a bicycle tour in a place we've never been.
58. Make fudge. 
59. Have a pillow fight.
60. Run errands together in our pajamas.
61. Carve our names into a tree.
62.  Love each other. For the rest of our lives. 

Playing with Fire

There's a famous writer, who's dead now, who's name I can't remember,

Who made his fiance read his journals from the last several years before she married him

So that she wouldn't have any misconceptions about the demon he really was

Or the demon he saw himself to be anyway.

Sometimes I think I shouldn't be with anyone.

I am too reckless, too careless, too impulsive and selfish

To treat anyone fairly.

Sometimes I think that there are too many things about me

That it would be unfair to ask another person to accept.

Like the fact that I will want all of their attention at a moment's notice,

And I will want to be left completely alone just as quickly.

But while I am being left alone, I want to be sorely missed.

Like the fact that no matter how happy I am with them, 

There are days when I will look out the window and wonder what other adventures I might be missing.

Not necessarily by loving them and not someone else,

But by staying in one place with them

And not being wholly unattached. 

Like the fact that my heart will always crave the world's most unbelievable adventure.

The fact that I will sometimes lay awake at night and feel alone beside them,

No matter how much they love me.

The fact that I will want all the love and devotion and desire they are capable of giving,

Even though I will sometimes run hot and cold.

The fact that in order to keep me, they must possess me completely

And never stop surprising me.

How can I fairly expect such wonders from another person?

Another mere human. especially when I know I am not capable of giving anything even slightly comparable in return?

When I know that I will be average.

I will be wounded.

Even boring.

But they must never stop amazing me, loving me, wanting me, needing me, chasing me, and preventing me from taking flight and escaping.

How can I tell someone that I want to be possessed, and I want to escape too,

Just to be hunted down and captured once again,

Over and over,

For the rest of my life?

Sometimes I think I should just be alone.

Some Pee Your Pants Cards

Nothing makes me happier than finding new and more interesting shit on the internet to laugh at. 

But, even when you follow 5 or 6 funny blogs, and regularly troll sites like XKCD, The Oatmeal and The Onion, surprisingly you can still run out of funny shit to read. 

This is clearly unacceptable.

Fearful of even one single day passing without me spitting out my coffee and laughing until I cried, I furiously searched the internets looking for something even remotely passable.

You'd be surprised how amazingly unfunny the majority of people are.

And then I found this: Someecards

And my life was forever changed.

This website is a huge compilation of the world's absolute funniest eCards in the history of ever.

Fuck those boring old eCards that have the same lame as fuck designs of things like kittens and confetti, and say bullshit things like "Happy Birthday". 

There is now a new way to not only say "Happy Birthday" but also show a little of your personality, and thoroughly disturb someone, all at the same time. 

And isn't that the point, really?

Why say "Happy Birthday!" When you can say:

Instead.

And there are cards for all kinds of occasions, like:

Gettin your flirt on

Or, apologizing

And Anniversaries:

These cards are pretty, hilarious, and cover just about everything you should ever need to say to someone.

You can even make your own!

I made one, but it's just creepy enough that I'm not going to share it here, lest I risk violating my parole.

Happy Friday and happy eCarding!

The Missing Piece

I want you to read me the paper while I drink coffee in our bed and resist getting up for the day

I want to sit on the back porch and drink white wine with you when you come home from work

I want the simple comfort of our daily life

Captured in soft phrases like 

"What would you like for dinner" or "Did you remember to wash my blue shirt?"

I want to abandon all of our responsibilities on a Sunday afternoon

And drive away with you.

I want to care for you when your sick

I want to cook bread and soup and sings songs to our children

Say prayers for each other's keep

And never stop planning our next adventure.

There was a time when I wanted everything

I wanted all the freedom and possibility in the world

I wanted to never be tied to one person.

But in my one desire to know you,

All else disappeared

And now all I want is a life less ordinary

With you.

Hello September

Hello September, oh how I've missed you...

Today is September 7th, which means I have just completed my official first week of September. 

I love September. 

I know that it's not technically the first day of Fall until the 23rd, but I am always happy as hell when this month starts. 

Why?

Because Summer tries to kill me.

Laugh all you will, but it does. 

I live in Arizona, but I still want to say that I like Summer. 

Yeah, I know, crazy, right?

But I do. 

I love the beginning of Summer, when you can feel Spring giving way to another season, and everything is bright and fresh, and you know you have 3 months of bathing suits, barbecues, sun screen and vacations ahead of you.

But in Arizona, you also have searing heat.

And if you're me, this is also when everything in your life always falls spectacularly to shit.

Call it fate, call it the turning of the tides, call it my own self fulfilling prophecy, whatever , all I know is that Summertime is always when anything that could go wrong in my life will go wrong. 

If I have a boyfriend, we'll break up, if I have a job I'll lose it, if I have a car it will break down and cost too much to fix, someone will die, etc., etc.. etc. 

And I don't mean just one of these things will happen, I mean ALL of these things that could possibly happen, will happen. 

It's not awesome.

But Fall.

Oh, Fall, my sweet lover.

Fall never hurts me. Fall is always the beginning of things turning around and getting better.

Everything starts to calm down, level out, and put themselves back together.

And not to mention ever since I was a little kid, I have always loved all the Fall decorations in stores and on houses, and the amazing Fall foods like Pumpkin....anything, and cinnamon on everything.

Fall seems homey to me.

Cozy and sweet, like a real family.

Thick sweaters and changing leaves, pumpkins and scarecrows and Thanksgiving. 

I just love all of it.

And of course, Fall gives way to Winter, which is even better.

So this year, as Fall quickly approaches, I will share with you all the things I am looking forward to about this season this year:

Pumpkin coffee from Starbucks

Making the kids pumpkin french toast for breakfast

Halloween

Sedona

Cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my little modge podge family

My love

Lainie's birthday

Sweaters

Walks in the crisp Fall night air

Holding hands

Cuddling in the cold

The start of my New Year.

Mad Men

"What are you the most afraid of?" He asked softly

As he pulled the blanket off just enough of her thigh so he could feel his breath catch in his throat

While he stroked the soft pale skin

Almost glowing in the moonlight

She was quiet for a while

Watching his fingertips trace circles just above her knee

Playing like the fluttering wings of hummingbirds against her leg

The blue light from the T.V. flickered and she knew she'd have to give him some answer.

Shrugging before she spoke, discrediting whatever she was going to say before she said it

She told him "Of things not working out."

He pulled her head down onto his chest and stroked her hair

And she knew she had lied.

Things not working out was hardly the worst of her fears.

It was the silence, the complacency, the boredom and the iciness that always came before the leaving

That scared her most.

The venomous words that could part the tender lips of someone who once loved you

The way their soft hands that once held you could turn hard

The way their blue eyes that once adored you could hold no warmth or sense of home.

The terrible isolation that comes with not being loved anymore.

Instead of correcting herself and telling him this, she kissed his chest and pulled the blanket up under her chin.

Hoping for the best.

All You Need to Know Is...

There is only one thing worth living for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, and it is love.

Listen to your heart

There is no heartache that the sea can't cure.

Soup is good food.

At least once a year, call in sick from work, stay in bed, and watch The Breakfast Club.

Don't be afraid to lose your head. The mistakes you make have a place in your story too, and it's our mistakes that lead us to our destiny more often than our victories.

No matter how badly you might wish you could, you cannot: make a person love you, force someone to care, or make children go to sleep when you want them to.

When you're 18, you will not be the same person when you're 23.

Don't put anything in writing when you're upset.

There's not a boy in the world who doesn't want his mama.

Women want security like men want approval. Emotionally or financially, we all want some kind of security.

It will stop hurting. Maybe not for a while, but eventually, it will.

Everything will turn out ok in the end. If it's not ok, then it's obviously not the end.

Believe in something. It's beautiful.

You don't really know someone until you take a roadtrip with them.

Don't throw away pictures.

Never miss a valid opportunity to tell someone to fuck off when they really deserve it.

Just because they're related to you, doesn't make them family.

If it's meant to be, it really will work out.

If you'd shut up and listen, you'd know what to do.

Sometimes, it is that simple.

You get what's coming to you.

Ice cream is always better with Oreos crushed up into it.

Even if it's hard, even if it's scary, even if it might be the last thing you ever get to tell a person, no matter what, say what you need to say.

Kids are not good for relationships, so having one to save one will never work.

Spaghetti sauce is always better with hot Italian sausage, and a hard boiled egg. Trust me.

Product Review: Ice Cream

I don't get product reviews done by bloggers. I see them on literally every blog I have ever read. Product review: cloth diapers! Product review: Swiffers! Product review: shoes! What have you. Maybe most of them do it to obtain blog traffic, and that makes sense. But I personally don't believe in writing to get people to read my blog. I believe in people following my blog because they like what I write. If people aren't interested in what I'm writing, then they're not interested in what's on my mind, and they shouldn't be following my blog anyway. 

So suck it.

Never the less, I want to be a cool kid too, so I decided I would make a product review, if nothing else, to see what all the fuss was about. Who knows, maybe when you make product reviews the sky opens up and Unicorns with horns that spout Starbucks coffee and butts that spray skittles when I've had a bad day come raining down and I get to keep them and name them all Darrel. I admit, it seemed far fetched, but I thought it might be possible. 

So the search was on to find something I wanted to review. Something I not only knew a little about, but also gave a shit about. At first, things weren't looking good. My options seemed to me down to various types of alcohol, the best cars for outrunning the cops, and sexual positions. 

Until today.

Today I went to the store (dun da da dun!) and as I was cruising the isles with my minions, who were fighting, running around and doing anything but being decent human beings, when I stumbled upon the ice cream isle (and by stumbled of course I mean ran to it at a full tilt like it was the last bottle of Patron on the planet). I was searching the Ben and Jerry's section, digging through the little pints in search of my usual, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. I couldn't find it, and just as I was about to melt down in a sweaty panic on the tile floor, I saw something that caught my eye. Fair Goodness Cake ice cream. Now, I admit, at first I grabbed it because it said "Fair" and "Cake" and in my mind that meant funnel cake. I love funnel cake. We're not going to go into how much I love funnel cake, because I'm sure at some point this blog has a character limit, but I love it. A lot. 

Anyway, upon closer inspection I discovered this was chocolate ice cream, with German chocolate cake pieces and caramel coconut swirls. Ho-ly-shitballs. This ice cream was comin home with me! 

After a dinner of spaghetti with Italian sausage, hard boiled eggs and garlic bread, I dove right in to my little pint of Heaven, and oh my God, I think I instantly came. 

It's chocolaty, it's cakey, it's caramely and it's coconutty, and it tastes EXACTLY like German chocolate cake, if German chocolate cake had babies with an ice cream bar, and the baby jumped into my mouth. 

Long story short, my review of this product for those of you that give a shit about my opinion, is:

This shit is good. It will make you want to eat ice cream instead of have sex on a Thursday night. It will make you want to shove your whole face in the bowl and drown yourself in the cakey, coconutty goodness. It will make your life, your soul, and you as a person cooler, more attractive and more complete.

Fuckin eat it.

Another bad love poem

We could go to Italy,

And kiss as the gondolier steers us through the watery streets of Venice.

We could find our way, have drunk on Sambuca

Through the winding stone streets where merchants push their carts home and women carry groceries.

Or we could go to Greece,

Where the cliffs all tower over the sea and the sun makes the white rock glow

Until even our pale bodies look tan against it.

We could dance in the bars and sing in languages we don't actually speak

Laughing as my gypsy skirts twirl and rustle and our hips move against each other's.

You could build us a cabin in Big Sur

We could live our lives by candlelight and sleep in pine beds covered in my homemade quilts.

I'd use pieces of fabric from your old shirts and the table cloths from all the places we've been together.

At night I would put lotion on your scars

And pet you before bedtime

You'd tell me stories as the moonlight spilled through our open window

And I would watch your eyes close slowly,

Heavy with all the things that filled your day.

Mother of all creation

This picture has nothing to do with this post. It just makes me giggle.

You're supposed to write everyday. How impossibly hard that is when there only seems to be one thing living inside you with any kind of voice. When the only thing your heart and mind want to talk about is love, eventually your hands get tired of hearing it. They don't want to write about love everyday. So you try to cultivate sadness in a place where you've finally found peace, just to have something to write about. Necessity may be the mother of all creation, but when the necessity is just simply to create, than the mother gives birth only to herself....and what a bloody mess that is.