One Day at a Time

Today was a Saturday at it's best.

It started with a shopping trip, and you'll be proud of me- I spent $0. But I did have some bonding time with this lady:

And this one:

We should have gone to Café Rio, but since we're all poor, and since Darian has much more resistance than I do, we went to Legend's instead. Which convinced me to bring them both home someday so I can show them what real barbecue--and, let's be real, here. Real MAC AND CHEESE...tastes like.



Condolences to a good friend who lost his Dad today; losing someone is never, ever easy, but it's especially hard when it's someone close.

Dear Alex:

Sometimes, I think I'm a much more eloquent writer than a speaker; I think I do really well in helping people out but sometimes, I have a hard time knowing just what to say in hard situations. The other upside to written words is that, whereas something spoken is heard once and then left behind, written words have the capacity to last forever.

This is a hard time in your life. It's a day that everyone must have at some point, but one that came without any warning for you--it's at junctures like this where that whole Mufasa thing comes into play: Life isn't fair. It kicks you down on the ground and steps on you, and keeps stepping on you until you can find it within yourself to get back up again.

I love you, and you have many other friends that love you, and your family loves you; I want you to know that you can rely on us in these next few weeks as you pick yourself back up. Your Dad loves you, Alex. When we die, we don't take a lot with us; we leave behind our bodies, our material possessions--but love never dies. Rely on him. Rely on your music; you are so gifted that way--and rely on yourself. Because the Alex I know is a pretty good, strong man.

I don't know who Danielle Redfield is, but hers was my favorite quote from my Google search: "Friends," she says, "are God's way of taking care of us."

Things are looking PRETTY lonely around here

We were going to have a girls night--which, let's be honest, here. We make this plan every Friday night, or Saturday night--basically, we work it in for one night almost every weekend. I guess cause we're all kindof hermit-y and we like hanging around in our pj's.

ToNIGHT, though, 5 out of the sexy six conjured up dates within like, half an hour! So...yours truly has had the evening to herself. But, I've had a room to myself all night, and gotten a lot of homework done and letters written. I just put letters in the mail headed to Atlanta, Richmond, Boston AND Brooklyn--so I feel pretty diversified.

That's my stack from tonight; keep in mind that I sent off two yesterday. I'm going to go broke on postage. Seriously.

Red Lipstick and Punkin Soup

Today is one of those red-lipstick, lunch at the art museum café, drop the f-bomb in a paper and then present it to the class type of days.

Wha?!

Yep. I done it.

All of it.

But before I make myself sound too edgy, or scare my mother, you should all know that it was a quote, which my writing professor was cool with, and, on top of that, my roommate and I made quite a fiasco out of putting the word in the essay in the first place; I typed half, she typed half, and at the end, we both sortof looked like this:

Only better. Because we were jumping up and down and making a lot of noise while we did it.

I do claim the lipstick and I did really like the MOA café. It's delicious, for one. And for two, I just enjoyed looking like a classy lady, eating a classy lunch with my classy friends. I'll be making another trip back there soon.

Deaf at Lunch

Today, I had plans to eat lunch with Darian at 11:00- because it's Monday, and I have class at 10:00, 12:00, but not at 11:00.

We swiped ourselves into the Cannon Center and what not, and...what not. She left to find a table, and I was standing in the salad bar- and, alas, I lost her, because that's what I'm just really, really good at.

Anyway, when I found her again, she'd been approached by a guy named Chris who asked her if he could sit there. One would assume she said yes, because there he was, at the table.

We did the small talk thing- the "where are you from"s and "what are you studying"s.

But then--and I do have to give Darian props for serious observance--she asked him why he was half-deaf.

I hadn't heard him say that he was half-deaf, but I'll be honest. I'm not the greatest observer. So I didn't really think much of it and just assumed that I'd...missed it. But then, I realized that he looked just as puzzled as I did.

So anyway, as it turns out, Chris was in a bad accident a couple of years ago, which resulted in a fractured skull. He lost 25% of his hearing (including mostly high-frequency pitches, which means...womens' voices. Haha, ha...this was a small source of gender humor), some of his balance, and went to speech and physical therapy following the accident.

But guess what else?

He had half of his head shaved at the hospital, in order to make way for one impressive scar, running from his ear, up around the back of his head- just like, oh, I don't know....

ME!

So, in the spirit of "there's a first for everything"--I can safely say that this was the first time in my life that, as a person with a largely scarred head, I was in the majority at our little lunch table of three.

You never know.

Pea-shooting flamingos

Yesterday, I came home from my trip to Richmond to find a post from my little sister- one of them, anyway.


"Mom had her witch-hack on while Amelie literally shot peas accross the restaurant. Seriously. I sat in shame, watching Ethan and Chloe put pieces of blueberry muffin in their mac 'n cheese, Amelie shoot peas one after the other, and dad eat two bowls of Tapioca pudding. I swear, he ate the pudding and automatically started rambling about eating it as a child on Sundays. And they chose the center of Sweet Tomatoes. I couldn't help but nervously glance around to make sure I didn't know anybody there."


What to take from this? Things have gotten PRETTY crazy since I came to college. Then again, Dad, you always did talk about your childhood a lot.