Milk

One day I am going to roll my eyes so hard I'll be forced to look at the inside of my head forever.

Do you ever get this? When you close your eyes. And there is a cluster of thousands of tiny white dots, all lined up, that drift around in a big group. I can see them whenever I close my eyes, and sometimes even when I don't. When I was a kid, they used to form shapes and I would watch them fly around at night to help me fall asleep.

Dragnet

We are all undergoing artistic schizophrenia. Some folks might find this helpful, the ability to simultaneously channel, filter and flip through a million influences, snippets and references and distill it into something uniquely their own. This is where we can sing the praises of having a literal world of information at our finger's tip. But for me, and I don't doubt quite a few others, this is amazingly detrimental. This ever-growing sense of modern-day anxiety caused by the very applications that are meant to comfort and de-stress - this is what makes the act of creating anything - nevermind art - nearly impossible. Each time I do anything at all I subconsciously compare every cadence, every lyric, every whip of my whisk to every other thing I've seen or heard in my lifetime. Fast motion. Flip through the hypothetical iTunes album covers of my life.

It's depleted my capacity for memory. Every day, I'm inundated with so much information that my brain can't categorize quickly enough. It can't process which memories and what knowledge is worth keeping in accesible parts of my lobes. What occurs is cultural amnesia - if more than a week has passed since I've heard a song, seen a movie, read a book, all the information disappears. I've been slipped a pop culture roofie preceding a night of bourbon and heavy petting and all that remains is the taste of cheap lube and leftover burrito in my mouth.

My patience has gone amok. The J button of my Reader is within such easy grasp that I find myself actually pushing J anytime I'm on a website, wanting the next thing. The muscle of judgement has bulked exponentially, mostly for the worse.

I don't know. This is the start of a larger rant but I'd rather just show you some photos of our Christmas tree, named Güs. You see, many years ago [2, if you're counting] we had a tree named Gus, fat and squat and bushy and ornamented with empty, glittered beer cans. We tried our hardest* to find a replacement but settled for this handsome, slim fellow who is a beaut but is no Gus. So we trimmed him with flea market keys painted brass, wine corks [in keeping with our wino theme], stickers, and various other ephemera. So he is Güs. Welcome.






* We did not try very hard.

Diversion.

What was to be a post-Thanksgiving fruit fast turned quickly into - a half bottle of wine and a Bourdain episode of eating sea urchins later - a leftover turkey and cranberry sauce bender spiked with the jealousy-induced purchase of 2 trays of California Gold uni from Catalina Offshore Products. Also mackerel and monkfish liver. Oooops. At any rate, at the bottom of this bottle of Syrah lies the kind of forgetfulness that will make the uni's arrival that much more majestic & whimsical? Right??


Here comes turkey.


Butternut squash and chestnut stuffing, port-laced cranberry sauce, cookies, pie, and thyme and parm mashed potatoes.

Wild & Crazy

Does the smell of Play-Doh have a brain-smacking visceral effect on you? Have you smelled Demeter's Play-Doh? How about cult fave Luctor et Emergo who's supporters and detractors alike effusively cry "PD!"? The latter is divine, Play-Doh or no, but the point of all this is. Well. This is what occurs on weekend nights of late, kids.


Creatures.


And more, with drawings of boobies for a backdrop.

What's this quarter-life crisis come to?

Sake to me.

Hey. You know, now that I've been walking dogs again, I'm out and about all day with all the servicey folks - postal workers, delivery people, handymen, doormen - it's kind of like an above-ground underworld with a secret language, but it's probably just me trying to make life into a fairy tale again. The end.

This explains a lot of things, does it not?


Here are my beautiful groceries.


Somewhere in Indiana, my toes.


Very pebbular.


Halloween.

Out On The Mezzanine

Moderately eventful handful of weeks. Let's sum up, in no particular order:

1. Had my wallet stolen. Dude just took it out of my purse. Brilliant. Lost everything.
a. Including my TX license, which I very begrudgingly replaced with an IL. Does this mean I'm no longer a Texan?
b. Was I ever actually a Texan?
c. Dude spent hundreds at Jewel-Osco on booze, probably, since what else are you going to drop a few hundred on. Not alfalfa sprouts or butternut squash, I'd venture, which really eats my muffin since there's a, like, 90% chance some bepimpled walking coma checked the perp's ID, uselessly.

2. Quit my job, visited home, started dog walking again. Infinitely more rewarding than merging and acquiring. Puppies vs. finance. You do the math. Figuratively, of course, all figurative.

3. Parents met fiancee's parents in one fell stressor here in Chicago. Butt clenched entire weekend, did not poop till Monday. All told, things went fine.

4. Perfume Posse clan hosted Chi-Cocoa Scentsation, which KPE staff attended with gusto despite the downpour. Fragrance wishlist has grown exponentially, am nervous about impending inebriated purchases. Check out pic of epic swag score below.

5. Hurricane Ike ripped 2 huge trees, roots and all, out of my parent's backyard. They have purchased a chainsaw for clean up, my butt is numb from nervousness. We were very lucky. For that I am grateful.

6. Went camping in Wisconsin for Labor Day, engaged in v. successful hot dog/cheese/condiment/chocolate experiments on the grill, engaged in wholly unsuccessful "beach" attempt. A sandstrip against a murky creek is different from a beach. Got myriad flora stuck between my Vibram toes.

Evidence:

Perfume bounty.

A forest tween my toes.


Pitch black camping snacks [we accept torch donations].


The ultimate meatsnack. Chicken apple brat stuffed with cherry calvados compote, topped with muenster, in our very own aluminum grilling basket creation. *

*Blueprints for this architectural wonder avail on request.

An Open Letter

Look, not for naught, another chapter has closed. Fin. Take what you can and don't look back. The story is not over. Nothing is definite. You're inclined to reflect willfully on the past but instead, stop and start again. Adhere.

Bring back confidence. Do not define your style by anything other than yourself, lest you misplace the meaning of style. Your five year old self will always be smarter, more adequately shameless.

You are not nearly so great as you think, but you are not so horrifying, either. Be a sponge, but know it's applications. There are no wrong choices. Your guilt is meaningless. Trust that, and yourself. You will fail at this. Keep trying.

People will come and go, but most importantly, they will come. You won't know when. It will work out, or it won't. Regardless, time will win. Go through every opening. Don't get lost. Do not be trapped by the lure of documentation or you will find yourself very far away looking down onto a tiny maze.

You will reach your goal, you will get smacked down, you will get back up. This is what to look out for when you think about Success. Tell the truth. Do it concisely. When it stops being fun, ask yourself why and fix it, and when you find yourself at the beginning of another new chapter, do it again.