I did have one strange thought while I was tossing and turning in my sleep last night/this morning. But before I say anything, I want to put this disclaimer on this blog. I am really enjoying being single right now. I know quite a few handsome, single men who are wonderful, wonderful people, but I’m not even looking at them as prospects (and I hope that if any of them are reading this that they are not offended by that. I still love my guy friends dearly, I’m just not looking to date them right now). I’m not interested in dating anyone right now. Which, simply by saying that, means I will be asked out in the next week. That is not my intention. All I’m saying is that I am happy being single. Moby and his friends came up with a word that describes a person or thing that inspires absolutely no sexual desire in others – an apathadisiac. If I might expound on his contribution to the English language, I would like to introduce the word “apathasexual” to describe a person who is not really inspired to sexual desire. You have heterosexuals and homosexuals and bisexuals and these terms all imply that these persons are practicing their sexuality. John Irving used the term “non-practicing heterosexual” to describe Johnny Wheelwright in A Prayer for Owen Meany. I would like to use the term “apathasexual” to describe myself right now because while I am typically attracted to men, I’m not really attracted to anyone right now (not in a romantic sense, anyway) and I’m okay with that.

Disclaimer aside, I had an interesting thought as I was trying to fall asleep. It occurred to me that it would be really nice if the man I was in love with were to come and lie next to me with his arm draped across my back and fall asleep there. The way my cat will, you know? But wouldn’t it be nice that instead of my cat sleeping next to me, it was the man who complimented me completely and who I knew I would be happy spending the rest of my life with. It wasn’t a thought of “Oh, I miss so-and-so” or “Oh, I wish someone was here right now.” More of a “Sometime in the future when I have found this man, won’t it be nice to sleep next to him? To feel the weight of his arm around me as I sleep?”

So yeah, in the spirit of irreverence that used to prevail in this blog but that has fallen by the wayside as I have a very one-track mind right now, I thought I would share this with you, my faithful readers. Have I told you lately how much I love the fact that you read this stuff? I do. I appreciate it very much. So thank you.

Does it still count as sleeping if you spend six hours tossing and turning with your eyes closed, drifting in and out of various dreams until you finally decide, “Screw it, I’m getting up?” I thought not.

I woke up at about quarter after midnight last night, thoroughly convinced that it was really later than that (aka time for me to get up) and that something had gone wrong with my alarm clock. So I checked all of the clocks in my apartment and determined that yes, it really was quarter after midnight and tried to go back to sleep. “Tried” being the operative word. I was having some weird, unsettling dreams none of which, of course, I can remember now. But there was a lot of tossing and turning involved. Not what one would call a “good” night. Oh well.

And now I’m here at work trying to think of something interesting to write about and I can only really think of two things, both of which I’m sure would bore you to death. The first of which is the Chicago Idol contest that I entered. I still don’t know if I made the finals or not (I’m guessing not), but whoever the ten finalists are get to do their live performance at the House of Blues. How cool would that be?

And the other thing I could think of to talk about would be the possible impending war with Iraq. Which, as little as I know about the situation, strikes me as a really bad idea. As I said, I know very little about the situation because I don’t watch the news very often. But it seems to me that going to war with Iraq is a bad idea because first of all, I think going to war just about anywhere is a bad idea. I know that wars can boost a country’s economy and stuff, but so can having President in whom the people have faith. And secondly, if nobody else in the world thinks it is a good idea for us to go to war with Iraq, maybe we should listen to them. We will not get outside support. We will end up having even more people around the world hating Americans and last time I checked, that was pretty far down on the List of Things We Want to Have Happen. And thirdly, what has happened in Iraq lately that is so terrible that we have to now blast it off the face of the earth? I thought we were still looking for Bin Laden in Afghanistan. What happened with that initiative?

So yeah, as you can see, I know very little about the whole thing so I should probably just keep my big yap shut and go do some reading or something. I’ll talk to you all again later.

I worked out hard last night. It was a routine I hadn’t done before and it involved weights and lots of repetitions of things. It was a strength training/body toning kind of routine and it kicked my ass. We’re talkin’ thighs, bis, tris, pecs, glutes, lats, you name it. Everything but abs, pretty much, which I will do today. And man, I feel amazing this morning. I’m not tight or stiff or anything. I can feel that my ass is firmer than it was. It’s giving me some extra power when I walk. Like I didn’t walk fast enough to begin with. Was it last week or the week before when I was asking if really muscular, in-shape people were sore all the time with a heightened awareness of their muscles? Well, I’ve been working out pretty consistently for a couple of weeks now and I’m not sore anymore, but I am aware of my muscles in a good way. It’s like they’re there saying, “Hey. We’re here. We’re working for you and ready when you need us.” It’s a pretty cool feeling.

I saw a clip of Oprah on the Emmy’s when someone was asking her about her ever-fluctuating weight and stuff (because, as we all know, Oprah NEVER has anything more interesting to talk about than her ever-fluctuating weight and stuff) and she said something along the lines of, “When you reach my age, you must include weights in your workout. You must use weights.” Well, I’m not quite her age yet, but I’ll be singing the praises of working with weights for a while. I’m not even using really heavy ones – I have one set of 8 pound dumbbells and I would like a set of 3 pounders and a set of 5 pounders and then I think I’m all good. But yeah, if you’re working out and don’t use weights, I would recommend giving it a try. You’ll be amazed at how it feels.

Does anyone know when daylight savings time is? ‘Cuz this whole “waking up when it’s still dark outside” thing isn’t really agreeing with me. I’m not talking about it’s still kind of bleary looking outside like the sun hasn’t quite woken up yet, I’m talking the sun is still in bed snoozing away as I am waking up and walking bleary-eyed through my apartment to feed my cat. I shouldn’t have to turn on the lights to see what color underwear I’m putting on in the morning.

See, this is another one of my little oddities. I only turn on the lights if I absolutely have to. It’s probably not good for my eyes, but I would rather walk around my house in the dark than turn on lights. If I’m reading or doing something that requires that I see well, I’ll turn them on. But in general, I like to live in the dark. It’s comforting somehow.

Except when the sun should be up illuminating my apartment and it isn’t. It is, instead, shirking its illumination duties off on the streetlights outside my window.

So yeah, I’m ready for daylight savings time to be over with.

Though the sky was really beautiful when I walked out of my apartment this morning. It was a fluorescent pastel blue, if you can imagine such a thing. And there were either no clouds in the sky or it was all one big cloud because the entire sky was the same shade of fluorescent pastel blue, like someone had Photoshopped it. I’m guessing that it was all one big cloud, though, because on the drive into work I got to watch the sky get lighter and lighter as a nice fog rolled in, covering the Chicago skyline. And now the sky is white out of my window. Maybe the whole “dark” thing isn’t so bad after all.

I actually stuck my tongue out at my alarm clock this morning. Waking up in the morning is so uncivilized. Particularly when that morning follows a lovely evening spent with friends and tasty fru-fru drinks that are on fire. I know, I know, I shouldn’t drink during the week when I know I have to get up in the morning and go to work. But my friend was treating and the drinks were really yummy and blue and flaming. A flaming Moe. Not really. Since the bartender was named Eric, it was more of a flaming Eric. He’s not flaming, the drink was. And it was good. And three very important things that I look for in a drink are if it is blue, if it is flaming, and if it was made by Eric (because Eric is a really good bartender) and this drink was, so how could I not drink it? How, I ask you?

So yeah, waking up this morning was not Number One on my list of things that I really wanted to accomplish, but I did it anyway. And now I’m at work and just had a really tasty lunch of leftover stir-fired veggies and tofu and brown rice. I’m getting inventive with the food that I have left in my house in an attempt to not have to go buy groceries on my credit card, though I may have to stop and get a couple of things. It’s hard to have a falafel sammich without bread. And I’m thinkin’ I might try the “no oil” recipe ‘cuz I’m still kind of paranoid about having a repeat of my falafel related injury whilst frying up some falafel patties. But if there is no hot oil in the pan, it can’t burn me, right? I’m smart. S-m-r-t smart.

Not really. I’m just rambling. So I’ll stop.

I have a blank page in front of me and my mind is racing in a million different directions, but none of them is the general direction of the blank page.

I’m thinking that I should be a therapist or a social worker or something. I love listening to people and helping them work through the things that are on their minds and I think I’m pretty good at it, too. But then again, I don’t know what I would say if I got some kid in my office who was twelve years old and felt she needed to bring a gun with her to school for protection, you know? I’m good at being a therapist to people whose worlds I can understand or relate to in some way. Which is why I probably won’t pursue that.

I’m breathing deep breaths of anticipation. I know the radio station got my video yesterday because I tracked the package online. Deadline for entries is tomorrow so I’ll know sometime after tomorrow. Though if it gets to be next Thursday and I haven’t heard anything, I’m assuming I didn’t make the finals.

I’ve been working out at home for a couple of weeks now and my gargantuan ass is starting to take on a nice shape. Granted, there is still a lot of it that could go away and I would be fine with that, but it’s nice to see progress. And it feels really good to go home and work out after work. To move around and work up a sweat and lift weights and stuff. I got this wonderful sense of self-righteousness last night because I did my workout, took a shower, and cooked myself stir-fried vegetables and tofu over brown rice for dinner. I felt so sickeningly healthy I had a Tofutti Cutie to offset the feeling. But even those things aren’t really bad for you. Would I be happy living the rest of my life as a good girl? A healthy girl? An annoyingly perfect girl? Probably not. Damn arse feck. There. I’m not so perfect anymore, now, am I?

Tee hee.

Just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I was being sarcastic there. The absolute last word that comes to mind when I think of myself is “perfect,” preceded shortly by “sexy,” “popular,” and “conservative.” But then, we’ve already discussed the differences between how I see myself and how the world sees me. But I was kidding about being perfect. I hope I never am.

Though here’s another thing I was thinking about as I was talking to a friend of mine last night. I have forgiven myself for a lot of things in the past. I mean that in a good way. We spend so much time beating ourselves up over things that are out of our control or things that are so far in the past that they shouldn’t even really be an issue anymore. And then we beat ourselves up because those things shouldn’t be an issue anymore but they are and it just keeps going around and around and around and around like that. This is where regret comes from. I spent a good amount of time kicking myself for loving fucknut and telling myself that I had been stupid for doing so and so on and so forth. Until I finally realized, there were reasons why I loved him. The girl I was then loved the boy he was then. I am not the girl I was then and it is okay to forgive her with the knowledge I have now. Things like that. I was realizing that I am getting better at forgiving myself for my own “mistakes” and learning from them. About which I can only really say “Woo hoo!”

And now that this blog has been recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Random Blog Ever Published, I will get back to my work. That’s right, I actually have work to do today. Can you believe it? I have work to do and I’m happy and I’m not bitching about boys or the weather or how the country is going to hell in a hand basket (though that would have to be a really big hand basket to fit the whole country. Probably too big to be considered a hand basket anymore. What do you call a hand basket that has become too big to be a hand basket? Is the next size up, like, hamper size? This country is going to hell in a hamper basket? I bet if we all walked around saying that, people would laugh so hard they would forget about everything else and we’d fix a lot of the problems going on right now. Not really. But it would be fun to get the entire country laughing all at the same time. Oh, shit, I’m supposed to be talking about how boring my blogs are when I’m happy and don’t have anything to bitch about. Getting back to that…) or anything. I will one day soon have something real to say again, I promise. In the meantime, thank you for putting up with my whimsey.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate being cold? Probably not ‘cuz I haven’t been cold in a while, but it is really cold in my building here at work today and despite my coat and scarf and hot tea, I’m still cold.

I dunno. I got nothin’. I thought the cold thing might be something interesting to talk about, as opposed to me gushing about how much love and support and encouragement I’ve been getting from so many sources over the past couple of days as a result of my music video. Who wants to hear about that shit, huh? How exciting is it for Kitty to talk about being happy and loved and feeling good? Aren’t these entries more interesting when I’m pointing out the many flaws in the world around me?

Today, I’m just not seeing them. I am reveling in the positive energy that people are sending my way. I can’t quite comprehend the magnitude of the positive energy so I’m feeling kind of small and sheepish and unworthy in comparison, but there is a little voice in the back of my head that is saying to me, “Soak it up. You deserve it.” And that voice also makes my eyes tear up and puts a huge grin on my face.

And for once, my imagination is not running away with this one. I hold no delusions that I am a musician. I know I didn’t write the greatest song ever written. I know that I will not have a 30-year career in the music industry. And you know what? I’m okay with that. Because when I wrote this song, I wrote it for me. To express something that I was feeling. I never thought anyone would want to listen to it and I never really thought that I would have anyone to play it for. But I wrote it anyway and I play it in my house when I’m all by myself and I like the way it sounds. So the fact that even just one other person would like this song, that one other person could relate to it blows me away. So all of the e-mails and posts on message boards and comments made when I am out and about are almost overwhelming. But in the good way. I have found a piece of myself that I can share with people that they are happy to accept. It is beautiful.

Even if I don’t make the finals in this contest, I am happy today. Even if I never record another song, I am happy today. Even if I do record another album and it doesn’t sell or critics hate it or whatever, I am happy today. I have touched people’s lives in a way that I have never touched them before and I am beyond grateful for that opportunity. I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled complaining later.

You can check out my video for "Allowed" here.

So far the feedback on it has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm so flattered that people like my little song. It makes me so happy I can't even tell you. So thank you again to my kick ass crew! I owe you guys one. At least one. Maybe one and a half. We'll see. Gimmie a call and we'll talk about what the "one" is and if it can be upgraded to "one and a half" without overstepping certain bounds...

Who am I kidding? I owe you two.

I also want to take a moment today to thank the crew who helped me make my music video this weekend. Matt Stratton for directing and editing. Brian Crane for recording the sound (see Thursday’s entry). Ben Gonzales, the director of photography. Ryan Peterson for being “the guy” in the video. And Tracy Hogan for doing my make up. I look really hot on film. Tee hee. Watch out, world, here comes Kitty’s ego!

Seriously, I had a blast making this video. It was an easy, relaxed shoot with some great people and it is all edited with titles and whatnot and it looks really pretty. I do look good on film. I know it sounds strange to hear me say that and trust me, it feels weird to say it, but I look good. I’m all cute and shit. With monstrous eyes and a detached wrist. It is so strange the things that I notice when I’m watching myself on film. Like the fact that I talk out of one side of my mouth. Or that I really do have the world’s longest eyelashes. They are things that nobody else seems to notice until I point them out and even then, they’re like, “You talk out of one side of your mouth?” But anyway. It kind of makes me think, “What things does Michelle Pfeiffer see in herself when she watches herself on film that none of the rest of us notice?” you know? You are your own worst critic, so what do you see when you look in the mirror?

But back to the video. Regardless of how it does in the contest, I had a blast making the video and I thank everyone from the very very bottom of my heart for taking time out of their schedules to help me out with it. It was fun and it looks pretty and I can put it on my demo reel, so that’s a good thing. I win no matter what. And hopefully, sometime in the next couple of days, the video will be posted on the Gravy Train Films website so y’all can see it too. As soon as I know what that link is, I’ll post it. I’m kinda proud of my little video.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Hooray for cool, crisp, fall air! It smells so good and it feels so good on your face. I love it. And it is great sleeping weather, too. But it means I have to start remembering to wear a jacket when I go outside. It is approximately 12 degrees Farenheit in my office today, so I’m having some apple cinnamon tea for breakfast in the hopes that it will warm me up. Maybe I should bring in candles or something until they turn the heat on in my building for a little extra warmth. Ah well. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t use an office for four days.

But anyway, hooray for fall. Time to pull the quilts out of the closet and wear warm, fuzzy sweaters to work and stuff. I love the fall.

I don't have a whole lot of time today because truth be told, I'm playing hookey. Yeah, after about a month and a half of having little to nothing to do at work, I figure if I don't go in for a couple of days, maybe there will be something for me to do when I go back in on Monday. Yeah, it's probably not the best way to deal with an horiffically boring day job, but oh well. Means I get to catch up on my pop culture again. Coyote Ugly is on Encore. Quality programming, that.

But anyway, I just wanted to pop by here right quick and give a huge thank you to Brian Crane for recording my little song last night and playing with it a little so that it sounds all cool and shit. When you talk to someone about their job, you still don't really get a feel for what it is that they do. After watching him record me and mix and clean up the sounds and suggest things that we could do to make it sound even cooler, I have a whole new respect for Brian. He is an incredibly talented musician and I would be honored if he wanted to produce my album in the future. I would love to go back in and play with this song some more and lay down a few more tracks. He has a great ear for what will work and what needs to be fixed and what doesn't. And he's just a frickin' cool guy. And the studio we were in was very comfortable and welcoming and inviting. I only had to play my song once before I was totally comfortable there, which is saying a lot for me.

So yeah, thank you to Brian Crane. He is going to be releasing an album of his own music sometime in the not too distant future (this winter maybe?) and I suggest you keep an eye out for it. It's gonna be good.

Okay, here’s something I don’t understand.

Last night I bought this cruelty free shampoo that smells like maraschino cherries. It’s really nice. But on the bottle, right near the label with the picture of the jumping bunny that says, “No animal by-products” is the list of ingredients, which includes an herb called “Horsetail.” Granted, horsetail is an herb, but to have something that blatantly says “horsetail” right next to something that blatantly says “no animal by-products” struck me as a little bit funny.

So I looked up “horsetail” on the web today to see what it looked like and whatnot. One of the online herb dictionaries I found lists the toxicity of each herb along with its description and soil preferences and such. Horsetail is extremely toxic to horses and only mildly toxic to other animals. It is used in some human herbal remedies. But it is extremely toxic to horses.

So here’s the part that I don’t understand: why do you name a plant after the one thing that can’t enjoy it? Or, if you insist on naming a plant after the one thing that the plant can kill, why not name the plant “Horse Poison” or something, you know? Make it obvious to everyone around that horses should not eat horse poison or something bad will happen.

I dunno. But if I ever run into a plant called “People Food” or something like that, you can bet your sweet bippy I ain’t gonna eat it.

Okay, I am not a chili fan. Ask anyone in my family. I have never really liked chili. Something about the spices or the way it just kind of sits in your stomach or the texture of kidney beans or something, I have never really liked chili.

That being said, Yves Veggie Chili is one of the finest products I think I have ever tried. Certainly one of the better foods I have sampled since making the switch to herbivore-ism. I decided to try it when I was at the store last night and I brought it for lunch today and now I want to stop at the store and pick up some more for consumption at a later date. It was perfectly seasoned and had fake meat in it so you feel like you're eating ground beef but you're not weighed down like you would be eating ground beef. It was so tasty. I'm going to be sitting here thinking about chili for the rest of the afternoon.

It's days like these that I'm glad I'm an herbivore.

Damn it, I had something interesting and pithy to talk about today and I’ve forgotten what it was. I hate when that happens. So I’ll talk about my music instead.

I’m going into a recording studio tonight to lay down my little song that I am completely in love with. I’m excited and nervous. I have never had to hand my art over to someone else before so that they could interpret and/or improve upon it. We’re shooting a sort of video for this song this weekend, too, and while I completely trust and respect the entire crew (it cracks me up that this seemingly simple, unobtrusive project has a “crew”), it feels weird to be giving creative control to someone else. Someone who wasn’t there when I wrote the song. Someone who may not fully understand the motivation behind writing the song because I may not have explained my motivations enough or very well or really at all. I dunno. I’m looking forward to the end product, but I feel like I’m sending my kid away to summer camp or something and I’m not sure who he’s going to be when he comes home in a month and a half.

When I was in high school, I worked on the school’s annual literary magazine. At our meetings, we would read the stories and poems and whatnot that were submitted for printing and we would discuss them and decide which ones we, as a group, felt were suitable for publication. The author’s names were taken off the pieces when we read them in our meetings so that hopefully, any personal feelings about a particular author would not be factored in to the decision-making process – selections would be made based on the strength of the writing alone. I remember submitting a story of mine once and listening to the discussion that ensued afterwards. People were naming my nebulous characters and trying to figure out the symbolic meaning of every little detail in the story. I had just sat down to write one day and the story kind of happened, so I was really amused to see it analyzed so thoroughly. And that was just a story. Tonight and this weekend, we’ll be playing with a song that I wrote that is still pretty personal to me.

Maybe this is why I shouldn’t be an artist. I don’t know how well I would handle the criticism and I don’t know how well I will handle other people helping me with my art. We shall see. In many ways, tonight and this weekend will be great learning experiences for me.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you’re just happy to be exactly where you are doing exactly what you’re doing? Where you look around and are happy to see everyone else there? Where your mind is not somewhere else thinking about what you’re going to have for breakfast in the morning or when you’re going to find the time to do your laundry? Where your body and mind are in the same place at the same time and you find yourself being completely content with that place? Aren’t those moments nice?

I had one last night. I was out dancing. Yes, I did dance last night. But I found myself looking around the room and being really pleased with the turn out. I had a couple of drinks in my system so everybody was my friend. There was much laughter and whatnot. It was a good time. And for the first time in a long time, I was out in public and didn’t want to go home. I was having a wonderful time. And I had the presence of mind to take note of the fact that I was having a wonderful time. I love it when that happens.

So you know how after you work out, your muscles are all sore and stuff? They feel tight and they feel good, but you can definitely feel which muscles you were working the day before? Yeah, so people who are really muscular and ripped, do they feel that way all of the time?

And yes, this does mean I have begun working out. I was getting tired of going out dancing and not really dancing, so I found an alternative method of exercise that I can do in the privacy of my own home so none of y’all have to look at me wearing spandex. Which is a good thing. Trust me. But today my quads and glutes feel all tight and stuff. I am very aware of their existence. It’s a good feeling. I just wonder if I continue on this exercise routine if that feeling will become a permanent thing. Will I always be this aware of my quads and glutes? I’ll let you know in a couple months.

So I spent my weekend visiting family in Minnesota. Every time I go, I’m glad I went. But it is always so strange to be there. It’s like visiting another universe or something. I’m not sure exactly how to feel about a lot of the weekend, so this update may be more factual than emotional. Or not. I’m just going to start typing now and see what happens.

We flew into Sioux Falls on Saturday morning on the smallest plane I think I have ever been on. It was still a jet, but it only had 50 seats in it and the one flight attendant had to stoop a little bit as he walked down the aisle. It was kind of funny. But we went from the airport to the hospital to visit my one uncle who is in there. This uncle had a liver transplant and was told that if he lived another five years, that would be doing pretty well. That was ten years ago. He has been in and out of the hospital since the end of June and he had a heart attack on Wednesday and on Thursday, they found out he had full-fledged pneumonia. He was hooked up to a respirator and a feeding tube and had just finished dialysis when we saw him so he couldn’t talk. But he shook our hands and was alert during the whole visit. He looked so small. And he had bruises all over his arms from all of the various needles and things they’ve been sticking in him for the past three months. But he had color in his face and the dark circles that apparently had been under his eyes were no longer there, so everyone took that as a good sign. He looked good for a man who is probably on his last leg and it was good to see him. Hard to not cry as I was standing there, but it was good to see him. And I think it did his wife a lot of good to have us (her family) there for a little while. She has been to exhaustion and beyond at this point, so it was probably nice to have some new, supportive faces in the room. It was disconcerting, though, that as we left, the nurse told us all to wash our hands really well because it was a really persistent bug that he had. “Here, touch your uncle and let him know that you’re there for him and you love him, but go scrub him off you now or you may end up in here, too.”

We went to lunch after that. Restaurants in the southwest corner of Minnesota crack me up. Pretty much every one of them has the same menu – you can get beef or chicken or fish or pasta or some really gooey desserts. It’s meat and potatoes country. If you want to know what qualifies as American cuisine, this is the place to go. I have no idea how so many of these “café’s” stay open because they are all essentially the same, but they do. And they’re everywhere. So we stopped for lunch. I had a salad sans croutons and sans dressing and an order of french fries. The only really non-suspect items on the menu. In retrospect, I probably could have/should have gotten pasta sans sauce, but I wasn’t really in a pasta mood at the time. And the family played a little round of “what can Kitty eat” and “let’s make fun of what Kitty can eat” during lunch. I appreciate the fact that they tried to accommodate as best they could and I know that this is something foreign to them. But to be a stranger in a strange land just trying to get by for two days, I could have done without some of the ribbing from my brother. Usually, when we go to Minnesota, it’s like we’re in it together. The city kids versus the country folks. So I had to throw in a good-natured, “Oh, he’s just making fun of me,” to let him know that his jokes weren’t really appreciated but that I wasn’t going to hold them against him if he stopped making them.

After lunch, we drove into Lake Benton, Minnesota (population 703) to visit my grandmother. For a woman who is about to turn 90, she looks great and still has a lot of life in her. She is losing her hair and has to walk with a walker now, but she was all excited about the party on Sunday, which was really cute. She got a brand new red dress to wear and you could tell she was dying to put it on and show it off. I love my grandma. I really do. She is warm and comforting and still always wants to take care of everyone. She insisted on taking us to dinner and she picked the restaurant in town that she thought would have the most choices for me. I had a baked potato with catsup on it. What does a vegan eat in meat and potatoes country? Potatoes. But it was really nice to spend time with my grandma. It made me miss visiting her in the house she used to live in when I was a kid. Walking down to the store where she would buy my brother and I each a toy. The way she used to put her bird to sleep at night. Doing puzzles on the front porch. Her salt and pepper shaker collection. She used to have over 500 sets of salt and pepper shakers from all over the country. Now she has about ten or fifteen because that is all that will fit in her room at the assisted living place. She doesn’t really like it there, but she puts up with it. You know she is a woman who has lived through a lot and still faces each day with hutzpah. Or at least hutzpah as she can muster. I wish I had known her better when we both were younger. And as much as I would like to, I don’t know if I am going to have another chance to see her before she dies. But those are things that aren’t really talked about much up there. So I thanked her for dinner and told her how nice it was to spend time with her and showed her pictures from my life of what I’ve been doing. And I need to continue on with the weekend now ‘cuz I shouldn’t be sitting here at work crying.

My brother and I shared a motel room in Pipestone. It was a little chilly on Saturday night, so I looked at the heater in the room. It was a wall unit that wasn’t plugged in. And the cord didn’t reach any of the outlets in the room. So my brother found a power strip that was connected to the lamp and rigged the heater so we could plug it into the socket in the wall. But then we couldn’t find the “on” switch on the thing. He opened up a side panel that looked like it had a place to light the pilot light on the thing, but we had no matches. And there were a couple of wires that looked like they should be connected to something but weren’t. So I slept in lots of clothes and my brother doubled over the blankets on his bed. But before we went to sleep, we watched the local news that had tips that every child should know before going hunting. And a report about the man who won the “Big Honkin’ Bingo” game. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s a whole other world up there.

Sunday morning, I had a peanut butter sammich on the pita bread I had brought with me for breakfast. It was tasty. We headed over to my grandma’s party around 9:30 in the morning and were among the first to get there. It was good to see the extended family for a little while, but you never really get to visit with people for very long or very well when you go to such big family gatherings. I think by the time all was said and done, about 110 people showed up. Pretty impressive for a town of seven hundred and three. There were people there who I recognized and people who I didn’t. There was a lot of pointing at my brother and I from across the room – “Those are Dan’s from Chicago.” And one of my first cousins once removed sat down next to me as I ate the spinach-tofu-herb ravioli I brought with me because she “had to see what Kitty was eating.” I had a little bit of the freak show element going on. But my dad kept introducing me to people as “his actress daughter,” which made me feel really good. And I was told quite a few times how wonderful it was that I had a dream and was pursuing it and it was working out for me. I wasn’t expecting that kind of support from that side of my family, but I got it and it was wonderful. They really are good people. Good, salt of the earth people who will give you the shirt off their back if you need it. I was also told quite a few times that it is a good thing that I’m waiting to get married. Another thing that I already know, but it was nice to hear that I’m not a mutant there for not being married yet. That was encouraging.

There was a table with photographs on it at the party and there was one photograph of my grandparents that I had not seen before. It was taken either when they were dating or shortly after they were married, so sometime in the twenties or thirties. I don’t remember ever seeing a picture of my paternal grandparents when they were my age before. She was beautiful and he was really handsome. I wouldn’t mind having a copy of that photograph.

So I got to see a bunch of people who I hadn’t seen in a while and a bunch more who I don’t know that I’ve ever seen before. I got to see my “little” cousins all grown up. One of my uncles is a great grandfather now (meaning yes, my grandma is a great-great-grandmother). The kids my age (who are actually a generation behind me) are graduating from high school. One of them is going bald at the ripe old age of 22. I wish I had gotten to talk to them more, but they got there kind of late and we had to get back to Sioux Falls to catch our mini-plane home. But they brought me some fresh, homegrown green bell peppers that made my backpack smell good on the way home, so all is forgiven.

It was hard saying good bye to my grandma. I could see in her eyes that she thinks she will never see me again. I’d like to think that isn’t true, but you never can tell, you know? I gave her a hug and held her hand and told her that I love her. She had tears in her eyes, which I kind of felt bad about. She shouldn’t have been crying at her own party. She looked so nice in her red dress with her pearls and a nice red and white corsage. But we said goodbye and drove back to Sioux Falls to come back to our busy city lives.

It was good to see the family. And nice to see land that isn’t really populated, you know? We drove by wind farms and cornfields and soybean fields (yay, soy beans!) and you could see the stars and whatnot. It did my heart good to see that small town America does still exist. There are a lot of really nice things about small town life. I don’t think any of them have to worry so much about their kids being snatched off the front porch or things like that. And it occurred to me that I could probably buy a three bedroom house up there with the little money I have now. Of course, I’d have to live up there, but I could do it. And I got a very small ego boost looking around the room and noticing that I was one of the skinniest women there. But I’m now wiped out. I should have stayed home to recuperate today. It is exhausting to go there and see that and wish that you could do more but be powerless to do so, you know?

I don’t know. I’m rambling at this point. I should go make sure my eyes aren’t too puffy and get myself some more apple cinnamon tea. I love my family. I really do. I wish it wasn’t so hard to see them, physically and emotionally. But I hope they know that I truly do love them. Thanks, Dad, for taking me back up there.

Hooray for allergy season! That wonderful time of year when no matter how many times you clear your throat or blow your nose, there is still a bus load of phlegm in there, waiting to drip out at the most inopportune moment!

I still love fall, though. Cool mornings, warm afternoons, good sleeping weather. If I have to put up with an overabundance of phlegm…some sacrifices are worth it.

I love watching people with their stuff. Especially at stores. Food stores are the best. Everyone has picked out their stuff that they want to buy and nobody else better touch my stuff, ‘Cuz this is my stuff, get it? Go get your own stuff. Even if we’re buying the same stuff, my stuff is better than your stuff. That’s why I picked it out. I picked out the absolute best stuff out of the 8,000 things of stuff that were on the shelf and I’m going to buy it. You my have the second best thing of stuff, but I have the best thing of stuff and I can’t wait to pay for it, get it out of here, and enjoy my stuff. ‘Cuz it’s the best stuff there is.

You know what? It’s just stuff.

The human notion of possession is an interesting one. This is mine, that is yours. Actually, I shouldn’t limit this notion to humans – dogs run around peeing on things to mark which things are theirs. Cats rub up against things with their face to mark their territory. Elephants mourn dead loved ones by passing their trunks over the bodies. You could even go so far as to say that plants grow towards the light in an attempt to get the best possible sunlight for themselves so they will survive and their competitors will die. It’s a fascinating phenomenon. The idea of possession. Why must we place ownership on so many things?

Truth be told, I have no idea. I can maybe understand wanting to differentiate between your food and my food (for survival purposes), but really, most of the other stuff that animals fight over is just stuff. Territory. Clothing. Bragging rights. Electronic toys. Sports teams. Why is it so important to have so much stuff? Is one life truly worth less than another because it doesn’t contain so much stuff? What does one do with so much stuff? Sure, you have a bunch of lovely paintings on your wall, but if they were in a gallery, everybody could enjoy them. Yes, that is a very nice computer, but what do you do when the power goes out? Those $300 sneakers you have are lovely. My shoes cost $5 when I bought them about seven years ago and they’re still doing great. What a gorgeous house you have! What do you do with all of the other rooms when you’re not in them?

You put stuff in them!

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just rationalizing why I don’t have a lot of stuff and why I don’t feel the need for a lot of stuff. But when you think about it, people’s need for stuff really is kind of funny. I can see wanting to collect experiences or memories, but how much good does stuff actually do you? Asks the girl with 200 movies. I dunno. Just watch how people handle their stuff next time you are out in public. Watch how they treat their belongings and how the treat things that will soon become their belongings. It really is entertaining.

You see this horse? You see how tall it is? Yeah, I’m just going to perch on top of it for a moment as I talk about my lunchtime yesterday.

Yesterday, one of my co-workers had a taste for chicken wings from a certain restaurant that is known for hiring women with large breasts wearing tight t-shirts and short shorts to be waitresses. The phone number for said restaurant was looked up on the Internet. A trip was made to the restaurant to pick up three orders of chicken wings that four of my co-workers were going to split. Approximately an hour and a half later, the wings arrived back in our office and everybody sat down for lunch. I must admit, they smelled like really good chicken wings.

I had brought a burrito for lunch that I made at home that morning – no salt added refried beans, Spanish rice, salsa (‘cuz I was too lazy to cut up a tomato) and lettuce wrapped in a tortilla. I must say that while it was not the best burrito I have ever eaten (I think I would need to add cilantro or something), it was pretty tasty and when paired with the apple I also had in my lunch bag, it made for a very nice, satisfying lunch.

Each of my four co-workers had the same reaction upon biting into her chicken wings. Their noses scrunched up, they made that “eeeuuugh” sound that usually indicates displeasure, and they took longer than usual to finish that bite of chicken and a nice healthy pause before taking another bite. In short, yesterday was not a good wing day. One woman ate all of hers because she was that hungry. Each of the other three had about three wings apiece before they said, “That’s enough. I can’t eat anymore of these.” They were too greasy and not very flavorful. And then jokes about the grease coming out exactly the way it went in were made and we all laughed and it was a lovely lunchtime.

I had the hardest time, though, trying not to pipe in and say, “My lunch was great. I’m full, but not too full, and I won’t be shitting grease tonight.” But I didn’t. I sat and silently enjoyed my healthy, fun, fulfilling lunch and snickered under my breath at their disappointment in the wings they put so much effort into obtaining.

Okay, I’ll get down off the horse now.

I know I shouldn’t laugh at other people’s food choices. I still share recipes for tuna casserole and stuff that I used to make. People should eat what they want to eat and what they are comfortable eating. And hell, until just a couple of months ago, I was eating that stuff, too. I will admit that I do miss being able to eat the leftovers when my office has lunch catered in or being able to order anything on the menu that I want and that kind of thing. But I don't miss shelling out money for a plate of chicken wings that are sub-par, you know? Maybe this is why vegetarianism and veganism are so popular. You don’t get that overstuffed feeling. You don’t feel like your pours are mini Texas oil wells. You don’t have bad carrot days, you know? You can tell before eating a carrot if it has gone bad or not, in which case, you don’t eat it. Fresh fruits and vegetables and nuts and grains are really pleasant foods. And they let you sit up on your high horse from time to time, like you have this wonderful secret that nobody else knows because they think tofu is icky. Oh well. More for me.