Forgetfulness

I'm a happy person. I'm young, I'm not horribly disfigured, and from the vantage point of 26, my life looks pretty promising. I snagged one of the best boyfriends, way back in Round One; I have good friends and a cool family; I laugh every single day; and I'm becoming a writer, gradually but in such a real way that the publisher of a local magazine handed me his card after eavesdropping on a conversation I had at work yesterday. Life is good.

So who do I talk to about removing this chip in my brain that makes me look with envy at other people's happiness, as if my own were somehow deficient?

Thoughts in a Very Loud, Very Dark Room With Hundreds of Strangers

That was to be the title of a stream-of-consciousness blog post that I wrote in bits and pieces in my head last night during the Modest Mouse concert. But now it's just a persuasive argument for keeping a notebook in my pocket at all times and writing things down as I think of them. Because when we got home last night, I didn't have the energy to actually write it out. So I sat down to recreate it just now, and discovered that all the magic had gone out of it. It would be hard at this point to remember everything I had wanted to say, and hard to achieve the effect I wanted, and I'm not interested enough anymore to put the effort in.

So instead I'll just say, in conventional blog fashion, that the concert--which we owe our friend Katie for, since she let us have the tickets she won--was awesome. We were in the front row in the orchestra pit, directly in front of the guitarist and his guitar-only speakers, which convinced me that it is possible to be too close to the stage during a concert. The singer's vocals were often drowned out by the guitar, and the unique vocals and lyrics are one of my favorite things about Modest Mouse. But that's just an observation. I wouldn't complain. The music was great, the venue was gorgeous, the gin and tonic was tasty, the people-watching was interesting, and the vibe was extremely positive. People love that band. It makes them smile. And for good reason.

Modest Mouse Rocks

Rock on, Modest Mouse.

Semi-Brief Update

I haven't been blogging much lately, simply because nothing's really been going on, even at the same time that I've been keeping fairly busy. I've been thinking more like a writer lately (which to me means that it's a reflex to compose descriptions of random everyday things in my head), but nothing holds my attention long enough to become a blog post. Instead, I feel like I'm filing all those observations away so they can eventually take their place in something bigger and more important, like a story or novel. But while I've been thinking like a writer, here are the highlights of what I've been doing:

I'm making progress toward publishing my fiction, not only in the sense that I'm thinking about writing again, but also insofar as the Writer's Market has made its way down from the shelf onto the coffee table, where it frequently gets picked up and paged through. I've been putting off cleaning in favor of reading and playing The Sims 2, the latter of which is really pretty mind-numbing, but did you know Sims can have twins? I had a preventative cardiovascular screening a week ago, which I don't recommend if you're looking for a good time, but which was kind of interesting now and then, like when they took a picture of the back of my eye (because, believe it or not, that's the easiest way to see visually what kind of shape my veins are in) and when I got to watch my own heart on an ultrasound machine. One of the results of this screening is that I've learned I need to make exercise more of a priority. For that and other reasons, after returning from my grandma's house where we'd celebrated Easter, Eric and I went for a long walk last night, through our neighborhood and along the river, where the sunset turned the opposite bank a burnt shade of orange. We discovered a nice park nearby and made note of a few apartments for rent. Afterward, I decided to catch up on some fairly urgent laundry. This morning, however, the laundry is still sitting in baskets by the basement door because last night when I went down to move the first load from the washer to the dryer, the basement was filled with smoke. The landlord had a guy come over to look at it today, and he'll be coming back later to (he thinks) clean out the lint trap in the outside wall. But since I hadn't used the dryer at all when the basement filled with smoke, and since Eric recently cleaned out that very lint trap, I think he's got more of a job than that to look forward to. I think he'll be taking apart the washing machine. Meanwhile, my "clean" (slightly smoky) clothes are mildewing in a basket on the kitchen floor. Awesome.

So that brings us up to date. I have two hours now to squeeze in as much cleaning (dishes and bathroom), getting ready for work (ironing, makeup, and hair), and relaxing (maybe a few minutes with a book and a quesadilla I'm really not supposed to eat) before I have to leave for a closing shift at the bookstore. So exciting.

Published, After a Fashion

My first article, on how to get rid of hairballs, is up at How to Get Rid of Things. Feel free to check it out, but not if you're eating or planning to eat in the very near future. Yes, that came out of my cat.