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  • Aging is for the weak, and everyone else
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  • Ok but ALSO:
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  • You can’t go home again
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  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

First things first: some of you are, like, total pussies about dead people in closets. I’m sorry, but someone had to say it. It’s almost like the grisly visage of a human who has clearly died while in the grip of mortal terror ooks you out, or something. BUK BUK BUK BU-GAWK.

(If it makes you feel better, you should go back and take another look at that Ring image and notice, like I did, the little barely-visible chalk line drawn around her on the floor, which I assume was put there so she knew exactly where she needed to curl up and pretend to be dead, since apparently “sit in the corner and be creepy as all fuck” wasn’t specific enough.)

Second: thank you SO much for the song recommendations! I added a whole boatload of new music to my Shuffle last night and they made a big difference in my 4-mile run this morning, at least before I ran directly over the flattened body of a dead squirrel, which I would like to point out is much more disgusting than a makeup-covered girl in a closet and THAT’S why I released a high-pitched shriek and ran the rest of the way home wildly flapping my hands in the air.

(EEEEEEEEEEK DEAD SQUIRREL OMFG.)

Anyway! Here are a few of the songs I’ve been enjoying:

Hanuman, Rodrigo Y Gabriela
When I Grow Up, Pussycat Dolls
Bring the Noise Remix, Public Enemy VS Benny Benassi
Run This Town, Jay-Z
Waiting, Taxi Doll
You Haven’t Done Nothin‘, Stevie Wonder
I Can Transform Ya, Chris Brown
Mary, Mary, Run-DMC
Lazy Eye, Silversun Pickups

In other news, Riley drew this picture this morning:

It’s a horse, because Dylan is always asking for someone to draw him a horse on that thing, and that’s a cowboy on top.

Now, I know this isn’t what you might call a perfect rendition. The face is pleasing enough in its jolly expression, but I’m not completely sure about the perspective. It isn’t clear where the cowboy’s lasso ends and his arm begins; a classic Life Drawing mistake. The horse’s tail is either missing or bobbed much too short. And of course there’s the issue of those extra legs, which might be forgivable if there was a backstory involving a nuclear power plant or perhaps a drug trial gone terribly wrong, but he made mention of no such thing.

But O! What can I say, this drawing kills me. It just absolutely kills me in some hard-to-explain way, that he’s old enough to draw something more than a scribble. That he can take a picture in his head and re-create it on a well-worn MagnaDoodle. He’s such a big kid these days, getting so tall and lanky and full of hilarity and obnoxious sass, and my god, now he can draw a horseapillar. When he was a baby he stretched my heart beyond what I thought it could hold—his star-hands, his tiny furrowed brow—and now he and his brother teach me every day about one of the most beautiful truths in life, that your heart is infinite. Your children are infinite. They never stop being amazing.

This weekend I ran nine miles. I know, right? NINE. Five of those miles felt pretty good, two of them were fairly unpleasant, and the last two were so miserable I feel sorry for anyone who had the misfortune of spotting me on the Sammamish River Trail around 3:30 PM on Saturday, because I bet my face looked like—well, do you remember that scene in The Ring with the dead girl in the closet?

I think that’s exactly how I ran those last two miles. I vaguely remember some weeping, frightened children at one point, but really that last half hour was kind of a painful, hallucinatory blur.

I am both amazed and proud that I was able to run for so long without stopping, and completely overwhelmed by the fact that as hard as that was, as much of a PINNACLE LIFE ACHIEVEMENT as that felt like—in two months I’ve got to run that distance plus another four miles. You’d think I would be able to look back on how much I’ve improved over the last two months and trust that I’ll be that much stronger and capable in two more months, but that sort of thinking is reserved for positive self-affirming people and I’d much prefer to sit here flipping out about how I’m probably going to experience a catastrophic gastrointestinal event during mile 10, right before my heart explodes in a giant arterial geyser of FAIL.

I’m sure I’ll be FINE, though! HA HA HA HA FINE. 13.1 miles! I can do this! WHOOOOOOO FIIIIIINE.

In other news, I need new music to add to my running mix, because guess what, running nine miles takes fucking forever. What’s your go-to song that helps revitalize your lagging ass? If you want to see some of my current favorites, I’ve got them listed here.

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