Re: yesterday

Good news: This dude still manages to be impressed with me. Awesome.

Shit gets downright majestic here in Appalachia.

This week, on the local public radio station, Nick and I accidentally tuned into a call-in show called "Sell Phone." Local listeners call in and candidly describe the item they're hoping to sell (" '92 Cavalier, looks good, runs good") and leave their phone number for interested buyers to call. Like some sort of analog Craigslist. Awesome.

I listened to My Aim is True and Armed Forces a lot in high school (usually through my walkman-to-tape-deck converter speeding down my street cause fuck was I ever late for school), but other Elvis Costello albums that are worth a damn I didn't discover until college. The first gift Nick ever gave me (we probably weren't dating yet) was a 45 of "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down". I think it followed a discussion of why Mr. Costello, as given to parenthetical titles as he is, would choose "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" but not "I Can't Stand Up (For Falling Down)". Then we took a preemptive puff from our inhalers and rolled for damage. Ha.

The bonus disc on the Rhino rerelease of Get Happy! has "Girls Talk" on it, but it wasn't until this past summer that I discovered this song and played it and played it and talked about it and put it on compilations for people and decided it would be in the opening scene of my screenplay that will never be written. I'm sort of....excitable. You don't want to see me at Kroger went they have bing cherries on sale.

While digging for studying-conducive tunes the other day, I came across that 45 I've had for a couple years now and discovered that the freaking B-side is, has always been, "Girls Talk". I don't know why but I felt warm, full, in good hands. Sometimes it takes me a few laps to catch up with Nick and vice versa but in the meantime we do okay.

Here we are, doing okay.

I grew up in a big cozy house in the woods with five people and an unruly dachshund. There was no privacy, there were no closed doors, and near-constant clamor. It was noisy and normal and good.

While intense porch talks with Sjannie are invaluable, there is something to be said for just feeling like you're part of someone's comfortable backdrop. It was nice idly tapping away at a paper while Jason was studying for his candidacy exam or cooking. It was a strange comfort to watch, amused, as Nick set up the TV's picture in picture so that he could play Resident Evil on the tiny screen while I watched Stand By Me on the large screen.

I remember now, that feeling after you've split up with somebody, being tortured by not knowing what they're wearing or eating for breakfast or if they have to work that weekend. In the midst of creating this online record of my trivial bullshit, I didn't realize how much I'd hunger for other people's minutiae.

The first week of class was stormclouded over by all this car keys hassle. Parking tickets were amassing. Businesses were yanking me around. I felt frustrated and impotent, with no end in sight. I couldn't shake the codependent, irrational notion that if Nick was here, he would be able to magically fix it for me.

Today provided some much needed perspective about all the warm bodies out there who give a shit about me. I got two beautifully illustrated letters from Lauren, one of which contained two CDs of new sounds for my earholes. I got a notice in the mail that Ana had bought me a subscription to ReadyMade to balance out all my grueling scholarly reading. My brother drove two and a half hours to hand deliver my CAR KEYS (case of the missing keys closed, by the way: my mom absentmindedly palmed them into her purse last weekend when she visited). And when I reached Columbus, blood sugar on a sharp downturn, Nick had just returned from dinner with his dad at my favorite restaurant and had picked up a carryout sandwich there for me. Seeing that brown takeout box in his fridge for me was like Christmas fucking morning.

Also, sleeping alone sucks.

So while I shouldn't necessarily encourage these school night visits, I'd be stupid not to soak them up.

Shit can get done tomorrow.