Dear Abe

Happy Birthday!

I like this picture of us.

I like you more.

In fact I love you.

Measured

Two parking lots, one car wash garage, a hole in the fence, a reusable cup, and sixty cents later…

A measurable amount of joy.

44 ounces to be exact.

Stands with a Fist...?

Today I noticed this:

Looks an awful lot like this:

If only I had some leather fringe.

My Day with Alexander

I didn’t realize my day was so bad until I called Mom and told her about it. She laughed and told me I should write a book about my day. “It could beat Alexander,” she said.

It’s true. In the last picture of this book Alexander ends up hugging someone he loves. Sunshine, crayons, and a blanket are all present.

My day ended with me throwing up. No hugging. No sunshine. No crayons.

I won. Or lost. Either way I plan on ditching Alexander tomorrow.

The Old Woman and the Gym

My journal entry from a few weeks ago went something like this:

Tonight I went with some friends to the Peking Acrobats. Amidst all the amazing (and audience-stress inducing) talent all I could think of was a conversation between myself and the old woman who issues required clothing at the gym. It went something like this:

Me: Can I get a size X swimming suit please?
OW (in thick Russian accent): I don’t think you know what size you are. Do you know what size you are?
Me: Oh. Uh. Yes?
OW: I don’t think you do. Size X is for the little Asian girls. Girls like this (holding up hands about three inches apart). You are like this (hands a bit further apart).
Me: ……
OW: Here is size Y.

It was too big.

Bleh

Our water heater is broken.

So is our heater.

It's hard to recover from a day that starts with a cold shower, an apartment that is 65 degrees, and an outside tempeture of 4.

Dynamic Reading

Robert Duvall as Boo Radley

I remember reading it for the first time while lying on the porch swing. I don't know if the image of light, filtered by the canopy of the swing, on the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird is real or imagined, but I do know that I loved the hours spent reading it. I remember closing the book and just laying there thinking. More importantly I remember I was changed by it. It was one of those changes I didn't know how to talk about. Like the character Jem, I turned inward with my thoughts, knowing I was different, but not knowing how, not knowing what to do with my new knowledge, my new self.

I just finished it for the fourth time. The circumstances around my completion were hardly so picturesque. I was on my bed, my desk was cluttered, a pair of dirty jeans on the floor. But closing the book caused the same reaction. I just laid there thinking, knowing I was once again changed.

I still don't completely know how to talk about how this book moves and changes me each time I read it, I think I will always be like Jem in that way. But it does. I think the thing I gained from it the most this time was the virtue and value of sight.