purple people eater
march 30th, 2000

i don't know why i ever try to dye my hair by myself. my scalp is purple. 
the bathroom sink is purple. the shower is streaked in purple-coloured 
trails of water. there are small little patches of purple here and there 
on the walls, and a few drops of purple on the floor. my scalp is purple. 
my neck is purple. and my fingernails will probably be purple until the 
next turn of the century. and all of this wouldn't be so bad...if my hair 
were actually uniformly purple. instead, my hair it dotted with patches of 
purple highlights, making me look as if i simply broke open a purple ink 
pen over my head and let it dribble wherever it will. ah well.

i got a letter from eric today! :) i miss that boy. he seems to be doing 
well - he's totally in love with his son, Austin, who sounds very much 
like he'd be up to a wrestling match with my daughter, with the whole 
pulling on lips and trying to take your face apart fetish. :) i really 
don't understand why, out of all of the men that have been in my life, and 
as cool and wonderful as most of them have been to me, and as wonderful 
fathers they would make... *sigh* i'll stop there. after all, i already 
said i wasn't going to think about It anymore. ;)

well, i'm jumping on the bandwagon, too...actually, i'd already been on 
the bandwagon without really thinking about it. i sent a voicemail to mary 
alice just now, and i figure since i already have voicemail myself, i 
might as well give out the number...1.877.213.7742, ext. 6249 (which is, 
oddly enough, the last four digits of eric's old number.) so leave me 
silly messages. and yes, i'm really just a sheep. baaa.

i have an extremely fussy starfish and a test to study for, so i'll leave 
off now. with a plug for sitemeter because they really kick ass. of 
course, i think most of you already know that, anyway. ;)



diet coke
march 30th, 2000

i'm sitting here drinking diet coke. except i don't drink diet coke. ever. 
it has no sugar, no taste, it fizzes and dies and doesn't do anything 
interesting at all, except embedd very strange commercial jingles in the 
margins of my memory. only 5% of this mesh of gray matter beneath my skull 
in use, and at least part of that has recorded the words "just for the 
taste of it...diet coke!" ugh.

i'm feeling inspired. he inspired me and she inspired me and now i feel as 
if i should ramble on some random tangent for hours and hours on end. but 
i've nothing to ramble about. it's housecleaning day, and not particularly 
inspirational material (even though i've written a couple of very 
inspiring journal entries shortly after cleaning house.) house-cleaning. 
ugh again.

this diary program i have, life journal - i really have no use for it, 
though i've gotten in the habit of typing out my entries in here, first, 
and then spell-checking and double-saving and cutting and pasting my way 
into diaryland. diaryland is pretty amazing. i'm glad i discovered it, or 
it discovered me, as this case may be. but this program, it has prompts - 
if you can't think of anything to write about, it will give you something 
to write about. (if you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nuthin' at 
all.) lemme try. i wanna push the button.

"Describe your most thrilling moment in life."

my most thrilling moment...there's too many. or perhaps not too many, but 
too detailed. there was governor's school, that little piece of heaven 
where a month lasted a year in the summer, where gillian and lyndsay and i 
stood on sundials to make time stop after watching dead poet's society, 
where doctor loebekka taught us how the moon was always falling towards 
the center of the earth, where we sounded our barbaric yawps, where my 
pinwheel spoke for me and i decorated myself in lipstick runes and i 
danced...and i danced, and i fell in love, and with the world. there was 
the coffee house in jefferson city, java jazz, where i first found my 
voice, where i took my words to the stage in poetry slams and breathed 
them out to world, without fear, without hesitation, where for the first 
time in my life i was widely adored and desired, i was the "cool" one, and 
everybody listened, and johnny would hide me in the back and talk about 
all of the different nuances of his life after drawing all over my face, 
where Dust stood out beside the candles and read to me love poems in 
german, where eric and carl, those insane hippies, preached of the beat 
and the cube the da vinci's peanut butter and jelly solution and sleep 
deprivation and monkey-watching. where i dreamed up the meaning of 
"glig-riffed."

there was the play "a midsummer night's dream," where i was crowned queen 
of the faeries as i bantered with oberon and lingered with puck behind the 
curtains too often...where i learned to let go, to simply exist, to dream 
and to explode like a million colours onto the surface of the sun, where 
fun became my middle name, alongside "acorn," where finally i was accepted 
and adored even within the boundaries of my own universe, that hell that 
was west greene high school where sweaty adolescent boys would try to drag 
you beneath the bleachers and no one would say a word about it. i stood 
out on the stage, i shouted my lines, i wore my wings, i flew. susanne was 
there, we touched the stars, she and i - we chased rainbows. we found 
rooftops with no chimneys. she was mary poppins and i was peter pan and 
nothing could have stopped us, not even oceans.

there was my eighteenth birthday party. it was a surprise, the afternoon 
after my graduation, a graduation that i could have cared less about, a 
graduation where i quoted neil gaiman in my little graduation speech and 
nobody had a clue what i was talking about - except eric, of course. a 
graduation where i wore my knee-high combat boots, because i always said i 
would. the afternoon after, i return to a house filled with my friends 
from the four corners of the earth - Dust and Jill, Doug, the Lost Girls, 
Matthew and Chris, Eric and Dawn, all of those faces i loved and adored 
there, in one place at one time, to celebrate my eighteen years. i love 
surprises. i loved that surprise. i had never felt so incredibly honored.

i struggled to keep that magic within, and ended up creating a 
smoke-and-mirrors existance for myself, doubly enforced by another 
smoke-and-mirrors set that was inserted into my universe shortly after i 
came to college. i wasn't happy. but there were moments. those times i 
went dancing - the dancing was always wonderful. the president's picnic - 
the first one - when i met a million souls i still hold dear today. 
claire...just claire in general. staying up with brian and joe all night 
simply to watch the sun rise, watching them smoke expensive cigarettes and 
pretending to take a taste every now and again. wandering through the 
streets of nashville with brian to have boot roots tell me to keep on 
dancing and to have lesbians give us free beer. riding in John's car at 
five hundred miles an hour to his home in knoxville only to have him make 
me a dinner of french toast and orange juice. getting lost in the 
mountains of north carolina with Erin and Dust, walking along the mountain 
paths at Ely's college singing to keep the evil things away. Erin and i's 
spontaneous road trip all over the entire state, getting hopelessly lost 
in the abyss surrounding nashville and popping caffeine pills in an 
attempt to keep the body going. (that one was an escape.)

the pregnancy. the steadfast friends. surprise baby showers in english 
classes. doctor fesmire (as she is definitely in a category all her own.) 
perfect blue hippie dresses. acts of random kindness. grocery shopping. 
buying a stethoscope at revco and sitting in the parking lot with Dust 
trying to see if i could hear my baby's heartbeat. the chaotic summer 
house, with Susanne and Andi, Erin and Dust, Taylor and Elf, Lyndsay, and 
so many others. Erin making an immaculate list of the different foods 
filled with iron i needed to put into my system in order to keep Aisling 
healthy. Dust and Susanne drawing all over my gargantuan belly. Erin 
standing by me in lamaze class. laughter, dirty houses, dishes that were 
never done. it was wonderful.

she came, that little angel with the blue eyes. she came, and my life was 
utterly changed forever. i held her, in all her tinyness - i held her, 
this little creature looking just like me, forever changed, and happy 
beyond anything i could ever possibly imagine. and then - then i knew what 
love truly was, with her breathing, and suckling, and tiny hands reaching 
out for me and confused and dazed at the surrounding world. watching her 
grow, and develop, and become a child with her own personality, and 
thought-process, imagination, and curiousity...that has to be the most 
thrilling experience of all - motherhood. she is, and for that i take joy 
in breathing.

and i breathe, while she sleeps, and i sip my diet coke - except i don't 
drink diet coke, because there isn't any sugar in it. still, i am drinking 
it tonight, all the same.