1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
I was a mom. And I went to Hawaii. And I was a wife. And I bleached my hair and dyed it purple. And I lost weight without really trying. And I was totally and completely honest with someone for the first time in my whole life.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn’t have time to make them for last year as I was busy having a child just days before New Years Day. I’ll be making them for this year, though. Just you wait.

3. Did someone close to you give birth?
In 2008? Um… no?
.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
I don’t want to jinx it, but I’ve only lost one friend this year.

5. What countries did you visit?
The United States was a pretty exciting place to be this year but, as always, I dreamed of other places.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Steady energy and sanity.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
September 24 was the day we were married.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I got published! And I raised a 1-year old! And I lost 30 lbs! And I moved into a house! And I maintained a relationship with a man without a single break-up! Woo-hoo!

9. What was your biggest failure?
Oh, we’re so not talking about that here.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes. I had a massive C-section scar to ring in the New Year and couldn’t sit up on my own for at least two weeks.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My homemade wedding bouquet from Safeway in Kapa’a

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
GObama!!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Hillary Clinton. ERgh.

14. Where did most of your money go?
baby food.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Moving into a house with my family. Working for a local news source. Going to Hawaii for a week. A trash-the-dress photo shoot. Presents from people who love me. You know, the norm.

16. What song[s] will always remind you of 2008?
“Single Ladies” - Beyonce
“All the Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom” - N.E.R.D.
“Run” - Gnarls Barkley
“I Will Possess Your Heart” - Death Cab
“Maps” - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (it has meaning now)
“The Hand that Feeds” - NIN
“Bodysnatchers” - Radiohead
“Little Boxes” - Melvina Williams
“2.99 cent blues” - Regina Spektor

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder?
It’s hard to tell. I’m just becoming blissful again.

ii. thinner or fatter?
Deeeeeffinitely thinner.

iii. richer or poorer?
Poor poor poor. But happy.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Cardio. But other than that, I think I did pretty good, considering.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
lying in bed unable to complete thoughts. I could do without that.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
for 2009? I haven’t decided that, yet!

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
I sure did.

23. Any one-night stands?
Definitely not.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
Top Gear

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Ugh. Katy Perry.

26. What was the best book you read?
Snuff by Chuck Pahalalalaninuniuuk

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
IRON MAIDEN!!! (Why didn’t anyone TELL me?!?!?! They’re hysterically great. Phenomenally shameless and the best music to get pumped to ever!)

28. What did you want and get in 2008?
Peace with my past and hope for the future.

29. What did you want and not get?
Enough money for me and Greg to take Chloe around the world for the rest of our lives. There’s always next year.

30. Favorite film of this year?
I’m not gonna lie; I’m retarded about “Mamma Mia!” I just want to be Meryl Streep’s best friend.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 25 and I sat at home with my new baby and babydaddy.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Again, I’m leaving this year feeling pretty damned good with what I’ve done.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Attempting to appear professional. Laughably.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
The new improved Trent Reznor. He’s like the best poster-child for sobriety ever created.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Prop 8. Buncharetardedbastardsgrumblegrumblegrumble…

37. Who do you miss?
I’m bummed we won’t be treated to any more Bernie Mac comedy. I loved that man.

38. Who was the best new person(s) you met?
Becky Billingsley.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:
Just one?
ah… okay, one I discovered recently that seems pretty obvious is that “Fear is only as big as our minds”
(I made that up.)

Scruffy wisps of dirty blonde hair are combed over the bald spots on her peeling scalp that perches atop an enormous forehead. Between pointy Yoda-esque ears, two spherical cheeks monopolize her pudgy face and nearly obscure her mouth, empty except for a few crooked teeth running along her upper and lower gums. Although hairless and free of dimples, her limbs are encased in doughy fat that conceals her knees and elbows almost entirely. This would seem out of proportion if not for her rotund gut that protrudes far past her beltline and comprises the majority of her mushy body.

But when she smiles, her eyes twinkle and, as she shouts indecipherable gibberish at me through toothless gums, I never doubt that my daughter is easily the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.

Happy First Birthday, Bear.

I know, I know. I’ve had this new blog for about two months now and it still is in it’s primitive stages. The truth is, I have no idea how to work half of these WordPress features and I simply don’t have time to read all the FAQ and figure out what I’m doing so I’ve just been updating and then going back to my life. That being said, if ANYONE reading this could please help me answer a few questions pertaining to WordPress as a program on an independent blog, that surely would help me a lot.

Like, what the heck is a “pingback” and how do I get those to go away?
How do I check my stats from here and how do I get Plugins to work on an independent website/server?

You know… stuff like that. (There are PILES more questions if you’re volunteering for the job, however. Be forewarned.)

And that being said, I’m so in love with my friend’s friend Ellie’s blog I can’t even stand it. First of all, she’s freaking gorgeous. Secondly, she picks these nuggets from her day and makes them beautiful and poetic. Thirdly, she’s one hell of a photographer. Fourthly (maybe not a word), she’s Australian so she’s got that going for her. And fifthly (definitely not a word), her blog is so fun and interactive and beautiful that it makes mine look like a 10th Grade HTML-learning exercise. This is me trying not to sound envious but instead respectful and supportive of a fellow blogger/artist/photographer/writer.

::::heeeehhhnn::::

Wow, Rick Levine. You said this about me today:

~~~
Monday, Dec 29th, 2008 — You may have a hard time knowing what you are feeling as your emotions change from one extreme to the other now that the Moon is back in your sign. Optimism and excitement give way to fear of change and then back to anticipation of what may be next. Others cannot keep up with your mood swings, so it may be best to keep your intensity to yourself until your high-strung energy settles back down.
~~~~

Schyah… Tell me something I don’t know.

Why is it that even after years and apologies and moving on and blissful times and a genuinely better life with an exceptionally perfect man, a single image of his recent return to town can turn my insides completely inside out?

:::sigh:::

Damn you, Facebook. No, I do NOT want to see pictures of people I distinctly, purposefully ”unfriended”… for a reason.

* (This is just a bit of fiction I’m trying out; there’s no need to call for help or alert anyone about my mental state. I promise.)
————————

Crimson absorbs the pearl, white where it bobs on the aching spot of my wrist.

‘Honestly, who does this?’ I can’t help but think to myself.

The Crimson collects where the point comes through and splatters between the “C” key, the “V” key and the Space Bar.

‘That’s a good way to ruin an iBook’

I wonder how long blood takes to dry.

Three hours ago I was talking to you. I’m all you wanted. I’m all you needed. Now I’m nothing. It’s sad, really. That my sense of self-worth is based on what you said you wanted.

‘Shit. Now my keys are sticky’

Blood runs up my forearms and onto my lap. It pools onto the spacce between the keyboard and my lap, where the desk sits waiting, servviccing, transient… almost.

I press another hatpin into my wrist, watching the bubble of red swwell and spill down my wrist, wondering where I accquired hatpins in the first placcce, although somehow they seem fitting. The pain loccks my wrist into place and soon I am typing with one hand, eager to speak my last few emotions into a keyboard before it all dissipates.

There is another hatpin from my grandmother’s sewing kit, then another.

sYlvvia Plath, vVvirginia Wolfe, Emily dickson would be proud. Or apathetic.
I don’t know; I never really knew those sad bitcches.

Red rains and rains and rainss onto my white, pure, keys. Taints them with the opposite, the loathing, the Fear, the pain. the Pain. The Pain that hass hauntedd me this long.
So long.

‘Another.’

Another, all lining my wrisst like a pearly ccaterpillar.

Ssoon, the padd is ssspeckled and sstickey with w iutth red. I am pressssing these pinss as fasst asss they’ll go.. In. deep. Through my wrisst but, mostly through The Pain.

Of Loneliness. Of SSearching. Of Light. Of Sounnd.
Of the Noisess.
Oh, the Noisse. Like Doctor sEuss says in that story about that green man,
‘The Noise. O, the Noise,noise, noise, Noise.”

It feelss lik e it’s working. It feelss like The End. I feel..it feelss like it’s bbbleeding out my annoying, pretenntious, eternnal, Sssorrow.
Whatevver that iss annymmore

And my poasst.
P{asst
Past

and the Pain,.
Teh Paionnn.
The Pain………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

(How many Beck song titles can I knock off for blog entry titles? Sheesh)

I’ve realized that New Years Resolutions aren’t successful for a number of reasons, but the most important being that if you were really that adamant about making these personal changes, one wouldn’t wait until a specific date to start being a better person. This is why I’ve started my planned resolutions slightly before the new year begins, in order to integrate them into my daily habits and not act as if they are somehow stunts that I am pulling off only to abandon once they become difficult. Also, the following resolutions don’t include my actual personal goals for the year, as I have them written in my own calendars and agendas, but plan to share in the near future, once I get them all hammered out.

So yes. Here we are

New Year’s Resolutions 2009

1) Stop Swearing So Effing Much
My daughter’s getting of the age where she’s going to start picking words up and I really need to quit with such explicit language if I’m going to be around throngs of children for the next couple decades. Now would be a good time to start weaning myself off such a tacky, trashy habit as cursing… I was an English major, for Christ’s sake. Surely I can start flexing that vocabulary a little.

2) Make Daily Meditation a Morning Event
I do better when I set up my day positively than when I try to reflect on my day and try to salvage it as I’m going to bed. I have lots of affirmations, prayers, rituals, etc. that I enjoy and pull strength from daily, but feel they would best serve me in the morning. However, instead of trying to cram silent meditation, various sets of spiritual/psychological/personal/metaphysical affirmations, morning pages, tarot readings, pilates, and mediumship all into a 30-45 minute slot, I think just going with what I feel I most need on a daily basis is a realistic place to start with regards to starting a sun-welcoming ritual.

3) Stop Apologizing for Everything
Yes, I know that my need to apologize for existing shows weakness and is a product of me trying to find a balance between humility and healthy pride. However, I’ve gotta stop apologizing for every action, every notion, every sentence that I dare to expose because I’m creating this reality in which I’m afraid of actualizing myself and, even though that’s not what I want, my fear is becoming more and more evident with every meek apology I utter daily. So, only when it’s absolutely necessary will I apologize. And when I say something or do something that I stand behind, I will not apologize for or try to control someone else’s hurt feelings as those are not my responsibility or under my control. (See? AA stuff lasts a longlonglong time. Have I not mentioned that?)

4) Let Go of One Vice Per Month
I have more vices than I have hairs. I’m pretty embarrassed by most of them so I keep them under my toup for the most part, but I constantly realize my need to release most of these. However, when I try to abandon them all, I tend to fling myself back into them a few weeks down the road out of my fear of inevitable failure at such an unreasonable standard.
So I’m kicking one vice per month. One month I will give up that one-or-two cigarettes I’ve started having when I go out with my girlfriends fortnightly. Then the next month perhaps I’ll quit sodas altogether. And then maybe the next month I’ll finally stop delivering pent-up heartfelt diatribes to people who don’t actually give a shit about me. Then I’ll give up dragging myself over the “shoulda, woulda, couldas” every day (hopefully with the help of Resolution #2) And then the next month I’ll give up sweets… The idea is that if I can stay away from these habits of mine for a month, then they’ve been broken from my system and I can choose to keep them around in moderation or do away with them altogether (now that I know that I can.)

5) Love My Body
Alright, this one has been the hardest for me for the better part of two decades, so I don’t think I’ll cure it overnight, but maybe in one year I can make some progress. It sounds really stupid when I said it out loud earlier, but I’m never going to love my body if I don’t GIVE LOVE TO MY BODY.
I is astute.
Instead of talking down to my body and making me feel bad about what I look like, I’m going to take more care of me as an individual person. I’m eating better, fresher produce, I’m getting the exercise and activity that I need and I’m going to start enjoying my body for the force that it is, no matter where my weight lands at the end of the year. Ideally, I’d love to get rid of this same 30 lbs. I’ve whined about since high school, but really, I’d just like to get out and go kayaking and bellydancing again. And if I don’t get on a scale this whole year, that’d be perfectly fine with me.

That’s what I have at the moment. Again, these are just building blocks to help me reach bigger goals, but I think these are all obtainable and reasonable, knowing my level of discipline and wavering attention in recovery.

I’m guessing I should resist the urge to start a journal about this, too. Herhhmmm..

There’s a scene in one of my favorite “Will and Grace” episodes where Grace has designed a Barney’s New York window for Jack and his boss Dorleen (the incomparable Parker Posey) looks over the draping, swooshing crimson curtains intertwined with white twinkle lights and says matter-of-factly. “I love it. It’s glam. It’s dark. It’s sad. It’s Christmas. ”

Somehow, that’s exactly what I feel inside my heart tonight.

~

My uproarious extended paternal family gathered at my Gran’s this year [for the first time in almost a decade] to celebrate Christmas a little early. My co-black-sheep cousin put on Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas album and I commented that when I listen to “Christmastime is Here” out of season, I feel this deep, lurching sadness in my chest. Naturally, this put the entire table of WASPs at a discomfort, but my cousin’s eyes twinkled with kindred understanding and suddenly we were talking about how Vince Guaraldi was a Yuletide genius for not only tapping into those dampered emotions of loss that everyone feels at the holiday season but chooses to ignore on a commercial level, but daring to pair this multi-leveled artistic notion with a cartoon. I was alight at the idea that something so sad could be beautiful and resonating with someone else in my family, but also that this sad, aching feeling didn’t have to mean I was alone.

~

I took my small family out to look at Christmas lights this evening to quell my childish obsession with watching them all, but there’s a part of that ritual that makes me miss alcohol all the more. I’ve discussed it before, but I used to drive around with a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream and listen to my personalized Christmas mix while riding throughout the county, gazing at light displays for hours. (Again, I realize this is stupid, dangerous, and unforgivable and I DO NOT condone drunk driving. Ever.) There’s a side to drinking that was a lot like a long-term relationship. Much like the other long-term relationship I’ve been associated with before this one at present, drinking was never healthy or honest or enriching, but I loved to live in the illusion that I was with a partner that bolstered my confidence, that shielded me from the perils of the outside world [despite the obvious perils its very presence actually caused in this world I was ignoring.] I miss the way alcohol roped me off from my noisy, rambling mind and soothed my hyperactive fears long enough for me to stop and observe twinkling lights and melodic rituals going on around me. It’s hard to rewire my mind to do that on it’s own, but having two loved ones in tow that sobriety is directly responsible for is an awfully nice adapter.

~

I am not insane tonight, not shivering in the corner of my bathroom or crying at the notion that this year has been wasted. I am just forlorn that somehow we’ve bridged the time between last Christmas Eve and this one in hardly a blink.

Last Christmas I was a heaving mass of pregnancy, ready to burst within days and giddily awaiting the imminent arrival of the greatest person I’d never met. I was excited and exhausted, sentimental and irate, enormous and glowy. I was that mythical combination of being both perfect and miserable.

This Christmas I am 70 lbs lighter (YIKES!) and still a little soft in the middle, wondering how this little person has possibly grown and changed so much and whether she’ll slow down long enough for me to catch my breath and make some memories before this fleeting childhood is said and done. I beam with pride at the countless growths she’s acheived in her short life and yet I pray that time stands still and keeps her where she is. I can’t stop taking photos of her, filling extensive folders with images of her daily activities for fear that I will miss or forget a single moment. I am petrified that the moments I’ve wasted gathering my mind are the moments I will never forgive myself for missing. I am devastated that my tiny infant is going to be a 1-year-old by this time next week. I am heartbroken that I’ve missed her first year in my unassuming ignorance and ongoing fear that I’m not doing anything right.

And then there’s the idea that next Christmas will be better. Next Christmas there will be visits and letters to Santa and Advent calendars, and songs and cookie-baking… Next Christmas will be even more wonderful than this, although I wish more than anything else that it would take its time getting here.

~

I will stay up late tonight, tracking Santa on GoogleEarth, sipping the Christmas Eve Tea that an internet friend sent me, and scribbling in my private fiction portfolio, hoping something salvageable comes out of my restless mind.

God bless us, every one.

I loathe when people ominously post lyrics to their blog in hopes that someone out there will feel the pain that they’ve cut-and-pasted from whatever lyrics source they’ve found.

However. I thought I’d do a brief patchwork-quilt-style poem of found lyrics to describe how I feel today. Because I feel Hedwig, Michael Stipe, and Dave Grohl can do it better than I.

This lightning storm
This tidal wave
This avalanche, I’m not afraid.
C’mon c’mon no one can see me cry

———————————————-

On nights like this
when the world’s a bit amiss
and the lights go down
across the trailer park
I get down
I feel had
I feel on the verge of going mad
and then it’s time to punch the clock

I put on some make-up
and turn up the tape deck
and pull the wig down on my head
suddenly I’m Miss Midwest
Midnight Checkout Queen
until I head home
and put myself to bed

I look back on where I’m from
look at the woman I’ve become
and the strangest things
seem suddenly routine
I look up from my Vermouth on the rocks
a gift-wrapped wig still in the box
of towering velveteen.

I put on some make-up
and some LaVern Baker
and pull the wig down from the shelf
Suddenly I’m Miss Beehive 1963
Until I wake up
And turn back to myself

Some girls they have natural ease
they wear it any way they please
with their French flip curls
and perfumed magazines
Wear it up
Let it down
This is the best way that I’ve found
to be the best you’ve ever seen

I put on some make-up
and turn up the eight-track
I’m pulling the wig down from the shelf
Suddenly I’m Miss Farrah Fawcett
from TV
until I wake up
and turn back to myself

Shag, bi-level, bob
Dorothy Hammill do,
Sausage curls, chicken wings
It’s all because of you
With your blow dried, feather back,
Toni home wave, too
flip, fro, frizz, flop,
It’s all because of you
It’s all because of you
It’s all because of you

I put on some make-up
turn up the eight-track
I’m pulling the wig down from the shelf
Suddenly I’m this punk rock star
of stage and screen
and I ain’t never
I’m never turning back

—————————-

I’m not scared
I felt like this on my way home
I’m not scared
I pass boats and the kingdom
I’m not scared

—————————-

This lightning storm
This tidal wave
This avalanche, I’m not afraid.
C’mon c’mon no one can see me cry

It’s come to my attention that I continually serve the ball into the courts of others long after they’ve apparently left the game…

… Which leads me to ask: Why is it that ‘rocking the boat’ and ’stirring the pot’ mean the same thing even though they’re completely unrelated in real life?