I Had a Dream You Were Two Towns From Me

Rule number 32: enjoy the little things.

Like the sight of my car in the parking garage after a long shift. Like Tracy Chapman played on my best friend's new radio show. Like comfy pants and a sweater and slippers. Like eating chocolate ice cream in my kitchen when it's freezing in the house. Like beginning to feel a tiny bit stable again after an eternity poised on a precipice. Being hydrated. Hours worth of text message exchanges with spectre from the past. The impending feeling of seeing Blind Pilot on Saturday night. A meteor shower leaking down tears of spacial proportions onto the hood of my car, where I sit cocooned.

I Don't Want to Wait For Our Lives to Be Over

I've spent the last three days rushing through wind storms of sweating brown snow, pushing needles under the skin of the buried past and unearthing the potential to claw my way to the other side of Neverland.

It was Thursday night when it happened. A prophecy was fufilled, a prophecy whispered to me in the state before sleep by three spirits who visited my dreams two weeks ago. They told me a story of a pair of prophets who bring the good word to the ears of the wicked. Sure enough, these prophets showed up as foreseen but it turns out that we are all the wicked and the prophets weren't looking to bring me word of eternal salvation. They just wanted to party.

I tackled Loo and Pan (or rather, tried, but was tackled myself) when they emerged from her new car in the darkness of Idaho Street. The baseball field was vacant and unlit at that hour and the street lamps on Polk Avenue would alternately dim and brighten as Pork Chop and I helped shoulder a weekend's worth of luggage into our apartment.

Two phone calls were made, resulting in two more guests. Lion showed up right around the same time Spaz did.

We all drank a little wine and the others smoked cigarettes on the balcony. Lion and I, both in an good-but-odd mood, stood in the incredibly hot kitchen, talking a mile a minute, feverish, sweating. We talked about the times when we used to be in love, the memories that came out of not only the years we spent every day together, but also out of the aftermath that followed. We talked about the people we love now, and the extent to which we still love each other. We were so far from sad or jealous or angry--we were excited, happy, manic. We enjoyed each other's company on a level that hadn't existed for two years.

Spaz left. Everyone eventually fell asleep except the two of us. We took a walk in the two a.m. mist (he promised to protect me from the cockroaches) and reveled in liking each other again and the new things it suggested for the upcoming San Diego months.

In the morning, I woke up in my bed feeling amazing as Pan and Loo crawled in with me. Six hours of sleep, facing a drive to Miramar, was not an optimistic concept, but I ignored it. Lion had gone home hours before and was due to come back over soon. Still in bed, Pork Chop brought me coffee in my enormous Jack Skellington mug and we sat in my room for a while.

I got up and put on a sarong. We made eggs and started watching The Princess Bride, halfway through which Lion came back and finished it with us. Pork Chop and Loo left to buy groceries, Pan left to meet up with a friend to get a tattoo, which left Lion and me to our devices. I got dressed and ready to embark on my journey, only to discover that my car doesn't have even enough gas to turn the engine over. I immediately put my sarong back on and simply sent my boss in Miramar an email.

Lion and I watched Real Genius and did a crossword puzzle. Loo and Pork Chop came home with an insane amount of groceries. The two of them made risotto with tons of broccoli and lemon crusted chicken. We sliced up a baguette and ate it with butter. We cracked open some wine.

We began to watch Human Traffic, an endeavor which fell apart soon after Pan came back sporting a large fleur de lis on his right calf. Pork Chop took Pan to pick up Brother and we prepared for another night like the last.

My former co-worker (still Pork Chop's current co-worker), Rider, showed up in bike gear as usual, having known that this weekend was dedicated to my last days of living in this apartment with Pork Chop. I had known he would be stopping by the next night, Saturday, but then, on Friday night, his presence was a pleasant surprise. He only stayed about an hour and after he left, the party went on.

Around one a.m., Loo put on Wonder Boys and everyone fell asleep over the course of it except me. When five rolled around and the movie ended, I finally went to bed.

Three and a half hours later, I woke up to the early morning and dressed myself to head out to a car wash fundraiser in El Cajon. I woke Lion up to drive me, as my car still wasn't starting. By nine thirty, I was at the car wash and Lion was on his way home to shower. He came back at two to pick me up and I came home with a splitting head ache due to sun, not having eaten at all, and being dehydrated. I also had a nice sunburn on my face and the backs of my knees and sore feet from walking around on blacktop without shoes. I devoured a half-sandwich, took two Excedrine, and collapsed face down on the living room floor.

I was just barely able to watch Braveheart with Loo, Pork Chop, Lion, and Pan and by the first battle scene, my headache was gone. We finished the movie, I took a shower, and as I was in the process of getting dressed, Pork Chop opened my door and told me not to come out for half an hour.

When they came to get me, the living room was decked out with Christmas lights, purple streamers hanging from everywhere, and food was ready. It was eight o'clock and we started to drink (with the exception of Loo, who had been drinking since the beginning of Braveheart while she made banana bread in our oven). I was drinking wine out of a plastic red goblet from Medieval Times. Spaz and Brother had come back over, and we had pastry bites and artichoke spinach dip and more and more and more wine.

We took themed pictures in the kitchen while a DVD of David Bowie videos played. Pan asked for a tube of lipstick and began to tattoo everyone. Lion got six-pack abs, a smiley face over one nipple, a heart over the other, and two connecting male symbols on his back. Loo had the word VAGINA written on her shoulder. Pork Chop simply had it smeared all over his face. I wrote TITZ across Pan's chest and VIVA LA AUBRÉ was written across the front of my legs. Spaz ended up with all of the above printed backward on his white T-Shirt due to many hugs.

Rider came back over about midnight. He sat with Lion and I before Lion fell asleep on the floor while Rider and I talked at length. For a hot second, a group of my friends who make up some faction or another of a fabulous band came to say hello. By the time Rider and the other children left, Pan and Loo were asleep on one couch; Brother, the first to pass out, was asleep on the other and Pork Chop was on my computer in the other room.

Lion and sat up for a while, and it was once again almost five before I fell asleep.

We woke up later today than the other two mornings. Pork Chop, Loo, Lion, Pan, and Me. The air had more of a resigned contentment quality to it as compared to the electric anticipation of the last few days. We were tired and happy and not quite ready to move on, back to reality and the outside world. Pork Chop went to work about one and the rest of us walked to the end of the street and got coffee. We loaded up the Hundai and sent Loo and Pan back to L.A.

An epic weekend to celebrate the end of one of the best eras that currently make up my life. I'll miss Pork Chop and this apartment more than I'm willing to admit, and packing is going to get emotional.

C'est la vie. And viva la Aubré!

I Got Soul, But I'm Not a Soldier

Last night, I was visited by spirits.

My roommate called around six to inform me that his friend Lara was in town, would be staying at our place, and would be hanging out at home with me until he got home from work around midnight. I was wrapped up in a game of Starcraft and reluctantly pulled myself out of it in preparation for company. Minutes later, with Lara en route, I get a second phone call. A very brief one from my friend Tony, in town from UCLA, asking what I was doing and, upon learning that I was doing nothing, hanging up on me and showing up at my door five minutes later with my ex boyfriend Brendan in tow.

When Lara arrived, the boys and I were in the living room and we spent a few minutes getting to know each other before she expressed a need for coffee, having been up since five. Following Brendan's infinite coffee wisdom, we headed to Claire De Lune. The coffee (on the Lara scale) got about a C-minus, which saddened all of us. But while we were in line, we noticed the stage on the other side of the coffee shop was slowly being occupied with the octogenarian members of a band called The Uptown Rhythm Makers. We hadn't seen these guys before, and the fact that there was no way any of them were not on Medicare led us to believe in the inevitable horror of the following performance.

Morbidly curious, we stayed for a while watching them set up, snuggled into a corner couch and the surrounding chairs, nursing cups of coffee. Lara was saying that the C-minus gained by the coffee had been brought up to a B-minus due to the hilarity of old guys with their instruments. We were soon joined by Hanna, who also sat down to watch the utter failure that was sure to be this band.

A trumpet, a slide trombone, a drum set, a clarinet, a tuba, a banjo, and a singer, playing New Orleans Jazz. Fabulous. They were amazing, and we stayed for an hour to see them. An older couple began to swing dance, which I watched with relish. Then younger couples started, too, and I was once again blown away by how deceivingly large the dance community in San Diego actually is. Mid-set, Tom showed up with his laptop and tried to hang out and do his homework simultaneously.

Eventually, we tore ourselves away from the scene and went back to my apartment to drink wine and talk about life. I fell in love with Lara, and when the children finally left, she and I sat up for a little while with my roommate.

The next morning was breakfast at Brian's. The most amazing French Toast I'd ever had, plus eggs and sausage and strawberry compote and Lara's biscuit because she doesn't eat gluten. Coffee at Cafe Callabria, where I saw a girl I'd known and sort of despised in high school.

Lara came up with an idea for my last weekend living with my roommate. She would grab Tony, drive down from L.A. and we'd rally the troops for a huge weekend bash to celebrate. We've already got plans in the works, and I'm ridiculously excited.

Last night, I had a dream that I'm pretty sure is going to be the next novel. Maybe a short story. But it's already gotten under my skin.

He Said I Think I'm Cured...No, In Fact, I'm Sure. Thank You, Stranger, For Your Therapeutic Smile

All day today I felt blinded, and not only due to the incessant California sun that seemed to take every opportunity to bounce into my eyes off of something shiny.

I should be cleaning or doing something else productive, but I just want to play Starcraft until it's suddenly dark outside and I realize I've lost all sense of time and place.

I have new freckles and I smell like sunscreen.

I'll Light the Fire While You Place the Flowers in the Vase That You Bought Today

The most productive thing I accomplished today was attending a crash course on how to make sushi rolls. The lesson took place in the apartment belonging to Xander and his roommate Jason. We packed myself, Andre, Michelle, the twins Kris and Mark, Jesse Bishop, Xander, Jason, Michelle's friends Jessica and Shauna, and Wilson, who came over just to provide some expertise to the rest of us sushi-making noobs. We had a regular imitation crab, spicy imitation crab, salmon, and tuna, plus avocado and cucumber and masago and sriracha sauce (which we later mixed with mayonnaise). It was delicious.

We lounged around Xander's place with everyone for a good while after we'd stuffed ourselves. Then it was time for Andre to step in as house bass player for a jazz jam in Pacific Beach. It started late, so we sat outside the restaurant/bar for almost an hour, canoodling and singing Bach chorales. Two hours of watching Andre play bass intermittently, and in his down time he sat with me. We had some fries and onion rings. He had a white Russian, I had a beer. We listened to jazz and sat there and talked about how nice it would be to go home and snuggle on the couch and watch the season three DVDs of House.

Which should be happening about now.

I’ll Blend Up That Rainbow Above You and Shoot it Through Your Veins...

I've spent the morning and good part of the afternoon in my pajamas, wandering back and forth from my laptop where it sits on Andre's kitchen table to the refrigerator and back. My pants are sticking to me as the hellish humidity outside finds me here. We watched an odd movie when we got up this morning and ate cereal with bleary eyes.

I hope this is the most energy I'll have to exert all day.

If I'm Murdered In the City, Don't Go Avenging In My Name

Being back from San Francisco has been a lesson in patience and in not pulling out my hair over life's little plot twists.

I thought I had escaped the awfully anti-stereotypical heat wave that was passing through San Diego last week while I was away, but it stuck around just for me. So it's eighty five this afternoon, sitting in my boyfriend's kitchen, pausing here and there to help his mother her things into her new husband's truck, on it's way to finding a home in their new house.

At Outside Lands, I fell in love with several bands, including the Avett Brothers, Blind Pilot, and The Morning Benders, so I've been rabidly stealing their music and listening to it with a fever. I'm finally starting to get hungry again after our Subway run around noon.

I hope I never forget what it was like to be in that city, at that place. The feeling of freedom, of beauty, of unparalleled freshness and lightness and tear-jerking exaltation.

Today, I was brought back from the precipice of losing everything by an act of selfless kindness.

Soon the sun will go down, Andre will come home, he'll take me back to my apartment, and I'll lay back and watch season six of The West Wing with my roommate.

Taste These Teeth Please

I arrived in San Francisco on Thursday, after an almost awkwardly short flight, as it's difficult to get comfortable when you know you're only going to be sitting in a particular spot for maybe two hours. I shoved in my headphones and lost myself in video games for the entirety.

I got off the plane and asked a sweet old man at the information desk where I could catch the subway. In basically pajamas due to a lack of foresight, toting my enormous suitcase and laptop bag, I rode the eight-dollar subway into downtown San Francisco and came up for air about one-thirty.

My hotel room wasn't ready, so I ate across the street and wandered into the public library--a much nicer one than San Diego's, but full of twice as many crazies.

When I checked into my room, I discovered it to be tiny and lovely. Once settled, I put some actual clothes on and went walking to find the Trader Joe's that allegedly was located about a mile away. It was late afternoon and the clouds were rolling in to partially block out sunlight. There was a light wind that blew my scarf behind me. I saw a man urinating in an ally. I wandered into a thrift store and talked myself out of buying books. Eventually, I found the Trader Joe's and bought a baguette, a wedge of brie, some strawberries, a package of California rolls, and some milk to put on the cereal I brought from home.

Back at the hotel, I had a snack and tried to watch a movie, but the wireless internet connection was too horrid, so I planned out my schedule for the following day instead. I played a few games of Starcraft with Andre and another guy and fell asleep with A Brave New World on my face.

I woke up Friday morning about ten, got dressed and headed down to the train that was supposed to take me to Golden Gate Park. I got on the train which ran for a few miles toward the water and stopped. Looking behind me at the front of the train, I noticed there was no more track. The driver wandered in, and exclaimed in surprise at the fact that I was still there--the last stop had been the end of the line. I told him I was supposed to get off at Irving and 9th, and he laughed at me, as this train had been headed in the opposite direction. After a few minutes, we set out in the right direction and I got off at Irving and 9th as the Muni robot had told me to. I found out later that the actual festival took place around 36th street. I walked for almost an hour to find it.

But find it I did, and I entered Outside Lands about one thirty. I wandered around the five stages based on the list I'd comprised the night before.

I had been trying to avoid bringing a bag, so I tried to do all my eating and hydrating before I left. It didn't work. By this time, I was already dying. I ended up buying a hot dog and a bottle of water, much to my dismay.

Most of the bands that played this time of day were one's I'd never really been into, and the list was based on very little information. As a result, I went to see West Indian Girl, Built to Spill, and the Dodos and was slightly disappointed with all of them. Less with the Dodo's, but all three bands came off sounding rather generic and unimpressive. Eventually getting bored with the Dodos' set, I wandered to the other end of Lindley meadow and sat in the grass up near the Presidio stage, and waited in the sun while a sound check went on in preparation for Blind Pilot. Never having heard them before, I leaned on the bar in the front row and stared up at them. A double bass, a lead singer with a guitar, a drummer, a girl banjo player who also took up the guitar and another instrument that may have been a dulcimer, and a man who played a trumpet, a keyboard and some kind of accordion, sometimes a combination thereof at once. They were wonderful.

Refreshed, I stopped in to see Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears for a moment, which was a spectacle. Great music, upbeat, with the band consisting mainly of goofy white boys in white shirts and black ties, with Joe Lewis in the middle, wearing shorts and t-shirt and rocking out. After that was Tea Leaf Green, another indie band that grew on me throughout the set.

I caught ten minutes of Tom Jones (because I had to see it for myself) before getting lost in a mob for Pearl Jam's set. People had been camping out up front all day, so needless to say, I was in the back. I stayed for a good chunk of the set, but left a little early to try and avoid the crowd on the way out. Walking a dirt path through the park, surrounded on all sides by trees, I heard Jeremy playing through the growth as I left.

The bus ride back to the hotel was a joke. Five buses passed by without stopping, packed beyond capacity with people. Eventually, one did stop and I shoved myself on with at least sixty others, the doors barely closing.

I watched Big Fish on my laptop when I got back to my room and fell asleep.

Saturday was much less intense of a day. I slept in, showered, and bought snacks for the day, which saved me. I caught a bus instead of the train, which was still packed to the doors, but which brought me right to the entrance and saved me a lot of walking. I met three guys from Chico state and we talked bands for a bit. I waited at the Land's End stage for half an hour, trying to get a spot near the front for the Raphael Saadiq show--not so much because I'm such a fan of Raphael Saadiq (though he was awesome), but because I was hoping to rush the stage and get a front row spot for Jason Mraz. I ended up with fifth or sixth, about, but I was nevertheless only twenty feet away, maybe. It was fabulous, despite Jason Mraz's new tendency toward a Reggae sound instead of his usual nerdy white boy style. At one point, right before the show, for no apparent reason whatsoever, a girl several feet in front of me suddenly hurled some kind of cup across the aisle and smacked some stranger right on the side of the head. Immediately, she dove down below the heads of the people around her--the guy she hit was pissed for at least twenty minutes.

I saw a few minutes of Bat For Lashes, to crowded to really see them play, but I sat in the grass at the back and listened.

Then it was back to the main stage for The Black Eyed peas. I was miles from the stage, it seemed, but it was enough to be able to dance with the crowd and hear the good stuff. I decided not to stay for Dave Matthews Band or The Mars Volta, and packed up to leave.

I was propositioned by a bunch of stoner boys to stick around (one even offered to keep me company in my hotel room, how nice...), but I left regardless and was in bed by nine, exhausted. Andre called about an hour after I passed out and we talked for a little while, but I was soon asleep again.

Sunday I was up by nine, had some breakfast and was out the door by eleven fifteen. Once again, I grabbed the bus, this time with a little more confidence and with less stress. Back inside the festival, the first band up was Cage the Elephant. A great show, but the lead singer was out of control--I could have lived without a mosh pit before lunch. After that was The Morning Benders, another great band, much better for hanging out in the grass, having a snack, just listening. The Avett Brothers came up next--these guys blew me away. I was up in the front row and was nearly brought to tears--fucking amazing. I was going to catch the Dead Weather which started playing halfway through the brothers' set, but I couldn't leave. So I got an OK spot for Modest Mouse (awesome), a much better spot for M.I.A., and an even better one for Tenacious D. What an amazing day.

Back in San Diego tomorrow...

The Same Old Dancers in the Same Old Shoes

The last few days have been spent lost in a world slightly outside reality, the perfect distance from home, while I've been melting into the comforts of routine, everyday trifles that barely keep me conscious and lucid. Eating cereal twice a day. Petting the cats. Watching endless DVDs and YouTube videos, only coming up for air to pour another bowl of Lucky Charms. Soft kisses. Not wearing makeup. Not changing clothes, even. Couch cushions, the whirring of the laptop, House, Futuramaand StarCraft. A vacation from everything that makes me need one.

Last night, we found a tiny worm poking his head out of a cocoon the size of a pine nut. He was pulling it along behind him, stuck to his abdomen, as he inched across the kitchen floor. We watched him for at least an hour, hoping that he would pull himself out of his little fibrous shell and expose his soft body to the world. I wondered what the evolutionary point is behind wrapping something tiny and brand new in bindings they can barely rid themselves of. As of this morning, he had not accomplished his task, and is now out in the dirt somewhere, his fate unknown to us.

We're ocean-bound tonight, hopefully soon, to sit by the bay, inhaling smoke coming off of flaming pallets, to watch my sister and her newly freed-from-high-school friends celebrate their last chances to do nothing before the world begins to expect things from them.

We missed the meteor shower last night...we got up around five this morning to see if the cloud cover had budged, but it hadn't.

I Never Told You I Agreed With You; I Don't Think I Do

Another week begins with me waving a sleepy goodbye to Trader Joe's and looking forward to four days of no motivation and not enough time to do everything.

How am I expected to make a living like this? The requirements: discipline, reliability, responsibility, solitude, goals, a clear vision of what's to come and how to get there...which of these is supposed to describe me? A terrifying concept considering that I do not possess even one.

My nerves are splayed and short-circuiting, I'm crying at commercials and puppies tied up outside grocery stores--much less valid issues like the loss of my roommates rent check and the $158 I apparently owe some diagnostic lab for a biopsy done in February and the complete failure of the first workshop I set up and my boyfriend's sudden apathetic abandonment.

My car registration is overdue. My day job is sucking my soul out of all my orifices simultaneously. My friends all seem very far away, in worlds of their own problems. I can count on one hand the number of people I actually like anymore, and out of those, only one or two still come around.

I have a perpetual knot in the base of my stomach that makes me want to start crying and never stop.

How did I think this was going to work out? My incessant naivety strikes again.

All My Instincts, They Return

Boys came out of the woodwork last night, simultaneously from my past and present, both reasonably solid and metaphysically nebulous. My roommate and two very old friends, left over from a different time, standing on my balcony, smoking Marlboros and drinking cheep Mexican beer out of twist-top glass bottles. Nostalgia took over as alcohol paved the way, only to be swiftly brushed away like an insect on a shirt collar and replaced by superficial discussions of penises and guns and wine and the other people in our lives lucky enough to be picked apart behind closed doors by the likes of us. French toast, cheese omelets, grimy diner taco salad, french fries drowned in ranch dressing and hollandaise sauce--it all tastes better in the hours between deepest midnight and the first turns of dawn.

Fifteen beers, six thousand calories, ten YouTube videos, eight cups of coffee, and four games of dominoes (totaling 245 points) later, the two of us who remain--who did not surrender to the siren songs of sleep and daytime responsibility--sit in a coffee shop on 30th street while the grey of very early morning hangs over the closed shops and dark apartments. Steam escapes from orifices in the French press to mingle with waves of Peter Gabriel that drift vaguely above our heads, creating a fine haze near the ceiling. My eyes and limbs have given up on the prospect of sleep, but are nonetheless sore and carrying lead. We laugh as dots and points continue to accumulate, recorded by dashes and circles that I can't read, and which I suspect are arbitrary and are the attempt of my opponent to bypass the math of losing. It doesn't work.

By the time the sun is out completely, still hours before I would normally be awake on any normal day, my friend and I are walking out into the brightness of daylight toting a box of dominoes and a set of four espresso cups with matching saucers, purchased for nearly nothing. Both of us are promising our bodies sleep, but we know the emptiness of this. I have a laptop at home, waiting to be useful in housing my verbosity. I have DVDs of The West Wing, Season Four, hair dye, makings for spaghetti, a pitch pipe on hold at the music store down the street, and a need for groceries, all of which will be utilized somehow before I can capture sleep.

Head under water, and they tell me to breathe easy for a while

I need a shower, but at two thirty in the morning, I can't muster the willpower. Besides, my apartment is freezing.

Recently my sorry excuse for a computer chair broke so that now all my computer usage is done in bed, which isn't quite as lazy as it sounds. Either way, I'm snuggled under blankets, though still tethered within a foot of where I am by the hardline to my modem.

No work tomorrow. No aching body, no complaining customers, no persistant whine of incompetance piercing my eardrums, no dumpster smell, no snob co-workers, no responsibility.

Ever since the frame of my futon/bed broke, I've been sleeping on the surprisingly comfortable but nonetheless last-resort futon mattress. The corduroy cover on the matress leaves horizontal patterns on any piece of early-morning bloated body part it touches; the matress slides across my bedroom floor with a mind of its own (I would have thought that the friction from the carpet alone would have kept it still); it's small and dirty and hard to manage. However, it has treated me very well and has many memories within its folds. It was my brother's before me, and it's the first bed I had living on my own. Which is why I'm sad to say that it must go by the wayside to make room for a real bed. Tomorrow, with any luck.

I've been trying to live through the last few days with a rare, scorching case of PMS. Hey There Delilah came on the radio at work earlier tonight and in addition to my accompanying rant about how it makes me want to vomit viloently, it also made me cry for a private moment when I was backstocking cereal. Tears not of (only) hatred or because I can empathize with naive sophomoric love spanning across a few thousand miles, but as much as it pains me to admit it, I was wishing that someone in the world felt about me the way that gay little acoustic-strumming sellout feels about this girl. I want someone to write me that song. I'm a sick, sick human being.

Cherry Post

I've spent the last two days watching the entire first season of Dexter. Yesterday I sat in a chair for six hours, completely sucked in. How can it possibly be that my solitary goal for the foreseeable future is to have days that accomplish nothing? Either way, there's a satisfaction in letting my brain unravel like a sickly colored ball of yarn in the darkness.

Recently, I find myself wondering more and more about the thin lines between what makes us human and what makes us sub-human. I don a work uniform, and suddenly it becomes acceptable for other people to stop speaking to me in complete sentences. I get points and grunts, one and two-word commands, as though bagging someone's groceries makes me consequently receptable to abuse. It's not necessary to respond to my questions or return my smiles or even look me in the face if it isn't convienent. Mostly it just makes me curious, our arbitrary societal hierarchies.

A small voice in my brain whines pitifully for change. Desperation rules out pickyness, choice negated by need. Everything feels slightly askew, a carbon copy of my life laid over the original, but to the right a centimeter or two, blurring the lines between them. Everything feels slightly wrong and much thicker, almost hazy, and very difficult to navigate.

I had the urge to make blueberry cream cheese turnovers today, though for no real reason.

The tiny rose plant I rescued from certain dehydrating death at work is in critical condition. It looks a little pitiful on my windowsill, almost bare against a grey sky. I hope it survives, for its sake as well as mine.