Here comes the...

I have ten toes.

Ten little wiggly toes that ache in stilettos, burn on the beach, and sparkle when I let them.

But you know? I would willingly get rid of one if I could exchange it for one of the following:

1. Belle's library:

Have you seen this place?  Books.  So many books.  Shelves and shelves of books that require spiral staircases just to get to them.  I still seethe (just a little bit) when the Beast reveals his mondo gift to Belle.  In recent years I have learned the value of used books.  There is a romanticism to knowing that someone else scanned those pages, lovingly/angrily/sadly/compulsively flipped through them, before eventually giving up the book.   I always want to track them down and find out why they decided they no longer needed the book.  I want to start a book club with them, all of them.  I want Belle's library.

2. A Body like Jennifer's

Enough said. She should write a book on how to be just like her.  It would outsell Harry Potter.



3.A Stable Friendship with Butch Walker

Pink is probably one of the luckiest women out there.  She's adorable even when she screws up the lyrics to his song.  He just laughs it off with her.  It's not a secret that I love Butch Walker.  The man is a genius.  Simple.  He should want to be my friend.


4. My childhood creativity

When we were kids, my best friends and I would turn our church bulletins into these elaborate blue prints of our fantasy homes.  Naturally we would all be neighbors, and we would all have (very practical) swimming pools in our bedrooms, ivory bed frames, gardens of fresh flowers spilling off our roof tops, exotic jaguars, lemurs, and peacocks wandering through our living rooms, and closets that rivaled Cher Horowitz's.  We wrote plays, filmed our own talk shows, and amassed way too many craft-night kits.  Nerds? Definitely, Clever? for nine year olds, I think so.  Now, when I sit down to write I have to psych myself up for a good twenty minutes before I can churn out one sentence worth sharing with the public.  At nine years old I had this unabashed personality that I shared with anyone who made eye contact with me.  Where did that go?

5. I think I will keep this one to myself...

Three of you read this.  Anything out there that you would maim yourselves for?

All this Beauty.

I have been putting some serious effort into organizing my life.  My bedroom is full of clothes I don't wear, books I don't read, magazines that should be thrown away, and shoe boxes that still haven't been unpacked since I moved back from Chicago.

Rather than find the appropriate places for these things, I have been shifting them from place to place (bed, floor, chair, bed, floor, bed, floor, closet).  In all of the rearranging, I stumbled across the journal I kept when I was a junior in high school and traveled to Europe.  I spent ten days traveling through France and Italy.  Before we left, my high school French teacher recommended that I keep a record of our "adventures".  Because I idolized her, I took her advice.

I was flipping through it, remembering how smoggy and malodorous the city of Paris was, how underwhelming the Leaning Tower of Pisa is, and how absolutely incredible Nice, Monaco, and Florence are.  At the age of seventeen I was blessed with the opportunity to see masterpieces like David, which I snapped illegal pictures of, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, the Sistine Chapel, the Rodin garden, and Versailles.  I had the opportunity to attend Mass led by the Pope himself.*

In nine days I will turn twenty four.  I have been mopy about my Birthday, as is typical for me, thinking about how I am getting older and how I haven't done anything with my life.  Bethany was married by my age, Jim was preparing to climb Kilimanjaro when he was 24, Jon was changing the face of Grand Rapids' neighborhoods with his design skills. 

I can't let myself become a bitter old woman in her mid twenties though.  I HAVE done things, and I am starting to realize how many more things I have to do with my life.  I watched the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night from the Seine, I got lost in the Vatican, I sang hymns for the congregation of the National Cathedral.  My research has helped schools in Florida and Georgia keep recess and PE programs, and I even touched Butch Walker.  Twice.

Sparkle Sparkle

Butch Walker, I love this man.

Yes, I have friends that are married, friends with kids, with mortgages, grown up jobs, and I think to myself that they are living their lives.  They are established.  But you know, the idea of being established is more frightening to me now than being 24, single, and living with Mom and Dad.  I am learning to embrace this ridiculous freedom that I have.

Maybe I haven't lived yet, but I have experienced.  I haven't peaked yet.  I have sixty years to peak.  Good things are coming, 24 will be good for me.  Who knows, maybe a refresher trip to Europe is in order....

*The Pope was presiding over the mass, we could have stood in the courtyard with the hundreds of other people, Jenny and I chose to go shopping instead.

We are Golden

It's been a while... seems like I should keep all three of you posted on my recent shenanigans...

These are things that happened in recent weeks:

I went back to blonde.

Its okay, I do what I want.

I graduated from GVSU with my writing degree.

Let the glamorous job offers roll in...

The delicious boys of Brena released their second album, I watched it all unfold.

You will know these boys soon enough.  Just watch.

National City officially became PNC.  National City no longer exists, unless you live in Indiana/Illinois.  You still have Nat City for another month.  Cherish it, their operating system was so much easier than PNC's.  

I started my internship at the Grand Rapids Children's Museum.  I don't have any fun pictures of that yet, but I'm sure some will come along soon enough.  Right now my job consists of me sitting at a desk fervently searching for relevant articles on how play benefits child development.

Basically I have convinced myself that I will not own a TV once I have kids.

I want my children to be so wonderfully weird and imaginative, and completely unaware of the existence of the Disney channel (unless they bring back Bug Juice).

I started my summer class: Writing in the Disciplines.  (I should be doing homework for that...)

The prof. is teaching us about dangling modifiers and what not.  That's what I get for taking a remedial class that I tested out of.  This girl needs four more credits before GVSU will stop holding her diploma captive.

After this I just need to complete Women's Self Defense and I am an official graduate.

I got out of going to the Bosnian wedding.  Loving that.

I got to not only see Butch Walker live:

I touched him.  Twice.  Somewhere around this point in the show:

My life is complete now.  I love this man. 

Other minor things:

-My neighbor's house caught fire (everyone is okay).
-I learned of the band "Locksley" and fell in love with them.
-I made the Dean's List for the first time ever in my collegiate career.
-Jenny came home for Mother's Day.
-I probably made some crafts and bought things I shouldn't have.

It's summer, which means I am smiling a lot more than I did over the winter.  I hope to have more time and less angst when it comes to blogging.  :)

A Song for the Metal Heads...

We used to skip church.  Our parents just needed to see us in the sanctuary.  As soon as the service started we would duck out of the balcony and race to Marie's car.

We would drive around Byron Center, listening to Marie's burned CD's of Dashboard Confessional, Nelly, and Ice Cube.  They would always skip and Marie would bang her fist down on the dashboard in hopes that the disc would resume.  For some reason I thought Marie was fantastic.  She was from Southern California, why her family moved to Grand Rapids I still don't know. 

I was thinking about her recently as I FINALLY boxed up my old CDs.  There, nestled in between the soundtrack to Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Savage Garden was my stolen copy of WGRD's Bootleg 2k2.  I borrowed it from Marie, when we were sophomores, to burn a copy of it.  This is what we did in 2002.  Despite her inquiries and pleas for its return, it is still in my possession.

That is the album that introduced me to Butch Walker.  Eight years later, I don't feel guilty at all about keeping this treasure from her.

This is the song that hooked me:


Six albums later, I am still stuck on Butch Walker.  I have watched him go from an angry redneck to a bit of a crooner.

I love this man.  I love Angry Butch circa late nineties, to grown up folksy Butch circa now.  All the other men in my life that I have loved have faded away.  Butch is still here.

He's coming to Grand Rapids very soon.  I need to see this man. :)