Name:Spring Country:United States State:Texas Metro:Dallas Gender:Female
Interests:implementing new xanga titles (an ongoing 10 points to whomever can correctly guess the origin of any given title), Harry Potter, the Episcopal Church, good music, American literature, linguistics, tennis, film, magnetic poetry, major league baseball, interior design, rockin' concerts, orchids, and sometimes, admittedly, writing Expertise:eating entire boxes of cheap chocolates with alarming speed, grammar, being a critic, typing (80+ WAM, w00t), quoting my friends and other hilarious people, being nostalgic, Fitzgerald, Cummings, and Plath, Third Eye Blind and Ben Folds, walking in heels, making smoothies, the television show Ed, being organized, being sheepish, driving a stick shift, making top five lists Occupation:Artist Industry:Nonprofit
Hello to all my xanga readers. Thanks so much for making the move to the new blog with me. You've allowed me to make the transition from xanga into the HUGE blogosphere seamlesly. I'm forever grateful for your encouragement during this big change.
Most of you are still getting to writes of spring via the link on my most recent xanga post, and I want to make it easier for you to get there than having to go through xanga.
Here are a few suggestions:
If you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, you can click on this link: http://www.writesofspring.com/index.xml and you'll get a "subscribe now" button up there at the top. If you subscribe, you can pull up my site through your web browser toolbar. This is a subscription to the RSS feed. If you don't know what RSS is, don't worry--Chad had to explain it to me, as well. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (no kidding). It takes content from a site and allows it to be fed to other places. Basically, it's a way to read my new blog without actually having to browse to the site.
If you are using Internet Explorer 6, I recommend using Google RSS reader, which you can get at http://www.google.com/reader.
If RSS isn't for you, then I recommend simply bookmarking my new site as one of your favorites. That's the way I surf, anyway.
Again, thank you much for making the move with me. Catch y'all on the flipside!
After nearly two years of blogging almost every weekday on xanga with little exception, it is time to move on.
Xanga has been good to me. It has allowed me to realize that this blogging thing really is all it's cracked up to be. And, what's more, it's kind of what I want to do with my life.
All week, while Chad and I have spent long hours working on the new blog (Chad much more than I), I've been trying to think of a metaphor for this momentous occasion. But I've been coming up short.
Then, the other day, when walking up to my front door after work, I heard multiple tiny peeps coming from above my head. In the corner under an awning, barely visible, was a nest. The eggs must have just hatched. I stood there for a while and marveled about what a brilliant spot it was for the mother bird to build a nest. It was sheltered from rain, wind, and even view, unless one looked very hard. The only entrance to the nest was a tiny space between the bottom of the awning and the top of the support beam, just small enough for a mother bird to fit through. I sighed, and then I went inside. Nothing represents good change like tiny, well protected baby birds born immediately after the arrival of spring.
And then last night when Ryan came over to watch America's Next Top Model with me, he told me to come outside and look at something he found. There, on the ground, was one of the baby birds. Its body was completely see-through, all of its internal organs a jumbled blue mass inside its bulging belly. It was badly hurt. The fall it took from the nest would have been the equivalent of a human jumping off the roof of a 120-story building. I ran back inside and asked Ryan to take care of it and not tell me anything. Nothing is more tragic than a baby bird just a few days old falling from its nest.
This morning when I walked outside, the baby bird was gone (bless Ryan), and there was one solitary peep still coming from the nest above, strong, unaffected, and needy, embodying all the possibilities that are still to come.
Because the weather has been impossibly beautiful these past couple of weeks, and our apartment has begun smelling increasingly of dog urine (we think it's seeped into the cheap laminate flooring and now there's nothing we can do, no matter how much powerful bleach I regularly pour on the floor), we've become accustomed to having the window (singular, as there is only one that hasn't been painted shut) open whenever the temperature outside is equal to or less than the temperature on our thermostat. It has been lovely, and it has supplied us with more than our fair share of fresh air. Or heavy, toxin-filled city smog. Whichever.
However, we have no screens over our windows because the windows are original to our early 20th-century building, and apparently screens weren't invented until decades later, or at least weren't considered a necessity back then. But because the reek of dog urine really is overwhelming sometimes, we have run a cost/benefit analysis and concluded that the flies that inevitably find their way inside and then cannot escape are worth the fresh air. At least for a little bit, until we shut the window and find ourselves stewing in the reek of dog urine again, except this time with a few dozen flies buzzing around, as if we are attempting to create our very own landfill. And being very successful at it.
Rufus, who obviously feels guilty about his inability to control his bladder activities while experiencing separation anxiety EVERY SINGLE DAY, has taken it upon himself to help us with our fly problem. And what do you know? He's actually good for something.
I thought he had dropped it on the ground behind the couch until he walked away licking his chops.
I am completely disfunctional at writing today. I've started two different entries: one about the fight that consumed Chad's and my Sunday morning, and one about blush. Both SUCKED.
But suffice it to say that Chad and I are never having children until he learns to be a lighter sleeper (or, at least, a nicer sleeper).
And also? I bought this cheek/lip stain on Saturday and it's definitely been the best $30 I've spent in a very long time. Trust me on this one. I also use it on my lips. The newest color, Tickled. And it's UH-MAZ-ING. Thank you, Amalah, and your makeup know-how. I wore it on Sunday morning, and a lady in the hallway at church stopped me and said that she just had to tell me that I looked beautiful. I knew it was because of the lovely, flattering, and natural-looking pinkish glow that was coming from my cheeks. And I thanked her graciously. Because I don't think a stranger has stopped to tell me how pretty I look since I was about four years old.
I also kind of wanted to write about the Sondre Lerche concert we went to on Saturday, but I didn't take any pictures, and I don't really know what to say except that it was a better show than I even expected. And it was hilarious, because a bunch of us middle-class white folks were crowded into the Gypsy Tea Room to see Sondre, while just on the other side of the brick wall, an entirely different demographic was at Gypsy Ballroom to see Public Enemy. And occasionally when the door between the two walls opened, we could hear the raucous sounds coming from the other concert, and we'd all laugh. Because we were all there to calmly nod our heads along with a Norwegian male singer-songwriter's music, not to start riots, which is what it sounded like in the other room. I'd also like to note that there was a metal detector and two large bouncers at the entrance to the Ballroom and nothing, hardly even a ticket counter, at the Tea Room entrance. Just a skinny white girl who laughed at the various pronunciations of Sondre's name.
(It's Sawn-Druh Lair-kay. SARAH.)
But, alas, I can't find a good angle on anything, and everything I was writing sounded more sad and pathetic than the usual tone I prefer, which is slightly tongue-in-cheek.
I will say that I took a three-hour lunch today to celebrate my upcoming birthday with my coworkers. And I don't feel guilty about it at all. Not even the banana creme pie.
I will also say that I have the feeling that this is going to be a really important week. And not just because I will be turning 24 tomorrow.
