Jenn: Night, Katie. When we wake up tomorrow, it’ll be Tom Petty Day.
Katie: I know. Night, Jenn.
Jenn: OH MY GOOOOOD
Katie: WHAT?
Jenn: I FORGOT TO BLOG
Katie: SHIT.
Jenn: I HAVE FIVE MINUTES!!! WHAT DO I BLOG ABOUT?
Katie: Post a Tom Petty video!
Sorry guys. I was busy making a caprese salad for Tom Petty Day.
This is Beau.
Beau is my stylist. Also referred to others as “My Beau.” Follicular genius, this man is. He’s responsible for taking me red in April of ought-eight and I’ve never looked back. I owe this man a lot.
So, when he asked Katie and me to be in a hair/fashion show? Yes. Yes. A million times yes.
We headed to Snapdragon Salon in the mid-afternoon and basically lived there until nightfall, getting processed and permed. Good thing there was a TUB of margaritas and beer. (And Pepsi, which clearly went untouched.) BEING A MODEL IS HARD.
Here’s Katie. She was going from blonde to blonder, with some blue thrown in, because she’s cool like that.
Yes, those are perm rods in my hair. My follicles haven’t seen that kind of action since 1990, and it was more of an “electrocuted poodle” look. So I was curious to see how it would turn out.
Once I had my hair and makeup fixed I took some pictures of the other models gettin’ their hair did. Here are some highlights…
You’re going to want to tune in tomorrow to see the making of my fro.
This weird thing happened last week when I tried to upgrade Wordpress and I messed up a bunch of things and it kind of made my site go away. Cody Zoppa, or Alan Zoppa, as he is now known, logged into my shit and fixed it. I’m not really sure how, or why, since I haven’t seen Cody since high school. But how amazing and nice is that? Thanks, Cody.
The days are so long and the sky is a weird purpley pink and Rufus Rufus Rufus is singin’ Judy Judy Judy, so what a perfect time to write.
Proudly, I must announce that I am doing very well indeed without the luxuries of cable television. And per usual, when one addiction goes away I quickly fill the gap with something else. This time, however, I’ve found some more [dare I say it] *sophisticated* substitutes. Cable, you get replaced with an obsession with european history. Internet, you get replaced
with opera.
I know. Who does that?
It all started when I had this shut-in, Netflixxed weekend of period piece watching. In the span of seven days I watched Marie Antoinette, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Duchess, Elizabeth, Elizabeth:The Golden Age, and the entire five-hour series of Pride & Prejudice.
I know. Who does that?
BACKSTORY. I took a European history class my freshman year of college, fresh off a summer visit to Italy and France. Pretty sure I looked at the course catalog and thought, “Hey! I saw some Renaissance things. This class will be cake.” Yeah, no. Know what happened between the late middle ages and the Industrial Revolution, people? A LOT OF SH*T. It was probably one of the hardest classes I ever took (which I guess isn’t saying much because I was a telecomm major.) (Oh. Zing.) I didn’t have time to read Utopia and I needed cliffs notes for Voltaire and hey, wow, they did NOT teach us about The Inquisition in Catholic school. But some of it must have stuck.
Sophia Coppolla’s Marie Antoinette wasn’t even that good of a movie (I wanted to see her beheaded at the end, which I realize is way macabre but I love drama.)However, it was shiny and colorful like candy and lead me to borrow this 29348274 page biography from the library. I’m kind of loving it.
I know. Who does that?
I’m not really sure how the opera obsession came about, really. I’ve been getting back into classical music lately and when some opera got thrown in there I probably said, “I can hang.” Rameau, Mozart, Schubert all came home with me (awkward car ride, to say the least) from the downtown library. SPEAKING OF WHICH, Indianapolitans, have you BEEN? Mercy. Pretty sure I spent a good hour just riding up and down the six floors of escalators.
Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking I’m sipping brandy by the fireside or something. I still get easily distracted and I still drink too much and I still spend my paycheck to the dime. I’m just getting better at Trivial Pursuit in the process.
Also: Recommendations for my Netflix queue. Leave ‘em in the comments.
Okay, I got kind of Mopey McMoperson there, as I am wont to do. Sometimes when I intend to end an entry with “and then I cried,” I don’t want the entry to start off all cheery and then spiral down into it.I take the balls-and-glory approach of “BAH! SAD! READ ABOUT IT!” However, I just tapped into my neighbor’s unsecured wireless network, which totally just gave me a boost, so let’s go with it.
I went home over Memorial Day weekend. An extended stay at the Rockford homestead is more or less like rehab. But, you know, in a good way. In that I understand how much NOISE is in my life, both in my environment and in my head. My parents’ home is set back in the woods on ten acres of quiet. There are turkeys and raccoons and hummingbirds and my mom talks of cheeky tree frogs that climb the screen doors. I planted petunias and sweet woodruff alongside the house, and it was breezy and cool and I played the oldies radio station. It was one of the most rewarding things I’ve done, to sit on the ground, feel the earth, cultivate.
I also spent some quality time with old friends, and completely fell in love with them, all over again. On Friday, Matt and I gathered together a random smattering of people from various eras of our lives. I sipped on ale and laughed and laughed and everything seemed…right. I catch myself on such nights, looking contentedly around the room, my brain manufacturing the memory.
I wish I could bottle nights like those.
Ten days ago, I broke up with my boyfriend of over three and a half years. He started speaking to me again yesterday. Having not so much as looked at each other in over a week, we had a 90-second conversation about absolutely nothing. Something about cleaning out the refrigerator.
I had forgotten what it was like. To have the words constantly clinging to the edge of your tongue, breaking free in one decisive moment. Finalizing.
Truthfully, I had always been on the receiving side. At seventeen, the boy I had first-kissed told me it “wasn’t working.” I will never know what he meant by that. At eighteen, I envisioned my future with a boy who later told me he “didn’t want to be tied down.” There was much crying and heart shattering and dramatic promise-ring-returning. At twenty, I fell head-over-heels for a college friend. He never picked up my muliple calls to him that summer, long distance, from London. [He picked up for his ex.] At twenty-one, a smart and lovable French major just. stopped. calling. We’re still friends, and I ended up with one of the greatest post-breakup drinking stories I’ll probably ever see. He was going through some things; I understand that now.
But this. God. This.
I had forgotten. No matter how sure I was, no matter how many times I had thought it over, deciding yes, this is the right choice, for the both of us — I had forgotten that moment. The second where your heart breaks open like a capsule, its insides spilling into a pool at the bottoms of your feet.
It had been a while. But I remember now. Head, stomach, and heart, duking it out in the battle of rendering me utterly and completely useless. Head does well on the nightshift with its signature insomnia move, while stomach hits its stride during the day with the consistent nausea. And Heart. Oh, Heart. Heart doesn’t even need the other two. She’s got an agenda all her own.
The difference this time around, of course, is that Damon and I have been co-habitating for the past three years. Our lives are deeply woven together, in a way you don’t recognize until you’re forced to think about untangling them. This also means that, until we get things sorted, we’re forced to face each other while going through one of the hardest aspects of the human experience. And while we didn’t speak for days on end, depressive beacons of heartbreak are flooding the place. I see his empty packs of cigarettes and he hears my melancholy mixtapes. Fast food containers are strewn around our apartment, symbolizing failed attempts to self-medicate with crab rangoons (his) and fried-anything (hers).
We avoid each other as if we’ve just moved in with someone we’ve never met. We don’t watch this television show together anymore. When I leave the house, I don’t say goodbye. The refrigerator needs cleaning. This sucks, doesn’t it? This sucks this sucks this sucks.
…I can’t end this entry without saying how lucky I am to have an incredibly supportive network of friends and family. Stubborn and independent, I am known to withdraw and isolate instead of holding out my hand when I need help. What a gift, then, to have people in my life that just reach out, grab, and pull, whether I need it or not.
[I need it. Thank you.]
… mainly because I’ve forgotten what embarrassment feels like:
ONE:
I am “joining” or “subscribing to” NaBloPoMo, which is geek slang for “National Blog Posting Month.” It’s basically a tool for bloggers who, like me, get distracted by shiny things and quarter life crises, to marathon-blog at least once per day in hopes of establishing a writing habit. You can pick any month to do it, and in true underacheiver fashion, I chose the shortest one.
There. I put a badge up. Now I have to do it.
TWO:
I just started playing Guitar Hero, currently PWNING Medium and putting in a damn good effort on Hard for “Barracuda” and “When You Were Young.” I see what people are talking about, but I’m not rushing home to play the damn thing. I spend a good couple hours tinkering away but inevitably get to thinking, You could be spending this time learning your REAL guitar….
Plus Damon and I got into a tiff about the game’s calibration. If the audio or video is lagging from MY EXACT MUSICAL SPECIFICATIONS, I refuse to play. This resulted in me yelling, “It’s not calibrated. You are hitting the button early! Can’t you HEAR that? Do you HEAR the music? I AM A CLASSICALLY TRAINED MUSICIAN, DAMMIT.”
[I am jealous because he can play on Expert.]
THREE:
I still have, and still wear, this shirt:
Bought by my aunt and uncle at an Aerosmith show at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids. In 1998. That means I’ve had this shirt since I was fourteen years old. And while I’m not a huge Aerosmith fan anymore, this shirt has been around enough to be its own entity; it’s seen some shit.
FACT: I just wikipedia’d this tour to catch the exact date of this show, and it was FEBRUARY 4th, 1998. Meaning it was purchased EXACTLY eleven years ago.
This shirt is a prophet and this blog entry is awesome.
[NABLOPOMO, OUT.]
For some reason or another, when the clock struck midnight on January 1st, I started making these grand declarations.
For everything.
They always, always start out with “TWO THOUSAND NINE, THE YEAR ______________”
It snowballed from a completely intoxicated statement made at the Lockerbie Pub in late December. “2009, The Year of Jenn.” Obviously, modesty is not my strong suit. But you get the idea. Sometimes they’re broad and abstract, like, “2009, The Year I Tell It Like It Is!“ Or sometimes they’re specific and literal, like, “2009, The Year Bess and Jenn Try Out New Places for Lunch .” Either way, they are both pronounced like they’re equally important, with large hand gestures and standing ovations. I thought this would taper off by January 5th, but I am still going strong with busting out these random affirmations, despite the eye rolls and laughter they are often met with.
“2009, The Year I Build My Gay Harem.”
Okay, so maybe not a Harem, per se. I am starting the interview process to acquire at least one consistent gay man in my life, which is harder than you think. Most gay guys have their one soulmate hag and those bitches are very territorial. Moreover, I find that I am working harder to secure a gay boyfriend than I ever did to land an actual boyfriend.
Case in point, I went to Jillian’s yesterday to hang out with Melanie and Co. for her birthday. Our waiter, Joshua, was so skinny and well manicured and fabulous. I peered up at him all doe-eyed and ordered a jack and coke.
“Double-tall?” he asked.
“Why not?” I shrugged, securing my role as the biggest boozehound of the table.
“Ooh, I can tell you’re the crazy one.”
That’s when I knew. I wanted to be his friend, right then and there. I wanted to smoke myself skinny with him. I wanted him to tell me what to wear. I wanted to dance with him at Talbot Street, glitter falling down all around us – a sweet, sweet, gay heaven on earth.
In 2008, I’d just sigh and pine for guys like Joshua from afar. But not in 2009.
2009, The Year I Give My Number Out to Gay Guys in Hopes of FIERCE and FABULOUS FRIENDSHIP
As I signed my receipt, I left this invitation: “You’re so fun! Let’s be friends. 616-581-xxxx. Lockerbie Pub tonight!”
He texted me back.
I feel like a girl of sixteen again.
I hope he does, too.
I think we all know that I’m not a “sporty” girl. I was that girl in middle school basketball that scored 4 points a season. “But you were good at rebounds!” my mom calls out from the peanut gallery. Yes, only because my growth spurt hit earlier than than everyone else’s. No, instead of a son that would go out and play catch or be the star of the high school football team, my father got me, an only daughter who tap danced down grocery store aisles and practiced Disney songs on the clarinet.
"A whole new wooooorrrrlllddd..."
So if you’re talking to me about baseball or the Colts or bowl games, I will nod and act like I know what you’re talking about, but rest assured, I DO NOT.
Unless it’s IU basketball.
If we’re talking cream and crimson and Coach Crean, I AM DOWN. If you want me to articulate the tears that fill my eyes EVERY TIME they do the flag/fight song in the second half, I can do that, too. (GREATEST TIME-OUT IN COLLEGE BASKETBALL.) Would you like to know that EVERY TIME I am in Assembly Hall, I squint at the court side seats to see if John Mellencamp (i.e. “Cougz”) came? ‘CUZ WE CAN TALK ABOUT THAT.
I know my dad is insanely proud of me, and we share a lot of interests, like photography and Paul Simon and whatnot. But watching IU basketball together is probably the only “dude” thing we share. When I watch IU basketball I demand submarine sandwiches, and I curse and throw accent pillows. (I suppose it’s not dude-like to recognize that they are “accent” pillows and refer to them as such.) I will get fired up and do that thing where you stand up randomly out of excitement or rage until you silently realize, oh hey, I’m in my own living room, maybe I should have a seat.
Of course, why should you be surprised? This is standard spectator behavior, but it’s funny when you are the person that schedules grocery shopping around Colts games (ghost town!) and writes soliloquies about boys who give her flower pots.
That said, even I could have made more free throws than the Hoosiers did vs. Michigan in overtime tonight.
(Yeahokayprobablynot.)
[Go IU.]
…and now I’m STILL LOST, only it’s in code and script and help forums.
You decide you want your own blog, that LiveJournal is beyond amateur, and if there’s any hope of being taken seriously, you need to get your own domain.
“I’m computer saavy,” you say. You probably know more than average. You’re a Google whiz. You don’t suck at Photoshop.
JESUS, MARY, JOSEPH, and ALL THE SAINTS AND ANGELS AND WISEMEN AND THEIR CAMELS. I had NO IDEA. Do you notice how SIMPLE this design is? Nothing fancy. Minimalist. I went through 239842 other designs before settling on this one, simply because I couldn’t get the other ones to work without breaking out some programming manuals.
I don’t even know if this one works, or can even be considered remotely functional. I just needed to get the hell outta LiveJournal.
So, props to you kids who can sit down and look at hundreds of lines of jib-jab and make flashy wundersites. I’ve had an easier time translating French literature than reading forum responses on how to get a stupid plug-in to work.
Anyway. Hi. Much more to come.
This post is messing up this entire page, but its inclusion in my life story is necessary. Check it out here.
..of "scene setters" from my cousin’s bridal shower last month…
Some more of my faves at my Flickr account.
You know how in Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs writes about how the Finch family would do "Bible Dips?" They’d ask the Bible a question, flip open to a random page, then try to find meaning in the word they landed on. [Excerpt here. I'd say read the book, but there are better ones I'd recommend, and for heaven's sake do not even think about seeing the movie!]
[Anyway.]
I find myself bible-dipping in the unabridged journals of Sylvia Plath. Is that weird?
I ordered this book a few years ago after having read The Bell Jar, but could not for the life of me get through it, linearly. I love me some Plath, but as you may know, even a simple passage about a day at the beach gets pretty intense. Regardless, I feel some sort of weird closeness to her more than anybody I’ve ever read. Although I don’t have the time or concentration to just sit and read as much as I’d like, I pick it up daily and read a random paragraph or two. Perhaps I do this less for direction and more for the connection, the less-alone feeling I get from it. I guess I believe that whatever I pull from the journal is what I’m meant to read at that moment.
For example, just now:
December 13, 1958
Blue shadows of trees looped on the sunwhite snow of the park in Lousyberg Square: the toga-Greek statue clutching his stone sheet in the front. Clear air. Bless Boston, my birthtown. Give me the guts to begin again here my second quarter-century of life and live to the hilt.
[Amen.]
This blog is like a friend. Only, it’s kind of a mutual friend, to anyone that reads it. And so when I’ve ignored the friend for oh, say - two months, you feel stupid calling that friend up and being like, "How’s..you know…how’s your life, man?" and you have to go through that whole awkward first ten minutes before you really settle in to old times.
So I told myself I needed an exercise to get back into writing again, and it started with the idea that I would produce 26 mini-entries, one for each letter of the alphabet. This was all going to happen by Monday [tomorrow]. It’s like how when I decide I want to lose weight I tell myself I’m going to eat 3423 veggies a day and run for 2938423 miles, and then on the first day someone convinces me to go to Qdoba and I can’t even find my sports bra.
She: "How was Black Friday?"
He: "It was pretty black."
She: "How black was it?"
He: "Like, Taye Diggs Black."
She: "That’s pretty fucking black."
He: "It’s like that movie, when she got her groove back?"
She: "Yeah."
Jenn is a 26-year-old writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. She lives downtown in a Civil-War-era house that used to be a brothel. It is now referred to as "The Cockpit."
More? Mosey on over to the About Jenn page.
