Progress/ Goodreads/ How I felt about that:

I am now on goodreads.com ( http://www.goodreads.com/dontyoutellme ) which is a nifty site that tons of people knew about and I didn’t get into until the other day. You can keep track of your library, swap books with people, rate books, get ideas for new reading material, etc. Below is a photo of my non-swap area:

Things I will not swap: Journals from 2007- 2009 (what hectic years), a Colonel Akbar guy, my signed copy of Carolyn Forche’s A Country Between Us, A strange (prob fake composite metal) frame holding a random Victorian looking newsprint found at a Goodwill near Healdsburg, CA, Walden, The Secret History by Donna Tartt (held together with rubber band), The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, An old Leonard Cohen copy of Death of a Lady’s Man, The Ghastly Crumb Tinies by Edward Gorey & the Melvins CD: Electroretard (out of print). Also, thats the corner of a print of Georgia O’keefe from the O’keefe museum in New Mexico. I’d just feel like a louse swapping that for a people magazine and three grape Charms blowpops.

I will put swap stuff up. I think. I become really attached to books. They’ve become the architecture of my room. Corny, sentimental. Go ahead, tell everyone my secrets. Shakti knows. I gave her The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls yesterday. I hope she reads it and likes it. We are able to swap because we get out things back. I gave her back her Didion, etc.

Speaking of swapping talents and fun and all of that… Ahmed and I went out on a super secret adventure the other night. We did some nightshooting (not what it sounds like I explained to my Bronx raised father) and I didn’t even have a tripod for most of it! Some of it is posted on my flickr, others are going to be blown up hopefully. I’m making an album for this summer and those will go in there. Guess who else I owed a letter and CD discs of photos to?

My Aunt & Uncle whom I have let a year pass without sending them photos from our vacation. I included a bonus disc. (Please note: 2 Discs!) I wrote them a nice letter on some stationary because they think email is impersonal and so do I. We like to exchange post mail.

So you may have noticed that my last post was very un- tax-of-colors (was it? I’m not even sure…). I was getting through some stuff that was kind of like when you make paper mache and you feel like you are going to throw up all the time but you pop the balloon inside and then you can paint the mold to display briefly before its becomes elementary garbage. My fingers got away. That was not right. See! Things are tax-of-colors. Okay. So I was drowning and I waved my hands at my closest buddies, but they were behind a glass wall and help up instructions for self-cpr and I realized I was qualified to straighten my lungs into breathing regularly if just for a little bit. Again. Then they surrounded me and patted me on the back and all of the surf got spit in their faces and they were so good to me they wiped their eyes like they had been crying with me.

Maybe I should do this and maybe I should do that. I am indecisive too, but I knew I wanted butter-cream paint and I knew I wanted that camera and I knew I wanted you and then I knew I needed to drink an entire glass of water stock still.

Seeing the kids today filled me with joy. Bringing them 5alive juiceboxes and beating that level with E, washing their chlorinated hair, making them dinner, punished D for saying “damnit”when she lost (20 minutes, extremely lenient, girlscout cookies rewarded for no tantrum) and talking about camp and lanyards. Yes I went to chess camp. And rocketry camp. But I also went to a place where we did the box and barrel stitch and ran fucking nuts all over the place for two weeks with our summer buddies. E said to me: “I’m so glad there’s no homework and your car has air conditioning.”

Also…If you’ve never seen the Kids in the Hall French Fur Trappers…its something I’ve been referencing for a fucking decade at least and never leaves my mind. Take a moment:

The end scene always kills it for me so hard that it never gets old.