Look what the Easter Bunny brought!

Slog,

I'd like you to meet Cerie. My new laptop. This is now where I am blogging from. As you can see, it is a new, very pretty laptop--young and gamine. Thin. Thus, Cerie, after the character on 30 Rock. We're still getting to know each other, but so far so good. I've promised not to break her, and she's promised not to break me. It seems fair.

But, we don't get anywhere by forgetting where we came from. Here, then, is a photo of the Toshiba Satellite, which I never bothered to name (that may have been where our problems began). It was a good, hard-working computer. I should've taken better care of it. When its internal temperature rose to, I don't know, eight million degrees, I should've looked into fixing the computer, instead of forcing us both to slog ahead, sweating. Honestly, I'm surprised I never got second degree burns from the heat of the keys. My bad, Toshiba. My bad.

This is the laptop on which I wrote my applications for MFA programs, and my master's thesis. (Hence all the food crumbs down in the keys--it's like I physically couldn't compose that thesis without some crumby snack in hand.) It's where I started my Facebook page, and my slog, and lost countless hours researching celebrities and other material for my fiction: favorite such searches include "ice mummies," "dirt-eating," and "marionette horror movies." Doesn't that make you want to read my stories? I know.

I don't know if you can see it, but the oil and dirt from my wrists actually imprinted themselves into the Toshiba, making two heart-shaped stains. Isn't that nice? And also a strong hint that I ought to wash my wrists more? Point taken.

Now I'm in this weird no-man's-land, where most of the work I need is still on the Toshiba, and it will let me turn it on for ten minutes, so I have to prioritize the items I most need to rescue, and then save them to a thumb drive and do it fast. It's daunting.

Also on the fritz: my iPod, my TV remote, and my shower. So, just another day in the endless, endless, battle between me and All The Technology in The World.

Yours,

Kendall

Where I'm Blogging From.

(This is the moss on my roof. I think it's lovely, and appropriate for St. Paddy's Day!)

Dear Readers (are you still there? are you? I wouldn't blame you if you went away--I did. Sorry! It's been Spring Break over here in the Spider House*),

Question: Have you ever done the wrong thing for all the right reasons? Have you? Take last night, for example. I did the wrong thing: I stayed out until 6 am. Six! I mean, we're not in Spain, amigos! And I'm not twenty-one! 6 am is for younger people--people whose to-do lists don't read like mine: "Snow tires; ceiling mold; taxes."

But, I did it for all the right reasons! See, I'm blowing this town in a few short months, which means that everything that happens here has the added sweetness of not lasting forever. One thing I'll absolutely miss, and mourn, and grieve for, is nights like last night, when Nikiforos made an out-and-out feast--at 5 o'clock in the morning.

At 3 am, we went to Winco. Winco at 3 am is weird. Even weirder? Our shopping list: 1 whole chicken; 1 onion; chicken broth; jasmine rice; fresh thyme (also, stewed tomatoes, but Nem just had those in the back of his car. I still don't know why. Who drives around with stewed tomatoes?)

Me (at the checkout): "Are you sure we don't just want a frozen pizza?"

Oh, no, we did not just want a frozen pizza. Because the chicken and rice and tomato sauce that Nick made was so good (if slow to cook)! And then Nem brought over his homemade, still hot-from-the-oven, challah bread. Because, well, apparently people bake bread in the middle of the night and then bring it over to their friends' houses. Think of all we've been missing by sleeping! I don't ever want to sleep again. (Except today. Today I really want to sleep. I'm exhausted.)

Even though I had to walk home this morning, still in high heels, past my gym which had already opened for the day and had people inside it, working out; and even though I haven't accomplished any of the exciting projects on my to-do list--sorry ceiling mold!, it was worth it. I mean, these things do not happen every day. What are the chances that in the next place I go, people will make middle-of-the-night feasts and fresh bread? And even if they do make delicious chicken-and-rice dishes, what are the odds that they'll be as generous, warm, culinary and nocturnal, as the friends I've made here?

Slim to none, I'm afraid. I'm sure that new friends in new places will have their own blessings and behaviors that I'll embrace, but their food won't taste as good. Which means that while I'm here, I've got to stay awake and eat up. And nap in the afternoon.

Sacked out,

Kendall

PS: The asterisk above* refers to the fact that I was going to blog yesterday, but then a spider crawled out of my laptop and across my keyboard. Right under my finger tips! And it ruined my blogging mojo. But now I'm back, and risking life, limb and spider bites to bring you my slog. You're welcome.

Highway to the Danger Zone; or, Cleaning Out My Closet

Do you know why blogging is So Dangerous?

I'll tell you. It's dangerous because as a blogger, you tell yourself "no big deal," you're just writing a public diary. But that is an oxymoron. Already, your brain is confused. Then, it gets more complicated because as a blogger, you've decided that your blog is NOT going to be a blog that reads like "My life is so perfect and stylish, here is a sweater I knitted out of hair from the mane of unicorns--look at these cute buttons I fashioned out of bullets! Well, off to do more yoga." So, you make a point of emphasizing moments of awkwardness and failure. You put up excerpts of your old diary entries, and pictures from the ugliest phase of your life, and stories about how you're a little messed up in the head.

All of that sharing may very well be therapeutic. But what must be remembered is that you've got friends who read your blog, and also some kind-hearted "future-friends" (strangers), and every once in awhile they're going to comment. They're going to tell you that you're not as uncool as you think you are, or that you weren't as ugly as you thought you were, or, worst of all, that you're a funny blogger. And this, to a blogger, is crack cocaine. It is deadly.

Because now I just want to push even harder for more positive reinforcement, like a dog who wants just one more Beggin' Strip (it's baaacon!). I want to tell even grosser secrets about myself (I like Justin Beiber--see below; I've decided leggings ARE pants (sorry Fuggirls); I was on the futon watching movies until 3pm today, in pajamas I've had since I was twenty-one, lying on two days worth of pretzel crumbs); and be told that it's okay! It's funny! I'm still a good person! A great person.

And I'm thinking that this phenomenon--getting some sort of good pay-off for sharing the various ways that you are bad news--is exactly what gets lots of bloggers blogging badly in order to feel good.

Dangerous.

Also dangerous: blogging under the influence. It is one of the legs of my platform: no blogging when you've been drinking like you have a hollow leg. That's a weird expression, but you know, several glasses of wine have been swishing around in my hollow leg since Monday evening (at the beginning of a semester, students and educators drink like fish--fish with hollow legs? I've bungled this one terribly--) so for the past few days, I've had to forego blogging on account of fuzzy-mindedness. This blog may be inane, and it is probably boring, but the very least I can promise you who read it is that you aren't reading the inarticulate ramblings of a drunk person. Just the inarticulate ramblings of a sober one.

I can also promise you that you will smile when you watch the music video below. Unless you don't have a soul. Also: yes, he's fifteen. So, watch it, then go ahead and tell me it is totally acceptable for me to be obsessed with this little bugger.

Peace out,
Kendall

Oh my god. Blogging is ridiculous!

Oh my god. Blogging is ridiculous! I thought at first it would be like exercise--something you do for thirty minutes a day to keep yourself sharp. Like Jazzercise.


Now I am realizing a blog is more like a pet, or a child, or a super demanding philodendron. It has to be nurtured! You worry all day about how it is doing! You wonder, is it developing normally?

Last night, I couldn't fall asleep because I was trying to figure out what I would write about today. Then, today, I realized that my entire inner-monologue had shifted. I am now a blog-oriented thinker. A BOT. As a BOT, one never stops asking herself, "Am I interesting??" A BOT goes about her day storing up items she might eventually discuss in her blog like a squirrel stores nuts.

I spend ten minutes on an exercise bike right next to my ex-boyfriend's father, and I don't say hello. (Neither does he. We just sweat together, side-by-side not speaking, peddling to nowhere.) Is that blog-interesting?

I buy a bunch of groceries willy-nilly (I am mysteriously drawn to kale--a vegetable I've never even touched), and the total is $61. Even. Not one cent more or less! The check-out girl says, "That never happens!" Interesting to me, but as I drive home, I wonder--is it blog-interesting? What will I blog about?

These examples are inane, but it gets more serious.

I go to climb into my shower and find my 2nd deadly Hobo spider in the tub. That doubles the number of deadly spiders I've found in my shower. And, the moment after I ascertain it is a Hobo spider (on account of the dangly balls hanging from its head--actually fangs, for the irachnophobes out there), I think: perfect! Something to write about in my blog! Then, as I bring the shampoo bottle down over its poisonous little body, I hesitate, just for a moment, because...if it happened to bite me...wouldn't that be blog-interesting?!?! At least a week's worth of material, so long as I don't let it bite me on my blogging hands and I seek appropriate medical care.

All of which just goes to prove that blogging is as dangerous, as self-destructive, as I've long suspected. And, as usual, now that I know it is bad for me, I'm hooked.