* Life has been so crazy that a real update is too daunting a task -- one of those things where I feel like too much has happened in too short a time to talk about any of it.  So, I'm taking advantage of 12 of 12 and it's awesome "a picture's worth a thousand words" philosophy to cheat my way back into your lives :)

( Click it, baby! )



*I promise to try not to be so spotty with the communication.  I have been keeping up with everyone's posts, even if I'm not commenting as frequently!

*Also:  I fear that airing "Center Stage" and "Bring it On" at the same time is breaking some unspoken law of the universe and the earth is going to spin off it's axis.  Way to go, TV.

*Lastly:  Seriously, though, how surprised are you that I remembered to do 12 of 12?!

I'm totally stressed out right now and need to do something mindless.  So:  music meme.

Step 1. Put your playlist on random.
Step 2. Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrasing.
Step 3. Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly. NO GOOGLING.

(I'm adding a personal disclaimer here: there is a really good chance that I will forget to post the answers to this.  So if you have a burning desire to know, feel free to remind me.  If that discourages you from guessing, it is completely understandable.)

1.  If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be: we're all okay. (This is still one of my favorite lyrics ever)
2.  Six AM, day after Christmas, throw some clothes on in the dark.
3.  Too low to find my way, too high to wonder why.
4.  We were swimming with the snakes in the bottom of the well.
5.  Please, please, please, no more melodies.
6.  Aaahhh, I love the colorful clothes you wear, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.  (nice mixed pronouns there, lyric geniuses.)
7.  In my little town, I grew up believing, God keeps his eye on us all.
8.  Well, I'll follow you wherever when you lead me by my nose on another big adventure, I suppose.
9.  I want a girl with a mind like a diamond.
10.  A winter's day in a deep and dark December.
11.  Cigarettes and chocolate milk, these are just a couple of my cravings. (right now, these are my ONLY cravings.  and I'm not a smoker.)
12.  There is nothing that is wrong with wanting you to stay here with me.
13.  You're a white collar boy, and you gave into the law.
14.  My world, it moves so fast, today the past it seems so far away.
15.  I was looking at the sky, just looking for a star, to pray on or wish on or something like that.
16.  It was one hundred degrees as we sat beneath a willow tree.
17.  There's a stain on my notebook where your coffee cup was (a throwaway, I think)
18.  I don't know you from Adam, you could make my day.
19.  Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed.  (another toughie)
20.  Baby Britain feels the best floating over a sea of vodka.
21.  I got a lot of something you oughtta try.
22.  Pull the ripchord, this ship has lost its sail, you're mama's got a new man, your daddy always fails.
23.  If I run uphill, I'm out of breath, if I spend all of my money, then I've got no money left.
24.  You say it fits, if you let it, love was made to forget it.
25.  I remember when rock was young, me and Susie had so much fun.

(I feel kind of guilty that the really embarrassing things didn't show up.   But I feel obligated to disclose the following:  I own the Ashlee Simpson CD, and I have listened to it way too many times.) 

Happy Birthday Bridges!!!  That is all.

I'm writing a reported piece for Creative Nonfic on NaNoWriMo, and I know a few of the f-listers have/are participating... if you are, and would like to help me by being one of my "experts," and letting me bombard you with interview quetions, I'll... do something nice for you!  You can even pick the something nice. :)

From Phoebe:
"Sometimes I go in your room and touch stuff but I don't break it.  Just like your CDs and things.  I look at the little books inside but put them right back.  Daddy thought you should know.  Halloween is in ten days then HALLOWEEN!  Maddy's pea costume is just her pumpkin costume from last year dyed green, but it looks like a pea.  If you look really close you can see the pumpkin stripes but maybe she's a stripey pea and if she tells you that then just say that's okay Maddy or else she might get sad."

That is all.

Madeleine's birthday is on Tuesday, so I'm home for a few days.  Last night, Phoebe lost her first tooth.  Dad and Julie were spending the night in New York for their anniversary, so the role of Tooth Fairy was mine.  However, I forgot until, like, four in the morning, woke in a blind panic, grabbed a dollar from my wallet and shoved it under her pillow.  Only to have Phoebe wake me up three hours later, ecstatic, talking about how the Tooth Fairy is "generouser" than she thought and waving a twenty dollar bill in front of my face.  I'm sure this has happened to parents everywhere; you're tired, it's dark, you're preoccupied wondering about who it was that first decided we should give children cash in exchange for the shedding of their teeth.  So I'm nineteen dollars poorer than I thought I'd be this morning, but (cutest of the cute) Phoebe insisted on taking Mad and I out to breakfast with her loot.  Why is she the sweetest thing in the world?  I do not know.

I have a wedding to go to next month- Graham's mom is getting remarried!  I'm so happy for her.  He is one of my oldest friends, and I feel so close to his mom; growing up, she was such an awesome person to have in my life.  One year she took me back to school shopping (I think it was fifth grade, when clothes were becoming important but I had no clue what I was doing and my dad had less of a clue and my grandma was- my grandma.)  Anyway, I'm so so happy for her, and I'm Graham's date, which means that I'm sitting at wedding party table, which for some reason feels like added pressure about finding a nice dress.  And today?  I found a nice dress.  I found THE nice dress.  The funniest part is that Julie and I both turned the corner and pointed at it at the same exact time, jaws dropped.  It's perfect.  It's everything I've ever wanted in a dress!  Look how pretty.  Enlarge it.  It's a little sparklier than it looks in the picture, actually, more gold, less tan.  So pretty, right?  So perfectly appropriate?  So three hundred dollars?  Sigh.  I'm not in the habit of needing formal wear, so it took a lot of convincing on Julie's part that this isn't an exorbitant amount to pay for a dress to wear to a wedding.  I decided to look around a little bit more this week and then, if I'm still coveting it before I go back to school, I'll suck it up and buy it.  I mean, it's definitely a dress I could easily wear again some day.  Ha, see?  I can't stop trying to talk myself into getting it.  Moving on.

I love Sports Night.  Officially and forever.

Midterms = le suck.

Anyone want to send me a link to the GG premiere?  You would make me so, so happy, and I'd be eternally grateful :)

I have been exhasted all day. Seriously, spent the better part of today planning and daydreaming about the glorious moment I could crash into my bed (after first tripping over my sister, asleep on an air mattress on my floor, and GOOD LORD that is a whole other issue that is slowly killing my spirit, because I love her, and it's only for a few more days, but she needs to get back into her own room and bring all her toys with her, particularly the ones that make noise, and ESPECIALLY the ones that are posessed and start singing/speaking/tickle-me-elmo-ing in the frakkin middle of the night. And while I'm on this tangent, Tickle Me Elmo? Demonic. Freaks me out. His laugh sounds like the evil cackle a witch might let out as she slowly stirs her boiling cauldron full of children.) But of course, once it finally did become a reasonable hour for me to go to bed, I couldn't sleep for anything. Hence, my first commentary, and the reason for this post, which is linked below.

I skinned both my knees at camp today. Because apparantly, seven year olds have better balance than I do. I have Scooby Doo band-aids all over my legs, and my dad was understandably embarassed at their visibility below the skirt I wore when we went out to dinner at a kind-of nice restaurant for Julie's birthday tonight. (Anecdote So Cute You Want to Gag: We walk into the restaurant, and Phoebe looks at the maitre de person and goes "This is a lovely home!" She's in her parrot stage right now, and we're still trying to figure out when she picked that one up.)

Okay. I'm trying the whole sleep thing again. Tickle-Me-Elmo cackles that it's time for bed. (Oh, the nightmares I'm about to have. I bring them on myself, I know.)


( Commentary on Chapter 5 of What She Keeps )

I don't know why I was sort of avoiding this whole online journal thing like the plague, but I have been. I think it was equal parts not truly understanding how it worked and not thinking I had very much of interest to report on my daily life. But I had to get an account to help with the ficathon, and so now it's just kinda sitting there, and that fills me with this very odd sense of unease, the way I feel when something is unfinished or when I start a project and then drop the ball (which is ridiculous and kind of makes me... right, CRAZY. But there ya go.)

My two jobs this summer are already running me ragged. The nannying in the mornings was supposed to be the easy, cushy job, because the kids are 8 and 11 years old, and I kinda figured they'd be a little self sufficient. I was mistaken. I feel like I spend half my time entertaining them and the other half picking up the random stuff they leave strewn in a messy wake behind them. These kids- I swear, I've met kindergartners who require less constant attention. I think it's maybe because I was a pretty independent kid, and because I was raised in a house that treated me like a person and not a baby, but I have absolutely no patience for things like that. And also? I shouldn't have to tell you to PUT YOUR SHOES ON when we are LEAVING THE HOUSE and GETTING IN THE CAR. If you took the milk out of the refrigerator, you know what would be great? PUTTING IT BACK. You're freaking old. Oh, and sidenote? I'm not sure there's an entity in the known universe quite as awful as an eleven year old girl. I may be generalizing here just a tad but: they. are. horrible.

So then, afternoon-Avery spins into her cape and is a counselor at day camp, which means: hey there, seven year old girls (26 in my group, to be exact)! Whose names all sound the same (Marissa, Melissa, Kayla, Kailey, Bailey, Sophie, Sofia, Lauren, Laurel, Laura, Jody, Josie... I'm not even joking)! Who push me in the pool! Who are so cute they make me feel guilty for wanting to rip their pretty little hair out half the time! Who 'play with my hair' until it is one massive knot! Who take forty minutes to change into their bathing suits!

And then I come home. And die. (Unless I have after-care. In which case I stay until six-thirty. Then come home, and die.)

Okay wow, sorry. End rant. I'll end with something happy: a friend of mine who has a cute little house right on the creek in my town is having a big 4th of July BBQ on Saturday and I'm wearing a pretty blue dress and it's been a while since I had an excuse to wear a pretty dress and flirt with boys I went to high school with and float idly around the creek in a canoe and and play with sparklers (and I like run-on sentences).

So, thus concludes my first LJ entry. (Did I do it right?) Ha. (No. Seriously.)