portland to blond, in photos.
excel, kitty, wine, rain (portland)
champagne, resolutions, of montreal (coast)

red, blond, red, laugh (atlanta)

things i love:
(pics soon)

the space heater i've hauled around for the last 2 years, and am just now re-introducing.
my momma's old cowboy boots.
short deep red fingernails.
not knowing why the ex is flying in tomorrow.
cheap, sassy, wide legged dark blue jeans.
texts from boys with ducatis.
the new york gals.
imagining a new life in a new city with a new job.
my new title (managing director) on the website.
boys that can dance, and then ask for my number.
the sweet design for the next tattoo.
comfortably wearing the size clothes i wore in high school.
nachos with fake cheese.
michael cera in juno.
the feeling after the ouch in getting my eyebrows waxed.

as if i could love this american life anymore, they've gone and done this.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
completed a triathlon, got to call myself a managing director, traveled to the west coast (for fun, not work) every month from August to December

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I was supposed to make a recipe a week, which only happened for the first two months.
This year: to complete an Olympic distance triathlon

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nope, but my sister’s gonna go in March. (!)

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No. Phew, and thanks.

5. What countries did you visit?
None this year, but so! much! domestic! traveling!

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
A clearer, louder artistic voice in the company. Full gratitude for the perks of my job(s).

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
September 22—the big Game, which was preceded by a month of me losing my mind and Oct 31, the big bash success of an opening of Meds.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Completing my first triathlon on May 5th in 1:40.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Umm….no super cute haircut?

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No. No hospital stays, which is incredible.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
2006 silver Vespa.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My parents have kicked their 57 year old selves into shape.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
A high school best friend, living in her parents basement.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Traveling. Rent. Booze and Chinese. The usual suspects.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Seeing friends. Dragonys! Pat and Amanda! Erin! Erin! Heather! New Florida friends!

Also, vespa!

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
Feist: 1234

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier, and more articulate about what makes me sad.
b) thinner or fatter? About 4 lbs thinner.
c) richer or poorer? Richer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Wish I had started walking outside earlier, listening to This American Life.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Crying about the Game.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
With the brothers and their wives, and a serious case of bronchitis.

21. Did you fall in love in 2007?
Close. And fell out of love with a few: B. and S.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
The Bachelor. Yep.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.

24. What was the best book you read?
American Pastoral.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Avett Brothers. Dr. Dog. Elvis Perkins. Of Montreal. Feist Bonnaroo.

26. What did you want and get?
100% out of debt.

27. What did you want and not get?
An iPhone, but it’s coming.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Knocked Up.
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Turned 25. Was in San Diego for the actual day, and got my first (ouch) facial. There was a big party a few weeks before at Sean’s, with enough hot buttered rum and pumpkin bread pudding to last me another year.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Being able to openly celebrate and discuss the early morning fun of November and December.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
Increasingly sassy.

32. What kept you sane?
Books and red wine. Maia and Ariel. Ogy. Walks on Freedom Path.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Judd Apatow.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Medical things: the capitalization of birth, the shitiness of insurance, lack of access to medical services.

35. Who did you miss?
While I got to see her so much (!) this year, I missed Ogy daily. Also, the New York crew: Hedu, Darcy, Brit and Kate.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
In terms of fun, certainly Chris. No match.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.
The south has taught me how to be myself in infinity more situations. People are attracted to energy and life and quick.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Patty Griffin's No Bad News:
We won't be afraid to be alive anymore
And we'll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us
Till there are no strangers anymore

take off tomorrow for west vacation-- two and a half weeks, family, oregon coast and friends, in that order. this is my excited face.

to be leaving tricky (!) here makes it all the more of a relief. i've got books (munroe, gilbert) and music (ritter, tweedy) to keep me company, and the feeling i'll be returning with a clarity. for now, today, i'm glad and grateful.

***
and really, the only thing is that 'the temptation of adam' by josh ritter is on repeat in my place for the last few days. this i can't get over, and it just won't stop breaking my heart.

this is true, today. for c.


This room, and everything in it.
Li-Young Lee


Lie still now
while I prepare for my future,
certain hard days ahead,
when I'll need what I know so clearly this moment.

I am making use
of the one thing I learned
of all the things my father tried to teach me:
the art of memory.

I am letting this room
and everything in it
stand for my ideas about love
and its difficulties.

I'll let your love-cries,
those spacious notes
of a moment ago,
stand for distance.

Your scent,
that scent
of spice and a wound,
I'll let stand for mystery.

Your sunken belly
is the daily cup
of milk I drank
as a boy before morning prayer.

The sun on the face
of the wall
is God, the face
I can't see, my soul,

and so on, each thing
standing for a separate idea,
and those ideas forming the constellation
of my greater idea.
And one day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about love,

I'll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it:
My body is estrangement.
This desire, perfection.
Your closed eyes my extinction.
Now I've forgotten my
idea. The book
on the windowsill, riffled by wind...
the even-numbered pages are
the past, the odd-
numbered pages, the future.
The sun is
God, your body is milk...

useless, useless...
your cries are song, my body's not me...
no good ... my idea
has evaporated...your hair is time, your thighs are song...
it had something to do
with death...it had something
to do with love.

today i went to the post office, and 60ish-drunk-dirty-wander-pants held the door for me. i should say he opened the door, but stood in the doorway, making it impossible for me to walk in. also, he rearranged his fingers, quite deliberately, so that the only finger holding the door was his middle finger.

he gave me the bird AS he held the door for me.

and then he did it again at the next door, this time following my eyes as i registered the birdie, and then gave a little smile. whack whack whack.

happy holidays. may every birdie you get also mean an open door.

my sister is half done growing a baby in her belly. i am so so ready, and thrilled, and ready ready ready to meet this little bambino. this is what i want to tell it today:

You Begin
Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

was rereading old writings, and this is true now, as then.
***
They send me an herb garden as a thank you gift. She rubbed my shoulder in the car, and I took the wrong exit. I called him small; he thought me proud. I missed my father, and wished for fuller days.

I could leave here too. I could quit this circle, these older friends, their mistakes already made. I could leave the admitting of lonely, of wanting what they have. I could leave tonight, sit in a hotel in Chattanooga, post my resume on craigslist. I could leave.

I wait for the call, wait by not waiting. Make plans, go camping, get drunk, don’t check to see who has written. Surrounded by fresh babies and women swollen with ready and new, I repeat ‘everything in me is a bird’ and kiss new foreheads and fingers.

My life will be filled with worse things: a long hospital stay, my mother will die too quick, the long and public humiliation, a not-worth-it affair. I will weather them with pride, and friends will call me brave. These slow, lonely days however, just may be my quiet end.

the last of the best friends from home got married in portland this weekend, and the event was all grey sky and vintage dresses. the vows brought me to tears, especially the last line that said "whenever i think of you, i will feel a twinge of surprised delight that i found you"

jana, the 10 year old cousin, and the wedding officiant and i busted serious moves on the dance floor, surrounded by floaty champagne filled friends and family. i had the same old coming home hangover feeling...that the weekend was something dreamt, that i can't quite remember all the details, that things here have harder edges and louder sounds.

i'm headed to portland to witness the last of the high school best friends wedding. it makes me officially The Single Friend, but i'm bored with being worried or sad or embarrassed about that.

i'm instead embracing all The Single Friend duties, including, but not limited to:
- look smoking at the wedding.
- make phallic looking appetizers for the bachlorette party.
- drink dirty martinis.
- buy the bride really expensive, really hot lingerie.
- kiss up on single boys at the wedding.

i'm 100% confident that i can perform my duties well. i'll let you know.

(oh yes)
i went on some more blind dates. one (in fact) i found interesting and smart, though admittedly mildly douche-y. we drank wine, and he spoke quip-y and fast, and i spoke slow and silly and we laughed and ha ha! a person my age who is together and ambitious and kind! whhhhhha?

oh yes, and then we met to go dancing, and he made out with every girl on the dance floor except me, and i remembered "first impression was douche-a-roo. guess you know more than you think you do. "

**

work has been all WHEE-OOO-WHEE-OOO CRAZY WORK SIREN, and the big (capital E!) Event was yesterday and it went well, and people loved it, and my! job! was! done!

but i still woke up at 4 am last night, worried about what's ahead. is this perpetual? vacation next week, and whew.

**

my sister is pregnant. exploding anticipation, love, and all of the warm fizzie fuzzies. baby baby sissy love.

holy hell. look what i bought (!).

oh jeez everything here in atlanta is screaming HEAT ADVISORY and IT'S TOO SMOGGY TO BREATHE and HOTTEST DAY OF THE WHOLE HISTORY OF THE WORLD and yes, when i go outside i think Aww fuck, my legs are tingling, but mostly i'm just sitting inside, ac at 69 degrees, so happy happy for this forced vacation.

it's not silly, or funny, but i was struck today about why i keep coming back to exercising. it really has little to do with how i look, because apparently i'm just supposed to weigh this much, and no matter what i do, how little i eat, how much i drink, how fat i feel, it's the same. It's been this way for a good year now, and while most days i think 'hooray curvy strong body!' i also sometimes think 'sweet jesus i will never be a small girl' and it sort of gets me blue. but that blue-ness, that's not why i exercise.


i haven't posted it here, but i've got some ick-ick neurological thing, and the docs are saying it could get worse, and worse looks like a wheelchair, and maybe a blind cane. it used to make me mad, and now it just makes me think. some days i exercise because i can, and i maybe won't be able to tomorrow, but most days that's not why i exercise.


i did my first triathlon in may, and it was the most satisfying experience i've ever had. no creative experience, or moment in a relationship, or journey has made me feel so capable. i trained alone, and competed alone, and beat even my secret goal, the one that was 10 minutes less than what i told everyone my goal was. i got to swim in a big cold lake, and bike up big hills, and run beside big trees. and i totally didn't suck. i didn't win, but i didn't even come close to sucking.


i exercise because it brings me back to myself. i can't think petty thoughts when i'm trying catch my breath. i can't miss anyone when i feel like i'm about to hurl. i can't worry about what i'll say on the phone when i'm watching the stopwatch. back in the water, back on the bike, back on the trail. i'm better there.

So I tried to go on a blind date on Saturday.

This is less extraordinary than it would be for most women—my new years resolution last year was to go on a blind date a week. I didn’t quite make it to 52 (I sort of dated some of the blind date boys for a few weeks here and there) but wasn’t that far behind either. Nonetheless, I’m not exactly a novice when it comes to blind dates.

That said, never, never have I been stood up on a blind date. That is, never until Saturday had I been stood up on a blind date.

I showed up at the pre-arranged time looking sassy but professional, fun but also a little business. We had agreed to meet at a tiny little bar by my house, a little dive-y and dark, and always full of drunk men.

Walking in, I didn’t see anyone that even vaguely matched the picture he had sent on. I scoped for a minute (remember, tiny bar) and then sat down at the bar and ordered a greyhound. As soon as I did, the bartender asked if I was Kathrine or something, and I said, yeah, sorta, and he asked if I was meeting someone, and I said, I think so, and he said, Umm, no he called and asked me to give you his number. He’s not coming.

At this point I forget my sweet, blind date, small bar voice and exclaim ‘Am I getting stood up on a blind date?!?!’

Well, every dude in the place promptly turned around and started asking questions. How we got set up. How dare he. Can I buy you a drink. What’s your name. Can I buy you a drink as well.

I ended up leaving the bar feeling far lovely than any single man could have made me feel. It was divine.

new york and seattle were tricky, in the way that made 7 days feel like 50. i got home to my sweet clean, cold, empty home, and immediately crawled in bed and passed out for 5 hours. i woke up a few times with coughing fits, one so bad that i came close to puking. i'm trying to pull back into myself, in every way.

but it was also fun, and there were pretty dresses, expensive cocktails, little sleeping, much live music so so so very much love and fondness for the women in my life.

i'm off to seattle and nyc. i've got blank postcards and colored pencils, and i'm going to mail moses and theo (my favorite nearly 4 and nearly 2 year olds) a note each day, chronicling my trip. i already have high hopes of today's picture: me riding an airplane. yes, like bronco style. maybe i'll be lassoing a cloud.
i'll probably have to draw me getting drunk for tomorrow's picture. they'll like that.

It’s been a quiet few days again—especially so today, as the power was out at the office, and even with grants due on Friday I had to come back home, and rest, and wait.

Things are about to get a little nutty, which is always one of my favorite anticipations. I’m heading to seattle for a wedding of a high school friend, and then out to New York City for a few days with friends.

Both events are a little trickier than they seem—the wedding is really a ‘renewal of vows’ for a friend who married a girl to keep her in the country. I don’t know how much of it is love, and how much is just pragmatic, and if she’s really the one for my him. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing old friends, and dancing, and all of that fun. I’ve got a sassy pink dress, and gold shoes, and Seattle is always a good time.

New York is tricky in another way—a good friend’s mom is approaching death, and my friend isn’t able to talk about it, so I’m going to just sit with her, and silently hope for a peaceful passage. All the rest and quiet of the past few days seem to be preparing me for this, getting me ready to send healing to others, instead of needing to hoard it for my own getting though, my own daily pressings.

So bring on the planes, and the cocktails and 3 am and familiar faces. Can’t wait.

bonnaroo was all dirt and sulpher and sun. it was also my two favorite red heads, and red beans and rice, and dancing. a shirtless sting, big dirty fountain and hot rum were also bonnaroo. it was a short drive home, long sleepless nights, and black nostrils.

elvis says 'thumbs up bonnaroo'
we say 'THUMBS UP BONNAROO!'