blognetnews.com
» Seattle

Lessons From the Kissing Booth

  • Any birthday that ends in magic wands, ...

    Any birthday that ends in magic wands, a cake with pink icing and jam, and drinking champagne until 4 am is ok by me. Having fun is one of our marketable skills.

    It's Bumbershoot weekend, so if you need me I'll be over on the Metblog talking about' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: September 05, 2009, 11:24am EDT
    by samantha

  • Today ...



    Today is my 27th birthday.

    Being 26 wasn't all bad, but it was boring. I've spent the last year healing and distancing and figuring things out, and while it has undoubtedly been good for me, it has also not been very exciting. I [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: September 03, 2009, 9:56am EDT
    by samantha

  • On ...



    On our way up the mountain we stopped a a viewpoint between clouds and next to a rocky outcrop, one that looked down on a valley ropey with trees. A group of people stood clustered at the base of the outcrop, and one man [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: September 01, 2009, 5:41am EDT
    by samantha

  • [nt]




    We went to Mt. Rainier this weekend, mostly because my friends have tired of my steadfast refusal to believe that the mountain exists. This is a thing that I do, sometimes, decide to not believe in something despite clear evidence to the contrary. [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 31, 2009, 5:33pm EDT
    by samantha

  • In the summertime we went to minor ...

    In the summertime we went to minor league baseball games, all the cousins and friends that could be gathered and stuffed in cars to be chaperoned by my nan and her partner in crime, the unsinkable Mrs. Webster. My friend and I weren't interested in baseball and instead roamed the' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 26, 2009, 5:43pm EDT
    by samantha

  • On my doorstep I found a bag ...

    On my doorstep I found a bag of plums, still seemingly warm from the sun. The waning days of summer always make my angry robot strongest, so I am trying hard to remember the things that I will miss instead of being impatient for crisp afternoons and tights and steamy [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 24, 2009, 5:37pm EDT
    by samantha

  • And then there was the day we ...

    And then there was the day we stopped holding our breath walking past graveyards, figuring that ghostly possession would at least be interesting. All of those dead people probably had the answers to questions we'd never think to ask, and who were we to argue if they wanted to take' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 20, 2009, 5:24pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Yesterday in the park a mostly-toothless Native ...

    Yesterday in the park a mostly-toothless Native American man with a can of beer in hand approached us and introduced himself as the mayor of Seattle. We were sitting under a tree enjoying the breeze, and he sat down nearby and offered to buy me some socks. I declined, so [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 19, 2009, 5:17pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Yesterday was my final presentation, which means ...

    Yesterday was my final presentation, which means that I'm done with my first quarter of school, which means that I am on vacation for the next few weeks. I took the next couple of days off of work, so I am going to spend a lot of extra time sitting' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 16, 2009, 10:40am EDT
    by samantha

  • Franz Reichelt was a tailor who invented ...

    Franz Reichelt was a tailor who invented an overcoat parachute. No one seems to know if he tested it alone before he brought it to the public, hopping off of fences and rooftops to drift slowly down and land with a satisfied thump on his own two feet. What we [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 12, 2009, 5:36pm EDT
    by samantha

  • I ...



    I found my first four leaf clover yesterday, sitting on the grass under a tree with some friends, fuzzy from too few hours of sleep between the end of a dance party and brunch. I shifted the napkin from my ice cream cone [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 10, 2009, 8:35pm EDT
    by samantha

  • It started out as a story about, ...

    It started out as a story about, I don't know, revelations and sincerity and the empty shuddery thrill of looking into an empty sky and seeing a lone bird winging out toward the horizon. But it didn't fit, not really, like sitting in front of a panel of psychotherapists and [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 07, 2009, 5:34pm EDT
    by samantha

  • The one battle I'm always losing is ...

    The one battle I'm always losing is the one with gravity, coming out of even the quietest of weekends dappled with bruises and scrapes. My knees and shins are always bumped and shaded purple. A couple of weeks ago I had a suspiciously hand-shaped bruise wrapped around my left side,' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 05, 2009, 5:32pm EDT
    by samantha

  • In truth, all I want right now ...

    In truth, all I want right now is this:
    On the grass in the slowly cooling evening, fuzzy with whiskey and wine and chocolate and laughing, and suddenly a telltale his and rattle just across the path. Two yellow dresses and one blue one running shrieking through the sprinklers, too [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: August 03, 2009, 5:31pm EDT
    by samantha

  • At the beginning of "The Crack-Up," Fitzgerald ...

    At the beginning of "The Crack-Up," Fitzgerald talks about how it's always the blows from outside that we remember and blame for our holes, when really it's the blows from inside, the tiny bad decisions and the wrong turns hitting with their soft fists, that do the most damage. The [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 31, 2009, 5:29pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Franz Reichelt was a tailor who invented ...

    Franz Reichelt was a tailor who invented an overcoat parachute. No one seems to know if he tested it alone before he brought it to the public, hopping off of fences and rooftops to drift slowly down and land with a satisfied thump on his own two feet. What we [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 29, 2009, 5:36pm EDT
    by samantha

  • I got lost in Siena last year, ...

    I got lost in Siena last year, which isn't notable in itself because I got lost everywhere in Italy, constantly, every time I raised my eyes from my map. In Siena I got tired of walking along what I thought was the bus route and carelessly entered the first bus' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 28, 2009, 5:22pm EDT
    by samantha

  • The weather this week is promising to ...

    The weather this week is promising to be the sort of thing that I fled to the Pacific Northwest to get away from, and man do I hate it when people complain about the weather but I hate being purposelessly hot and sweaty even more. In any case, I mostly [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 26, 2009, 7:31pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Most of the time I walk too ...

    Most of the time I walk too slowly, spend too much time looking up and sometimes around. There's always so much that I want to cram in to my eyes. This sounds like it would be an endearing quality, but you find yourself frequently exasperated, wishing that I would match [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 23, 2009, 5:24pm EDT
    by samantha

  • I got sick again, after a beautiful ...

    I got sick again, after a beautiful day on an island drinking what turned out to be way too much, so I've spent the last week or so buried under another mountain of headcold, grumpy and drowning in phlegm. I've been sick for a significant portion of the year so [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 21, 2009, 5:22pm EDT
    by samantha

  • When I was younger I had a ...

    When I was younger I had a pogo stick, a birthday present, probably, or maybe Christmas. It was red and shiny, and I never was big enough to make it pogo. That certainly never stopped me from trying, of course, so for months I spent hours, bare feet black from [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 17, 2009, 5:19pm EDT
    by samantha

  • For a while I kept a list ...

    For a while I kept a list of the things you left on my doorstep. A compass and a kitten and three headless birds, a book about fish, a cracked watch, two candy canes, a treasure map of Atlantis, and an old copy of Newsweek. I was looking for patterns, [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 15, 2009, 5:41pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Philip II of Macedon ruled from 382-336 ...

    Philip II of Macedon ruled from 382-336 BC, and during that time some folks in a land called Phocis made all of their neighbors mad by farming the sacred field of Delphi. Feeling sure that they couldn't survive for long, all of the Phocensians decided to build a pile and' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 13, 2009, 5:27pm EDT
    by samantha

  • I am slowly moving into a rhythm ...

    I am slowly moving into a rhythm with school, figuring out how to work time for reading into my already busy schedule. I've got a routine down that involves going to the coffee shop for the first round of reading and then to the bar for the second, because getting' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 09, 2009, 5:22pm EDT
    by samantha

  • I have been thinking about taste memories.

    I have been thinking about taste memories.

    On Thursday night I was having a bbq in a suburb with the family of one of my good friends. The yard was filled with laughing kids and parents and siblings and friends, a haze of hamburger-scented smoke drifted over all of [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 07, 2009, 5:17pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Have I told you that I'm writing ...

    Have I told you that I'm writing a movie? An old friend who's a film maker asked me to write a movie with him, some goofy mumblecore something based on a few things I've written here. Hilariously, it has sort of turned into a horror movie, which is definitely something [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 03, 2009, 10:18am EDT
    by samantha

  • When I knew him he was surefooted ...

    When I knew him he was surefooted and lean, confident that the ground would always be there to meet the bottoms of his feet. He remembered people, considered them, stored up their details in the lines of his skin to be pulled out and repeated back, unexpectedly. Just so you [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: July 01, 2009, 5:19pm EDT
    by samantha

  • On Friday night I made my debut ...

    On Friday night I made my debut as a cocktail waitress, which seems like it should have been a spectacularly bad idea, given how clumsy I tend to be. But a friend of mine needed help and in this post-Michael economy we could all use a little extra cash, so [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 29, 2009, 5:31pm EDT
    by samantha

  • You know, I had something else I ...

    You know, I had something else I was going to say, but I am too busy being bummed about Michael Jackson. In my baby book my mom wrote that one of my first phrases was, "Michael Jackson! Yeah! Alright! I like that!" When I got a record player in my [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 25, 2009, 5:17pm EDT
    by samantha

  • In World War II Japan built bombs ...

    In World War II Japan built bombs tied on to balloons that they released into the jet stream in hopes of bombing forests and cities from across the ocean. They launched 9,000 of them, and about 300 were found or seen in North America, although they were hoping to land [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 22, 2009, 5:26pm EDT
    by samantha

  • We set out a box on the ...

    We set out a box on the curb labeled "Free!" and full of everything we no longer needed. Bouquets from the weddings of couples who are now divorced, math books full of equations that never added up, ghost stories and butterflies and sugar packets and the bones we found papered [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 18, 2009, 5:17pm EDT
    by samantha

  • We have two weapons in the summer ...

    We have two weapons in the summer of not overthinking, and those are drinking and remaining well-behaved. And I must say that though it is boring, keeping my hands to myself certainly does calm everything down. I haven't smashed anything in ages, and there are few people that I am' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 15, 2009, 5:27pm EDT
    by samantha

  • My ...



    My mom has been scanning some of the photos that she found after my granddad died. My granddad grew up in Pinellas County, and so did my mom and so did I, and my veins are all tied up in that ground. Like [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 11, 2009, 5:24pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Walking home in the earlier end of ...

    Walking home in the earlier end of the night, Self got a conspiratorial grin on my face and nudged me in the ribs, eyebrows raised, suggesting that we have been so well behaved for too long, that it's time for running away and changing names. Time to go hunting in [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 10, 2009, 5:32pm EDT
    by samantha

  • You would think that only having two ...

    You would think that only having two weeks to go before my first quarter of grad school starts would put a limit on how much worrying and overplanning I am able to do, but you would be wrong. I am extremely fond of planning, and knowing exactly what is going [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 08, 2009, 5:19pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Internet! Starting in about two weeks I ...

    Internet! Starting in about two weeks I will be a graduate student at Seattle University. As late as yesterday I had myself convinced that if I did get in it would be for summer quarter of next year, so now I am kind of hyperventilating. Though not in a bad [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 05, 2009, 5:30pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Captain Toby and I have declared this ...

    Captain Toby and I have declared this the summer of not overthinking, which, given that overthinking comes to me even more naturally than breathing, means that it is probably actually going to be the summer of strenuous denial. But I've never yet been able to turn down something done in' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 04, 2009, 5:17pm EDT
    by samantha

  • This is a thing I don't normally ...

    This is a thing I don't normally do, but: some friends of mine are running the Rock n Roll Seattle half marathon to raise money for another friend's AVID class, since the universe is kind of made of budget cuts these days. These are kids who are' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 02, 2009, 5:17pm EDT
    by samantha

  • We asked only for heat and movement, ...

    We asked only for heat and movement, careening wildly forward with elbows out scraping the walls, both leaving behind and taking along. Talking like a rabbit warren, all twists and dust and dead ends that only we with our long ears and swift feet could navigate safely. When we emerged [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: June 01, 2009, 5:22pm EDT
    by samantha

  • This morning, at the intersection of the ...

    This morning, at the intersection of the lake and near the lake, I found myself waiting to cross the street in a snowstorm of dandelion fluff. The breezes had picked up and the plants had let go all at once, and wisps and clumps of white cartwheeled all through the [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 29, 2009, 5:24pm EDT
    by samantha

  • It is always in these better hours ...

    It is always in these better hours that I am always unwillingly thinking of those Greek soldiers that Herodotus told us about who, charged with holding the gates against the Persian army, first sat down and combed their hair. When Xerxes, shocked at the display, asked what it was all [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 26, 2009, 5:30pm EDT
    by samantha

  • The sign on the outside of my ...

    The sign on the outside of my picket fence reads, "Gone Fishin'". I took yesterday and today off of work, and combined with the long weekend, that's going to end up meaning a whole lot of sitting outside in places having fun. My tomato and strawberry plants are already putting [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 22, 2009, 11:59am EDT

  • The antipodes of most places are in ...

    The antipodes of most places are in the water, somewhere at the bottom with the dirt and the dark and the eyeless fish. Oh sure, some of New Zealand is in Spain and some of Indonesia in South America, but almost all of us are swimming in our opposites. Which [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 20, 2009, 5:43pm EDT

  • I spent pretty much all of this ...

    I spent pretty much all of this weekend outside, planting tomatoes or drinking mimosas on the patio of my brunch spot or throwing a bbq on a rooftop deck belonging to some friends who are out of town, and the rest of it involved in dance parties or otherwise engaged [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 18, 2009, 5:37pm EDT

  • I am running incredibly low on both ...

    I am running incredibly low on both inspiration and energy lately, wrestling with another bout of bronchitis and waiting for the spring to hook me. I am thinking only of taking naps and growing things, of how many people there are and how many years are left and how many [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 14, 2009, 5:23pm EDT

  • All rectangles are squares at some point ...

    All rectangles are squares at some point or another, and probably circles too, secretly, somewhere underneath.

    We are happiest when fixed in motion, soothed by the motion of winds and ideas across our cheeks, like shipwreck survivors still somewhere longing for the swell of the waves. All of the [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 12, 2009, 5:17pm EDT

  • This morning I mailed off my grad ...

    This morning I mailed off my grad school application, and now there's nothing left to do but wait. Waiting is not a skill I actually have, so instead of doing that I'll probably pace around my apartment talking to myself a lot, and drink too much and lie loudly that [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 09, 2009, 2:15pm EDT

  • In the half light you traced the ...

    In the half light you traced the veins running blue under the thinner layers of my skin, hands floating soft like fog down the street. The summer died not that long after, but the heat from that second lingered for months, crackling like the moment after a lightning strike, tasting [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 07, 2009, 9:21pm EDT

  • A few weeks ago, a man at ...

    A few weeks ago, a man at a bus stop gestured to the starlings hopping around in the grass and told me that these were birds that were not native, that they were introduced to this country by someone who wanted to live in a land that had all the [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 04, 2009, 6:31pm EDT

  • There's not a whole lot of difference ...

    There's not a whole lot of difference in the atomic weight of lead and gold, which explains why it is that I can't be quite sure yet which one of them has slipped inside the lining of my pockets. It's possible that I might not find out until the lead' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: May 01, 2009, 6:07pm EDT

  • Our bones may as well be outer ...

    Our bones may as well be outer space, for all that we will ever see them without tools and photographs and uncomfortable accidents. It's only other people that get to look under our skin, long after we're gone, having turned disconnected and forever smiling gruesomely.

    I think about my [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 29, 2009, 5:33pm EDT

  • Yesterday we threw a surprise early birthday ...

    Yesterday we threw a surprise early birthday party for one of my favorite people, and I tasked myself with distracting the birthday boy long enough for the people we were having brunch with to get to the party, and for the rest of the guests to assemble. I was [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 27, 2009, 6:28pm EDT

  • Three smell memories:1. Walking home ...

    Three smell memories:

    1. Walking home late the other night, I passed a house with sprinklers on soaking a garden, smelling exactly like coming home at the end of summer right after the streetlights came on, having just adjusted my watch so that it looked like I wasn't getting' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 24, 2009, 5:33pm EDT

  • [nt]

    Grandad

    One of the things I most regret is not asking for my grandfather's stories before he died.

    I love stories, but it always feels like a delicate thing, asking for them. I think that this is at' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 22, 2009, 5:47pm EDT

  • I was walking home last night, in ...

    I was walking home last night, in the hours which a month ago would have been verging on late but which are now, in the softening spring evenings, only more hours. It was warm enough to not be wearing tights but cool enough that the breeze rustling the bottom hem [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 21, 2009, 5:17pm EDT

  • Man, didn't we have a time.

    Man, didn't we have a time.

    I knew that there was a pretty good chance that this weekend in Vancouver was going to be fun, but there was just no way to predict that we would spend all of the last 48 hours laughing. All of my laughing muscles' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 19, 2009, 7:06pm EDT

  • Well. It looks like an impromptu weekend ...

    Well. It looks like an impromptu weekend trip to Vancouver is in the works, and I couldn't be more excited. I have been going out of my skin with restlessness since, oh, January, and will like nothing more than to get in a car with a bunch of people who' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 17, 2009, 9:10pm EDT

  • Late one night I told you a ...

    Late one night I told you a story about an apple who meets a bird and becomes jealous of the bird's freedom and discontented with his own future. The apple didn't want to become a pie or cider, to be crunched between anyone's teeth, to fall from his branch and' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 14, 2009, 5:17pm EDT

  • I disappear sometimes, in between breaths. Thinning ...

    I disappear sometimes, in between breaths. Thinning and fading. Happens so fast that you wouldn't notice unless you were watching very closely, but it's interesting how far you can travel without breathing.

    There's this cave on the Greek Island of Crete, the Zeus Cave. It's supposed to be the [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 12, 2009, 8:24pm EDT

  • It's been a year now since I ...

    It's been a year now since I landed in Italy, tired and rumpled and broken and frankly scared out of my wits.

    It's funny how physical being lost is, how you can travel in circles for fifteen miles looking for something three blocks in the opposite direction, and how [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 09, 2009, 5:32pm EDT

  • They say that 2,000 years ago the ...

    They say that 2,000 years ago the climate of the Congo was cooler, less damp, that instead of being composed of thickets of impenetrable jungle the land was mostly smooth grassland with fingers of forest along all of the major water sources. All the bigger animals and the running animals [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 07, 2009, 5:22pm EDT

  • Oh, hello there, spring.We knew ...

    Oh, hello there, spring.

    We knew you were on the way, of course. The signs were all there--the daffodils, the thick purple flowers up in the higher branches of the trees, the chives coming up in my window box, all of the bright pink and gray earthworms strung along [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 05, 2009, 8:25pm EDT
    by samantha

  • Right on schedule, same as every year, ...

    Right on schedule, same as every year, I find myself bored of everything in the world, tired of being cold and sick, of looking at the same things and eating in the same places and listening to everyone in the greater metropolitan area whine about the weather. There's always a' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: April 02, 2009, 5:17pm EDT

  • Suppose for a moment that all of ...

    Suppose for a moment that all of those concave Hollow Earth theories are actually true, that we are in fact living on the inside of the Earth with the universe around us and the sun on a battery, that if we were tunneling it wouldn't be in but out. That' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 31, 2009, 5:26pm EDT

  • I am pretty much a walking petri ...

    I am pretty much a walking petri dish this month, having acquired a bad cold to go along with my recently enhanced bout of bronchitis, all of which has left me exhausted and bad-tempered and wheezing and unable to go within three feet of my couch without waking up on [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 29, 2009, 3:35pm EDT

  • It isn't staring at an eclipse that ...

    It isn't staring at an eclipse that hurts our eyes, the times when was was bright has turned dark, but the moments after when the sudden influx of light alters the chemistry of our cells and damages them. With age the damage becomes less and less each time, our lenses' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 26, 2009, 5:43pm EDT

  • We see these things only in flashes, ...

    We see these things only in flashes, glimpsed like telephone poles from the window of a speeding car, adjusting our poker faces to suit the landscape just passed. Moving like a mantis shrimp, which is neither mantis nor shrimp but which can still punch like a bullet. Staying totally still [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 23, 2009, 6:07pm EDT

  • I am mostly recovered from my terrible ...

    I am mostly recovered from my terrible wasting disease, except for some lingering coughing and a general vagueness of brain. I'm having a whole lot of trouble focusing on anything, including conversations with other people and my own impulse control, which has led to fortunately less damaging wackiness than it' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 20, 2009, 5:33pm EDT

  • So you've heard, I imagine, about

    So you've heard, I imagine, about that bat clinging to the side of the space shuttle this week, hanging there on the side up past where anyone could see him, staying warm and alive through liftoff and possibly all the way to space. Probably living out some bat plan' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 17, 2009, 5:45pm EDT

  • Generally I'm not very good at being ...

    Generally I'm not very good at being sick, all grumpy at being confined, so it's a measure of exactly how sick I've been that I hardly noticed not leaving the house for most of a week. I hate the flu, and how weak and pathetic it's left me, in this [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 15, 2009, 8:32pm EDT

  • Oh man, do I ever have the ...

    Oh man, do I ever have the flu.

    It's been years and years since I've had the flu, and I forgot how completely miserable it is. I have spent almost all of my time at home for the last three days in a miserable heap on my couch, sweating [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 12, 2009, 5:36pm EDT

  • I am very, very high on cold ...

    I am very, very high on cold medicine today--that'll teach me to forget my hat, walking to work in the snow--and have spent a significant portion of the afternoon thinking about Coconut crabs, an arthropod that can get to be half as big as I am and would think' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 10, 2009, 5:37pm EDT

  • I was reading that scientists are using ...

    I was reading that scientists are using cotton candy to grow replacement tissue, pouring a chemical over the flimsy sugar and then dissolving it, leaving a network of tiny tiny channels where the candy's thin strands used to be. And if you line those channels with cells and seed the' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 06, 2009, 7:08pm EST

  • I read this with an instant ...

    I read this with an instant shock of recognition: I do this all the time. Some of the things I tend to imagine against my will are:

    Going in a car under an overpass and someone commits suicide off of it, landing on our car and killing whoever [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 03, 2009, 5:25pm EST

  • I have spent almost all of my ...

    I have spent almost all of my free time this past week--and probably a considerable amount of the time I should have spent doing other things--reading Gone With the Wind. I've spent the last few months with books that were pleasant enough, like conversations with friends of friends only in' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: March 03, 2009, 9:47pm EST

  • I dreamed of daffodils, lifting their buttery ...

    I dreamed of daffodils, lifting their buttery throats and shouting at the sky, yelling in daffodil so that no one nearby understood their words but only felt their meaning. Screaming in such a way that even the stars drew closer, furrowed their brows, and tilted their heads.

    But imagine [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 27, 2009, 10:34pm EST

  • It's my grandfather's books that make him ...

    It's my grandfather's books that make him feel farthest gone, sitting here on my ordered bookshelves rather than stuck all higgledy-piggledy on his shelves without any organization to speak of. When I was in Florida in January I combed those shelves, picking out the volumes I wanted to keep. People's' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 25, 2009, 6:04pm EST

  • I love weddings, even weddings at which ...

    I love weddings, even weddings at which I have to do the "single girl of a certain age sitting alone at a table during a slow dance" scene found in the dopiest of romantic comedies. (No, seriously. When they took the photos of the people at our table, mine ended [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 24, 2009, 6:09pm EST

  • At my grandmother's house for probably the ...

    At my grandmother's house for probably the last time, my mom and I were starting to get my grandparents' condo ready to sell. I was moving around furniture, cleaning surfaces, trying to make the place look nothing like how it has looked my whole life. On an end table sat [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 22, 2009, 8:17pm EST

  • Flying back to the East coast is ...

    Flying back to the East coast is always an exercise in mortification of the spirit, given that a red-eye flight back means that I spend an entire night not-sleeping on airplanes, and the early morning flight means that I spend a night not-sleeping on the way to the airport, in [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 21, 2009, 11:52pm EST

  • I am thinking in unchopping ways right ...

    I am thinking in unchopping ways right now, feeling the urge to fill back in those notches I made on your side with my axe, patching you up with butter and pomegranate seeds and rainbow trout and stuttery apologies. Everything I scraped off and filed away suddenly feels not so [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 17, 2009, 5:57pm EST

  • I'm going back to Florida in a ...

    I'm going back to Florida in a couple of days, which always make me nervous, and never more so than now when people are falling apart and everything is changing. So I have been overscheduling myself to an alarming degree, with shows and parties and photo shoots and dinners' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 15, 2009, 10:55am EST

  • My big change is...a new email address! ...

    My big change is...a new email address! Well, that wasn't supposed to be the big change, but it's certainly stressing me out today a lot more than the other thing, which I will get to in a minute. Last night I came home from celebrating the 15th birthday of my [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 11, 2009, 5:59pm EST

  • My telephone seems to have reinvented itself ...

    My telephone seems to have reinvented itself as the Bad News Line, and if I thought that hiding it would do any good I would shove it in a drawer and leave it there until it had time to rethink what it's doing. Sometimes people are just calling to say' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 09, 2009, 8:42pm EST

  • Crunching late through frost-ripened grass, I want ...

    Crunching late through frost-ripened grass, I want to yell things, but there are no echoes worth talking to in these parts, nothing to yell at that yells back.

    It is almost as though, having once slid a hand down the length of my bones, you have managed to convince [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 07, 2009, 4:35pm EST
    by samantha

  • I have been thinking lately about a ...

    I have been thinking lately about a color blind synesthete, about how his brain would be able to see colors but his eyes couldn't, and so whenever he would look at certain numbers it would be his brain that showed him colors that simply didn't exist anywhere else for him. [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 04, 2009, 6:11pm EST

  • Dear everyone,January? January was mostly ...

    Dear everyone,

    January? January was mostly stupidly boring. Ultimately that's probably for the best, since January excitement is pretty much never the good kind for me, but I'm still bored. And being bored tends to make me reckless.

    I made a last minute decision to go to Florida [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: February 01, 2009, 8:09pm EST

  • I have a very severe fear of ...

    I have a very severe fear of my apartment burning down. As a kid I used to wake up in the middle of the night, convinced that I heard arsonists creeping around outside our trailer. This is largely because of the day the man across the street died in [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 31, 2009, 8:33pm EST

  • In Italy I spent a considerable amount ...

    In Italy I spent a considerable amount of time inserting myself into the background of people's pictures. No to make faces, or stand in funny ways, or to in any way ruin their atmosphere, but just to stand there, maybe only in parts. I was trying to make myself transparent' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 28, 2009, 6:59pm EST

  • I left Seattle late, tired from alcohol ...

    I left Seattle late, tired from alcohol and conversation, and slept through most of my first flight, waking only when the pilot announced our descent. The houses on the ground were dark, penned in by streetlamps, except for one spot that doubled the light of everything around it. It was [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 26, 2009, 8:36pm EST

  • There's never really time to adjust to ...

    There's never really time to adjust to the time zone on these trips, and too many people to see, so I always seem to go to sleep on Seattle time but wake up on Florida time, and this means that there have been approximately three hours of sleeping done by' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 24, 2009, 10:04am EST

  • And now here we are in this ...

    And now here we are in this new old world with a job of work to be done and certain sure we'll screw some of it up somehow. We always do. Still, I get a little damp in the eyes every time I even think the words President Obama. I' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 21, 2009, 5:34pm EST

  • Eight years ago I was just barely ...

    Eight years ago I was just barely into my second semester of college, an unhealthy 20 pounds lighter and with very long wavy brown hair. Within a few weeks I would be breaking up with my first boyfriend and, immediately after, having a bout of pneumonia and bronchitis that would [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 19, 2009, 7:58pm EST

  • Seattle right now is covered in fog, ...

    Seattle right now is covered in fog, fog that thickens and disperses and then gathers itself again, and has been for days. Late at night it muffles everything beyond a few steps, muting the sulphur glow of the streetlights over my head. Anything can happen in these fogs, hidden from [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 16, 2009, 6:01pm EST

  • I spoke to my grandmother today, which ...

    I spoke to my grandmother today, which was hard after yesterday's news. And all the more difficult for being hard, I think--we speak every couple of weeks, always with the same easy understanding that we will have the same conversation next time, that I will always order her gently to' [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 14, 2009, 5:34pm EST

  • All I really want to tell you ...

    All I really want to tell you about is my uncommon grandmother, and how 20 years after the doctors told her she had five left to live we are suddenly moving much too quickly toward actually losing her, but words aren't big enough for a lady like my grandma. My [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 13, 2009, 5:36pm EST

  • Tin cans and string were not our ...

    Tin cans and string were not our worst means of communication, given how lost we are anyway, given that our only compass is the soft thump of blood passing under our fingers. Given that the stars are all muffled in our closed eyelids. Like the synesthete who was blind, we [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 12, 2009, 9:19pm EST

  • Like clockwork comes a wave of restless, ...

    Like clockwork comes a wave of restless, of smash-everything, of dye my hair black and change my name to Lola and move to South America to run guns and whittle tiny elephant figurines with a little pink pocket knife. Too much time stationary and sickly and turning in the same [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 08, 2009, 5:57pm EST

  • In evolutionary biology they have this wonderful ...

    In evolutionary biology they have this wonderful term, "hopeful monster," for a creature that has a severe mutation that gets passed down and turns out to be the key in the lock of whole new evolutionary groups. It doesn't really work for science--more often than not, the real excuse is [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 07, 2009, 9:40pm EST

  • This morning was the perihelion, and part ...

    This morning was the perihelion, and part of it was also the end points of the Quadrantid meteor shower, so it was the work of only moments to put together a fleet of paper airplanes to send up to those meteors, to land on their craters and to later be [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: January 05, 2009, 9:59pm EST
← (206) Life- A Seattle Blog Hot Splice →

Blog Info:
Lessons From the Kissing Booth

» http://gingerlee.blogspot.com/

Categories

Life

BNN Traffic Index

Alexa: 12,004,698
-436,712

Compete: No data
0

Quantcast: No data
14

BNN Traffic Index: -436,712

BNN Authority Index

Technorati: 0

Google: 0

BNN Authority Index: No data

» Subscribe to the Lessons From the Kissing Booth feed