until october 2039...

...i am owned by the bank. why, you ask? because i bought a house. or as my dad put it, i fulfilled one of the american dreams: i became a homeowner. and even though i don't technically move into the house until next week, and thus making today ever so slightly anti-climatic, i am very, very excited. i felt like i signed my life away at closing with all the papers that bear my autograph. and i thought signing an apartment lease was bad. i chickened out of buying the washer and dryer, and now i slightly regret this - only slightly, because that's a pretty big bill as well. and after all, spending thousands upon thousands of dollars in one day is exhausting. i may go to bed soon, and it's not even 9 p.m.

i have felt in the past year that none of the growing i was doing was good enough. sure, i had a job - but my friends are getting married. sure, my car was paid off - but my friends were having babies. i got the idea in my head that buying a home would help me grow. it would put me on the same level, because in my head, nothing is worse than being left behind, especially not when everyone else is having all the fun. so last may, i met with a realtor and started this process. almost five months later, i am a homeowner. my intentions may not have been ideal, but the end result isn't one i regret at all.

and - it has to be said - some of those friends who got married are no where near ready to buy a home. so i do have one leg up on them.

the growing continues.

bless this band

coldplay and something corporate will always be favorites. but there is no band like sigur rós. they're from iceland, so i can't understand what they're saying. but even if i spoke icelandic (it's really a language), i still wouldn't be able to understand them all the time, because sometimes they speak vonlenska, or hopelandic - basically a nonsense language. lead singer jón Þór "jónsi" birgisson made this language up specifically for his music. most of their songs are long, six to eight minutes usually, and a lot of times they're just instrumental. their albums range from way out there - ( ) is fascinating in that it's different than anything i've heard (and yes, ( ) is the name of the album) to more traditional (i use that word loosely with this band), like the one i just downloaded, Ágætis byrjun (translated: "a good beginning"), which has some of the most melodic sigur rós songs i've heard.

one of the best things i love about sigur rós is that they're completely open to interpretation. every song on the album ( ) was untitled, though they did include nicknames for each song. the pages in the album cover were blank, so people could write in their own lyrics (as most of the songs are instrumental). even the name of the album is available for each listener to decide for themselves.

but probably the best thing is that sigur rós is just so different. there is no comparison i can point out to this band, no one out there i've found who comes close (though if you have ideas, please let me know!). i am not one to go for "out-there" music, but there is something about the way they string notes together with random instrumental combinations and jónsi's haunting falsetto. it's the most evocative, emotional, powerful music i've ever heard. i don't know what they're saying, and more importantly, i don't need to. it doesn't matter. the sounds are enough.

* under the did-you-know category of the day, "bless" is actually good-bye in icelandic. i love that the word for farewell is also a lovely word in english. and also that's probably the only word i'll ever be able to pronounce in icelandic. vonlenska, anyone?

that was then

i was in a classroom, barely watching the tv, more interested in the issue of the newspaper coming out in a few days or a week or two weeks. i saw out of the corner of my eye "the sears tower" on the crawl, and everyone gasped, but they were only evacuating it.

in the next class, we watched the news. we saw someone falling. they were wearing red or brown or green, as if it matters, tumbling like a doll.

i was expected to concentrate in algebra, and all i wanted to do was scream at my teacher, are you serious? do you really think my mind is on equations today?

we didn't have to concentrate in english. we got to write our feelings. i was working on some meaningless thing about smoke and fire and darkness when a siren went blaring down the street. even though we knew - we knew we were ok, we were thousands of miles away, no one would attack boring indiana - our heads still went up, our blood still pounded. for two seconds we were there.

we went to annette's house for lunch, so we could watch the news. on the way back i leaned my head out the window to a sky: blue, cloudless, empty. no planes. i remember thinking how strange that was. i couldn't understand. but that was then.

book diverson: "shelter me"

i have to write one of these when i read a really good book, especially one that's not a romance, since that's so rare for me - plus i won't be reading new romances for a while, since i can't stomach the judgmental librarians at the cbus library (only, only reason i miss indy - computer checkout at the library!). plus when your grandmother hands you a book and says, "read this," you should.

"shelter me" is a debut novel, and it is biting with wit and humor and laughter, which is slightly strange because it's a story about a terribly sad event - a woman whose husband died in a freak accident, leaving her a single mother to two young children. the book follows her first year without her husband, a year of lots of downs and lots of ups, and even some surprises - like when a contractor shows up a few months after her husband's death to build the porch her husband had planned for her.

juliette fay has created a lovely story that is written in the spirit of billie letts or lorna landvik, both writers that i love. they have a very conversational tone about them, less lyrical and deceptively descriptive. i can easily hear janie, the heroine of the book (because she really is a heroine if there ever was one) saying the things she says, just as i can taste the indian pudding one of the characters brings to thanksgiving dinner. i loved the cover of the book with the quilt sheltering the two people, because that's what the book felt like to me, an achingly sad, yet hopeful place that i escaped to for two lovely hours. my grandmother was right. read this.

no more indy

my shoulders feel so much lighter now that i am finally out of my apartment. it took many trips back up to the north side, but thanks in a HUGE part to my dad, brother and mom, i'm out. finally. FINALLY. i loved my apartment, my first home that i paid for and organized and was responsible for. but i am so, so happy to be done with it. it's such a hike, and i was sick of the traffic and the driving and the everything. i was done, ready to move on, which is the perfect place to be in when it's actually time to move on. there was no sentiment, unusual for me, as i left, mostly because the things that had made the apartment mine - my stuff - was gone. it was just an empty living space with a few more nicks on the walls and stains on the carpet (thanks hamlet). now my mom's house is literally overflowing with my stuff in boxes and bags and thrown everywhere. i need to get to my own place pronto. i can't wait.

20 pounds in 30 days?

you've got to be kidding me. but that's what it says on the front of the dvd. 20 pounds in 30 days, gone from my tall, tall frame. i'm a big girl, no question (38D, what what!), but those pounds from college - ok, really from freshman year - have lingered and lingered. the few times i was dedicated to the gym, i did lose some weight - and i was actually able to pull myself up on the tube from the water, something i'd never been able to do, a true testament to my hard work. so i'm doing it again, trying to be healthy, because in the end it's really not about losing weight and i like my curves.

(*side note: girls who are sizes 00-6 do not have curves. i'm sorry, but you don't. and i have absolutely no sympathy for you. people.com describing this girl in the caption as curvy really fucking pissed me off. sorry, i couldn't find the original caption, but that she-waif was actually referred to as curvy.)

so here i am, day 2, lying in a pool of sweat, ready to kill jillian michaels. i wasn't sore today per say. but i cannot do a push-up to save my life, and she has me doing 30 seconds of them. 20 pounds my ass. which may be how much it actually weighs.