i had a really interesting night on friday.i was in this completely foul mood when i got off work,so i called deb and told her that she might not want to hang out with me afterall.she said that she would cheer me up and to come and grab her,since i had decided that i needed to go on a nice long drive.so i pick her up and we start out,she decides that we need to be smoking for this,and i agreed.we ended up out near crystal's(the dildo store) and deb tells me we need to make a pitstop,since she had had some casualties in her toybox.so we are in there doing a little shopping.my phone starts ringing and deb says "i bet that is matt" (since he has called the last three times that we were in there,it's eerie) and sure enough,it was him.i do not understand how he could possibly do that,seeing as he doesn't really call me all that often.so deb gets her replacements and we roll out to shelby farms and continue smoking and talking and singing along with the stereo.eventually after completing a circuit around the city,i dropped her off.


as i was driving home i got a call from my friend mike d(not the beastie boy)so i went to his place and we worshipped his volcano.it is a completely high-tech vapor machine.german engineering at it's finest.but the icing on the cake was that we were watching an awesome concert,zappa plays zappa.alot of really really talented musicians.i was very impressed,and frank zappa's music never fails to put me in a good mood.i was so completely toasted by the time i left about 3:30 am.i adore mike,he's one of those people that i can literally talk to for hours on end about anything.over the past two years or so,we have actually become pretty good friends.

so i make my way home,very very slowly.i get to my courtyard,and there is a jumble of very very drunk girls and one rather cute but terribly embarassed boy.one of the girls had taken off her pants and was running around dancing up on people,i just wanted to bum a cigarette,and was looking at the stairs up to my studio,they were very daunting in my rather inebriated state.then some neighbors came down from the building next door.turns out that he and his friend live in shadow's old apartment.he was this really sweet guy,kinda young,one of those widespread panic kids.ask me to come up and smoke with them,so i did.didn't make it home until 6a.made me miss my hippy days when i was their age.they had a girl over there that totally reminded me of a friend i had when i was 17.her name was crazy amy.

crazy amy wasn't crazy in the "wild and crazy" kind of way.she was crazy in a more spaced out hippy girl with a million werid theories that only made sense to her sort of way.she had a very gentle way about her.she was very beautiful,inside and out,but also very fragile.she was beautiful like really old antique lace....you loved it so much,but you knew that it wouldn't last much longer.you knew that no matter how careful you were with it,that it would eventually just fall apart.we spent hours and hours poring over robert hunter's lyrics and she would make all these notations in the margins.every song had some amazingly personal meaning for her.the funny thing was that she would never go on tour with us.i think she was afraid of being around so many people,but she soooo loved the music.i miss her sometimes,i haven't seen her in years.last i saw of her,she was living in a little apartment in the royal arms and had found "this cat" that had taken her in,he was older than her,and she was really trying to make a little home for them.he was a roamer and eventually left her there in the little home that she had made,with a child in her.after that she just disappeared.

anyway.i had very little sleep between going to bed at 6:30 and getting up at ten to start my hair apppointments on saturday.i worked until 4pm and then i just hung out will a few of my sisters at different times during the evening.decided against going to the show at the hi-tone.didn't feel like being in a tight crowd.

i have had an aversion to crowds since last x-mas when i went to a burlesque show that was so packed that i couldn't really move easily.there were alot of people i know in the building,not all of them people that i would ever want to actually have to encounter again,but i can tolerate them from a distance fairly well.the fact was that they kept sneaking up behind me and i felt like i was being ambushed.i couldn't run away for the crush of the crowd and i just had to grit my teeth into a semi-believable smile and make small talk until everyone shifted again and took them away from me and i could go back to just being on the look-out.after that i started avoiding crowds.i have gone ot maybe a handful of shows since.oh well.maybe i will get over it before too long.

blinking into the bright sunlight...

a little suvey thing,cause i am that kind of girl....


1. Are you left handed? i am ambidextrous

2. Would you ever consider living abroad? god yes!

3. Who did you last call babe/baby?probably one of my sisters,or someone i was talking to on the phone,i am southern,so i honey/baby.sweetie everyone to death without thinking about it.

4. If you got married to the last person you kissed what would your new last name be?woolard

5. Do you love anybody more than words can say?yes,several someone's in fact

6. What was the last thing you bought?something to drink

7. What is the background on your cell phone?i have a nokia dinosaur phone,so it does not have a background

8. Do you have family problems?i have a brother that still hasn't left home,even though he is older than i am.i think my mother deserves a break now.she needs to have a home to herself

9. How old do you look?it depends.most of the time,people think i am younger than i am.whatever

10. What's something you wish you could understand better?there are alot of things that i don't understand,because i don't have it in me to get it.like cannibalism,materialism,obsession with romance,the need to keep up with the joneses,people who stay in bad relationships.but i don't really care that i don't understand,because to understand,i would have to have that mind set,and that is not something i am willing to do.

11. Is there anything that you are craving right now?a good conversation in the dark,lying in my bed,listening to music.(this has nothing to do with sex by the way,and everything to do with closeness)

12. Six things you did in the past three days:
a) filled up my gastank(very espuensive)
b) finished an addictive book
c) went to lunch with two of my favorite ladies twice
d) went to a party,and ate a special brownie
e) had a flashback,a really strong one
f) pulled the biggest cooter sneak of the century

13. Do you have a malicious mind? not normally.if someone happens to piss me off,i get a little finky,night hiss a little.but i try to control the bed thoughts,because they have manifested before and i don't want any more funky karma.

14. What was the last thing you said aloud?thank you

15. What is on the walls of the room you are in?a bunch of crap that i have hung in my cubicle

16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy? an RV so i could start traveling

17. What do you think of the person you took this survey from?i think that she is an immensely talented painter and i love to look at her work

18. Have you ever thrown shoes on a telephone wire? no,i am not that kind of girl

19, When did you last receive flowers? i had a friend give me flowers a few weeks ago,he put them in my hair

20. If we were to look in your phone inbox, what would we find? alot of gibberish to anyone who didn't have my brain


so yeah,the weekend was completely insane.i had a good time until i realized that i was hallucinating and had not planned on that kind of experience,esp at a party that was chock full of people that i know and wanted to see,and yet at the same time full of people who were more than a little out of hand.it didn't help that it was a costume party.i went as a schizophrenic so that i could change identities all night long with the help of props that i found around the house.
for the longest time i was dr zhivago.i was hanging with a member of the french resistance,and a disco space gypsy,as well as a rather x-rated dorothy from the wizard of oz.things started getting a little to intense for me,so i sent one of the guys in to get my bag,and fled the scene,luckily with one of my girlfriends trailing me,to make sure i got home okay,i think she was looking for an escape from the intensity as well.

i spent all of sunday trying to recover before i had to come into work.it was not easy trying to pull me head back together,but i think i am fine now.i am done with parties for the time being.i have been to two particularly crazy ones in the past month(my b-day and LL's as well)i think i am going to stick with visiting people one on one for a little while.whew!

....and the rooms get smaller and smaller one coat of paint at a time

so...i have had this massive bug up my ass to move into another apartment,but after careful speculation over my meager finances,i am not going to be able to afford the move.that being so,i have still been looking at apartments.i know it seems like i am being downright silly,since it involves me wasting not only my time,but the realtor's time as well.to be perfectly honest,i like to look inside the apartments,walk around in them and imagine what life i would lead there,where i would put this or that.i like to imagine what the last tenants did for a living,what they liked for breakfast,what they sang in the shower,whether or not they took advantage of that awesome porch in the back....and so on and so on.i also like to look at the adverts for apartments.i always have.it is the reason that so many people ask me for advice when they need to find an apartment in midtown.that and i have also lived in,or been inside of almost every building in midtown area.(i used to move...alot)so i just keep calling and making appointments to see places.if i start considering this a hobby,i might have to start looking at the expensive ones,just to see.

in other news,it has been a pretty good week.the weather hasn't felt anywhere near as much like fried hell as it usually does in june.i have been enjoying it immensely.wednesday was particularly nice,despite the grueling task that was scheduled.my best friend LL has,for many years,had rainbow coloured hair.guess who her colorist is.most of the time it is a slap and dab process,but twice a year there is another process that we tenderly refer to as the massive overhaul.the name only hints at how unpleasantly like hard labor this overhaul really is,though admittedly it is a labor of love. she took me to lunch first,and then we got down to business.

at least for the color-adding portion of the days festivities,i had boss helping me out and declaring herself my "dye monkey".it was alot more fun than the 6th floor of hell root bleaching portion of the day.we laughed our asses off,smoked cigarettes,ordered chinese food,and boss modeled selections from LL's splendid wardrobe,and tottered around on sexy-pie high heels.we were all dye spattered and laughing like drains.

when i left there,i was seduced by the smell of the jasmine and the mimosa trees, by the moonlight and the cool night air,i simply had to take a drive!right as i was getting underway, simone called.we had not really talked in a really really long time.so i talked to her as i drove my little circuit around the city.it felt like old times,like no time had passed at all.it was great.

when i got home i had just gotten off the phone with simone and slid into a saltbath when another old friend (whom i have known for a really really long time) called.around here we call him punchy,because he likes me to hit him during sex,but i would never tell him that.when i ask him why he was calling me so late,he said that he was in chicago and he was always up late in chicago.so we laughed and talked forever until my phone died of lost charge.so i climbed out of my bath and flung myself into my bed,and thought about what amazing people i have in my life,and about my silly hobby and why in the world i had felt the need to change everything around so much,or better yet,why i was having fantasies of moving away.maybe it was just mercury retrograde wreaking havok with my mind.(thank god that shit is over!)

life is good despite business(hair,tarot and such) being absolutely dead lately(usually is at the beginning of summer) i am broke as a joke,but all the bills are paid and i have alot of joy and beauty in my life.one side effect of being broke is the fact that i am definitely drinking alot less.i am having to be alot more creative to fill up my time,you know,all the time that i normally spend in dark smokey bar-type places.it is probably more healthy,seeing as i have to cook instead of going out and eating things that i am ignorant of the ingredients in.(please ignore the lack of sentence structure there)all i all,i guess that poverty suits me.gluh,i am starting to bore myself.
back to the ole grindstone.

sunglasses and kingcake babies....

that is what i find at the bottom of every purse that i pull out of my closet to change my stuff into.usually i score a lighter and an handful of pennies as well,but always the sunglasses and the king cake babies.what i wonder is where all the babies are coming from.i will attest that i always manage to eat a piece of king cake every year for mardi gras.....but to amass that many babies is kinda incredible,and yet there they are lurking in the bottom of all my bags.

so anyways....i am soooo worn out from this weekend.i got to see a bunch of interesting people though.on friday night it was all stormy,and i overcame the urge to stay in my dry little studio,i wrangled up boss and we went to hang at my friend mike's house.my girl LaLa was over there with her man,mr.eddie.later on mo(another friend of mine from way way back in the day whom i had not seen in a dog's age)showed up and we ended up talking crazy about lionel ritchie's video for hello(basically a debate about who was stalking who in that situation) and german engineering and mo and i did the whole crashcart down memory lane thing.boss was off the chain,rather excitable and feeling rather KABOOM(she had been drinking with a viking juggernaut earlier in the evening).mo was being hilarious(as per usual,he is a comic) and watching the two of them interact was ridiculous.

saturday i woke up kinda late,but managed to get all my errands done.i also was feeling kinda like an ass for ignoring that dame lately,so i decided to go to lunch with her at my favorite mexican(right now)but she brought that guy that is living with her.she's madly in love with him,and he's platonically sharing her bed.i don't get it.he's not all that interesting,he isn't all that handsome.but she is not exactly known for her taste in men.basically they sat there bitching about how much they hate memphis.i will admit that i had been thinking about moving away,but in that moment i realized that i really love this city.i got a little bit "feh" at them for running it down like they were.i was thinking "THEN FUCKING LEAVE!!!" it's kind of like the way that brothers and sisters will tease eachother,but let someone else talk shit about them and suddenly those are fightin words.that is the way i feel about memphis.the one bright point is that they has one of his friends there.some really cheerful gypsy punk type from the bay area.he was a doll and our side of the booth was a rather merry place.their side of the booth was all dour bitching.after lunch i took the dame with me to the beauty supply store.she is on the warpath to do something different with her hair.at this point she is doing something that i told her was a bad idea,but she is the type to do it anyways.at least i am not the one doing it.after the debacle of her wanting to go blonde a couple of years ago,i refuse to attempt anything that i have reservations about.eventually i dropped her off at her place and she seemed a bit pissy at me.i am really really okay with that.

last night was insane once i caught up with all the ladies late.we decided to go out to earnestine and hazel's.it's one of my favorite bars downtown.it used to be a brothel.we were going down there to meet up with shadow and some friends of his in from out of town.we thought that he had already gotten the wifey safely home to bed(so we wouldn't have to suffer her exsistance) but no,it was unfortunate,but there she was.she bitched about having nausea because she is taking chantix and still smoking,so they were leaving.my sisters and i did manage to hijack the seattle chick out of their entourage though.she stayed out with us and we listened to all this fantastic old soul on the juke box.we split a soul burger and drank and talked shit and danced.i needed a night out with my sisters.i felt bad for shadow that he had to go home with that bitch wife of his,but he is the one who stays in that nightmare of a marriage.oh well.

so today i have done nothing.i took a long bath,i gave myself a manicure.i lounged around my house and read until it was time to come to work.feh.at least i had an interesting weekend.

liquified....

i am almost an inanimate object at this point in my life.i have spent the past week watching seasons 4,5,and six of sex in the city,preparing for the viewing of the movie.you must understand that i am doing this for one of my best friends,her name is deb and only she could actually get me to watch THAT much sex in the city.i had lost interest somewhere during the third season,also about the time that deb and i moved into the "living apart" part of our long and illustrious friendship.(i have known her since i was a sophomore in high school) back when she and i lived together,we both worked day jobs and we watched SITC and friends before we went to bed.it was like an off switch for my brain.everyone has a superpower.hers was getting me to watch television.

i have never been a television person.when i was a little girl,i was not allowed to watch much in the way of television,mostly because my brother(three years my senior) was allowed to,and he had turned into a complete zombie,and my parents didn't want to make the same mistake twice.as a result,i was speaking and reading before he was. by the time i was old enough to rebel,i was hanging out with these anarchist gutter punk types telling me that television was a tool of the government to keep the masses pacified.i took this to heart.

in the first apartment that i shared with a number of other people,i had the only television.it was for my vcr.i love movies(they have a beginning and an end,at which time to go on to do something else with yourself after) it was an old beat up thing,and i tuned the uhf and vhf knobs to the point where no channels came in.i told all my roommates it was broken.it took them six months to figure out that i was bluffing. then i ended up actually trashing the thing in an effort to stem the tide of stupidity reigning in the household.yanked the cord right out,then made like there had been a very tragic accident.no one else in residence was amused.

back to the matter at hand.i have become a shut in,trying to catch up on the seasons that i didn't bother to watch.deb loaned them to me en masse about a week ago and told me to get cracking,because she had planned out the night for us to go to the movie,and where,and all this and it seemed like an awful lot of research and hard work,so i agreed.she likes to talk about the plot lines,so i couldn't cheat.

all this being said i think that maybe i am just not that girly.i mean i understand the concept of dating and heartbreak and the need for an amazing core group of women in ones life.but alot of the drama is basically about them being shallow.about them looking for something to be wrong with everything.wtf?i guess that in a way i am thankful that i got frogmarched through this parade of cynicism and really bad apparel.it has made me think about alot of things.i have realized that i am happy that my girl-friends have amazing depth and can look past all matter of faults to find beauty in most everything.i am happy that i am not in a place in my life where all i can think about it getting married and having babies.i am also glad that no one and i mean NO ONE could ever,ever get me to wear a flower the size of me head over one of my tits.ok?

at least i got something out of this.....other than making deb a very very happy lady.silly silly creature that she is.

under the crescent moon

i was feeling all MEH about losing my evening to work.i had been having such a good time until i had to come in for my shift this afternoon.i got to spend some time with one of my favorite people in the world.M is one of those people that you might not see for ages and ages,then when you do manage to get together,it is like no time has passed at all.she called me out of the blue while i was in the bath last night,telling me that she was at a bar,and all her friends had gone home and she wasn't done yet and that we needed to go out for a cocktail,so i agreed to meet her at the neighborhood bar.
i got there before her,and sat at the bar,cause the bartender is hilarious,and i thought i was perfectly safe from anyone encroaching on me until she showed,sitting with strangers and all,turns out the cute one is talky and the one beside me knows me from years and years back when i lived in this insane boarding house.understand that this was no ordinary boarding house,it was a house of complete insanity.but that is a story for another day....
so after being spotted,M showed up promptly and saved me.she is a wonderful human being,and made the talky boy and the guy who knew me from insanity house move down the bar to accomodate her,and we drank and contemplated the best pool to sneak into.in the end we agreed to meet for lunch today.so we went to lunch and went shopping today before i came in to work.i was not pleased to have my pleasant day interrupted.
i was getting into a kinda finky mood and we have been having some crazy person calling up here and talking mad shit,and we have a jerker(one who calls repeatedly while jerking off and talking dirty on the phone...occupational hazards of working at an answering service)but then i took my break,i walked outside and i looked up,and i saw the crescent moon hanging over the tree line.
it's the first night i have been able to see it in the sky since dark moon.every time i see baby moon going to bed in the sunset,i think that life is an amazing journey,despite crazies,and jerkers and people that recognize you when you would prefer that they didn't.i look around at the lush trees and i feel the heat from the pavement finally giving up and rising into the air.i watch the cloud sweep over the horizon like they are on fire and a little airplane high overhead reflecting the last rays of the sun that has already dipped below treeline for those of us on the ground and i think that it is truly a big and amazing world out there,and i am blessed to be in it.

american dreaming

have been exceptionally introverted for the past week or so.introverted translates into being flat broke. however,i did hair yesterday and made enough to go out for tapas with deb.she showed up at my house after work,so i loaned her a cute skirt and some beaded flipflops,because dish is kinda like that.we talked and talked and tried to figure out something about seeing a movie,but gave up,and decided to go driving around in central gardens and idlewild district daydream house-shopping,then went for icecream since it was sooo hot outside.so we ate icecream and watched the sun go down and talked about what we would do with one of those big old houses in the historical district.after that we sat around on my futon trying to cheer up boss.she just had to break up with someone whom we have all been friends with a really long time,and we all love him,but when it isn't working,it isn't working.he's been making her miserable for a while now and this is the second time she has had to break up with him.so deb and i distracted her by talking to her about politics and history and making new habits and i am hoping that she went home feeling better.
so today i went back to being "introverted" and did almost nothing all day until coming to work.i stayed in bed way too late,i was having such strange dreams that i kept going back to sleep.i was in a house that had a really long hallway,or more like rooms that just lead into another room,that leads into another room,and so on and so on.this actually shows up quite often in my dreams .once it was supposed to be my apartment,except i went thru a door in the back wall of the bathroom,and there were several rooms that contained undustrial restaurant kitchens,then after those were a few store rooms,then a really big store that was comprised of a bunch of strung together rooms that sold all manner of things and i was testing beds,and i had picked out a little glass ball that had a whole little world inside of it.it was all very very strange.
i also still have dreams about this little room for storage that had a little five foot tall door,it was in the back of my mother's walk in closet.it was where she put all her old clothes and shoes.she would let me play inside there,playing dress-up,and there was an 8 track player with a bunch of her motown 8track cassettes.so i was always diana ross,or sometimes aretha franklin,or once in a great while,i was otis redding.i could act a fool in there as much as i wanted,and be as loud as i wanted,because it was under an eave of the house and noone could hear me.i considered my mother's little storage room my own little world,because noone else was allowed in there.also because it was the room inside of the closet,and unless you walked all the way to the back and moved the clothes out of the way,you would never know that little door was there.i still to this day have dreams about rooms with all wooden planking walls.

snowplough

maybe it's the fourth quarter ookie's,maybe it is the mercury retrograde behookities....i feel like hiding out.i had a crazy week,hell,few weeks.now all i want to do is read in the bathtub and dance in my studio instead of going to the bars.i want to stay home and listen to music rather than get out and find where the party is going on.i think i have finally hit some point in my life where i really don't give a shit if i am missing out on something or not.maybe because i spent years being all up in the middle of everything,i am just finally figuring out that i treasure the time i spend with people one on one and the time i spend alone,doing whatever i like.

it's like i suddenly have this need for sanctuary.normally i am always on the search for adventure.but today i am not feeling it.maybe just go for a long drive alone,listening to nightdriving music.it seems like the night for it.we were passed over by all these tremendous storms,but they brought a nice cool breeze with them,so it might be one of the last decently cool nights for driving around.

it takes me back to the end of last summer.it was the first night that felt like anything but the heat of summer.i had gone out to a fondue restaurant with my friend Shadow and his horrendous wife, M , and Teddy.we all ended up drinking far more than we had planned and we were all the way out in the middle of nowhere in east memphis.so after we left the restaurant we
decided to find a liquor store and head to the cemetery where one of my dearest friends (he was also M's boyfriend) is buried.she and i used to go out to his grave and drink bottles of wine there, play music for him,leave flowers,and whatnot.so i get in shadow's truck to follow M and Teddy in his bmw,which was driven at breakneck speed through suburbia in search of this elusive liquor store.the entire time,shadow's wife is freaking out on him for driving so fast to keep up with Teddy.i just kept wishing that i had hopped into the bmw with them.so finally we make it to the graveyard and drink on G's grave,Shadow and i ended up slowdancing to angelo badalamente
in the road and having to talk Teddy out of swimming around in the duckpond.after the drive there i declined to get back in the truck with Shadow and his wife.
So Teddy jammed M and i into the bmw and took us on a very fast night drive out in oakland and fisherville,all these little winding roads with hairpin turns,taking them at 60 mph.i was a little afraid we would all die,but M and i couldn't stop laughing and giggling as we were catapulted around like pinballs inside the car.it was at least ten degrees cooler out there,and there was fog.inside the city,it was still steaming in september,but we caught a whiff of the fall to come while careening around all those tight curves on all those lost-in-the-woods roads.on the way back we sang songs to eachother and breathed in really deep,knowing that the cool fresh air would be history by the time we made it back home.M and i trying to think of ways to take it back with us,so we could keep the chill wind like a little bubble around us until fall actually made and appearance.
i know that the summer has already started,it's going to be hellfire for a few months.but i have something to look forward to....that first day with a chill in the morning,the first night that your bare shoulders get cold and you have to dig thru the car to find a cardigan.it will come,it always does.....waiting for it...that is the hard part.