Supine Fever » 2005

6.29.2005

Dear (blank), Savannah is super!

Get ready for the LONGEST FRIGGIN ENTRY in the history of man, woman, and child. I am seriously warning you now. Get out while there’s still time!

You guys, I am so good at painting green peppers, it’s not even funny. For real, I should open up my own business and just crank ‘em out. I am amazed that the extra hours I’ve been spending in the studio sketching stuff are paying off already – I mean, it’s only been two weeks so that’s a pretty fast turnaround.

I had the best day, because the professor in my still life class pulled us each aside during class to critique our peppers painting, and he actually likes mine. Weirdly enough, so do I. I am very very happy with it. Watch, tomorrow I’ll probably spill ink all over my sketchbook or something equally demoralizing. (There’s the spirit! Man, I’m a downer.)

MemeMemeMeme

As promised to Janet, here are my answers to the “Five Things I Miss About My Childhood” meme:

1. Playing catch with my dad – I know, I sound like a real boy on this one. But when I was little (like, eight through ten), one of my favorite things to do was go out to the backyard with my dad and have him hit popups or grounders to me so I could practice my softballing. I was pretty good at softball and tennis when I was young. All those hitting sports, you know. Maybe I had a lot of anger to work out? I don’t know.

2. My puppy – Okay, here’s where things get all sad. So, here’s a little summary of Supine: The Early Years. I was born in Georgia, in the town where my dad now lives, and when I was seven my mom and dad and I moved to Maryland. I didn’t want to move, I hated Maryland, I had no friends, blah blah blah. One day my parents gave in to my begging (brattiness and tantrums) and bought me the puppy I had fallen in love with from the pet shop in the mall. I LOVED THAT PUPPY. She was an American Eskimo we named Sasha. She was adorable but we never got her trained very well; she was super-hyper and never learned to heel or stick near you when you walked her. A free spirit, if you will.

So, maybe a year later, when I was eight, my parents divorced. My mom and I moved out, into an apartment, and since my dad was a lawyer and, according to my mom, a workaholic, he didn’t have time to take care of Sasha so we had to give her away. I was pretty much devastated, still having no friends at school and all. She ended up going to a family that lived within biking distance of my new apartment, so most days after school I’d ride over and play with her.

Well, but remember when I said how she never got to be very well trained? So, maybe a few months later, we got a phone call from the family that had her. It turns out they’d opened the front door one day to take her out and she’d raced out past them into the street. She got hit and killed instantly by someone speeding through their neighborhood. When I heard this, I pretty much lost it for, like, weeks.

ANYWAY. I loved my dog a lot, I only had her for a year, and then she died. I miss her. The end.

Actually, now that I think of it, I don’t have a whole lot of good memories about childhood. I think those two might be pretty much it, odd as it sounds. I remember being happy and relaxed when I was very young, before we moved to Maryland, but after that move there are a few years I barely remember at all, and then junior high SUCKED ASS, of course, because I had no friends and went through the mother of all awkward changes. I got friends and had a big social life once high school came around, but overall I wouldn’t call my childhood very happy. I remember being alone in my room a lot, avoiding my mom and stepdad because we didn’t get along, or just trying to make it through the day at school without some embarassing thing happening. I remember being very sad and crying a lot, and hating myself for being so hated at school but simultaneously hating everyone at school for being so cruel to me every day.

So I am going to quit now, while I have two happy things down, and move on to Phototage: The Final Frontier.

(GOD, people, don’t ever meme me again!)

(Just kidding, Janet! I’m fine! I’m not going to cry myself to sleep tonight! Ha ha ha.)

(But seriously, no more memes.)

Phototage: The Final Frontier

This is the true story of three strangers and one dog, who chose to live in this house.

Here is the view down our street in one direction (the away-from-downtown direction). See those cars pulled over on the left side of the street? IT WAS A COP MAKING A BUST. Look how much personal risk I took to bring you the truth!

View of the living room, when you walk in the door. That wicker chair is pretty uncomfortable, but at least it’s not covered in dog hair, so I usually sit there. I’ll take an uncomfortable ass over a hair-covered one any day – you heard it here first.

Living room from the other angle. Here is the black couch, and on it is the black dog. See that glowing dot? That’s the eye of the dog.

This is where I “cook” “food.”

My room, from the door. The house has hardwood floors everywhere, which I guess is supposed to be a good thing, but I’m a plebian and I prefer carpet.

(Yes, that is a suitcase leaning against the wall, waiting to be unpacked. I threw all my winter clothes in it and hopefully there will be a week or two in January when I’ll get to wear them. Man, I love cold weather clothes.)

The other part of my room (so basically, my bed). Same ikea bedding I had at the old apartment. Am just noticing that I’ve got quite the pillow collection going on all of a sudden. Am I becoming Southern by osmosis, perhaps?

My computer. SET TO MY SITE. Ha ha, how meta is that?

(I use the word “meta” all the time, don’t I? I need to stop that. It’s annoying, I’m sure.)

(Do you think it’s meta to be talking about the word “meta?” Just wondering.)

The backyard, and we have chairs and lights and a little grill (that has yet to be used, but I am gonna get my male roommate on that any day now).

Our dog. She came from the Humane Society and is very docile and well-behaved. Except for that whole shedding thing. I wish she’d cut that shit out.

One final photo, which I include only because I accidentally took it while she was licking her lips (do dogs have lips?), and LOOK AT HOW HUGE HER TONGUE IS! Good god! This cracked me up. Okay, I’m twelve.

Hey guys, guess what’s coming up in like three days? The one-year anniversary of my blog! God, it’ll be great. My place, ten o’clock. I’m barbecuing, but BYOB.

supine @ 10.56 pm |

6.26.2005

God, I love grilled cheese sandwiches

Events from the past week:

1. First week of school over. Nine more to go in this quarter! Art skills await me, I feel it.

2. First Saturday night drinking in Savannah. First (and, oh god, second) shots of Jagermeister taken, on top of two or four beers.

3. First time driving my roommate’s falling-down-drunk ass home.

4. First Savannah hangover.

5. Have gotten marginally better at riding my bike through the town, in that I haven’t damaged myself or any other public property yet. (Knock on wood.) I did almost get hit once already, by a college bus no less. Maybe I should learn those arm signals after all…

6. Am working on two paintings simultaneously for one studio class – an arrangement of green peppers and a lemon, and an arangement of two apples. Am developing a hatred of fruits and vegetables, which might well lead to my developing scurvy any day now.

7. Have made the acquaintance of two nice young men by complaining, on two different occasions, that I have no car with which to haul stuff around. Boys here are very gentlemanly apparently, because one told me to call him anytime I needed a ride anywhere(!) and the other told me to call him whenever I wanted to borrow his pick-up truck(!). As my friend S from home put it, “Heh. Nice ‘pick-up’ line, indeed.”

8. I have almost finished finding a place for all my stuff. I only have one box left to unpack. (Never mind the fact that I simply ignored two boxes entirely and just put them directly out in the shed. I don’t really need a TV or a DVD player. This week anyway.)

9. I got my wireless card finally, obviously. I installed it too! It was easy! And then the little man who lives inside the computer automatically found our wireless signal and got things all configured up and ready for Internetting, with no calculations or work on my part. I love the Mr. Mac Man.

10. First time cracking a textbook in about four years. Did you know that prehistoric peoples rarely included humans in their cave paintings? That’s some Art History 100 for you right there, baby.

Things I still need to work on:

1. So, I’ve got a bike, right? Which is faster than walking, and provides a breeze, which is great. But as I have discovered, sometimes it rains. (Yes, even Georgia gets rain. It’s not just a big ole flat plain here, apparently.) So what good is my bike then? Should I buy one of those stupid “umbrealla hat” thingys? Because I’ve been wearing a raincoat but the hood blows off my head whenever I pedal faster than, like, a snail, so it’s not helping all that much. How did this potential issue never occur to me before? Am I a half-wit? Where is my mind?

2. There is absolutely no more space in my room for any more crap, so that final box might not be opened for another year or two. I hope it doesn’t happen to contain anything timely, like imported tropical fruit, or an ant farm.

(Speaking of ant farms, did anybody else ever have one of those? When I was about seven, I saw an ad for one in the back of a magazine or something and convinced my mom to order it for me. When it arrived, it had the plastic box thing that the ants would eventually tunnel through plus a little plastic vial of ants. The ants had been frozen so that they’d be comatose for a few days, allowing you to pour them into their new farm without them running away. Brilliant, no? What was less brilliant was the packing job done by the ant farm shipping people. The box had a long tiny crack in the inside of its roof, which we discovered a few days later, when I went to inspect the progress of the ants’ tunneling and discovered that not only had those lazy buggers NOT TUNNELED ANYWHERE, but that they were, technically, not in the box anymore. At all. They were tunneling their way all over my room. My mom never bought me anything ever again.)

3. I need to make some friends. My roommates are great, and those two offers of transportation are all well and good, but otherwise I’m currently a big friendless loser. The people in my classes seem to fall into one of two camps: surprisingly friendly and nice, or surprisingly bitchy and ice-queeny. It’s sort of what I expected, I guess – the weird atmosphere of a school that’s partially Southern and partially arty and private.

4. I need a job. It feels weird not to be earning any money at all, like I’m a derelict or a drain on society or something. I have a birthday coming up next week, so at least that’ll be good for a little income.

(Oh my god, how sad is that when your birthday is your main source of revenue??)

~~~~Coming up in my next post: Photos of my house and dog! An account of how I freaked out after the third day of class because I had decided that I wasn’t good enough to be here! Plus, the highs and lows of being the owner of a yard-sale-procured noise machine, which may or may not be* haunted!

*Um, it totally is.

supine @ 9.36 pm |

6.17.2005

No more air mattress for me! Cuz I gots a bed now.

Well, I’ve been in my new house in Savannah for almost a week now, and things are going great. Last Saturday, my dad and stepmom took me to Target and to the grocery store, moved me in, and left. I didn’t realize how used I had gotten to living with them until it was time for them to go, and I got really sad. In the week since I’ve been missing them a lot.

(I realize that you all might be thinking, you know, duh right about now, but I’m not very close to my mom or stepdad, so when I leave their house I don’t feel very affected by it. This “missing the parents” feeling is a new, pleasant experience.)

My two roommates are great and very friendly and helpful, but I’d spent the last month basically hanging out with my stepmom all day every day, so I’ve sort of been going through withdrawal not seeing her anymore. Apparently she has too; we’ve talked on the phone almost every day and she’s already talking about picking up my friend M and coming for a visit.

In the same way that every month I get sad and weepy for a day or two and for some reason NEVER CONNECT THE DOTS that it’s due to my period, I forgot about my tendency to get sort of depressed and anxious each time I arrive in a new place. I remember when I first moved into my DC apartment – I had been living at my mom’s for a few months, and I moved in on Valentines’ Day of 2003. As if that isn’t an odd enough moving date, it happened to be a Friday, the day before the whole East Coast got hit with that huge snowstorm. So my mom and stepdad (and also that ex-boyfriend, the one from Detroit) moved me in and then took off to get back home before the blizzard hit.

Aaaaand…the blizzard hit that night. Remember how it snowed all weekend, and then nobody had to go to work for like three days the next week? Well, those five days were pretty much my introduction to living alone. It was more than enough time to get my IKEA furniture set up, hang things on the walls, and hang up my clothes. It was lots of time to sit around. Alone. In a one-person apartment. Talk about moving-in depression – not knowing anyone in my building (or in all of DC, actually) yet, I had lots of time to get to know myself.

(Ew, not in that way.)

Moving in here was easier, definitely. I mean, I have roommates this time, which helps a ton. And they are wonderful. (On my first night here, we made a late night beer run. I was in my pajamas. They did not mind.)

The school had made this big song-and-dance about Savannah being a pedestrian city, cars are discouraged for students, all you need is a bike, blah blah blah. Which is true, technically. But they sort of overlook that period when you first arrive somewhere, and you have large items to buy and things to sort out, and all those superstores are located out in the strip-mall suburb-land. So I have really lucked out that my roommates have been so cool about helping me out.

The girl took me to the pawn shop to buy a bike, and Oh! what a bike it is. I love it. I was expecting to get just a rusty, junky, generic street-riding bicycle, and instead I found one that looks like it belongs in Back to the Future, or possibly Grease. It is really cute. The body is sort of thick and black and it has silver cursive writing on it. The day after I got it, I rode downtown to get a chain and a lock, and it was soooo nice to be whizzing down the streets instead of trudging along in the heat. Of course, when I got to the main downtown avenues I had to get off and walk it down the sidewalks, because I am a dork and a wuss and not ready to brave traffic, but other than that this whole bike-riding thing is terrific.

And yesterday my guy roommate took me to buy a mattress. I got it from this guy who had an ad in the paper, and it sounded super-sketchy, what with the whole “meet me at my storage unit” thing, but the mattress is fine and it was brand new (wrapped in plastic!) (for all you Twin Peaks fans, heh) and it was very cheap, so that’s the important thing. I think.

The two of us did have a good time together in his car on the way home, freaking out over whether we’d done a good enough job tying it to the roof or not. Thankfully we had. (Or, he had, if we’re keeping score over these things.)

Not everything has gone swimmingly: my ipod, which is BRAND FREAKING NEW, doesn’t work. I had to send it back today and apparently I’ll get it back, fixed, in a few weeks. Wah whine etc.

Also, I am still using my roommate’s computer for all internet stuff (thus, no blog-reading still, and yes I am all twitchy and panicked from quitting you guys cold-turkey like this). Did you know that wireless cards for iMac computers are really really expensive? You did? You knew that? Why did you not tell me? I am always the last to know. So I am putting that off for a bit. Between the ipod, Target, the new bike, and the new mattress (and, um, tuition), I need to not buy any more new crap for a few weeks now.

Anyway though, Savannah is FABULOUS, you guys. It’s not crazy hot (yet) and the town is just so beautiful and unique. My favorite place ever is London, and this is pretty much the closest thing to London you can get in America, I think. I just love the squares, and the trees with Spanish moss, and the amazing old houses. I love walking and exploring, so I think I am going to be really happy here. Classes start Monday and I am mildly terrified, but I’ll be strong.

supine @ 6.57 pm |

6.9.2005

More of a bulletin of thoughts than an actual entry

(Can I just ask if haloscan is doing weird things to anyone else lately? I haven’t been getting an email for each comment left for a few weeks now; I only get one about half the time. So that’s why I haven’t been emailing responses to people’s comments very reliably. Please don’t think I’m being rude or taking you for granted. I actually love you all dearly, so much so that I hope to marry each of you in turn someday, and almost as much as I love your comments. Thank you for leaving them.)

(And then the other thing haloscan is doing is not updating the comment counter at the bottom of each post very reliably either. It is getting annoying. Haloscan, fix yo’ self!)

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I am fascinated by the Tom Cruise Downward Spiral of 2005. Suddenly he has gone completely INSANE, in that commercials for upcoming talk shows show him leaping onto furniture and hooting and hollering for no apparent reason. People should not become more energetic as they age; it’s just not the natural law. And the Katie Holmes thing, I…I…gah.

It’s just not right! It feels wrong, so wrong, and not in that good way of wrong. In the ew way of wrong.

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Since my dad and stepmom and I are leaving tomorrow to move me to Savannah, my dad told me this morning to make sure I finished all the leftovers (since I am the only one in the house who deigns to eat leftovers) and the groceries I made them buy me (ie. the healthyish things). So I have just had a lovely meal of leftover barbecue and baked beans, cut-up vegetables, and yogurt. My stomach is going to stage a rebellion any time now probably.

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Since I am wrapping up the whole “living at dad’s” experience, I realize that I forgot to tell you guys about this one sort of dramatic thing that happened to me. I stepped on a GINORMOUS TACK that had fallen out of a sort of pirate-booty-trunk-thing that my stepmom uses as a coffee table in the living room. I was just walking along and then suddenly there was a pain, and then there was a YOOGE SHARP METAL THING sticking out of the sole of my foot. It was pretty freaky. There were lots of people around but at first I was so shocked I didn’t make any noise so nobody noticed.

I actually sort of tried pulling it out myself for a few seconds, while the conversation around me just sort of went on, but I couldn’t make myself pull hard enough to get it out, and then suddenly it started to really hurt and I hollered and began hopping around on my good foot, holding my metallic foot up in the air. It probably looked pretty funny.

My dad pulled it out. It hurt. I hollered more.

Then, since it was metal and all, I had to go to a local clinic and get a tetanus shot. Good times! At least I now can be sure that I’m tetanus-protected for the next ten years. Everyone, get your booster shots!

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OH MY GOD. The final craziness in the moving-saga is that I had to leave a few bags behind at my mom’s, because they wouldn’t fit in the car my dad drove me down in. So she’s had to unpack them into boxes and mail them to me in Savannah. When she called me to say that she’d done this and they were on their way, she had this really weird tone to her voice, like she was pissed about something but wasn’t going to say what. So I started wondering whether she’d come across something weird in my things. I didn’t know what that could be. I thought and thought and suddenly it came to me. There was one possible thing she might have found. The worst possible thing. The most embarassing, holy shit possible. So embarassing I cannot even name it.

Here is a hint: it is battery operated, and it is for women.

OH GAWWWWWD. No I did not leave that behind. No no no no no. I will die.

So tonight when I got my things together for the move, I tore through the bags that did make it down here with me already, and thank god wonder-of-wonders, I found it. I had packed it after all, which I had THOUGHT I had, because good god that would have been an error in judgement, leaving that of all things behind.

(Basically, I have no idea why my mom sounded all pissy on the phone, but she’s pretty crazy so it could have been anything. No point even worrying about it now, I guess.)

Be happy for me that I did not have to endure the most humiliating parental conversation ever – the one where you discuss your battery-operated toy. That woud have been soooo bad.

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So, I leave tomorrow for Savannah and my dad and stepmom will leave me there on Saturday. On Monday or Tuesday the boxes from my mom will arrive, including the one with my lovely computer, and you can bet that I will set that puppy up and get back in touch with everyone properly as soon as I can. Have a great weekend, boys and girls.

supine @ 9.57 pm |

6.6.2005

The frogs have met their maker

Well, my week of babysitting for my 10-year-old neice is over. In addition to the roller skating, she and I and my new friend (my only friend in the state, technically, but that just sounds sad) went to an amusement park one day. It was raining lightly all day on and off, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the park was nearly empty and we didn’t have to wait in line the entire day. Also, I have discovered that sliding around on a wet bench gives riding a roller coaster that little extra frisson of danger, which translates into more fun and terror.

In fact, what my friend, M, and I have discovered is this: when we get scared, she is a squeezer (of my hand), and I am a screamer (and yes, I scream like a little girl, or a woman in a movie. This is probably my most girly feature).

This discovery of each other came into extra effect during each evening last week, when she pretty much crashed here every night along with my little neice. We’d sent MK to bed and watch a new scary movie every night, during which we would clutch each other (her) or scream our fool heads off (me) for two hours straight.

This is what we saw:

Night 1 – “The Ring,” which I for whatever reason had never seen, and consequently had built it up in my head to such epic proportions as such that I thought actually seeing it would end up being a letdown. It was not. The Ring is SCARY. Holy lord.

Night 2 – “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Gore gore gore gore gore. Also, very bloody!

Night 3 – “Session 9,” which I had seen but it was still freaky scary, and yes, I screamed once or twice. My friend M had never seen it and she was holding my hand so hard that my hand got all gnarled and twisted. (I am currently typing this entry wearing a hook.)

Night 4 – We left the house and saw “House of Wax” in the movies. Sweet CHRIST, people. Do not let your children see “House of Wax,” ever.

We are both scarred for life! I will never light a candle again! (Screw it, I’d RATHER just curse the darkness.) It was both jumpy-scary and gory, which is a rare find I think.

(Also, Paris Hilton is in it but don’t let that stop you. She pretty much plays herself, which is totally watchable.)

Night 5 – We had overdosed on terror and rented “Closer.” This turned out to be an equally terrifying movie, in the sense that it makes you never want to be in a relationship with anyone ever again.

The frogs!

Did I tell you that my dad and stepmom have a pool in their backyard? I know how horribly richie-rich that sounds, especially to those of you who live in cities, or up north. I myself find it surreal to look out the window and see a pool. However, I have learned that in the south it’s fairly common, as land (along with everything else) is so much cheaper. So don’t freak out on me and stop reading my site because you think I have “gone bourgeous” or something. I am as trashy as ever, deep down!

Anyway, we have gotten a lot of rain lately, and for whatever reason this has caused the entire frog population of south Georgia to relocate to our backyard, give birth en masse, and then commit a sort of species-wide hare kare. By this I mean that they are jumping into our pool and dying.

By the dozens.

I mean, dead baby frogs. In the pool. Lying there, dead, floating, white, bloated, the whole nine yards. It is repellant. I was a bio major in school but I still cannot handle this. I mean, anything mildly gross becomes completely horrible when found in large quantities, don’t you think? Like, one earthworm is okay, but a big mass of writhing, squirming earthworms…

(SORRY!)

Right. Not okay. So, picture our pool all FILLED with frogs after each rainstorm. Gack. My little neice fishes them out with her bare hands, but I am wimpy so I use the pool skimmer. I have developed a good technique for scooping up the ones that have sunk to the bottom. See? Skills.

The only ones that don’t completely gross me out, only because my sense of inappropriate humor tops even my sense of squeamishness, are the ones that have sunk to the bottom in such a way that they are “standing” on their back legs with their front legs stretched up toward the sky. These, we have dubbed the “reaching their arms up to Jesus” frogs. Yup, we’re pretty much going to hell.

My house!

Also, last weekend my dad and I took an overnight trip to Sav to scout out apartments, and I found one! It is actually a house, a cute little yellow house. I am ecstatic. I will have two roommates: a girl who is also 25 and also a grad student at scad, and a guy who is a DJ on a local radio station. Rock.

We have hardwood floors, a cute black mutt dog, a porch with chairs, and a little backyard with a grill. My room is pretty big and I even have a walk-in closet. I can’t wait! My dad and stepmom and I are moving me in this weekend, and then I’ll have a week to sort all my stuff out before classes begin.

I just bought a new electronic friend off the internet, and getting acquainted with that thing will kill some time too. I just know we will be instant BFFs. Here is a photo:

My Buddy

Have a nice week, everyone!

supine @ 3.15 pm |

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