Joanna Newsom and Robin Pecknold

This is where I was on Monday night, serenaded by lovely music perched high up in the balcony of the Fox Theater.  Now, it's Thursday afternoon and five and a half hours to a genetics final, seven and a half hours and a train ride away to the start of my summer.  Many things happening, many many things!

It's family beaches that I desire

I realized all too late that my new planner starts with August while my old planner ends with June, which makes July 2010 the Lost Month.  One month of can't stand work, one month of going to the mall for hot dogs on sticks and Orange Juliuses and shoelaces and awful video games, one month of falling asleep without brushing our teeth and stale mouths in the morning, one month of unofficial fireworks show flying in the face of safety, one month on the beach one easy bike ride from the new house and legs reaccustomed to biking up hills, one month of near drizzling gray outsides hopefully breaking cracking open with sunlight pouring into the front room, one month of packing this little room up tonight because tomorrow we move into the most beautiful house in the world.

Projecting, one month of hopefully visitors in what I assume is an extra bed, one month reunited with the crazy boys that I will be living with, one month of haircuts once scissors are unearthed from the back of the garage, one month of soccer in the backyard and naps in the tree fort, one month of hot baths and no more lukewarm showers, one month of cooking and eating and laughing and loving, one month of figuring out how to get myself places like feeling so grown up suddenly, one month figuring out the ins and outs of homeleasership.

Another thing to check off the best friend's list

Spanakopita pizza from Symposium, and more spending time together every day (which, I think, now that I'm sitting alone in my room hearing distant shrieks and laughs and recess bells from the elementary school on our block, and Eloise curled up behind me purring, it is so nice to have someone to just be with sometimes and especially if that someone is Courtney). I almost don't want to be able to check everything off of the list of what we want to do together now that I'm back home and she hasn't run off towards a promising future in San Francisco just quite yet, because it would make going back to Santa Cruz feel so final (I know I don't even need to worry about that, but as ready as I am to rush off to the happy apartment brimming with new people to know, I've liked this time spent being known with my best friend).

These past few days have been luck and unluck, and lots of packages in the mail, drawing, sewing, taking a dress in four inches with back darts and I never never thought that was possible, for me, and really good food, and still not finished sewing, but hopefully today, with more good food, and green awnings, and warm hugs, and so bittersweet when you can and can't handle a distance between your heart beating just right in time with the people you love.

I think we're all trying to figure out how to not be so far away from each other. Because "every where I go, everyone I know comes with. Wonder how many more I can fit inside this crowded, crazy heart."

Falling asleep tonight

Summer rain outside while Pup's learning "Peach, Plum, Pear" on his ukulele, and I'm waking up in seven and a half hours to get my teeth cleaned. Looking forward to so much.

Small accomplishments

Persephone's web spun a fit of inspiration--buttercream khaki, tiny white buttons, 7" polyester zipper, floral lace, ribbon roses. Switching between Project Runway, LA Ink, Policewomen of Broward County last night, Courtney and I switched between black and white thread on her industrial strength sewing machine gathering, stitching, basting, hemming, attaching fabric to fabric. While I'm not about to unleash anything (I've still got work to do), I am amazed that I was suddenly willful enough to sit down and not stop until I had a skirt. Mostly, I am amazed I remembered how to sew after only having used my machine these past few years to mend tears and make hip-skirts waist-skirts.

In the wake of a mad, maybe on and off, ten-hour sewing adventure, today was sluggish and hot and mostly non-functional. A shower, a trip to the Davis cemetery (more on that later!), one million dragonflies and strictly business at the bank, Courtney, anticipation, the future, and chirashi.

Less arachnid, more attractive

I want to be so good about blogging, but in the weeks of neglect:

Macarons in midtown with Poopie (chocolate, pistachio, lavender apricot!)

Very much missing Beardy and definitely going for a ride to the dentist tomorrow

Gooey perfect chewy corner brownie from this recipe

Eloise glamor shots

Homemade jungle curry with mom

Pins clumped on a tote bag

Stunned Baby from the orange light of the camera

Sebastian and Yuka at the 6%dokidoki fan party in San Francisco

Perfect little swirly zucchini slice on my pizza

Very lucky new glasses!

Here's to being better.

Persephone's cricket

"It is actually--a cricket!"

As sick as this is, tonight felt like a turning point (like hunger, or nourishment, or voracity, or suddenly springing back to life after a long dormancy). I guess the morbidity was lost on me, because instead of death I watched a life sustained and leap like spindly eight legs across a sun tea jug to the start of something new. Feeling so stuck, waiting for something new, and a new inspiration strikes like chelicerae.

On another note

Pup expertly paused and searched the episode of Conan we attended the taping of and, though this may be blurry and uncertain for anyone else, that is definitely and undeniably us perched way up in the back row clapping wildly and smiling even wilder:

Fame and superstardom, here we come!

Every place I am, I want to be somewhere else

There are pieces of me scattered all over every home I've ever had and I can't leave anywhere without leaving a part of myself there. And everywhere I go I find myself there, but it's the me of memories of being there--a specific me with a particular life and unique feelings and ideas and beliefs about where and who and what I am. But who I am is always looking towards another place to be, because I want to be a new person not reliving what it was like to once be where I am and I always hope that a shift will occur each time I unpack myself in a new place. Because right now, as much as I love and once loved living carefree and easy in Davis, I just want to be back in Santa Cruz curled up under leaves and flowers and soil trying to root myself in at least one place.

Salads, squeegees

Today's uneaten salad: lettuce, avocados, cucumbers, red cabbage, pepitas, garbanzo beans at the last second--uneaten because of its accompanying fish tacos. Sorry, salad. I'll eat you soggy tomorrow.

Earlier, I screen printed for the first time with Tom, which was exciting and inspiring and made me much much too too impatient for a future beyond prerequisite calculus, chemistry, biology, physics and introductory drawing classes, thinking about frenchships while printing peas, carrots, broccoli on six-to-twelve-month onesies.

Dreaming about a CSA box for next year's apartment (and next year's apartment) and trying to track down a Santa Cruz subscription before the season is over. Two Friendly Farms four-week trial as a trial-run for when spring rolls back around? Maybe it'll be a kale winter. It's been a vegetable day.

Where I'm going: home

I had fun down in San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Stratford too,
And I've got a life in Santa Cruz,
But Davis, California, comin' right back home to you

Where I've been: Hollywood Bowl

Where I've been: on a walk

Where I've been: LA Zoo

Where I've been: Getty