Just a Peek: Excerpts From My Journals

January 11, 2000 – 7:05PM

It’s a shame that nail polish bottles are so small.  Otherwise maybe the colors could have better names, like “five minutes before sundown in a smog-infested city” and “jack-o-lantern in December”.

April 29, 2000 – 5:45PM

I am at Eeyore’s Birthday Party.  He is 37 this year.

I love this city.  Earlier, I saw one of the many dogs here bite one of the many puppies here on the nose.  Apparently it looked bad to the owners because various people studied and caressed the victim’s nose for some time.  He seemed slightly confused but otherwise ok.  The attacker’s owner took a different approach.  He bit his dog on the nose and asked him how that felt.  I guess it was a lesson on treating puppies the way you want to be treated. 

I love the costumes.  I saw a middle-aged unicorn smoking a while ago.  And a scantily clad girl with a rooster on her shoulder.  And a topless girl painted in silver.  And a yellow teletubby.

I find it hard to believe that this began when some frat boys wanted to impress their sorority girlfriends, but that’s how the story goes…

October 30, 2001 – 10:47PM

I have been wanting a Tarot deck for some time now.    Ever since I saw the selection at Book People, I have been interested in getting one.  But how to choose?  There were so many different designs.  I kept putting it off because I wanted a deck that was really me.  Well, the other night in Borders, I was buying a new Austin map and while I was in line I saw a deck of Halloween Tarot cards on the counter.  (Yeah, it was a total impulse buy.)  So I looked at them and noticed that every card had a black cat on it and they were all Halloween designs.  That sold me.  It seemed like the perfect deck.  Then, as if that wasn’t enough, while I was doing a reading at home, I pulled up the “Devil” card to find that the devil looked just like me in my costume this year!  It was so bizarre.  Instead of the devil being some big burly demon guy, it was a woman.  She had long brown hair, and she was wearing a short tight blue dress, blue elbow-length gloves, red fishnets, and black boots.  Plus, of course, she had the horns, tail, and pitchfork.  Except for the color of the gloves that was my exact costume.  It really freaked me out.  But it also told me I had made the right choice.  I love my cards.

July 15, 2002 – 11:12PM

[Note:  This was two days after moving into a new apartment.]

Around 10PM I was arranging my books on my various bookshelves.  I wanted to put all of my Halloween/Tarot/Astrology books together on the new little bookcase that I painted red.  So I put all of them in there, but it didn’t look right.  After searching through my poetry books and novels for more that fit the theme, it still was not completely full, but I decided to leave the space thinking I might get more Halloween-related books later to fill it up.  Then I decided to take a break from books and work on organizing my bedroom closet.  While standing on a chair in my walk-in closet, I reached up to the highest shelf, the one that I can’t even see it’s so high, and my hand landed on… a book.  I picked it up and looked at it and got butterflies in my stomach.  The title was The Good Witch’s Guide to Wicked Ways and the inscription inside said, “Lexi—Maybe we can brew up some spells for a fabu 2002!  I love you sooo much.  XOXO—Zalith”.  (Or Zabith or Zolith or Zobith, not sure.)  It creeped me out, in a good way.  It was like, “Man, I wish I had a new Halloween book.  I think I’ll go look in my closet.  Oh, here’s one!”  I’m definitely keeping it, but I don’t know how much use I’ll get out of it.  The only spell I’ve read so far is for “a more spiritual and tranquil cat” and involves me wearing a bag of catnip and oregano around my neck for three days.

March 19, 2003 – 9:15PM

There is popcorn popping in the microwave.  The president is on TV right now talking about the war that just started.  There is a half-patched hole in my bedroom ceiling where a man fell through it today.

[Note:  Though I apparently did not write about it in my journal, I later discovered that the roof worker who fell through my ceiling while I was at work also brought with him the skeleton of a dead rat or squirrel, which landed (somewhat appropriately) in the basket of cat toys below.]

July 14, 2004 – around 11:20AM

I have an announcement to make.  Christopher Lloyd is not dead.  Let me repeat, Christopher Lloyd is not dead.  It seems that a year or two ago I was involved in an unfortunate miscommunication in the lunch room at school when I heard (or thought I heard) another teacher (who was reading the newspaper at the time) say that Christopher Lloyd had died.  I was shocked and saddened that Doc Brown was gone and told several people of the tragedy.  Well, good news.  Christopher Lloyd is not dead.  He is alive, 66 years old, and will be starring in a new TV show airing Tuesdays this fall.  I apologize for spreading such an upsetting rumor.

January 14, 2006 – 10:28AM

“Under Covers”

Here I sit

In my PJ’s

Soaking in

Midmorning sun rays

Eclipsed in purple

Shrouded thickly

Some might think

That I am sickly

‘Tis not true

I’m well enough

It’s my idea

To surround in fluff

The day is mine

No work is destined

So though my habits

Some might question

I choose to spend

My hours in bed

Hot tea in hand

A book half-read

Three warm felines

Napping near me

Understand

My needs quite clearly

Together we gather

Our group of four

Caring not

What lies in store

Outside the window

People scurry

From one place

To next they hurry

For me a different

Path discovered

I’m spending my Saturday

Under covers

February 24, 2006 – 5:39PM

I fell down last night.  Yup.  REALLY bit it on my living room floor.  Flat on my back.  If I was 40 years older, I would have broken a hip.  As it is, I just bruised my pride a little (the left side mainly) and wrenched my neck so bad that this morning I was paranoid that I had meningitis.  I’m a dork.

 

June 18, 2008 – 11:02PM

If I am reading the label correctly, my bottle of rubbing alcohol expired eleven years ago.  Yeah.  November 1997.  Now, this disturbs me for various reasons.  One, what happens to rubbing alcohol when it expires?  What does that mean?  Is it poisonous?  Is it less alcoholic?  More alcoholic?  Will it infect my wound rather than disinfecting it?  All very curious.  But I think the bigger question here is why I have been carrying around this bottle for eleven years???  Think about it.  This means that I’ve had this thing since BEFORE 1997, which means I most likely acquired it in college.  This means that I have packed up this bottle and moved it at least FIVE times, from the dorm to my apartment on Riverside, to my apartment in Tarrytown, to my apartment on Bent Tree, to my OTHER apartment on Bent Tree, to my current duplex.  I mean, how many other things in my house have been with me for eleven years?  I’ve had that thing longer than my cat.  I guess I should throw it out and buy a new bottle, right?  That’s the sane thing to do, right?  And yet it’s still in my bathroom cabinet as we speak…

November 6, 2009

Today I didn’t like my boring beige knee socks, so I put blue, permanent marker polka dots on them.  But I did it while wearing the socks and now I have blue polka dotted feet.

February 10, 2010 – 8:30PM

[Note:  This was written just a few weeks before I moved in with Mark, just three months before our wedding.]

Ok… so, I am starting to not like my black cat fortune birthday gift from Crazy Cousin Kelley too much.

I haven’t used it since October or so.  But tonight I am packing and enjoying the fact that I called in sick for tomorrow (cough cough) and I decided I needed to take a look at my future.  Or really, my present.  I asked the cards to tell me about my upcoming move and I shuffled them and let Gink cut the deck, sort of.  Read on for the shocking results.

“The Past” Card: 

“You have had an eventful past.  You have borne trouble with fortitude, but, unless you are careful, your future will be still more eventful.”           

(Not too bad.  “Eventful” isn’t bad.)

“The Present” Card:

“You have made a resolution to wed someone who is very wealthy and you will succeed in your undertaking, but your future partner will regret it.”

(Um… ouch.)

“The Future” Card:

“Your friends will oppose your prospective undertaking and try to persuade you from taking the important step, but if you will be firm, all will end well.”

(Well, as long as it ends well…)

“Love Matters” Card:

“The one you love is not rich in money, but rich in love and if your married life is not a paradise on earth, it will be because you are very hard to please.”

(You could sugar coat it at least.)

“General Advice” Card:

“Never sing or play while you are in company or when neighbors are at home, as it may have a tendency to make them wish you lived in different parts.”

(Ok, the truth is the truth.  As long as my bad singing won’t make my husband leave me, I’m fine.)

“Danger” Card:

“If you do not stop flirting, it will deprive you of the love and esteem of one who loves you sincerely and who is in a position to make you happy.  So beware!”

(Yea, I kinda saw that coming.  Why weren’t the other cards labeled DANGER too?  Sheesh!)

August 28, 2010 – 9:55AM

Last night I was SO TIRED (“How tired were you?!”) that I couldn’t stay awake in my dreams!  In my dream about being at meditative yoga and my dream about being at my friend Kristine’s house, I kept falling asleep in my dream!  Then I had nightmares about a small panther and a bobcat chasing me trying to eat me and then a very strange dream about playing mini-golf (which was really more like bowling) with a blind guy in a wheelchair, but the ball was a cooked potato and there were some really annoying cheerleaders in the way, one of whom I hit in the belly with a small piece of potato and then got in trouble for it.

June 5, 2011 – 3:19PM

            Wow… my house is so dirty right now.  I mean really dirty.  Whatever you are picturing, it’s worse than that.  Example:  There are shoes on my dining room table.  Yeah.  Shoes and piles of mail and some tissues and some cat food and dirty dishes from yesterday and an empty Jamba Juice cup from two days ago and a couple of books and a couple of journals and a set of dominoes and a towel… And that’s just on my dining room table.

            See, my house always gets like this the last week of school.  When summer looms just around the corner, I get bold in my slothy-ness.  Everything from doing laundry to doing dishes to throwing a dirty paper towel into the trash can meets with the same response:  “I’ll do it next week.”  Maybe I’m revealing too much here, but it’s true.  I take care of the necessities, such as bathing and clothing myself and feeding the cats, but the rest… can wait.  And the dirtier and messier my house gets the more satisfying it is to clean it and get it back in order when summer begins.  My M.O. used to be to drink a bunch of caffeine (most in the form of Starbucks chai lattes), put on an old favorite movie or some classic Crazy Cousin Kelley mix CDs and clean like a maniac until 3AM.

            It was awesome.

            But last year, for the first time, I had a husband (who still had to get up and go to work) and I had to adapt my crazy cleaning mode to fit more reasonable hours.  It still got done though, and if I remember correctly it was still pretty awesome.

            But THIS year, I still have a hubby who has to get up for work and I still have a giant mess to clean, but I also have a puppy.  A wonderful puppy who complicates matters a bit.  A)  He has helped to take the end-of-school messiness to a whole new level (i.e. shoes on the dining room table) and B) he is not going to let me go into crazy cleaning mode for 6 hours without needing my attention.  Plus, he’ll probably just follow me through the house messing up what I just cleaned anyway.  So this could be interesting.

September 6, 2012 – 8:32AM

            Yesterday morning in the shower, I was singing “Calling You” by Blue October.  You know, “I will keep CALLING YOU to see, if you’re sleeping are you dreaming, if you’re dreaming are you dreaming of me?”  It’s a song that Mark put on the first mix CD he gave me.  And I decided that if Mark is ever in a coma, that’s the song I will sing to him in his hospital bed to try to wake him up and bring him back to me.

            And then, I thought about what if I’m the one in the coma?  And I realized that he should definitely sing that horrible horrible song “Brass in Pocket” by The Pretenders, the one that goes, “Gonna use my FING-ERS!” because I HATE that song and Mark constantly sings it just to make me mad and it works every time.  So if he sang that to me when I was in a coma, I am fairly sure that I would wake up to slap him.

            But last night, as I was lying in bed, hyped up on an Excedrin that I took too late in the day, I realized how horrible it would be if I didn’t wake up, so I told Mark, “Mark!  This morning in the shower I decided that if you’re ever in a coma, I’m going to sing ‘Calling You’ to you, and if I’m ever in a coma, I want you to sing that horrible fingers song to me so it will make me mad enough to wake up, but if I DON’T wake up in, like one minute, then you have to sing something else!  Something sweet!  Because that horrible finger song CANNOT be the last thing I ever hear!  So think of another song.  Tomorrow.  Please.”

            I think he thinks I was kidding, but I wasn’t.

September 6, 2012 – 3:24PM

Hmm… Maybe I’ll post some old journal entries to my blog.  Think anyone would want to read that?