OTHER pics...

i've been meaning to show you (as per multiple requests to replace the bloody t-shirt)

brushin' the ole teeth

Abby's gay pride jello. can you believe that thing?! only a transplant from Utah could pull that off

Scooper bowl 2007


Mom reading with Max on her head



What does this painting make you think of? (is it just me?)





I had a wicked bad cold

Some kind of Special

yeah, so yesterday we got to help out at the special olympics, you know it was really fun. Got to cheer and shout and flirt like crazy. hold hands and ask people the names of their pets.
all of that athleticism flying around I guess I was feeling festive or envious maybe, I don't know: I kept leaping over the chains sagging down between posts--you know, to keep the cattle out or something. Abby was too chicken to leap. she prefered the cautious approach: throwing one leg over at a time. which made me laugh at her and call her a wuss.
anyway, fast forward a few hours, I was going over one such chain and somehow got my feet caught up in it and fell over hard. tree in a forest, just really SMACK straight on my chin.
I thought I was cool at first and tried to shake it off, until I noticed my hands and arms were wet and looked down to a whole lot of blood coming out my chin. yeah me-here to help out and I'M the one who ends up in the emergency room. YEAH MAN.
The best things to come of it:
a) look how tough my volunteer T-shirt looks (blood stains are a definite improvement to the pink parrot)
b) while other volunteers were out hunting down abby (my ride) I got some TLC from my super-crush who happened by just in time to see me covered in blood :) got the damsel in distress thing down. word
c) woot. more stitches (this will be a scar upon an already existing scooter accident scar from when I was 6) I got 10 new stitches: 2 inside because I cut down to the bone.
The worst thing to come of it:
a) paying out of pocket since I have no health insurance

I am going to mexico mid-July. If anyone wants to come hang out with me you are so welcome. It's just going to be donkeys and sunshine.

what a cutie

ARE YOU READY KIDS??

oh kids! what can I tell you. things are going faster than meat on Monday. I can't seem to pin myself down

pinp pipinp pin pin

(tinkly pinning down noises)

I am sick of ABDICATING. no more abdication

Here's what I am reading (with ne'er a suggestion in sight):

the Grapes of Wrath (my bday present to myself this last year)

some Audre Lorde

more Anne Lamott

I have been on a weird biographical tangent lately

I am going to start writing about Boston. Because that is what this blog is all about.

his life was a one in a million shot

who in their right mind

would leave this?

squint your eyes and look closer

oh hi. I am writing to you for the week. it's turned into something like that. I am becoming so predictable-I think I have domesticated. hahaha ha. boston town has warmed up, but it's all wet. we live next to a lovely pond where people fly fish and jog and deal drugs in the bushes. a new flavor from coolidge corner land of trader joseph's and community composting workshops.

Abby's favorite thing to do is get lost navigating the city streets and my favorite thing to do is to hold the city map (it's an atlas really) and go "uhhh..." I am trying to teach her how to use public transportation.

man what can I tell you. I got a haircut. I'd show you, but my camera is still mad about that armpit incident. I am reading some trippy stuff-lots of nonfiction, but it's summertime now and I'm ready for a novel. any suggestions?

so dang fast

lake winnipesaukee was a success ang buhay ko! yeah baby, I made it under 2 hours with 14 BIG FAT seconds to spare. what a victory, I didn't think I would actually make it.
Happy mother's day to mom.
Abs and I had a nice summery dinner at our friends' home--homegrown asparagus and corn and organic chickens. I don't think my body even knows how to deal with the real foodness of it all. this is us farting around on the cape after the race. icing our sorry ankles in the ocean

the Davenport and me

Well the davenport (abby) and I finally moved in together. kind of. I guess technically I am living on our friend Riva's couch until we can work out the bogus bed we bought off craig's list and until the person whose room we are taking gets her stuff out (would be nice), but probably sometime tomorrow it will be official.
Our friendship has never made a whole lot of sense, but only in trying to move in together have I fully realized how ridiculous it all is. something about fish and birds...
I think I'm the fish.

("Hweeeee....want to give me an example?"-Andrew Beck)

well, like yesterday trying to move stuff around so we could atleast sleep on the floor I somehow ended up stuffing shoes into this ridiculous hanging shoe contraption of Abby's that crinkles when you touch it like a bib at the dentist's.
my shoes: 1 pair of dress shoes, running shoes, flip-flops (no vans...sniff sniff...--see March 5th posting).
Abby's shoes: freaking fifty million.

Abby calls my music "ballads of the drugged-up lost soul". her music gives me flashbacks to EZ listening with Delilah in Julie Thompson's mother's car on the way to High School,
interspersed with waves of nausea.

me: Indian food, sushi, independent film
abby: Friday's, Disney channel specials

we both like NPR

I guess you get the idea. what amazes me is that we somehow still enjoy eachother so much. I think it has something to do with the way Abby, for all her straight-lacedness, swears at bad traffic. that and our mutual delight in mocking ourselves and eachother.

School ends this week. my job (Kittergirls) ends with this month. then it's really hard to say. I am still planning on coming back to good old Provo next January, probably for a semester. so woo hoo! bust out the wasabe

have a happy May Day

moving on

goodbye Naples Rd

(better email me before you write)

(should any of you write)

okay I know I can be more of a leap first and look later kind of a girl and so I will often get really excited about things that turn out to be CRACK HOUSE MOMENTS (ex: volley ball in jr high, calling Mandy at 2 am New Years morning to profess my love for the Jew, Joanna Newsom) but THIS is the real deal yo!
Regina Spektor is my best discovery since Fiona Apple a year ago (I know, I found Fiona shamefully late in life, but at least I found her). Regina is RADical! Here's a little taste, but don't be shy after you hear this one to poke around a bit, because they're all SO good

Samson (dedicated here to my sweetest downfall! ohhhh!)

I didn't take that first picture

I just like it because Perez looks hot! can I please reincarnate as a real runner.

Well last Monday was the Boston marathon. I was feeling kind of gloomy, like the weather, but I decided to walk down to the race (just down my street really) to cheer on the runners for a bit. I ended up by this great old woman in a big old LLBean parka and with a thick boston accent. Though we were around mile marker 20, it was still pretty early on in the race and so runners were only trickling by, letting her cheer on every runner by name--or at least by whatever their most distinguishing feature/article of clothing was. "That's right Notre Dame!" "Go army!" "Moustache, yes!" she was great. after she left I was kind of down--I really wanted to slip her my phone number and ask her to call me every so often and leave inspiring messages on my voice mail

Since Monday our weather has looked up--the sun came out (it's been about 3 weeks since we'd seen it) and today we were suddenly in the 70's (as opposed to high 30's that windchill turns into low 20's). I know mom loves it when I talk weather.

I've been feeling sunnier too. You know I could use a good hug, but who couldn't? we probably all could. and I get told "i love you" like 20 times a day by three cute little girls, so how can I complain. I dropped my camera trying to take a picture of this monstrous bruise by my armpit and now the video part won't work. dang it aall. no more youtube rants.

older people

Rebecca's eighty something mother suffering from dimensia has been our longtime visitor. I run into her in the hall sometimes and admire her inspiring collection of knitted accessories--booties, hats, those parka things. sometimes I get urges to set her free when no one's looking--like the last (yes, mandy, LAST) surviving ant in the kitterman's antfarm--except like that ant I know she wouldn't make it long on the street. I guess she's also half deaf, so Rebecca and other members of the family are always yelling these days. There's just so much of "WINDOW!!! mom, I said do you want me to open the WINDOW?!" a girl like me can take. and only so much that poor old lady can take I'm sure. When I met crazy people I used to always feel grateful that they weren't my parents, now I add and that I'm not theirs.

This is not Rebecca's nuts mother, but it is a picture of the loveliest fish in the sea. Don't you just want a kiss?

Happy belated Passover

Well last week my bud Aimee and I decided to crash a passover. For some reason we decided we could pass as Jewish--my old roommate thought I was a Jew. she was Mexican. (which all resulted in a lot of weird Anne Frank in Mexico poetry that my professor told me was too politically incorrect to ever see the light of publishing). Aimee, on the otherhand, couldn't look more Sacandanavian.

Anyway, our dreams of kind of benignly blending in died pretty quickly--the rabbi greeted us at the door with big boisterous Hebrew--probably something like "happy passover"--and all we could do was stare at him and giggle nervously before we ran away to a table in the back. I was hoping we could hide amidst one of the families too preoccupied with their ADD children to notice our obvious Gentile-hood, but instead we were joined by Stephanie (a twenty something-very Jewish) and two (fifty something) newly divorced Bachelors--Eli and Moshi--looking for love. I tried hinting to Stephanie that we weren't Jewish by saying this was only my second passover (thank you Brother Ludlow) and that she would have to help us along, but she just said she hadn't done a lot of formal passovering herself and that we could help eachother out (oh crap).

Well real passover is a far cry from the watered down grape juice version of brother Ludlow. lots and lots of long Hebrew prayer songs (lots and lots of mumbling and moving my lips so people don't catch on that I have no idea what is going on), lots of strange ritual food combinations ("take a bite of matzah"-"now take a bite of your lettuce with some horseradish on it"-"now make a matzah sandwhich with the lettuce and horseradish and take a bite"-"now put the matzah on your head and dance like a chicken").

The real delight of the evening was Eli deciding that I would make a great wife number three. How these men interpret my discomfort and complete lack of interest for mutual flirting is always a mystery to me--but it happens enough to keep my wondering.

The good news is that as the evening went on everyone got a little drunker--even Aimee and I on our grape juice loosened up after four hours of insanity--and by the end no one cared that we had no idea what we were doing, the kids and the charismatically childlike rabbi were dancing around the room, Moshi was trying to help Aimee see that her French ancestry really came down through the house of Isreal and I was giving my email address to Eli for free Hebrew lessons. Aimee and I stumbled home, arm in arm singing "DAYENU!" to the night sky--maybe Kristia was right. I felt pretty Jewish.

Meanwhile in Boston town--I am looking to move. checking out South American NGOs for some summer work. doing well.
love you, erin.

to whit

For those who don't know, Whitney Nelson, my brother Andrew's girlfriend/almost wife, died last Sunday. Andrew is doing amazingly well and is still lost in his missionary work in Pennsylvania.
Last week I was too sad to write my own words. poetry is made for those kinds of times. I felt for a little while that the world was all sold-out of joy. but already I find it creeping back, slowly. shy and awkward--a little more jaded, more world weary, but essentially, the same.
'This is what the atonement's good for', Abby reminded me last Sunday night walking around Walden pond where the sun played on low branches that rose up out of the water like glorious forearms, 'for swallowing up pain and guilt and regret and death--leaving us with clean lessons.'

Now that Whitney is gone I am suddenly flooded with all the lessons I should have been accepting from her while she was still alive.
that life is good and exciting and that we shouldn't be afraid of it, that people are good and exciting and that we shouldn't be afraid of them, that there are a million ways to be alive and who am I to judge instead of love.

I want to thank her for what she gave me: the confidence to wear high heels as a tall person, a working knowledge of the wonders of hairspray (why didn't I know about this sooner?), the blonde streak in my hair.
I want to thank her for challenging me. my feminism, my femininity, my relationship with Andrew and with my mother.
I want to say I'm sorry for not accepting these lessons more gracefully.

I love you Whitney Nelson. We were growing our hair out in a race to our elbows. I think of you when I eat tortilla soup.
I am glad that I knew you and I am better for it.

LOVE.erin

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

James Wright

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden

Good Week

the worst day

well Paul just came upstairs to confirm my fears: due to an odious series of events my shoes accidentally got thrown out with the trash this morning.