Buggin' April 9, 2008
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that is the beginning of a short story i am writing for my writer’s studio class. i pulled out my typewriter, wrote slow, intentionally.
i would like to make another chapbook after this semester. i might write some poetry. i have no idea.
amber and i signed the lease for our very first apartment yesterday. we are getting the keys tomorrow, and the landlord is letting us move in like 18 days early free of charge if we just clean the place. it’s not that awful to begin with, so it should be pretty easy work.
i’ve been going slowly the past few days. just taking time to admire the architecture, the sounds of brooklyn, the smells of good food. amber is buying us a cookset and friday we are going to hunt down some dishes. we are going to have a yay apartment/no furniture party. also, it is a birthday party for khalil, who is featured on a mug that robert bought at the salvation army. someone took this mug, honoring khalil’s birth, to the salvation army. we think he’s dead, that someone took the mug to the salvation army to get rid of his smiling face, but that’s just us being scheming writers.
at our party, there will be cake and champagne. you are all invited.
Falling Into Place March 29, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a commentit’s been a whirlwind. i’ve been stressing so much about the vagina monologues, about apartments and living situations for next year.
it was going to be grace in the singles lottery, and me waiting til april 17th to see if we’d be getting a space together. amber had a room in a space not too far from school, ready to put down a deposit. tuesday night, i got a message from amber: “i got bumped from my sublet. let’s get an apartment.” we found a place on craigslist, right on dekalb. we called, set an appointment for 1:30 on friday, in the middle of our ridiculous, busy day. we went. the guy didn’t show. we called, he said he’d be there in an hour. i went to go get my mother and my aunt, and we returned. 30 minutes later, around 3:15, we called him again. he finally made it there around 3:30. the space was cramped, with railroad-style bedrooms, one leading into the next, in a line. i was not pleased. we told him we’d let him know.
we returned to the bakesale. on thursday, we’d done $101 in two hours. we’d sold everything, and now we had 48 brownie bites and four pieces of raspberry crumble. finally, another bakery called us and we picked up a tray of large black-and-white cookies and something else i forget. i ran around, hysterical, worried. we made another $53 at the bakesale friday.
i ran to my room, pulled on some clothes, ran back to memorial hall with my hands full. i kept shaking my hands up in the air, trying to shake the stress from myself. this is something adrian does when she’s excited, she bends her forearms up into the air and twists them up and down, complete with jazz hands. i’ve picked up the move from her: it’s so fitting for excitement or nervousness, it’s striking.
we photocopied the programs using our copy budget, 750 copies total to make 250 programs. i had the actresses sit in a circle and fold, stuff, fold, stuff. they were so willing to help with whatever i needed. it was amazing.
we went on and it was perfect. not an issue. 70 people showed up, bought baked goods, tossed in a couple extra bucks. the final count was $360, i was so happy.
now i am just tired. tired, tired, tired. but a good tired. like i worked out for two months straight and now i just get to breathe.
A Few Days in Pittsburgh March 19, 2008
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i intended to come home and sleep every day for twelve hours. i didn’t really accomplish that to the fullest. i mostly worried. summer employment, budgeting, the vagina monologues, the control freak just kept thinking and thinking. and i watched 19 mind-numbing episodes of friends, which made me feel like life might be okay.
my cousin jen turned 30, and had a fantastic party. jen is tall, gorgeous, composed. her mother and my mother are two peas in a pod. jen had some of the most fantastic food, hors d’oeuvres: stuffed mushrooms, bruschetta, spinach puff-pastry things, raspberry-filled cupcakes. it was literally painfully delicious — my poor stomach ached from over-eating. there were jello shots — my first encounter with them — and my mother took down quite a few like a champ.
two days later, we had our version of easter, a week early since i won’t be here. my mother made ham, “funeral potatoes,” corn casserole, jello salad, deviled eggs. i made the best fruit cobbler i, personally, have ever eaten. we went shopping at walmart for supplies, which i was not too keen on. we stood in the condiment aisle and pondered the difference between mustard powder and ground mustard. an employee asked us if we needed any help, and we repeated our conundrum. he laughed. “i went to culinary school, and this is what it got me: a job at walmart and a question i don’t know the answer to.”
today we made the hour-and-a-half long trek up to johnstown, pa. a hundred-odd years ago, johnstown suffered through a horrible flood: the water poured down into the valley before word could get to the poor town. then they just rebuilt — the town looks like it’s stuck in the 80s, but the people are as nice as could be.
we went because i was on a mission. i wanted a typewriter. of course, johnstown would have a place that sells and services them. i looked up the address and we pulled up to a two-car garage next to a man’s house. the upper level of the garage held the motherload: tons of typewriters, manual, electric, portable, half-apart, bits and pieces. the gentlemen looked a touch skeptical of the chubby girl with the messy hair that was poking and prodding at their babies, but they pulled out two portable manual typewriters for me to check out.
i tapped, typed, considered. and i ended up with the adorable smith-corona pictured up there. $70 got me the typewriter, an extra ribbon, and corrective papers. i carried the bulky thing out and felt genuine. this is my craft, i’m going back to the times where things were so much more agonized over — you couldn’t just hit a key and delete, you had to physically throw something away if you wanted to start over.
i head back to new york city tomorrow. it’s raining cats and dogs in pittsburgh, flood watches all over the place. i hope my flight isn’t delayed.
Going Slowly Crazy March 12, 2008
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the screencap is from adrian’s blog [www.adrianshirk.com] i just couldn’t resist. these people here, they know me so well.
i’m having a mini existential crisis, like i do every week and a half. i think i might want to go to grad school. i think i want to do nyu. i think i want an mfa so i can teach creative writing. i don’t know what else i could possibly do. i don’t think i’m talented enough to be the next best-seller [although taste is subjective, and one could say that the best-sellers aren’t necessarily “good” in a literary sense.]
i am going a little crazy. i have so much on my plate for the next few weeks. i’m blogging at 2:30 in the morning because i can’t sleep because i am having a mini-crisis.
i am so worried about everything. i guess this is just another aspect of my being such a control freak, but i’m having issues handling it. i can’t ever ‘go with the flow.’ i don’t know what i want to do with my life, and that is terrifying.
i think i’m going to go drink some warm milk and try to sleep.
Posessions March 10, 2008
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photo courtesy stephanie willis and her amazing camera. gillian and i went to a party at taaffe on saturday, a western-themed. i, of course, have no western attire. i don’t even own cowboy boots. note my ridiculous-looking hair. oh jeez.
gillian brought up possessions that night. “i don’t really have that many possessions,” she mused as we meandered down the street. i thought about it and agreed. i don’t have much stuff. i have a computer, a cellphone, random hand-me-down furniture [a desk, a table and chairs] that i picked out from the wreckage of the divorce, but aside from that, what do i really have? books, maybe. i don’t know when it will feel like enough. perhaps this is what leads to america’s retail obsession: we feel like we just don’t carry enough mass, have enough things surrounding us to bring us the kind of comfort we seek.
i am not really sure what else i think i need. more books, probably. dishes: jenny brought up dishes in her blog, and i felt like crying. i’ve been looking at fiestaware and corielle, thinking “teal and brown, or teal and pink” and feeling this awful sinking in my gut when i realize that i don’t have a place to store them: no apartment yet, no real space to call my own.
Breathless March 5, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a commentoh! i have scarcely been able to breathe the past few days.
matt arrived, safe and sound, though delayed [flights and traffic and cab drivers] on tuesday afternoon. we walked to target and ate vegan soul food. got lost a bit.
we came back because i was scheduled to read on adrian and robert’s radio show, ‘the oregon trail and other stories.’ robert and adrian are both oregon natives, on the same wavelength. i am envious. i read two things: a story and a poem, both of which have haunted me from the first time i read them. we discussed family, moms, the bag of body parts they found two subway stops from ours on the g.
i said “i guess my life is a little like law and order. if i squint my eyes and tilt my head to the side.”
today, we ventured into manhattan, no real object, just a list of things we kind of wanted to do and see. apple store at 14th & 9th. i wonder if i’ll ever be able to give up technology. of course i won’t be able to, silence scares me far too much.
and then, back for another reading, this time in the basement of a kindred book store, unnameable books, on the border of park slope. the theme of the reading series is families, and i reworked the tale of the lavelle christmas party to read aloud. a cat almost climbed in the basement window while robert was reading.
and then! grace, oh grace, amazing grace, grace from seattle, vegan grace with the widest smile and rhinestone-bedazzled glasses, turned to me and said “oh, by the way, three vegan bakeries are donating cupcakes and brownies to us to sell after the vagina monologues.”
what?! i was amazed, ready to cry of happiness. she did that of her own accord, because she knew we wanted to have a bake sale, so she just went ahead and sent emails and now we’ll have dozens of cupcakes to sell to raise more money. oh, grace. she makes me smile so much.
i feel lighter as of recent. i don’t think i’m losing any weight or anything, i just feel as though i am lighter. a weight off my shoulders, belly, heart. i can climb the subway stairs without calf cramps now, i am considering this a victory. just lighter and happier.
Back and Forth February 27, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a comment“when i worked here,” nicky told me as we were in barnes & noble dropping off my application for summer employment, “people used to come in and scream about our political book displays. they’d accuse us of having too left-leaning book displays. my manager would sometimes go over and show them ‘here’s a liberal book, here’s a conservative book’ to prove that we were being fair.”
“i would have just told them that it isn’t barnes & noble’s fault that liberals read.” i told her.
i went home this past weekend to drop off applications, sleep, recharge. i accomplished… turning in my applications. oh dear. i still haven’t made it to health and counseling to get blood work done. i don’t even remember what running on 100% feels like. i don’t remember the last time i did it. i’m trying to drink more juice and sleep more normally.
i saw most of my family this weekend — the lavelles — and it was really great. seth, nicky’s baby, is the cutest chubby little baby. when we were at brunch, he just kept eating and eating. when he was finished, he pointed to the buffet, as if to say, “more!” it was absolutely precious. lisa, nicky’s sister, has a little girl named mazzie who only eats from an extremely limited selection of food — cheese, bread, peanut butter, milk — and she refused to eat a waffle that had syrup on it instead of peanut butter. i shoveled down cheese blintzes covered in too-sweet strawberry topping.
we had an oscar party, which involved snack food and mimosas and many mentions of james garner (what do you mean he’s not jennifer garner’s dad?) it was pretty delightful despite the fact that the ceremony itself was lackluster.
i came back in a flurry of general confusion and irritation — delayed flights, cab drivers who don’t know where pratt is, only having got 2 hours of sleep the night before — and still plugged through my day. i missed everyone so much, it was absurd. just seeing the faces of my friends here, it makes me feel better.
matt is coming in six days. i cannot explain how excited i am. he has been my one constant from this summer to this school year. it’s so amazing to be able to have someone like that in your life. we are going to nintendo world (for the pokemon center, obviously) and to see spamalot. he gets to come see me read at adrian and robert’s reading series. it will be great to have someone be able to experience what i do here. what i’m doing here, the change i am creating, the dynamic.
Haggard February 19, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a commenti have spent the past few days [weeks, months, years] wandering around in a fog. i sleep 10 hours and take a nap in the middle of the day, i’m just that tired & lethargic. i’m getting the old sort of angry again, where i’d very much like to just stab the people who irritate me. i’m hoping there’s something wrong with me at this point, if only for the hope that it can be fixed. i’m hoping it’s something.
to be honest, i can’t even remember what all happened this past week, since i gave you guys a real update. valentine’s day happened. i’ve never exchanged cards with my friends. it was weird to have people pushing them in my face, all smiles. it felt awkward to me.
it’s weird to have most of my friends here exclusively. at home, i have a bunch of people who ditched me when i got depressed, who harassed me for being such a downer. by contrast, today at lunch we brainstormed what could be making me so sick/tired/angry/depressed. there is support, here. at home, there is very little, if any at all.
matt is coming to see me in less than two weeks: matt, who has been one of my friends since i moved to michigan, matt who’s always there to listen. i’ve missed him terribly. it’s strange how distance can change your relationships with people in ways you would suspect. scott told me that i marginalized myself by moving so far away. by contrast, matt and i, who were never by any means anything but kind to each other, now usually talk at least once a day. it’s refreshing to have someone with such a parallel mindset to yours to talk to. we want to liveblog something eventually. in lolcat speak, of course.
tomorrow, i am going to health and counseling to get myself some help. bloodwork, medication, Something. i need to know what’s wrong so i can fix it. and then i have to trek to go to my bank. i love making those little trips, actually, when i have energy.
thursday night, i am going back to pittsburgh to spend a weekend begging for employment. best case scenario, i get two jobs. maybe even three, if both barnes and nobles, for whatever reason, hire me. worst case scenario, zero. but i can’t let zero happen, that is for sure.
i am just exhausted.
The Right Place February 8, 2008
Posted by Katie Oh in : Such As , add a commentyou know you’re in the right place when you feel so confident that you can get up on stage and karaoke to kanye west and have your friends all around you and you just feel good.
“girl,” a woman said to me as i climbed the stage and the dj announced my song, “you better do this right.”
“oh, trust me,” i said, “i know it like the back of my hand.”
i love it here. and i wouldn’t trade anything for this place.
Sunning February 7, 2008
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the pratt cats came back out for one day this week. they seemed to be mia for what felt like a month due to the crappy weather, but this week was nice and warm. it was 50 and sunny one day, and they all came out to sun themselves on the benches. then the next day it rained and they all scurried back to the engine room where it was nice and warm and dry.
tonight, i am apparently going out to celebrate chinese new year, the lunar new year. new years are good for new beginnings. let’s take some time to refresh ourselves. sun. relax.