Through a Glass, Darkly

ALARM: *beep, beep, beep*

KARI: What day is it?

MIKE: Uhhhhh, I don’t know? Friday? Friday.

KARI: I overslept.

MIKE: We got in bed earlier than we have been, and we still didn’t get enough sleep if you have to ask what day of the week it is.

KARI: I was really hoping it was Saturday.

MIKE: I know.

—

All right, I just thought that was funny, and a good snapshot of how our week has been. But it’s not what I’m going to talk about. I’m going to talk about these rules that Mike keeps making for our lives. Rules like, “You can’t count down to the season premiere of Gilmore Girls until two weeks before it starts.” My coworkers said, “You know, that’s kind of arbitrary of him.” So I counted down to them instead. They may have regretted taking my side in that particular discussion.

The latest rule is, “No soup until October 1.” Now, I could eat soup any time of the year, but Mike believes that we should not be eating soup until October 1. This morning when I woke up, it was nice and cool outside. Good thing, because if it wasn’t starting to be fall before October 1, the Arbitrary Rule King would probably have said that we still had to wait for some soup. One of my coworkers says that her husband has the same rule, and that this morning he said, “You know, some soup would be great this weekend!” We’re thinking of forming a Spouses of Arbitrary Soup Rule Makers support group. And there’s a restaurant I enjoy that has a rule about soup: something like, “No soup until the first frost.” They have missed out on some soup purchases from me, is all I’m saying.

But, finally finally, tomorrow is October 1. And I am planning on making soup on Sunday afternoon. This time of year, after the long soup ban, I love making soup after church and letting it simmer all day, filling the house with wonderful smells. I can’t wait.

Since the invention of free Verizon-to-Verizon minutes, I rarely drive in my car without talking on the phone. I remember that driving time used to be time for me to think or to listen to music or to pray, but now I just fill it with words. I hardly ever take time for solitude. Even when I consciously think, “I’m just going to be quiet on the drive home,” I find myself picking up the phone to call . . . someone. Anyone.

To me, that’s what technology has meant: loss of solitude. I love my cell phone as much as the next person, but always being available can be both a blessing and a bane. I like talking to Mike the whole way home. I like being able to talk to my friends whenever I want. I like being available to them. I like the safety of knowing that, if something happens (or even if I’m just running late), I can reach Mike or my friends or family.

The tradeoff is that I don’t have as much quiet, uninterrupted Kari time. And I get to the point where I stop answering the phone altogether (or I want to), where I don’t feel able to talk to anyone but Mike, where I just want to turn down the air, put on flannel pajamas, and hide in my bed for a while. And eat popcorn. And drink wine. Or hot tea, since it’s cold in the house.

This week has been an emotional drain. It’s Thursday afternoon and I am exhausted. I feel behind on everything: work, housework, relationships . . . maybe not reading, because I’ve been doing a lot of that. Mike’s been busy with a lot of papers and midterms. And I just want to go home and read and eat and sleep for days.

And I’m going to try to stay off the phone.

(I’m pretty sure a pink box isn’t going to encourage any guys to watch the show.)

December 13, in case you’d forgotten.

I finished Julie & Julia yesterday, and it was pretty good. A quick read, and very entertaining. My favorite part of the book was when she was talking about how sexy cooking - not just food, but cooking - is. And it made me realize that the only thing I like better than cooking for Mike something he really enjoys is cooking with Mike something he really enjoys. We made Kristen’s South of the Border Lasagne a few weeks ago, and it was fun to work in tandem. Plus, it was really good. I have to admit that I’ve never watched Julia Child, so I don’t have any strong connections to her or her book. A lot of the food simply sounded gross. But I understood that it wasn’t really about the food for Julie. It was about getting a purpose, getting focus at a time when a lot of things seemed uncertain for her. I had been looking forward to it since I first heard about it a few months ago, and it didn’t disappoint.

So at lunch today, I started The Friend Who Got Away, which has twenty essays about friendships that didn’t work out. I’m not very far into it, but it hooked me from the very first page:

You hear the name, and your heart starts to pound, your palms sweat. You catch a glimpse of a familiar face on the street and suddenly you find yourself sideswiped by memories better left forgotten. It may have been years since you last spoke, and yet it all comes back in a moment, the first giddy rush of talk, the shared confidences and sudden adventures, the certainty that your friendship could survive anything, and the startling heartbreak when it didn’t.

We all have one. A story about the friend who got away. A tale we replay on sleepless nights, turning it over in our minds, chastising ourselves for our cruelty or betrayal, our longing or jealousy. Sometimes we mourn the loss of a friend; other times we celebrate the break, but no matter what, we don’t forget it.

The loss of a friendship can be nearly as painful as a bitter divorce or death. And yet it is a strange sort of heartbreak, one that is rarely discussed, even in our tell-all society. Tales of disastrous loves about, but there is something about a failed friendship that makes those involved guard it like a shameful secret. Whatever happened to your friend? someone asks, and more often than not the answer comes back carefully crafted to give away nothing. We had a falling out. It’s complicated.

It’s interesting, because I think a lot of women do feel that way about failed friendships - as if they can’t really talk about them, as if no one will understand, exactly. I know I feel that way about the friendships I have that turned out badly. And yet, even if we don’t understand the specifics, we all do understand, because we know what it’s like to believe in a friendship only to see it fall apart.

When I met Mike, I told him I wouldn’t let our relationship get in the way of my friendships with my girl friends. I am sure that I let them down more than I realize, but it’s always been important to me that I have those friends. There have been times when I’ve had to realize that they didn’t feel the same way, just as I am sure they felt I let them down. But it’s a hard topic to discuss, because I only know my own perspective. I don’t always get to know what she thinks happened, how I hurt her. Sometimes those things are discussed, sometimes not. But I’m looking forward to this book, because it’s such an interesting topic.

Soon after Emily got to the party, she came up to me and said, “What is this I hear about you not liking hazelnut coffee?” Busted. I asked her if she had found that on my archives or if someone had told her, and she said that she couldn’t remember which friend told her, but that she had heard it from someone else. “Jerk,” I said, laughing. We then acted out a scene in which I tried to drink Emily’s coffee and she pulled it away from me, a girl fight resulting in coffee splashing everywhere.

It’s true, you see, that Emily’s decaf coffee is pretty much always hazelnut (though, for the record, she is not the person I was thinking of when I made that post). And it’s also true that I pretty much always drink it. After Emily and I worked this out and progressed to a new level in our relationship, I pulled Kelly over and made her tell the mint chocolate chip story so that Emily would realize that I do this to everyone. Or maybe I told it. I can’t remember. I know Kelly was standing there, at least. Anyway, this was a theme for the rest of the night: Kari is a big fat liar who can’t be trusted. Much later in the evening, Mike’s boss came in and said, “I love those cream cheese cookies!” I told him they were very easy to make, and he said, “I hear from your friends out there that you are a liar who can’t be trusted! You probably slaved over them all day!” I tried to explain to him that I have been struggling lately with the balance between being honest and being polite and he said, “Girl, you just need to speak your truth.” Hee. Some of our other church friends were drawn into this discussion, and they all said that friends should feel free to discuss their food preferences. They said they would tell me if they didn’t like something. And, you know, I would want the opportunity to provide something else (if I had anything else available). I would be mad as heck if people were eating stuff they didn’t like just to be polite. I might only have a PBJ to offer, but at least let me offer it! (Which, I am sure they would say, is how they feel.) For whatever reason, I’m still struggling with this need to be low-key. Maybe I will figure it out one day. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’m not going to get away with hazelnut coffee at Emily’s anymore. Just when I was developing a taste for it and everything. hehe.

Over the weekend, I read the new Alexander McCall Smith book, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. (And, by the way, isn’t that a wonderful title? It puts me in a great mood just thinking about the cover of the book.) This is the second in the Sunday Philosophy Club series, and I loved it just as much as I love all Mr. McCall Smith’s other books. The characters and the way they talk and the things they say are so realistic. I especially related to how Isabel makes snap judgements about the people she comes in contact with and her responses when she is wrong. And I love her friendship with Jamie, the former boyfriend of her niece.

Last week I read a review in Entertainment Weekly about Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, and it gave the book a B-. If I may say so, I think the book was at least a B and I would probably give it a B+. Sure, it’s not a book that’s going to change the world, but it made me feel good to read it, which has to count for something. A few days after I read the review, I went to see Nancy Pearl, and one of the things she talked about was the four “doorways” through which a reader “enters” a book. Each book, she says, can be accessed through its characters, its setting, its story, or its language. Good books, books that have broad appeal over time, can be entered through more than one of those doorways, and in many cases can be entered through all four. Each reader has different preferences when it comes to reading books. Mike, for example, prefers to read books that focus on story and then character, while I like books that focus on character and then story. Books with dense language are often my downfall.

The reason I am mentioning all this is that, after reading Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, I started to wonder if EW hadn’t maybe chosen the wrong reviewer for the book. You see, this book, like all of Alexander McCall Smith’s books, is about the characters rather than being about what happens to them. It’s about one slightly nosy woman’s life in Edinburgh and how she deals with the ethical problems she encounters. There is a very slight mystery aspect to the story, but to focus on the mystery is to miss what the book is really about. And that’s where I feel the EW reviewer went wrong: he or she complained that the plot was very thin. It seemed to me that he or she was trying to enter the book through a doorway that’s not actually one of the book’s strengths without considering whether that was what the book had set out to do.

Do I think this book is for everyone? No I do not. But I think that a study of a character and how she responds to the things that happen to her, even if those things do not include cars blowing up or the secret love child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, is a valid story to tell. And I think that Friends, Lovers, Chocolate is a good example - not the best, certainly, but a good example - of a book that focuses on its characters and does it well. If you are looking for more exciting things (which is certainly a valid pursuit), there are plenty of books I could recommend. But I don’t think this book should have to apologize for being something that it’s not, especially when it never claimed to be all that exciting to begin with.

And it’s nice to see that the things I learned last week have some interesting practical applications.

I could talk about the fun I had this weekend: dinner with friends, time with Scott and Kelly, Mike’s birthday party, the best zoo trip I’d had in years . . . but I’ve been thinking about some other things, too, so maybe I’ll get back to that stuff later this week. I make no promises.

The past few weeks I’ve been mulling over the realization that, if someone tells me something I already know, I get kind of prickly about it. As if they are deliberately insulting my intelligence. I am not sure why I get so insecure as to respond that way, but I know that it’s not my most attractive characteristic. It’s interesting: I do believe that I have, as I have mentioned before, made good steps away from defining myself by my GPA or as “the smart girl.” And yet, stuff like this makes me realize I’m not as far away from it as I would like to think I am, because if I get even a hint of, “Someone is telling me something I think I should already know,” I get, well, not so nice. Even with my closest of friends, but especially when I’m in a situation where I’m already not sure of my footing. I want people to believe that I am intelligent, even when I doubt it myself, and so I lash out, making sure to define the things I know in great detail. Making it clear that, just because I don’t know everything about this particular issue, that doesn’t mean I’m dumb. I put the gathering of information on my own terms instead of being a good student.

I don’t do this in all information-gathering situations. There are plenty of times that people tell or explain things to me and I am happy to learn from them. There’s just something about the implication, either from my own mind or something I detect from the other person, that I should already know the information they are giving me. That I should understand this already.

I am guessing that it’s not something I can change overnight. I have been kind of peripherally aware of this for a while, but in the past few months I have noticed how unkind I can be when I find myself in those situations. Thus far, I have been pretty unsuccessful in curbing this tendency, but by posting this, I am allowing you to call me out on it. “Kari,” you can say, “if you are getting prickly because you think I think you should already know this, then just stop. Stop putting so much pressure on yourself to be perfect. Stop worrying so much about what other people think. And pay attention to what I’m saying, because this stuff is pretty interesting.”

Last night we went to see author Michael Parker read from his new book at UNCG. I heard him speak on Tuesday at NCLA, loved his writing, and bought his latest book for Mike. Yesterday Mike sent me an email letting me know that he’d be speaking on campus, asking me if I wanted to go. Since our church is just across the street from campus and we were going to church anyway, I figured, “Why not?” We postponed our plans and walked over after the services.

I’ve been out of undergrad for four years and grad school for two, and it was weird to be on campus and not see anyone I know. Mike doesn’t know a lot of people, really, either . . . he doesn’t live in a dorm and he’s not really taking classes in his major yet, so he doesn’t have a lot of strong connections. He did point out a couple of his instructors who were also at the reading, and I got to meet one of them.

The reading was great. I am looking forward to reading the book when Mike is done. I love reading books by North Carolina authors because I always “get” the voice so easily. When our library did Raney by Clyde Edgerton for our all-county read, Mike says that he wouldn’t have gotten the voice very well, except that we started the book by me reading out loud. And I grew up with people just like the ones Raney is talking about, so it was easy for me to know how to phrase things and exactly what it should sound like. Mike, not growing up in the same environment, doesn’t know it as instinctually as I do, so it helped him for me to start him off. In the same way, I think this book will be enhanced by knowing what the author wants the character to sound like, what it’s like to be in the character’s head.

A lot of this book is about music, soul music to be exact. And it got me thinking . . . a lot of authors I really admire talk about music. It’s something organic with them, something they are passionate about, something they grew up with. Last night Michael Parker said that this book really grew out of a lot of the songs he listened to when he was growing up. It reminded me of Kathleen Kelly: “When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does” (I know I quoted that recently, sorry). I think the songs you listen to when you are growing up can be exactly the same way. And that makes me kind of sad, because, unless it suddenly becomes cool to write a novel based on the music of the Newsboys, I don’t have any concept of growing up with music. Apart from church music, music wasn’t a big part of my childhood. My parents aren’t, I don’t think, big music people. I remember that some of my friends with older sisters would talk about music and I never knew what they were talking about. We listened to oldies a lot in the car, so I know those standards more than some people, and I’m a big fan of The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkle. When I got to be a teenager, I started listening to a lot of the Christian standards of those days - dcTalk, the aforementioned Newsboys, Steven Curtis Chapman, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Jars of Clay, PFR . . . you know the drill. I loved that music, and I learned a lot of different things by listening to it, some good, some bad. But sometimes, as Mike said last night, “I wish I grew up listening to Springsteen.” At least I was able to miss out on New Kids on the Block.

Music isn’t a huge part of my life like it is with Mike and with some of my friends. Which is okay, you know. I am a book person much more than a music person. The seeds that were planted in my childhood were on pages instead of set to music. But I really admire people who have both, especially writers who can write about music, who can take the essence of a song or an album or a genre and put it to the page. I don’t know a whole lot about soul music, but I think I know a little bit more about it after hearing Michael Parker read last night.

I’ve heard that you can always tell a librarian conference by the abundance of sensible shoes and totebags. (For the record, I carried a totebag for my notebook, my novel, and my waterbottle, but I was not wearing sensible shoes.) So when I wasn’t sure exactly where to go for my registration, I followed the four ladies who fit those requirements. Sure enough, they were librarians who were there for the same program I was. As we struggled to find any signage that might point us in the right direction, I joked that if we couldn’t find the conference room, they were going to take away our jobs. “I’m sorry, but you’re just not good enough to be one of us anymore.”

The conference itself was great. It reminded me of the things I do miss just a little bit about school (not enough to even think about going back, though) - talking about ideas and books and being around people who are passionate about the same things. I get that at work, too, but on a smaller scale. This was a whole room full of women (okay, there were a few men) who like books and talking to people about them.

I have to confess that I’d expected Nancy Pearl to be a diva or something. She has these books and an action figurine (and a new Deluxe Librarian Action Figurine with a book cart! Which I want very much!) and she’s on NPR and all famous and stuff. But she was very approachable. We went to the bathroom at the same time, and I was brave enough to make a little small talk. I never do that. She was really approachable. (Also, what else are you going to do in the bathroom line?) And now I can say that I peed with Nancy Pearl. Twice, actually. She washes her hands, in case you were wondering. We also washed our hands together.

I would tell you what we talked about, but I’m pretty sure it would bore anyone who’s not a librarian. So I’ll just say that it gave me a lot of insight on why I read and why other people read. I tested my new skills on Mike yesterday, and I can tell you that while I tend to read for character and then story, he reads for story and then character. I don’t think I could recommend books to anyone yet, but I’m a lot farther along in the whole process than I was. And it was really fun to hear that all the speakers feel the same panic that we mere mortals do when someone asks us for a book recommendation. And they probably get it lots more than I do.

In more interesting news, Michael Parker, a North Carolina author and UNCG instructor, spoke at lunch, and his short story made me laugh and almost made me cry. I bought his latest novel for Mike (it being Mike’s birthday and all) and got it signed. If it’s half as good as the short story he read, well, he’s definitely going to be high on my list. The short story was wonderful. It’s called “Hidden Meanings: Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony, and Life Experiences in the Song ‘Ain’t Gonna Bump No More No Big Fat Woman’” and is featured in New Stories from the South 2005. He’s speaking at UNCG tonight, and we’re trying to decide if we want to go.

The highlight of the day, for me, was when we came back from lunch and found that everyone at the conference got their very own Librarian Action Figure. Of course, I already had one, but it wasn’t in the package anymore, so I hadn’t brought it for her to sign. This one, though, I’m going to leave in the packaging. And she signed it, “To Kari - Book Lust forever! -Nancy Pearl.” I told her that several of my friends had bought me one when I graduated, and that they were excited I was coming to see her today. She was so sweet and gracious. It was a real treat to get to hear her speak.

And today is back to work as usual.

(I guest blogged for Michaela again today, and this is some of the same thoughts taken in a slightly different direction.)

I’ve been told lately that my blog is reflecting that I am in a pretty content place in my life, that things seem settled and happy. I don’t think I am generally a very content person, sometimes to the point of worrying that I am creating drama (which is a form of creating drama, I suppose), but I think it’s true that I have very little to complain about these days.

There is a situation where some things have happened and some old wounds have been revealed to be less healed than I thought they were. It took me by surprise, the way these things have popped up again, and I spent a couple of days in some distress (which mostly just meant that I ate more chocolate than usual). In an effort to gain some perspective on the situation, I pulled out some old journals and tried to figure out how things got to where they are now. I couldn’t really find a journal from when it all began, and I’ve never been a consistent daily journaler, so most of the entries referred to the situation in an already-heated state and my attempts to handle it appropriately without very many details. I am glad to report that I am much less dramatic than I was four to six years ago, and even though I am dealing with some of the same things, I seem to be handling them better.

I didn’t get the insight I had hoped for, but I did notice something else: Most of the journals were from my college years and my early years of marriage, and I talked a lot about the struggles that Mike and I were going through in learning how to be together, learning to be one. I talked about my desire to go to grad school, and how I wasn’t sure how he felt about that decision. And I talked about this other situation, and how I wasn’t sure Mike really understood how much I was hurting. And I spent pages and pages talking about his relationship with his parents, and how I was hoping for reconciliation and how I was just beginning to learn that he didn’t want a relationship with them.

When we got married, everyone congratulated us on how great our communication was, and how we excelled in that area. But it’s clear to me, looking at those journals, that there were a lot of things we didn’t talk about, a lot of ways we hadn’t yet learned to work through hard things. I was writing about these things instead of talking about them. Lately I have been apologizing to Mike for some of the things I remember from those years, the drama queen I was, the poor way I handled things, the way I made things more complicated for him than they needed to be. And I could see glimpses of that in the things I was writing, too. I was passionate about some of the wrong things, not understanding Mike’s perspective, not being able to communicate mine.

I have been wanting to burn these journals for a while . . . there’s just a lot of stuff in them that I’d rather was never seen by anyone. But it was nice to be able to look at them and see how much better I handle things, how much better Mike and I communicate, how some issues have been put to rest (or are in remission). I used to think that one day, maybe in my 40s or 50s, that I’d have it all figured out. I thought I’d grow into the kind of life where I didn’t mess things up, that I’d learn how to do that. I remember how sad I was when I realized that life doesn’t work like that. But reading those old journals gave me hope that, even if I won’t have things all figured out, I will be a little farther along.

KARI: When you get home, you will see that I wrapped your present and put it on the dresser* with the following note: “If you peek, I will cry. And I will never give you another present for as long as we both shall live.”

MIKE: For as long as we both shall live? Are you sure?

KARI: Yes.

MIKE: Now, peeking, okay, but what about touching or shaking?

KARI: For as long as we both shall live.

MIKE: I’ll take that as a no. Couldn’t you at least have put it under the birthday tree?

KARI: Wal-Mart was fresh out of birthday trees. I’ll try to plan better next year, so we can listen to birthday carols and put out the birthday stockings.

MIKE: YOU GOT ME A BIRTHDAY STOCKING?!

KARI: *sigh*

*I understand temptation! I do! I had Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sitting on my desk on July 12 (non Harry-readers: it didn’t come out until July 16)! Did I give in? No I did not. And I think Mike can wait until tomorrow morning.

Dear Old Navy,

I came to your store to spend money. I know I haven’t been in a while, but it’s not because I was cheating on you. It’s because I had no money to spend. And today, when I was ready to spend, you had nothing for me. Well, you had some cute pants, but they only came in the regular size. I, unfortunately, wear the short length. What about my needs, Old Navy? Short people have needs, too. Help me spend my money.

Thanks for nothing,
Kari

—

Dear Gap,

So, what, you guys don’t carry skirts anymore? You had like two in the whole store. What’s that all about?

Disgruntled,
Kari

—

Dear Ann Taylor Loft,

Please lower your prices. I love pretty much everything in your store. But I can’t buy it.

Also, your sale rack today? Sucked. Could you do something about that?

I would wear ATL every day if I could (but don’t tell Old Navy),
Kari

—

Dear Victoria’s Secret,

I have been trying to spend this giftcard for two and a half months. I know what I want. I can’t buy it if you don’t stock it in my size. What is it with stores not wanting my money today?

Oh, and your salespeople leave a lot to be desired,
Kari

—

Dear Mike,

I’m still not speaking to you. You should know better than to look at my to-do list so close to your birthday.

I love you (but I’m still mad),
Kari

—

Dear 12-year-old Kari,

I have bad news. Apparently, even 14 years later, you are still so immature that when you are meeting a new doctor and he is super-cute, it’s really hard for you not to giggle. One day, perhaps, you’ll be past this phase. But not yet.

Not yet a grown up,
26-year-old Kari

—

Dear Hallmark,

I mean, I get that you put the Christmas ornaments out in July, but, seriously, is that really necessary? Yeah, I mean, I looked at them today, but I didn’t buy one. Yeah, I mean, I would have bought one for Mike if I had seen one that I liked. But let me tell you what would have happened. I would have hidden it away in some secret place and then completely forgotten about it and had trouble finding it come Christmas. It’s just as good that you didn’t have one. But, for the record, could you maybe step up the snowmen next year? Mike really likes snowmen.

I’m not just bitter because you didn’t have anything I liked,
Kari

—

Dear Target,

I know I don’t come see you very often, but I do love you. Thank you for the cute shirt and the other thing that I can’t mention until after Mike’s birthday. But you know what I mean.

Hugs and kisses,
Kari

—

Dear Old Navy,

Yeah, I came back. I bought a skirt. What of it? If you’d had something affordable to go with the skirt to begin with, I wouldn’t have had to go to Target. Did you ever think of that?

I’m still not sure why skirts are in such short supply in this town,
Kari

—

Dear Mike,

See, all that money I spent today wasn’t so bad. I obviously tried to spend a lot more. And anyway, it was all for you! And your birthday party! Next week is birthday week! You you you!

Attempting to distract you from the credit card bill,
Kari

Most of my friends would agree that I am a pretty verbal processor. That’s one of the reasons I blog - it helps me think things through. What you get here are not always my fully-formed thoughts, but what I am thinking at the time. You get the process. Of course, it would be wrong to say that you ever get my most fully-formed thoughts, because I don’t think you can get those this side of eternity. I’m always reevaluating. I know that in the past people have expressed concern because I seemed somewhat down or depressed at various times, but in general I’m fine. Sometimes it’s easier to write the very good or the very bad about yourself because it gives you an angle to work with.

Right now I am struggling a bit with a few things that would be inappropriate to talk about here. In the past, in order to get my thoughts on, er, screen, while still respecting other people’s privacy, I’ve done what Madeleine L’Engle advises, which is to create a situation that would engender the same sorts of feelings without using the exact details. When you’re caught up in something, which is how I feel now, that can be kind of hard to do. I have said before that things get slow around here when I’m not reading much and when I am not able to talk about the things I am really thinking about for whatever reason. And that’s how I’ve felt lately.

In addition, from time to time I still struggle with not wanting to burden my friends. I suppose most people who process verbally feel this way - it takes time for us to be able to work through what we are thinking, and we often end up talking in circles until we get a handle on things. Some of the things I am processing right now are issues I’ve been dealing with for a while, and it’s hard to believe my friends that they don’t mind talking about the same things we’ve been talking about for weeks/months/years. I know I wouldn’t mind if I were in their shoes, but it’s still hard not to imagine them counting the minutes as I ramble on. And I get kind of stuck when I’m not talking things through one way or another.

One of the thing that helps is just to be outside. To take my journal to the park. To take a walk. To eat lunch at the picnic tables at work. So this morning instead of lying around and feeling sorry for myself, I got up and took my iPod on a walk around the neighborhood. I listened to some of the artists that have been recommended in the Great Band Search of 2005 (go make some recommendations if you haven’t already). I talked to the various dogs who approached me, asking them to go away and not gnaw my leg off. (I’m a little bit afraid of dogs.) I watched moms getting their kids out the door to go to school. I thought about these hard things and I enjoyed the coolness of the morning. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about some of the things that have been happening, but it was nice to watch these slices of other people’s lives unfold, to remember that none of these things are the end of the world. To get some perspective. “How is taking a walk like blogging? If you only look down, at yourself, you’re going to miss a lot of really beautiful things.”

I came across a photography book in the catalog called Moments Without Proper Names, and I loved the phrase so much that I took note of it, wondering if I could use it somewhere. I can see how it works better for pictures than for what I tend to do here, but it got me thinking that most of my life isn’t a Christmas-card type moment, even if there are things about it I’d like to remember. So here, in no particular order, are three moments without proper names.

On Friday night, Mike went to see Coldplay, and I had planned to scrapbook with my friend Melissa. We ended up going over to our friend Emily’s house to watch some season 3 Gilmore Girls and scrapbook. And drink coffee and eat biscotti. You know, usual girl things. While they were getting the coffee ready, my phone rang, and when I picked it up, I heard the sounds of “Yellow” coming through the phone. Mike knew that I wanted to hear it, and he called me. I sat down in Emily’s rocking chair, a big smile on my face, until the song got too fuzzy to listen to anymore.

On Sunday morning, Mike’s cold took over, and he was feeling terrible, so we stayed home from church. I got him medicine and made tea and heated up some soup and then got back in bed with him to read. We were reading and chatting, and I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I do remember looking from my book to him and feeling both concerned about his cold and happy to be lounging around with him.

This morning, my alarm went off and Mike, who usually isn’t ready to talk first thing in the morning, started telling me some things about an issue we’re facing. This was kind of amazing because he’s not a morning person or a confrontation person, so I could see how he was going out of his way to communicate with me in the way that’s easiest for me. Am I kind of stressed about the stuff we talked about? Yeah. But the hug he gave me before I got up sure did help.

None of that is huge, earth-shattering stuff that would make a great story. They aren’t picture-worthy moments that would go in our scrapbook. It’s just a bit of our life for the past few days.

Was the insane giggling fit in Target when we were trying to remember all the words to my “Yellow” parody. hee hee hee. It makes me laugh every time.

For some reason, I have been thinking about some of the regrets I have as far as how I handled things when we parted ways with Mike’s parents. I was so young and I had never dealt with problems of that depth before. I was just really unprepared. I overreacted to things, I said and did things I’m ashamed of. I have apologized for those things and been forgiven, but I still wish I could go back and change them.

The biggest thing that strikes me as I look back is how sure of myself I used to be. I was so sure that I was right and I was sure I knew how other people would respond to things, and I was in over my head. When Mike and I were talking about this last night, I asked him if he thinks I am different than I was then, and he said that he thinks so. I feel different to myself, so it’s good to see that he can see the changes. Not all the changes, though, are positive ones. Instead of feeling sure of myself, I feel like I second-guess everything and doubt myself. I’ve swung too far the other way.

I am not sure exactly what I’m going to do about this. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.

In other news, my mom helped me pick out pillows to turn our cedar chest into a window seat, which we’re very excited about. And we’re also turning the old card catalog stand into an ottoman, and she helped me pick out fabric for it as well. I feel good about having more places to sit.

I finished Blessed are the Cheesemakers, which is my book club book for September. It was cute and quirky, maybe a little overly so, but I liked the characters and I think the book is pretty memorable just because of the subject matter. I liked the overall theme of the book, too. It was a nice light read, and I would recommend it to someone looking for a light read. It’s probably not quite strong enough for a book club, but I’m sure we’ll find something to talk about.

Last night I watched Before Sunset, so that I could see the next part of the story. I was doing some scrapbooking while I was watching it, and it made me so sad to think that their one perfect night had made real relationships hard for both of them. It was great, though, don’t get me wrong. It was just sad because of how realistic it was. It reminded me of how I am: afraid to be overly romantic because those kinds of things don’t line up with “real” life and I don’t want to have unrealistic expectations. After watching it, I told Mike that I don’t believe in soulmates, but if I had had an experience like theirs I think I might. What I really liked about it was that the things that happened seemed true to the characters. As sad as I was at the end, I felt like the characters were making the right decisions for themselves (even if I didn’t agree with them). I am not sure which one I liked better - there were great things about both of them. They have talked about making even more movies with these same characters, and I would love to see them if that happened.

Anyway, those are some disjointed thoughts for a Monday afternoon. This is a busy week: I’ve got my Harry Potter discussion tomorrow (which was in the Asheboro paper yesterday, so I have hopes that people will come!), Gilmore Girls and Survivor are premiering, I’ve got a dentist appointment, there’s yardwork that needs to be done . . . just a lot of things happening all at once. I’ll try to have better thoughts tomorrow.

(I’m still looking for band recommendations, so be sure and give me some.)

I don’t think I’ll ever be a huge Coldplay fan, but I have to say that they have gone up in my estimation after last night’s show. For one thing, there are three songs of theirs that I know all the words to, and they played all three of them. So that was a good thing. Selfish, yes, but I appreciated it immensely. In addition, Chris Martin is funny and I like the way he skips around the stage. I did not get to see this myself from my view almost two miles away (okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea), but Mike says that he is also very pretty. But I’ll let Mike tell you about that. (In other words, go bug him to tell you about seeing Coldplay on two consecutive nights.) It was a good crowd who was into the show, and the show was full of memorable moments both on (”The Scientist”) and off (”the lost diamond ring incident”) the stage.

As Susan already explained, the night was full of fun: snacks galore, a crazy Target run, counting all kinds of things, free sodas, parking two miles away from the pavilion (not an exaggeration this time), and lots and lots of giggling. Poor Mike, surrounded by estrogen.

This morning we were in bed and I turned to Mike and said, “What’s my favorite band?” I mean, Alisa wasn’t sure the other day when she filled out that survey thing, and I realized . . . I don’t know either. I spent so many years with Caedmon’s as my favorite band, and even though they aren’t anymore, I haven’t found anything to replace them. As we talked about it this morning, we decided that there’s not a band that I have to have their CD as soon as it comes out. The closest thing would be Counting Crows, but that’s Mike’s favorite band, so it’s more like I know I’m going to hear their CD as soon as it comes out, and I am curious as to how much I am going to like it because I know I will have to listen to it for three solid years until they finally decide to put out a new CD. (Aside: Why can’t Mike have a favorite band that has more than four CDs? I am a little tired of those four CDs. Can someone speak to Adam Duritz about this? Get him to make some more music, please?) There are a few individual artists whose CDs are always must-haves for me: Patty Griffin and Miranda Stone, to name a couple. But no bands. I used to be quite a music girl, but something . . . lack of time or the sheer volume of music, maybe . . . has made me back off from that quite a bit.

This is where you come in. I need some recommendations for new bands to try. What are your favorite bands? What are your favorite albums and songs of those bands? I need a band to be passionate about again. Help me find one. Please.

Today I’m guest blogging for Michaela. Have a look-see.

Mike made me watch the clip of R. Kelly from the VMA awards on Friday night. A few weeks ago, I read Pamie’s entry discussing how to write your own R. Kelly song, but I didn’t really get it. Well, after watching R. Kelly act out all the parts of “Trapped in the Closet,” I finally get it. Mike and I have been walking around turning our lives into R. Kelly songs just like Pam described.

KARI: I’m eating a BAGEL. It’s a really good BAGEL. There’s cream cheese on my BAGEL.

MIKE: Repetition is very important when singing like R. Kelly.

KARI: Yes, now you try.

MIKE: I’m doing my HOMEWORK. I’m reading this BOOK. I’m getting so SMART.

KARI: Do you think R. Kelly reads?

MIKE: Probably not.

KARI: We’re out on a BOAT. And it is so SUNNY. I’m WATERSKIING and falling down and there’s water up my NOSE.

MIKE: Our songs need more danger. I mean, Chuck possibly gave Rufus AIDS and he could have given it to Mary or whatever her real name was and then maybe she even gave it to the narrator (whose woman is sleeping with another man). And the narrator had a gun and Chuck had a knife. Where’s the danger in our songs?

KARI: I’m driving my car down the HIGHWAY. At a really high SPEED. And I’m looking in the MIRROR and putting on LIPSTICK.

MIKE: Oooh, dangerous!

KARI: Thank you.

A - Alcohol. One of our friends makes his own beer, and I had one on Saturday that was Chocolate and Hazelnut flavored (I think that’s right . . . I don’t remember what he said and I didn’t think it tasted much like chocolate or hazlenut, but that’s not the point) and it was the first time I’d ever actually drunk a whole beer. (See also Kevin and Lisa, below)

B - Barbeque. Mike made a ton of barbeque yesterday like he did on July 4th, and it was delicious.

C - College student pizza party. There was a pizza party for college students on Sunday after church, so obviously Mike was invited. College students were told to bring their roommates, and as his roommate, I also got to attend. Hee.

D - Daniel and Marnie. These are some friends from church who were also at the lake with us (see, Kevin and Lisa and waterskiing, below).

E - Eight-thirty. The time that Mike fell asleep on Saturday night after being at the lake all day. (See also: Kevin and Lisa and Waterskiing.)

F - Fireworks. There were fireworks after the Grasshoppers game. (See Grasshoppers game.) And it wasn’t even birthday eve.

G - Grasshoppers game. We went on Monday night to the last game of the season. The Grasshoppers (I typed Bats and had to fix it) were down 5-0 but came back to win 7-6. Nice way to close out the season.

H - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’m leading a discussion on the book next week at the library, and I decided I needed to reread before then. I’m about 2/3 of the way through, and I have pages upon pages of notes.

I - Ice cream. It went pretty well with the peach cobbler I made last night (oh, did I spoil the surprise? See Peach Cobbler, below).

J - Jalapeno flavored chips. On the way to the lake (see also Kevin and Lisa and waterskiing), we stopped and got some water and some chips, and Mike got my favorite - jalapeno flavored. Yum. We had the bag finished by Sunday afternoon.

K - Kevin and Lisa. They took us out on their boat on Saturday. (See also sore and waterskiing, below.) They’re in our Sunday School class, but we hadn’t spent much time with them, so it was fun to get to know them a little better.

L - Losing record. Unfortunately, the Grasshoppers have a losing record this year. I was glad they won the last game of the season. (WAFFLES!)

M - Mike’s stage fright. The dirty little secret about going to a lake is the fact that everyone pees in it. Mike, though, had a little stage fright one time when he was trying to go. He was hanging on to the back of the boat and he got a little nervous about the propeller (even though the boat was off). “I saw Indiana Jones,” he said, “and I don’t want to be cut up.” [He would like me to point out that even though we kept accusing him of being afraid of being sucked under by the propellers, that he was just afraid of knocking one with his foot and getting cut.]

N - New waffle song. Oh, how I love to yell WAFFLES at the Grasshoppers games. Yesterday was the first time we’d been there since July 4th, and they now have a SONG. About WAFFLES. I was so excited that I was hopping up and down in my seat. Unfortunately, the Waffle House strikeout victim struck out the very first time he was up at bat, so I only got to hear the song once. Did that keep me from yelling WAFFLES! every time he was at bat? No it did not.

O - Obsessed with Cameron Kent. At the Grasshoppers game last night, I was fairly sure that we were sitting a few rows behind one of the local news anchors and his family. Mike, however, did not believe that was the case. The evening turned into me saying things like, “Cameron Kent is a family man! He loves baseball and apple pie!” and Mike trying to get me to shut up. I also dared him to go ask “Cameron Kent” for his autograph and he said, “How about you dare me to do something I am actually going to do, like filling this water bottle up? I am not going to ask that man - who is not Cameron Kent - for his autograph.” I couldn’t stop watching “Cameron Kent” play with his kids and enjoy the game. I am not the only one who was looking at him, so I am pretty sure that it really was him. No matter what Mike says.

P - Peach cobbler. Yeah, I tried again. And it turned out pretty well! I would do some things differently the next time, but at least I got the recipe to work.

Q - Questions. We played Book Lover’s Trivial Pursuit on Friday night while we were eating dinner. Well, okay, we didn’t play it, but we did ask questions. It was a lot of fun to finally get Mike to agree to play with me. It was really fun when we would answer questions at the same time.

R - Reading. I got lots of reading done this weekend. Marnie lent me Savannah Blues, which was fun, and I finished The Writing on the Wall which was sad but ended well, and I’m about 2/3 of the way through my Harry Potter reread.

S - Sore. See, waterskiing, below. It killed my shoulders. It hurt to move. I tried to get Mike to cut my arms off because of the pain. He declined.

T - Trim. Actually, it was more than just a trim. Mike’s hair had gotten incredibly long, but he finally had me cut it for him on Sunday afternoon. He stood in the doorway with the black box that holds the clippers and the scissors, and I looked at him and said, “Are you sure?” His hair looks very nice now.

U - UV rays. I didn’t get burned on Saturday, except that my nose was a little pink.

V - Virginia Tech. Mike has decided that we are going to watch college football this year, and as a lot of our church friends (read: Daniel and Marnie and Kevin and Lisa) are Tech fans, he thinks we should pull for Virginia Tech. Which is fine with me, but I realized that I have only ever seen one college football game in my entire life, and I just don’t have a lot of interest. As evidenced by the fact that, on Sunday, he said, “Our team is playing today!” and I was like, “The Panthers are playing today?” Oh, well.

W - Waterskiing. I had never been waterskiing before, and I wasn’t all that successful, but at least I tried. I was getting a little better, but I got so tired and couldn’t really keep attempting, plus I kept swallowing a lot of lake water.

X - Xavier Arroyo. He plays for the Grasshoppers. That’s the best I can do. (Hey, I was going to say Xylophone. But no one played the xylophone this weekend. Which is too bad, because any weekend would be improved with xylophone playing.)

Y - “Yellow.” We’re going to see Coldplay next weekend, and I dreamed that we saw them and i went to the bathroom and they played Yellow while I was gone, which is one of the only songs I know, and I was crazy mad. hehe.

Z - Well, zzzzz usually indicates sleep. It was a very restful and fun weekend. I hope you weren’t bored to sleep by reading about it.

It’s been a week of strong emotion: watching the hurricane coverage and aftermath on television . . . actually, that’s not true. I haven’t watched it much at all. I’ve been listening to the radio and reading the news online for most of what I know. Sometimes Mike has watched it and summed up for me, but I find it’s best not to let myself sit in front of the television.

On Sunday I told Mike that, as we are approaching September 11 (can you believe it’s been four years?), I still get surprisingly sad. I mean, nothing happened to me or anyone I know. But I think it’s hard to remember the kind of evil that people are capable of, what they can do to each other. And I think we’ve seen more of that in the coverage this week: the looting, the violence, the rape. It’s a terrible situation, to put it mildly. We’ve also suffered some panic in this area about the availability and price of gas, though it seems those concerns have quieted somewhat today. I am no longer concerned that I might not be able to make it to work after next week.

But, despite those stresses, the one thing that I would really want to remember about this week wasn’t related to the hurricane. I’ve been trying to exercise more lately, and Wednesday evening my iPod and I went walking around 8:30. I decided that Sam Phillips was appropriate walking music, and I made my way through the neighborhood listening to her voice, looking up at the stars. It was a peaceful time - I had been disappointed that Mike couldn’t walk with me, but I enjoyed just being by myself, focusing on the music and the quiet of the neighborhood. I could have been reading, I suppose, but I’ve been reading so much lately and these cool evenings aren’t going to last forever. Most of my neighbors watch television with their blinds open, I learned, and I thought about taking a poll to see what they were watching, to see what the most popular shows are in my neighborhood. Without looking too obvious, I tried to figure out what they were watching, but I never could get a good glimpse of the screen. Not like on Superbowl Sunday when you drive through a neighborhood and everyone’s got the big screen hooked up and the blinds open so you can see how much cooler their parties are than yours will be. Maybe it’s easier to see in the windows from a car. I realized later that I only have basic cable, and there are millions of channels that people could be watching, and I probably wouldn’t have recognized the shows anyway. It was nice to be outside, waving to my neighbors, breathing the air, being thankful for a place to live and be safe. There was a moment where I was walking down a slight incline (we won’t call it a hill) and the guitars were playing in my ear and I thought, “I’d like to remember this.” I can give you all the little details about it: my ratty tennis shoes that I’ve had for seven or eight years, the ponytail I had my hair in, the cool temperature, which song was playing, but I can’t convey the sense of peace that I felt. I thought about my friend Scott and I prayed for his safety and sanity, and I waved at the other walkers and their dogs, and I headed home to drink the coldest water I could find.

The new Harry Potter Legos for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire are out.

They would look really nice next to my Hogwarts Castle.

(Yes, I know it says ages 8-12. What’s your point?)

(And now that I look at it, my Hogwarts looks different than that one. How strange.)