I recently started reading a book called No one belongs here more than you. It’s a collection of essays and short stories by Miranda July, whom I had never heard of before but who I’m starting to think might be my alter ego – the version of me that chose grad school instead of music, writing instead of performing. Not every story is dead on what I would have chosen to write about or say in those situations, of course, but there’s this underlying pathos, this feeling that she is constantly trying to see the world from an optimistic and witty point of view but everything she has ever experienced in her life is telling her that it’s not possible to go on that way.

It wasn’t until I read the brief essay “This Person” that I grasped this about our connection, and was finally able to voice it accurately. It is just under 4 pages long, and I am sincerely tempted to spend the next half hour typing the whole thing in so that you can all read it and appreciate exactly why I’ve fallen in love with this author, much like my obsession with Jeanette Winterson that began in college and continues to this day.

For now, though, a few of the lines that caught me the most:

“…a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that.”

“…but it would be so like this person to become depressed on the happiest day ever, and so this person bucks up and joins the crowd.”

I know these lines on their own don’t have the desired effect, so I highly recommend picking up the book – at least in a library – and reading the whole essay. Buy it, though, if you can, because there’s more. I found these in the first story:

“Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.”

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky; that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing.”

P.S. Next time you’re having a shit day – the kind when you just can’t imagine yourself feeling anything but sad or angry or, worse, empty, for the rest of your life – buy a box of berry-flavored Mike & Ike’s and eat a few handfuls of them. Even if you don’t like Mike & Ike’s. Or go get a blue slushie.

Because it is impossible not to smile, even if only for a millisecond, when you realize that your cheeks are stained with mascara and your eyes are unrecognizably puffy, but your tongue is the bright festive blue it used to be when you were little and carnivals and lollipops were the highlight of your week. Back when you didn’t even wear mascara or know that crying made your eyelids and cheeks puffy and cemented your contacts to your irises. Back when it was easier.

August is supposed to be the month when I make up for so much lost time in June and July. The “lost time” was mostly lost to procrastination, frequently in the form of my Xbox 360 (I can’t help it that Guitar Hero released an Aerosmith version of the game, I was helpless in the light of the computer-generated Steven Tyler).

So, I entered this week with optimism, a daily schedule, and every intention of doing certain things every single day (walk Evey, work out, spend 6-8 hours working, etc). I also planned to finish unpacking, get the cable and internet installed, and make this place feel like home.

It is now Saturday night, and we have internet. And I walked Evey today. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Aside from the various distractions that often come with anyone’s day, here are a few of the random issues that have either sidetracked or completely dislodged me from attaining my goals:

• Wednesday night, I stayed up all night to build the new closet organizer, along with some smaller furniture I’d picked up that day. After the hammering and drilling was finished, I took the empty boxes and other trash out to the dumpster – or, tried to. Our apartment complex has two dumpsters, one on either side of the U-shaped building. Unable to find a route to the closer one, I hauled the heavy load of trash all the way through the back alleyways inside the building to the farther one, in a narrow fenced-in alley against the outside of the building, and heaved the trash in. I then discovered that the door I’d come out of had shut behind me, and has no doorknob or other method of opening it from the outside. Crap. So I headed for the gate just past the dumpster, which leads out onto the sidewalk and, thus, safely to the front gate. Except you can’t open this gate from the inside (or the outside – no key works in there). After 5 minutes of futility trying to open both the gate and the door, I chucked my shoes and keys over the 6-foot high fence and climbed it, barefoot, dropping into the neighbors’ lawn. At 4am. Thankfully no one called the cops on me.
• On Friday, ComCast guy showed up 10 minutes earlier than the 3-hour window of time I was supposed to allow. Thinking we’d get all set up in a hurry and I could go rollerblading, I let him in and showed him what he needed inside the apartment. However, to get to the cable box for the building, the landlady had to guide us – out the front gate, past 5 other buildings down the block, around the corner, to the PotBelly’s behind our building where there is an alley for their dumpsters and deliveries. This is not the route we get, though, as the actual path to the back of our building involves squeezing between the alley’s fencing and a huge overgrown strip of shrubbery that reaches at least 10 feet into the air and almost entirely obscures what may, at one time, have been a foot-wide path about 50 feet long. ComCast guy looked at me like I was insane, but dubiously disappeared into the jungle behind PotBelly’s, coming back 5 minutes later to tell me that he cannot reach the boxes and we have to go get his ladder. Back around the block to my building, he unhooked the ladder from his truck, then back around the block to the impossible path. Where I then found myself hunched over, shoving leaves and sharp branches and, very possibly, poison ivy out of the way with my bare arms and my face as I helped him shove the ladder down the “path.” We finally emerged in a small clearing at the back of my building, where, sure enough, two large cable boxes are attached about 15 feet up on the brick wall. He did his thing, we braved the jungle once more, and voila! Two hours late, we have internet. (Yes, it was worth it – no, we’re never changing our service, because I’m not going back there.)
• But best of all (using the most sarcastic form of “best” I can possibly invoke) was last night at the Gaelic Storm concert. I love a lot of Gaelic Storm’s music and have seen them once before; you’ve actually seen the two lead singers – Pat Murphy and Stephen Twigger were part of the steerage band in Titanic. You know, this scene. Anyway, I was out with a group of friends watching them perform at a venue on the south side, having a great time, singing along to “Johnny Tar” and drinking a Smithwicks or two. A little less than halfway through the show, some sort of goofing around ensued in my row, and I twisted my body in laughter. This shouldn’t be anything notable – except that my cell phone was in my lap. About 10 seconds later, it hit me that my phone was no longer in its precarious place, and I looked down…and saw my BlackBerry Pearl, leather case and all, ass-end poking up out of my beer. It was completely soaked. It is now fried.

So…if you’ve been trying to call me, don’t bother ’til next week when I will get yet another replacement phone from dear Verizon. For now, I’m just thanking whatever god is out there for giving me internet just before my phone left me. Sad but true, I don’t think I could handle being completely out of touch with the world unless I planned for it – I’d probably have a nervous breakdown.

It took much, much longer than anticipated, but we are finally living in our new apartment in Hyde Park!  The packing took over a week longer than I’d planned because the A/C in our old place was out and we were waking up at 7:30am to 85 degree heat on a daily basis.  Not conducive to packing boxes, or cleaning, or doing anything really.

But I’m sitting at the Borders near the new place, Evey is snuggled safely in bed after sleeping a straight 12 hours (that dog is so lazy, I am constantly amazed), and I am trying to relaunch my daily routine.  Be productive!  Yes!

This from the girl who just rolled out of bed at 11:30am.

I have an excuse, though.  I was up all night installing a closet organizer I bought at Target.  I’m normally more of an IKEA girl, but a trip to IKEA is a full day and I only had a few hours yesterday, so I picked up a replacement for the crappy wire thing that collapsed on Sunday (spilling all my dresses, dress shirts, tank tops, and the boy’s button-downs and sweaters crashing into crumpled piles on the floor).  And then spent 4 hours last night / this morning building it.

Do you know how hard it is to drill holes in a wall and pound plastic screw-holders into the holes <em>quietly</em>?  I do not advise building furniture in an apartment at 3am.

But it’s done.

I’ll be updating more regularly again now, catching up on emails, and booking more shows again.  Stay tuned!