bird by bird

A good friend of mine, Wade Addison, is turning 25 next month and instead of having a birthday party or accepting gifts, he started a fundraising goal to make $25,000 in 25 days (subsequently making us all look like big assholes on our birthdays... I kid!). The money is going toward The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization created to stop suicide amongst gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth, and Wade's project is called 25forTrevor (25forTrevor.com). He, along with another good friend (and photographer/videographer) Taylor Ballantyne, made this amazing video to support the cause! I still cringe at all my speaking parts (and the unfortunate state of my bangs), but  it's worth taking a look at. Feel free to share, tweet, re-post, or donate.  Just no making fun of my bangs, please. 

Sometimes I feel a little ridiculous that I'm a 27-year-old babysitter. Many of my 27-year-old friends in the Midwest HIRE babysitters on Saturday nights, and I still AM one! But then I remember where they are and where I am. And I also remember that I make $20 an hour babysitting, and I usually still go out afterward... so, then I don't feel so pathetic. The money is great, but the truth is (and don't tell anyone), I really like babysitting because it makes me feel like I'm a part of a family; it reminds me of home. It's hard to explain, but since moving to the city, I find something so comforting about being in a home, a real home with carpet and a landline and marks on a wall showing how much the kids have all grown in the last 9 years. Homes that are decorated for holidays with drawings on the fridge and concerts, games, and playdates marked on the family calendar. It helps that a lot of the families I babysit for also make me feel like a member of their famil...

   

Things by Lisel Mueller What happened is, we grew lonely living among the things, so we gave the clock a face, the chair a back, the table four stout legs which will never suffer fatigue. We fitted our shoes with tongues as smooth as our own and hung tongues inside bells so we could listen to their emotional language, and because we loved graceful profiles the pitcher received a lip, the bottle a long, slender neck. Even what was beyond us was recast in our image; we gave the country a heart, the storm an eye, the cave a mouth so we could pass into safety.

A bird ballet from Neels CASTILLON on Vimeo .

This is from a blog post from a massage therapist in Portland I stumbled upon a few weeks ago and remembered today. I think it's such a real, raw, authentic look at the human body and a refreshing appreciation for the fact that we are all flawed. Or actually, maybe not flawed at all. " Women have cellulite, men have silly buttocks. I’ve been a massage therapist for many years, now. I know what people look like. People have been undressing for me for a long time. I know what you look like: a glance at you, and I can picture pretty well what you’d look like on my table.  Let’s start here with what nobody looks like: nobody looks like the people in magazines or movies. Not even models. Nobody. Lean people have a kind of rawboned, unfinished look about them that is very appealing. But they don’t have plump round breasts and plump round asses. You have plump round breasts and a plump round ass, you have a plump round belly and plump round thighs as well. That’s how it ...

Last night I babysit an 8-year-old girl with pink glasses and mermaid hair. We held hands as we walked uptown to pick up a pizza for dinner, and I asked her what she was going to be for Halloween. "A police girl," she said, "with magic handcuffs. So I can arrest my daddy." "What will you arrest him for?" I asked. "What's the crime?" "For being the best daddy in the world," she said. "And I'll handcuff him so he can never leave me." Then she added: "Until I'm a grown up; then I'll set him free." And that was that. There we were: two daddy's girls walking on Broadway, one with magical handcuffs and the other whose daddy had been set free.

Seriously, I do the same thing with my neck when listening on my walk to work in the AM. That beat is so rad.

When my South Dakota life and my big city life intersect, I feel more like a whole person. I'm a person whose past, present, and future aren't entirely different novels, but instead chapters of one story with reoccurring characters and relationships. This weekend I felt this way when five college friends came to town to see the city and, in between their sight-seeing and city-touring, little 'ol me. I got to be a version of myself that I hadn't seen in a while. She's fun. I missed her.  Their visit included a lot of what my every day life here involves: spending too much money on food and spending too much time waiting for the subway. But we also got to spend time together, and that's something I don't get every day. On Saturday we visited the 9/11 Memorial, and then we toured the downtown parks: Riverside, Battery, Washington Square. I revealed the great irony that all my favorite places in New York City are the places that remind me most of South Dakot...

Friday Night Gallery Opening I'm legitimately proud of this.  Girl after my own heart

Some days are good days. You wake up two minutes before your alarm goes off, and pop out of bed knowing exactly what you'll wear that day. Someone brings bagels into the office. You get praised for your work. You and your boss laugh behind a computer monitor until your sides hurt, and your trains all come on time on your way home. You find a piece of forgotten dark chocolate in the back of your cupboard after dinner. You get a letter in the mail--a real letter, and while grocery shopping, you notice that heirloom tomatoes are on sale. You crawl into freshly washed sheets at the end of the day and fall asleep smiling, thinking, "I am so lucky." And then there are days when all of those same things happen, but you don't notice because you're too busy concentrating on one little bad thing, and you miss out on all the good things. You focus on that email that no one replied to or that favor that no one thanked you for, and you don't realize all the sweet little ...

This is why I'm never cutting my hair.