Shake it, shake it, Cali.

So after my second trip to California in as many months, I have this verdict: the Bay Area is deceptively attractive in the fall. When you can see every building in San Francisco sharp against the horizon, and trees are changing to orange and yellow, and it's in the mid-60s with a pin-prick sky, you can't help but think: I want to live here.

Of course it's not practical. Or affordable. I would have to trade my little piece of heaven in Austin for some rented hovel in the Mission District for twice the price, where I would have to nudge bums and used needles out of the way to get in the front door. And then the whole thing would collapse in the Big One.

But no water bottles and no plastic bags, and health insurance for all city residents!

Strangely enough, I didn't even go to San Francisco while I was there. That's a lot of longing for not a lot of visiting. Instead: me, six friends from college, and three of their children went to my parents' cabin in Twain Harte, about an hour north of Yosemite. Beautiful, fun, haunted: all the things you want out of a vacation cabin.

Did I get haunted?

Yeah, I think I did. But please take this with a grain of salt, since reality can roll up and slide sideways when you really want something to happen. In fact, I was so riled up for something to go bump in the night that I eventually got too scared to get up in the dark and go to the bathroom. But for the record, I will say this: I think something touched the side of my shirt while I was sleeping the first night.

Also, the second night, I might have been sassing a ghost when I apparently said, very calmly, in my sleep, "I don't think so. Nice try, though."

On the way home yesterday, on my flight from Oakland to Los Angeles to El Paso to Austin (I like to stop at as many airports in the western U.S. as possible, apparently), we flew over several of the fires burning in Southern California. And even though the Santa Ana winds were well over 60 mph and were whipping the fires forward, from the air the plumes of smoke looked still, like someone had captured them on film and posted them in the airplane window. A terrible beauty.

When the sky ain't the only thing falling.

I took my Little Sis out for pizza tonight. Originally we were going to have a picnic at the park, but then it rained in the morning and got steamy in the afternoon, so that no longer felt like a fun outing. Plan B = pizza, which I believe is a universal truth. It should always be Plan B; it always works.

Anyway, at the pizza joint I went to get a drink refill and to get some crackers for my LS. Walking back to the table, I tripped on the step. I stumbled forward and went down hard on one knee, but did not fall all the way to the floor and did not spill a drop of my drink. It was a loud fall, though. But none of that matters, because falling in public is A) deeply funny when it happens to someone else, and B) deeply embarrassing when it happens to you. My LS giggled a little, and I tried to play it off like it was no big deal (kinda like what I did when I slid head-first into someone's cube at work 2 months ago).

Me: At least I didn't spill my drink!
LS: [shaking her head] I thought you were going to fall and crack your head.

Like the person whose cube I tripped and fell into, LS reacted like I was constantly doing these things for attention and that she wished I would just cool it for a minute. I do love physical comedy, so.

My knee is killing me. Maybe it's time to hang of the vaudeville and move to dramatic monologues.

Sometimes the universe hugs you.

And sometimes it's just a small child in the shoe aisle at Ross.

I went to Ross after work this afternoon, because dates = new clothes. These types of store are ones in which you must be committed to combing through. You've got to be ready to go item by item, step over the millions of shoes on the floor, avoid unsupervised children careening around the store with shopping carts. It's not an every day place; you've got to be up to it. I was. I went item by item, gathered some selections, and received my dressing-room number to try them on.

While I was in the dressing room, approximately 1 million children showed up. And upon discovering that there was a slight echo, began singing. I like this about children, their willingness to sing wherever, whenever. What I don't like are unattended children, singing or no. Especially those who peak their dirty little heads under the dressing room wall. The first time the little girl did it, I said, "No, no," and she tucked her head back under the stall like a turtle. No sooner did I have one leg in a pair of pants and she's peaking again. I gestured with my foot for her to scoot, but she didn't get it. "No, no, go away," I told her. She backed up. Her brothers never ceased in their singing.

So I made my way toward the shoes, wading through the 20% of the store's merchandise that is always on the floor. I passed a kid in the aisle, about 6 years old, shopping with his mom. He looked at me like he knew me, like he hadn't seen me in ages, and then extended his arms. I backed up as if unfamiliar with the international sign for Gimme a Hug. He advanced and hugged me around the middle.

I stood there with my arms raised above my head, in case his mother turned around and saw him hugging a strange woman. I didn't want her to think she needed to contact Chris Matthews or anything.

It was odd. And then I laughed, bought some jeans and a polka dot top, and left.

Born to run.

Note: gray jeans might not be the Next Big Thing. Gray jeans, black top: it's like I accidentally dressed myself like Bruce Springsteen this morning. All that's missing is a bandanna tied around my leg and a nostalgic melancholy for the American working man.

Home sweet home.

Wednesday is my two-year anniversary of being an homeowner. It's the single scariest decision I've ever made--scarier than moving to Memphis or to Austin, scarier than when I spent two weeks staying with a Spanish-speaking family in Costa Rica when I was 17, scarier than that time those geese trapped me on the Town Lake trail and I couldn't get by.

I looked for 2 months and toured over a dozen houses with my realtor, who was one of my dad's old frat brothers from San Diego State. Looked only south, past Slaughter Lane and far down on Brodie. And one stray place up north, but still within the metro Austin square: east of MoPac, south of 183, west of I-35, north of 71. And that was the one. I knew it the moment I clamped eyes on it. And the master bedroom closet sealed the deal.

What did I do the night I finally closed, the day I got the keys to my very own 960 square feet? I went on a bad date with a guy who was too impatient to wait 20 minutes to be seated for dinner and made us eat the bar. That guy sucked and I knew it; it was the only time on a date I've seriously considered making for the bathroom and slipping out the door. I kept hefting my keys the whole night, wishing I were alone in unit 101 instead.

Anyway.

I still remember what if felt like to open the door and see the condo as mine for the first time. Of course, I expected the keys not to work--like there would have been a mistake or maybe my loan app had been denied after all or I had forgotten to sign something. None of that: it opened like I owned the place. I did. And I saw every water stain, every crack, every scratch on the countertops. I half expected to immediately step on a rug that was covering a hole in the floor and to sink to my shoulders, trapped, like in Money Pit. It seemed huge: the responsibility, the commitment, the upkeep. I felt more tethered to a place than I'd ever felt in my life, after 7 moves before high school, 3 apartments in college, 2 in grad school. It meant I was staying in Austin for a while. Which was terrifying and suffocating and liberating and stabilizing all at once.

I painted all the walls myself. The kitchen sea-grass green, the bathroom yellowy taupe, the office a soft spring green. The master bedroom silver sage from Restoration Hardware, with a chocolate brown accent wall (the best room in the house). I retiled the kitchen and bathroom floors (peel and stick, but still; it's quite a chore). Painted the kitchen cabinets white. New shower head, new toilet, new kitchen fixture (ok, my dad did all these for me).

Also: a leaking laundry fixture, a rat that died in the wall, leaking flashing around chimney (three times), a horrible plastic bathtub that creaks like your foot is about to go through it with every step. Bent and broken blinds--which is my pet peeve--on three windows.

Nevertheless.

I love this place. It feels like home: some place completely mine, completely my taste, completely at the mercy of my design whims. And now, two years in, I won't have to pay capital gains tax if I ever sell.

Which I can't imagine.

Only fools rush in.

Today is the 30th anniversary of Elvis's death, and I've been to Graceland six times.

Not the the two are related.

When you live in Memphis and someone comes to visit you, it seems remiss not to take them down Elvis Presley Blvd., past the car lots and the Heartbreak Hotels, past the prostitutes and the loafers, to Graceland. It is the terminus of every half-cocked high school road trip, the chorus of a Paul Simon song, and verse two of that Marc Cohen song about Memphis. It's quintessential Americana, and a physical example of too much and not enough.

That being said, it's one of the most underwhelming places I've ever been. Six times.

The house itself would not be out of place in a typical middle-class neighborhood in the city you live in. The inside is garish, but only because its saturated in 1970s. Mostly you think to yourself: this is it? The Jungle Room is something your suspect uncle Roy would convert his game room into to lure chicks. (And "chicks" is totally the right word.) Complete with the 4-foot stuffed animal propped on the chair.

It wouldn't even make it on an episode of Cribs. Though it does have a graveyard and an eternal flame. But heck, even my grandpa has an eternal flame (seriously; it's at his church in Valley Center, Ca.).

The whole time you're there, marvelling at the fresh flowers on the grave--because that means someone just brought them--and observing the reverent quiet, you wonder which is the sadder: young Elvis, naive and full of promise, or old Elvis, trying like hell to get it all back? Because you can't look at young Elvis without knowing how it all ends.

The whole thing is a cautionary tale, a monument to that most American of sentiments: schadenfreude.


Blue Hawaii is a good movie, though.

¡Que bien!

I'm bringing back the mojito as my summer drink of choice, and I don't care that it takes 20 damn minutes to make one.

The key is not to over-muddle.

The haunting of Twain Hart Cabin.

I have a slight obsession with ghosts.

I don't really ever want to run into one or have one haunt me or anything. But I am fascinated by the idea of them.

For the record: I do believe in ghosts but I don't believe in aliens.

My parents have a house they call a "cabin" in Twain Hart, about an hour north of Yosemite. The cabin is haunted. Which I find both thrilling and terrifying.

One of the first times I ever went there, I was talking to my mom as she stood on the stairs. In a pause between words, there was a loud whisper. What was that? we both asked.

I'd like to say I got goosebumps or that the air went cold, but it didn't. A million rational ways to explain it all? Probably. It was the middle of the day, and the idea that a real-life (ahem) ghost lived in the cabin was just too much to hope for. You understand there's a certain romance in this.

My mom goes up to the cabin alone quite often, and since then she's had several odd experiences, all auditory, all difficult to explain. Also, once a bat got in the house, but that's not ghostly. Just a nice detail.

My mom does not tell anyone about these things and has forbidden me from mentioning them to my younger siblings. She doesn't want to ruin the cabin for them or scare them out of going there. Apparently there's no worry about ruining the cabin for me.

Two weeks ago my mom was at the cabin with her sister. The morning after the first night, my aunt asked if there were ghosts in the cabin. My mom said nothing. My aunt described hearing whispering/murmuring, but tried to up sell it by comparing it to the sound of "angels' wings."

This week my mom was there alone. She heard the whispering again.

Just angels' wings, I'm sure.

Take this broken wing and learn to fly again

I think I broke my elbow this morning. Is that even possible, since it's a joint and not an actual bone? I remember there's a part in The Lovely Bones that bothered me so much because it said the narrator's dog came trotting back from a nearby field with an elbow in its mouth (the narrator is a murdered teenage girl telling her story from heaven--that's not a spoiler, it tells you that much on the back of the book). How is that even possible?

Anyway.

I banged my funny bone hard on the towel rack this morning and have not been able to fully bend or extend my left arm since. Maybe I fractured my radius and/or ulna. Or maybe I'm a hypochondriac looking for attention. Sometimes it's hard to tell with me.

Good-bye, wig, good-bye!

My hair is currently the longest it's been since my high school senior picture. Shoulder-length, nothing to write home about. But it feels like I could braid it and throw it over the balcony for some handsome young fellow to climb up. Or that I could be posing nude on a half-shell and be decently covered, like Botticelli's "Birth of Venus."

I can't stand it this long. And yet I get suckered to keep it like this because it can go in a ponytail. And as my sister Kristin has long told me, men like women with long hair (and also with blond hair, so I am at a double disadvantage when I cut it short).

I never feel like I look my best with longish hair. It's thick and weirdly curly in some places and basically feels like a heavy wet towel on my head. It has no style.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think I want "the Posh" cut (it actually kinda embarrasses me to even admit that). Maybe not that short, but sassy and shaped and with a definite style. Yet this may be one more step in a long history of focilular missteps. If it please the court:

Exhibit A: During a spring-break mission trip to Mexico my senior year of high school, I decided I simply could not wait one more moment to have my hair like Winona Ryder's in Reality Bites. (Un)luckily, I had a magazine with an ad for the movie (it was 1994) as an example, and told the first person I saw to just do her best with a pair of kitchen scissors. Without a mirror. And no haircutting experience. I thought Winona's hair could be achieved by a messy, non-methodical cut...of course, I know better now how much artistry and effort slacker bed-head hair takes. The cut: a bit of a disaster.

Exhibit B: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I decided to go for that same cut my freshman year of college, and stopped the first girl on my dorm floor who looked competent to hold scissors. Misjudged that one. Again. Should have known where this was headed. Tears, mostly. I should have known it was a mistake when she told me to flip my head upside down and she just started hacking away. The cut: a bit of a disaster.

Exhibit C: You will never know how short is too short until you go there. Just before Joelle's wedding and my move to Memphis, I got a way-too-short cut from my trusted stylist (because by then I had learned that you cannot put a price on good hair). It felt like she had given me a men's cut: tight on the sides, kinda longer and poofy on the top. I came home in a panic and decided the best step would be to even out the length myself. I literally had the scissors in my hand, poised to take a chunk out of the front of my hair when Joelle intervened. We still talk about this as the day she saved my life. The cut: a bit of a disaster. And sooo short.

Exhibit D: Various times when I have decided what I need to freshen my look is a full set of bangs...which are never straight and always the wrong decision. No one who cuts bangs is ever happy with them.

But it's not been all bad. I have had some great color and style along the way, most notably the winter of 2002-03, when Ashley told me, "I don't care how much it costs to keep what you have going now, but you should do it." I should have listened. Now I'm stuck with hair that not even Britney Spears would wear on her head, and she wears some broke-ass wigs.

Under it all, remember this: it always grows back.

Kitten heels + cuffed pants = bad idea.

If you wear heeled shoes with cuffed pants, you will trip. You will catch your heel in the cuff and fall forward in slow-motion, as if you're sliding into home base. Except home base is someone's cubicle in the desktop publishing department. And you'll try to play it off with a a friendly "Hi!" Like this is the kind of entrance you make all the time. But instead of laughing with you, she'll look at you like you're Urkel, and she'll ask you in a voice that parents use with kids who are constantly getting into mischief if you are OK. She won't laugh with you.

Redfaced, all you'll have in your defense is a skinned knee.

Welsh whore.

You know me, you know the story: my first name is the Romanized name for Wales, my last name means, well, "woman of ill repute." Thus, Welsh whore. Which has been quite the label to live up to, I'll tell you what. But it also means always having to convince cashiers and the like that yes, that's my actual name there on my checkcard. It's quite an elaborate hoax otherwise. Or possibly identity theft. Oh, okay, you got me! Here's my real card...and if you look over my shoulder, there's the camera! Gotcha!

Here's an exchange I had recently:

Me: [hands my checkcard]
Him: Woah! Lovelady! Is that, like, your real name?
Me: [slits own wrists over having to hear this question for the 9 billionth time] Yep.
Him: Lovelady! I want to party with your parents!

Which is weird, because when I talked to my mom tonight, she asked if next time she and my dad come to Austin, was there someone possibly high, possibly working in the service industry, they could party with?

The kindness of strangers.

Whereas a dog never forgets a kindness, a cat never remembers them; instead, he will tip your glass of water into your bath and pretend it's a plugged-in hairdryer.

Whereas a dog will take up all the room in your bed, a cat will wait until you are vulnerably sleeping and then suddenly pounce on your face with all the fury of hell, fangs and claws first.

Sometimes I think I should get GM his own pet cat to bully. But mostly I am afraid they will form a rogue gang and straight-up murder me.

Someone: Will I ever get the life I thought I was going to get?
Someone else: No one gets the life they think they were going to get.

Ah-mend, not ahl-mend.

I suppose the main thing I've taken away from reading grammar books during the summer doldrums at work is that I am mispronouncing everything. My learned facade reveals a bumpkin at heart as soon as I open my mouth.

For example, I pronounce the "l" in "almond," which is wrong. I say CAR-i-be-inn instead of Carib-BE-in. I've said "nuk-u-lar" enough times to be the president already. I call window treatments "drapes" sometimes instead of "curtains," which, according to the articles cited in Garner's Modern American Usage, is indicative of someone using overly formal words to sound upper class when she's not. Huh.

I am fascinated by language. It's a living, breathing thing that's always changing, and it's interesting to learn how people approach it as a science and an art. Like, at what point do you legitimize how people actually speak and use words, and at what point do you correct them and insist they stick to the rules? (Case in point: starting that sentence with "like": is it just me trying to write like I talk--like a Valley Girl, apparently--or should I always strive for proper usage?)

Yeah, it's 10:30 on a Friday night and I'm thinking about language. Jealous? I thought so.

The best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

Got into a debate at work today over whether the gambler in Kenny Rogers's song dies at the end. Of course he does; otherwise, the song has no poignancy. The gambler imparts his life wisdom and then merely goes to sleep? No. Dies in his sleep, leaving him time enough to count his money now that the metaphorical dealin' is done? I believe so.

The lyrics speak for themselves:

And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

So when he'd finished speakin', he turned back towards the window,
Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.
And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.
But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

Kenny: back me up. I love your chicken.