Holy Mother of Pearl – do you have any idea how happy all of your delurking made me? It was like the clouds opened up and God showered me with Sweet Tarts ALL DAY LONG! Reading your messages made me grin out loud, if there is such a thing – and I know there is, since I did it. I learned of people that I had no idea existed, and heard from people that I knew existed but had no idea were frequent readers.

Thank you for reading this little blog. No, I’m serious. Thank you. Your sweet words throughout the years have been life to my soul, and your companionship, even just through this crazy internet contraption, has been such an encouragement. Plus – so many of you have great blogs yourself! I’m subscribing to all sorts of new ones after your delurking yesterday.

I made cookies last night, and I came up with a brilliant idea. You know how Crisco has started packaging their shortening in little blocks wrapped in paper, for easy measuring? Gone are the days of trying to level 1 cup of Crisco in a measuring cup, which only ever winds up giving you a lardy hand.

(Sidenote:
If I ever form a band, maybe we’ll call ourselves Lardy Hand?

The Lardy Hand Band?

No?)

So here’s my idea: what Crisco has done with shortening… someone needs to do that with peanut butter. Because it’s always the same dilemma. HOW is one supposed to gracefully and easily measure peanut butter without making a huge mess? I want my peanut butter in stick form!

You heard it here first.

Tonight, I am driving to Chattanooga to take part in a Special Edition Running Club. Tomorrow morning, we’ll run along the river, and then Josh’s mom Deb is making us breakfast. Free food has always been the way to my heart, and yes, I will drive 133 miles to get it.

The last time I was in Chattanooga was in September for a wedding. I drove down by myself, and stopped at the Wal-Mart to get a card to go with my gift. And walking out of the store, in front of God and rednecks and everyone, my wrap dress came unwrapped. Just fell open, right there in the parking lot. Let’s hope for better luck this time.

And finally, based on my life every single morning, something I would like to share.

Travel Mug - a little poem by Annie Parsons
Once
just once
I would like to discover
a travel mug that
does
not
leak

All over my lap
All over my life

Leaving behind
the evidence of
my addiction

and exposing me
as the sloven
I am.

Yesterday was a day when my panties were in a twist. Figuratively. And, come to think of it, literally.

I am once again AT THAT POINT. The point where the house is a disaster, the dishes have piled up for days, I sleep curled in the only corner of my bed that isn’t strewn with clothes and water bottles and books, and wake up after a 5-hour tooth-grinding slumber only to hear my neighbors engaging in… an “extracurricular activity”… and to find that I am out of clean underwear. But not completely out – just down to the ones I don’t like. The ones I keep around just in case I find myself AT THAT POINT. The ones that are uncomfortable, and leave me going about the tasks of the day with the screaming knowledge that I HATE MY UNDERWEAR RIGHT NOW.

Also, I went to work without realizing how low-cut my shirt was, and so I spent the entire day tugging it up, and feeling self-conscious, and altogether embarrassed.

The phone rang incessantly, and while in the past I have complained about the mind-numbingly quiet hours at work, I found myself feeling insulted and indignant that people are calling? SHEESH. This isn’t my JOB. (Yes, I do realize that it is, in fact, my job.) It gave me a newfound gratitude for the silence I typically spend my days cocooned in – even when the cocoon is more like a sealed Ziploc bag in which I am slowly suffocating.

My jaw hurt. My back hurt. My brain felt spiky and hung-over for no reason. My eyes were tired of the computer screen glare, my mind was tired of post-election Twittering, my feet were tired of high heels. And most of all, my heart was, and still is, devastated about Ben.*

The weight of it all came crashing in at lunchtime when I mindlessly wandered through Target only to spend $17.99 that I don’t have on a tiny tube of eye cream that I know won’t work. But at 26, I am looking in the mirror and seeing wrinkles and an age spot. AGE + SPOT. Now, there are two words you never want to see together. Like shoulder + pad, or skin + flap.

And, speaking of eye cream, I interrupt this blog to bring you the three biggest lies I have ever fallen for:
1) Hemorrhoid cream gets rid of puffy eyes,
2) Stop signs rimmed in white are optional, and
3) Vodka has no calories

Anyway, back to Target. I forked over the cash for the “anti-aging,” “wonder-working” concoction, and went on my merry way. Congratulations, Annie. You’ve just been had.

Today is a classic case of “second verse, same as the first,” with the exception that I am not taking a lunch break, peacing out at 4pm, and flying to San Diego for a wedding – in which I am both a bridesmaid AND the musical act. Except: I’m not packed, I have no idea how to fit this floor-length bridesmaid dress into my suitcase, I haven’t practiced the song, I know that I’m going to forget something imperative like my phone charger or my guitar capo or my underwear…

Oh wait. None left.

LOOK OUT, CALIFORNIA.

* Last night, my old church in Seattle held a prayer vigil for Ben Towne. And Greta wrote some (not surprisingly) beautiful and meaningful words about the service. Please continue to cradle the Townes in your prayers.

Yesterday, I was this close to writing about Twitter, and calling it “N is for NOBODY CARES.” But I figured that all of you Tweety Birds would be hurt. And when I’m honest, isn’t this blog just one big, festering, narcissistic Twit? Or whatever.

So instead of ranting about our culture’s obsession with broadcasting the minutia and detritus of our lives, I figured that I would just go ahead and continue broadcasting the minutia and detritus of MY life. But I’ll try to do it using words like “minutia” and “detritus.”

When my friend Aaron Chan started med school, a professor drew an iceberg on the board. “This is your brain,” he said. He began to add tiny penguins on top of the iceberg, saying, “These are the things that you know.” Eventually, the iceberg was so crowded with penguins that “at some point, inevitably, penguins start to fall off.”

Twitter is pushing my penguins off the ledge.

To be fair, it’s not just Twitter: Facebook, MySpace, blog updates, text messages, email, and all sorts of other technological “ways of knowing” are cramming and jostling their way onto my iceberg. I can’t keep up – but more than that, I don’t WANT to keep up. I honestly do not care where my 922 Facebook friends are at all times (brushing your teeth, in line at Starbucks, reading CNN.com, going to church, at a bookstore, grocery shopping, sitting at your desk, eating potato chips, what-have-you). It doesn’t mean that I don’t care ABOUT these people, that I don’t care about YOU – it’s just that for the first time, we humble laymen have the capability and the technology to mass-inform… and we, myself included, have gotten a bit slaphappy about it.

So. What to do? Give up the internet? Erase my online footprint? Boycott status updates? Feel more and more aggravated as my brain is cluttered by people’s Twittery Tweets, crowding out important information like birthdays and bible verses and when was the last time I changed my Brita water filter? I can’t hide from the internet – it’s unstoppable, like… like a train that… can’t be stopped.

Whoops. There went my simile penguin.

Please. For the love of flightless, aquatic birds. Let’s attempt to be more responsible, intelligent, and discerning with what we are unwittingly forcing upon each other’s icebergs. I’ll try if you will.

Dear Summer,
We regret to inform you that you are being fired, effective immediately. Technically, you should have been gone weeks ago – on the Autumnal Equinox, as universally agreed – but obviously, you had your Nashville constituents fooled. You hid your face for a week or so, only to reappear on the scene with a foul air and a hot head.

You have been most rude to your replacement, Lady Fall, pushing her aside and preventing her from carrying out her duties. She is a beautiful soul, ready and willing to perform her magical deeds, but it’s impossible to get anything done when you have commandeered her workstation. And let’s not forget the incident involving you using her scarf to attempt to strangle her. I know, you say that it was all in good fun – calling it “one last tryst with Mr. Sun-Kissed” – but she is threatening a lawsuit. You have overstayed your welcome. This leaves me no choice but to ax you.

Summer, this may come across as discourteous, but it must be said: everyone is sick of you and your obnoxious ways. For 4 ½ months, you have greeted us each morning with the unsightly image of your butt crack of dawn. You huff and puff your way through your days, bag of Doritos in hand, sweating on everyone you encounter. You have fostered skin cancer, body odor, and bad hair days. You have inspired bikini-clad women to dance to Kid Rock on boats and in the backs of pickup trucks. And as your latest egregious act, you have threatened that tomorrow you will crank up the thermostat to 86.

Well, guess what, Summer: you 86 us, we 86 you.

Signed,
Annie

I was in the dairy section of the grocery store last night when a crisis hit me like a rake to the face. Reaching for my usual quart of Dannon Light & Fit vanilla yogurt, I noticed three terrible words: “Great New Taste!”

What.

Why do they need to go changing my favorite yogurt? I don’t need it to have a “great new taste” – I loved the old taste. And! AND! What’s worse: it has increased from 80 calories per serving to 110 calories per serving. I DO NOT LIKE THIS. This is almost as bad as the day that they started packaging Tampax in bright orange wrappers – an absolute betrayal. How is one expected to be inconspicuous with something orange – the color of panic devices, like flares and Coast Guard buoys and the terrorist attack level “High”?

It’s not quite as bad as the day I found out that they no longer produce Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmer in “Coffee”. But still. Completely unjust.

I come from a long line of calorie counters – it’s in my genes. At various points in my life, I have been absolutely ruled by the regimented balancing act of caloric consumption/expulsion. Last summer, I achieved what should have been a dieter’s nirvana, reaching the lowest weight of my life and fitting into the tiniest pants I’ve ever owned; however, I still felt a panic and a desperate need for control. I still saw my pipe-cleaner arms to be flabby, my thighs to be trunk-like, and my flat stomach to be completely unworthy of a bathing suit.

I couldn’t relish the accomplishment of it all. I was too busy worrying about gaining an ounce.

Since then, I have considerably loosened my tight rein on calorie counting. While my mind feels a little bit freer, my body is also a little bit heavier. What’s a girl to do?

I want to live in freedom from the oppression of low self-esteem, terrible body image, calorie counting, exercise obsession, and general control freakage. I’m not there yet. But I want to be. And for me, I think that “freedom” is going to have to mean weighing a few pounds more than I know that I could weigh. It’s going to mean not beating myself up over my caloric failures of the day when I crawl into bed at night. It’s going to mean recognizing and living out a healthy balance of enjoying food, and being active, and getting enough sleep, and having a glass of wine if I want one, but not having too many.

It’s going to mean eating the extra 30 calories of yogurt. And it’s going to mean not flipping out about it.

If you believe that I have already covered the topic of the Nashville heat to satisfaction, that I have fulfilled my word quota on the subject, that I couldn’t possibly have more to say about living in the never-ending doldrums of sultry torment… THINK AGAIN.

There is no insulation in the walls of my home, and so the wimpy window air conditioner unit doesn’t make a difference. Last night was the hottest night so far, and my apartment would not cool down, no matter what. I have taken to freezing my Nalgene water bottle, and then sleeping with it in my bed at night. How resourceful – I’m a regular PRAIRIE WOMAN. It doesn’t really help, but it makes me feel like I’m doing something to combat the swelter.

A couple of weeks ago, I put on my fall clothes. I just put them on, and stood in front of the mirror, scarf and all. And then I peeled them off. I needed to remind myself that it won’t always be this way, and better days are coming, and there is hope. Incidentally, these are also the words that crisis counselors are trained to give suicidal individuals, but I digress.

Last night, I told Debbie that if I had known how miserable the summer was going to be, I never would have moved here. Maybe it’s good that I didn’t know, because I’m serious: I would not have come. I solemnly swore to her that this will be my only summer in Nashville, and that I’ll move away before June 1 next year. She told me that that’s what she said 11 years ago. I do not like those words.

I have been in an outrageously bad mood for a full 2 months, ever since my lunchtime walks around Centennial Park were terminated due to the sizzling air and scorching sun. Now, the only walking that I do is down 4 flights of stairs in the parking garage to cross over to my office building. Ever since it has gotten unbearably hot, do you want to know what the stairwell smells like? A carnival. Humid and dirty, stale popcorn and urine, old newspapers and staph infections. That is what I get to walk through on my way to work.

So Seattle, enjoy your day. No, I mean it: SOAK IT UP. Relish your 83 degrees of gorgeous bliss, with the mountains and the ocean and your patio happy hours. Think of me – whose next patio happy hour will likely be in November – in sheer misery, with no ability to think of a blog topic outside of the heat.

Recently, I strongly considered moving back to Seattle. I was presented with a really great opportunity – one that was incredibly tempting. A job, a chance to be with my old friends, a wide open road straight back to my Emerald City.

But I said no. I’m going to stick around Nashville, at least through the end of 2008. I just have to see. I don’t know what I’m hoping for or looking for or waiting for, but I just have to see what might present itself during this time. I’ve been loving the city more and more, and making friends, and settling into a routine – I can’t pack it all up and leave now.

Still, it was a really big deal for me to say no to Seattle. It was so enticing – I could almost smell the ocean. It would have been so easy to say yes – to pick up right where I left off, and re-enter my beautiful life of comfort and, in many ways, what I now see as luxury. But I chose Nashville.

And so as a result, you want to know what I chose?

Humidity so ubiquitous that the toilet paper separates on the roll. Heat so oppressively constant that I lie in bed at night thinking, “This must be what it feels like to die.” A steady coat of sweat, making makeup senseless. More cockroaches in the kitchen. A waning opportunity to spend any time outside, for fear of a heat stroke. An astronomical utility bill from running my mediocre AC window unit. Towels that never fully dry. Relentless sticky discomfort.

And I hear that this is just the beginning. So far, June has made me think, “I am so hot and cranky, I cannot go on.” But the locals tell me that July turns Nashville into an absolute sauna, and just when you think it cannot get any worse, August descends downright demonically.

Lord help me. Literally. GOD, SAVE ME FROM THIS HEAT.

But I chose this. Over salt water and bright blue sky and clear, glorious Seattle days, I chose to walk outside every morning straight into the hot, smelly breath of Satan. So I should stop complaining. I should.

But you know I won’t. It’s just not my style.

Growing up in small town western Colorado, country music was always playing. At the grocery store, in restaurants, in everyone’s cars – this music created the backdrop for my childhood. However, as is often the case, eventually the cool kids decided that country music wasn’t “cool,” and I followed suit. I assumed that in order to affiliate myself more closely with the cool kids rather than the hicks, I should listen to Green Day and Alanis Morissette (whose “Jagged Little Pill” album, let it be noted, remains one of my most formative musical experiences – I still love it*).

But when I was 13, through a variety of circumstances, I heard three songs that captured me and, although I didn’t see it at the time, literally changed my life. And they were all on country radio.

Brooks & Dunn’s “My Maria” was full of harmonies and awesome background parts, and was one of the most feel-good songs I had ever heard. Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine” exploded from the speakers, and was sassy and fun and different – a lively, cheeky, boot-stompin’ ride. And finally, Deana Carter’s “Strawberry Wine” tugged at my emotions like I had never experienced until then. Written by Matraca Berg, who turned out to be one of my favorite writers, the song is intensely autobiographical, and tells the story of one girl’s loss of innocence. It’s a song, but even more, it’s a story; I love that country music has retained the craft of story-telling.

These three songs opened up the door for me to learn the rich history of country music. “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “’Til I Can Make It On My Own”… Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette and George Jones… My spirit was fed by these songs, and they set me off on a path that has led me to where I am today: living in Nashville, attempting to write better songs, and just maybe, good songs. I want to write truthful music. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I crash and burn, writing things that are so banal and cheesy that I would never share them with anyone. But I keep trying, so inspired by the writers of good music.

Which is why Toby Keith’s latest song, “She’s A Hottie,” feels like a kick in the back of the knee-cap. Haven’t heard it? Hmmm, let me give you a sampling of some of the lyrics:

Hottie! She’s a hottie! Got a smokin’ little body!
String bikini and a barbed-wire tat,
She’s a rockin’ that cowboy hat!

Hey mister! Yeah, I kissed her!
Son, you oughta see her sister!

Toby Keith is huge. He’s HUGE. People love him. And I don’t get it.

It’s writing like this that helps me to understand when people tell me that they don’t like country music. OF COURSE you don’t like country music, when this is what’s represented on the radio.

I challenge us all to expect more from our music. There are amazingly talented people out there, full of musical depth and craft, and just because they aren’t readily accessible on the radio doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t go digging for them. Good music is enriching and transporting and, as I can attest to, potentially life-changing.

And if you have any suggestions of songs/albums that I just need to hear, regardless of genre, I want to know what they are.

*Perhaps you remember Alanis’ song “You Oughta Know.” Jonathan Coulton did a cover of this song, and you can access it here. It is one of the most remarkable transformations of a song I have ever heard, and proves that there are no bounds to a well-written song. However, please note that this is a very raw and adult song, and there are some vulgarly honest and potentially offensive words (yep, including an F-bomb). If this might affect you, don’t listen. But if you’ve been jaded by exposure to harsh words and years of hard livin’, like I have, then check it out.

I love the Bluebird Café. It’s probably my favorite “thing to do” in Nashville. Since arriving here two months ago, I’ve been going about once a week, just to listen and enjoy the writers. If I’m with a friend, then typically we’ll sit and eat (I enjoy their Big Salad with grilled chicken), but if I’m by myself, I find a dark seat in one of the pews in the back. Last night was one of those nights.

The cardinal (haha, get it, like a bird?) rule at the Bluebird is “Shhhh!!” This a listening venue, a place that is all about the song, the writing, the exposing of story and emotion through music. People are expected to sit down and hush, primarily because this is the respectful thing to do, but also because why would you choose to miss out on the unfolding of some amazing songs? I feel like I am given a gift every time I sit at the Bluebird, and I am constantly inspired with ideas, which I rapidly scribble down in a little notebook that I carry in my purse.

Which is why last night, when two out-of-town businessmen at a table behind me couldn’t rip themselves out of their loud and sarcastic conversation, I was annoyed. No, I was more than annoyed. I was enraged.

They were in business casual khakis, each with a Bluetooth attached to his ear. I mean, really? At a restaurant? TAKE THAT THING OFF, YOU LOOK RIDICULOUS. They switched off between conversation with each other, and answering their cell phones. “Nah, man, we’re at the Bluebird. THE BLUEBIRD! Yeah, it’s this restaurant with music and shit. No, I’m in NASHVILLE. Going for drinks later – wanna meet up? Come ON, man! We’ll find some LADIES – hot chicks, you know what I’m saying?”

It was atrocious, and tasteless, and offensive. I felt insulted on behalf of the performers, and on behalf of the audience, and on behalf of myself.

I sat there stewing about it for a few minutes, but when their cackles reached a crescendo and no one was telling them to stop, I whipped my head around and glared at them – a long, deliberate, poisonous glare, first at one, and then at the other. You. And you. Better shut up. Or I will come back there and personally remove your vocal chords with my bare hands.

They both froze, mid-sentence, staring back at me. They were like cats that had been caught scratching the furniture: alert, but no sign of contrition. I turned back around.

But this was not the end of their erroneous behavior. Their voices continued to rise, over and over again, no matter how many times I mentally dealt them excessive violence.

At the end of the show, I stood up to gather my things, mourning the heist of a peaceful evening, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Excuse me, are you a writer?”

Oh look, it’s the spawn of Satan.

I mumbled something about “yeah, maybe, I guess, blog, songs about abortion…”

He smiled. “I could tell – you kept writing things down.”

Therefore. Obviously.

“We’re from out of town – Richmond, Virginia.”

Charming.

I was being cold. I was so not about to look this man in the eye, for fear of the eruption of venom I could feel building up toward my tongue.

“We’re going for drinks downtown – care to join us?”

OH NO YOU DIDN’T. Did you just hit on me? After I have done everything short of castrating you with my laser beam glare for the past hour? Are you that clueless, that moronic? What makes you think that I would consider spending ONE MORE MINUTE of my time talking to the men who completely violated the Bluebird code of conduct?

“No. Thank you, though.”

Some people.

Luckily, I get to go again tomorrow.

Dear Burt’s Bees,

I don’t know what to say. I am utterly flummoxed. After years of faithful service, you have let me down.

How could you? HOW COULD YOU? Did you want to cause me havoc and harm? Kick my 2008 off to a despicable start? Or, worse yet, did you think this was a good idea?

Today, I have been all over town – department stores, major shopping complexes, groceries, strip malls – and every place I have found the same deplorable truth: you no longer produce Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmer in “Coffee.”

Oh, you try to make it look like you are still a reputable organization. You have your flimsy little cardboard stands full of Lip Shimmer in various asinine shades: Champagne, Watermelon, Rhubarb, GUAVA. You even have the nerve to carry “Toffee,” causing my hopes to shoot through the roof. But the wishful “C” quickly morphs back into the actual “T,” sending my good faith plummeting back down to earth, where, apparently, dreams wither and die like fish in hot dirt.

But I’m a big girl. I do what I need to do. I bucked up right there in the middle of Whole Foods Market, and purchased your Lip Shimmer in “Papaya,” the closest thing I could find to the flawless “Coffee” shade. However, I’ll have you know that I also purchased “Blaze” by Alba, which, if I’m not mistaken, is your arch-rival when it comes to lip gloss. Take that.

May your 2008 bring you new brains and new management.

Kisses – blazing Alba kisses,
Annie