currently sitting at black dog and listing to horse feathers. they’re amazing. waiting to go to my next class, which is on the confectionary arts. yum. so pretty. i wish my coffee wasn’t so hot. and that i could find my sunglasses. oh well, white girl problems.

(but for now, the memories are what i have)(& these fragments of frozen time)

Summer is here. I hope. Yesterday it was ninety, however, today it is fifty…alas, Kansas City weather. This weekend was sheer insanity. But in the very best of ways. Friday night was First Friday and for a change we were extremely busy, surprisingly as well, since we actually had a really small staff for the event, mostly due to the fact that last time we were far overstaffed and had nothing to do. After the night wound down I ended up going to the Westside Local with one of the guys that lives in the condos above Chez Elle, the Local closes early so we could only stay for about 45 minutes, following he invited our table of people back to his condo for an impromptu party. It was sensational. The mix of people was hilarious. A 42 year old art professor from Rockhurst University, the woman who is the art director for the H&R block art space, a 69 year old man named Victor who knew everything, in the best of ways. Others Tim, Dirk….I can’t remember what they did, but everyone was of an upper class nature and then there was me, and for some reason they all enjoyed and wanted to interact with me as well. It was strange and lovely.

Saturday was Artopia. Which I would have paid to attend, however, as luck would have it Chez Elle worked the event. We were stationed in the corner of the room with a DJ, so it was terribly and wondrously loud. We brought a single crepe iron, so we could actually make crepes in front of people. Kyle and Dawn formed an assembly line, with Ellen and I standing in front of the table directing traffic, answering questions and sorting the samples. It was entertaining because all the other sample booths had brought warmers for their foodstuffs but were not making the food fresh, so they were far less interactive than we were, not to mention we were all partaking in the free beer that was being provided. Kyle and Dawn were dancing whilst making crepes, we were all covered in powdered sugar and once we closed down our both we all went on the dance floor. Amazing. I love my job. The people I work with are like a second family. I really just adore all of them.

Annoyingly, the work front is fantastic and my social life is becoming more and more difficult. I won’t state specifically why, regardless of the fact that this is a blog and whatnot, I really still would consider that gossip of some type….but the conflict in my heart with certain things is starting to take a toll. I’m not quite sure who I’m friends with anymore.

At the end of this month I move. The countdown has begun. Also, school is out incredibly soon. Eek.

Slowly, but it’s the easiest reaction. It’s unfortunate. The worst part is that things that are going poorly, things that have been making my life maddening are creating some pretty awful results elsewhere in my life. Even though I know the cause, it somehow doesn’t make it easy to just cease these problems. I cannot wait for school to be over. Summer will be more appreciated then, perhaps, ever before. I have a desire to de-structure my life. Which currently looks like this most of the time:

That, by the way, is a single origin macchiato. Bliss in a cup.  Seriously. The only place I know that does single origin is the Roasterie, which is where I am now, and most of the time, nowadays since I require internet access, decent music and Chad works there. My typical day is spent listening to a little dubstep, or something motivational and inspirational whilst reading/typing/procrastinating my homework away. Currently I am procrastinating. However, most of my homework tonight is actually done in class, so it’s not that big of a deal, except that I really need to catch up. Really really really bad.

Recently it has been rough. Ship wreck is impending. But I know it’ll be alright. Because it has to be. I am moving soon. Either to Overland Park (ahhh!) or Westport.  Sheesh. As if school wasn’t enough. And then, this guy. No control. Complicated. I always mess up when it’s a great thing. It’s a talent. It’s a curse. It’s gonna get me in the end.

Dismantle. I want to travel. However, there are some restrictions. I could, for one, only go in the summer. I would most likely have to leave my job, which would be sad because I really like working there. Money could be an issue. Apartment leases, bills….I have a car that I pay for and a wee bit of credit car debt, however, this is one of those moments, where now is the time. The attachments are limited. My debt is pretty solvable. I have few actual possessions. It would just be so fantastic. To pack a bag. Buy a ticket. A few maps. Some phone cards. To wake up on a train. To hear a language I’ve never heard. It makes my heart race just to think about it.

must go to class. unfortunate. argh.

These photographs are out of order, but that’s sort of how my life is anyway. Slept through my first class of the semester this morning. Score. What a way to begin. Two classes tonight, it’ll be alright. I’ll spend this morning kicking crossword puzzle ass and drinking coffee at the Roasterie. I have decided quite recently that I really like Kansas City. Not where I actually live, but the parts that I spend my time in. How surprising. At least I was surprised.

The new P.O.S. album is amazing. New to me, not to the world, it’s from 2009 and entitled Never Better. Let it Rattle is my favorite so far. I have to move soon. Hopefully to Westport. Or Westside. Or somewhere downtown closer to work. I thought about maybe even just moving to the downtown Kansas side, only really for in-state rates at school, it might be worth it, maybe.

The photo above is the only one that I have of the school that we’ve been trespassing at. The lighting inside is too poor for my phone to take anything remotely worth sharing. Although, hopefully with financial aid + taxes + money Gramma left me = Canon 60D in my future. Hope hope hope. I might have to save a bit for it, but I should be able to get one within the next two months. And the delight will ensue.

The West Bottoms is a photographer’s wet dream. Really. I will steer clear of this lovely place after dark and I would never recommend going to a party there, but during the day it’s positively golden.

I think I might be growing up. I know I say this after stating that I slept through my class this morning, which is ever so juvenile, but I feel like this is actually fact. I have always been the more responsible type, but now it’s personality, which I sometimes wish I could change. It’s obnoxious to always think of the consequences of every situation, no matter how bad they might be. I wish I could just do things, it’s funny though, I react without any thought of consequence to an emergency. For some reason that is terribly easy. But when it comes to something fun that might possibly end with handcuffs and sirens I get hung up. Sad fact.

In the school it feels like time stopped. It’s interesting because we discovered that the school actually closed pretty recently, back in 2006. But when you’re inside it’s like walking around in a stalled past. It almost looks like they just told everyone never to come back one day and that was the end. The disarray is bizarre. We dig around every time we go in and there is still more stuff. Boxes upon boxes of books line the hallways on one floor, the entire library just abandoned. Projectors, record players, headphones, student files, tools, scales, bikes,  it’s insane, just the sheer amount of junk and treasure. Last time we got on the roof. It was sort of terrifying. We had to go in the attic and cross some pretty unsafe looking boards only to climb a ladder to get out of a rickety window. It was beautiful and completely worth it though.

Soon I’m going to travel. Although, soon may be hopeful considering I’m stuck with a required activity every day of the week, until Spring Break, which may or may not be helpful, I want to go somewhere and not visit someone. A real vacation. Where I can just lounge around and read, write, etc. Not one where I have to meet someone somewhere each day, that’s what happens every time we go to MN, which I haven’t been to in a while, almost a year. Last year wasn’t a total loss though, I went to Ohio twice (even got on an aeroplane!), Omaha three times? and Minnesota once. Most people don’t do that much.

For Thanksgiving I tried my hand at some vegan pumpkin oatmeal raisin cookies, they were great, however, they tasted like health food. We’ve dubbed them oatmeal raisin granola balls and I think I’ll keep making them just because they are actually incredibly healthy. Today I’m making molasses cookies, the recipe is modified from one I found on one of my favorite vegan blogs Hell Yeah It’s Vegan! (original recipe: http://hellyeahitsvegan.com/?p=710).

Oatmeal Almond Molasses Cookies

Yield: about 2½ dozen 2″ cookies

2/3 c apple sauce
¼ c blackstrap molasses
2 tbsp ground flax seeds whisked into 3 tbsp warm water
1 c brown sugar
2 c whole wheat flour
½ tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 c. sliced raw almonds
1 c. oats

Preheat oven to 350° (do this later, about ten minutes before taking the bowl out of the fridge). Whisk together apple sauce, molasses, flax seeds mixed with water, and brown sugar. In a separate bowl, sift together remaining ingredients. Honestly, I have a terrible baking tendency to not mix in different bowls, it’s improper, but I’m a cook, not a baker…I just like to bake when I’m bored. So I mixed this all in the same bowl then added the oats and almonds, also, I eyeballed the measurements….again, I’m a cook….

After mixing toss the bowl in the fridge for about an hour.

Shape your dough into roughly 1″ balls, if you would like you can also roll them in sugar (I’m forsaking white sugar at the moment, and hopefully all processed sugars soon…). I also flattened them (well, the second batch, anyway), I think they didn’t spread terribly well because I used apple sauce rather than oil (I’m going for health here!). No need to grease the cookie sheet, I prefer to use parchment paper though, just because it results in a rather simplistic clean up.

Now bake these little guys for about 10 minutes-ish and yay! Cookies! Wait to take them off the sheet for a couple minutes, if only to save your mouth from being burnt. (:

incomplete.

and I took the day off
to watch the birds migrate
waste the day away
spent the night in a hideout
found out you knew about
moved to pretend I was going on vacation
the cold of a new climate
made my lungs ache
cut my skin like a knife
knuckles white
sun bleached snow for miles
blinding me from what little I can see
there’s not much to see
anyway
one more cup of coffee
just to feel my heart beat

open.

I wanted to be mysterious
so I kept my mouth shut
you wanted to hear what
I wasn’t saying
so you took a crowbar
to my teeth
metal and bone
tore the words from my lips
felt the prying of your fingertips
the sound of my voice was
but a whisper from misuse
and I still struggled to
be honest

Every thirty minutes I heard at least one comment about how much I’ve changed. How they all would have walked by me on the street. How no one liked my black hair. How I had gotten so many piercings and tattoos. I had this small hope that maybe, just maybe one of my cousins had went punk or gothic. But I was to be disappointed, every single one of them is just as innocent and normal as the last time I saw them. In fact, only Daniel is regarded as slightly off. Probably only because he’s an artist. Once while taking a nap I overheard someone telling another member of the family that I came home, “Amanda came, she’s sleeping right now. It doesn’t look like Amanda but we love her anyway.”

I’ll have to come back in a week or two for a funeral. I really hope that I can. I do truly love my gramma, she’s amazing, five kids, 12 grandkids and she’s still lucid enough to remember small details about us, she never stops telling us how much she loves us. We all just sit with her. Hold her increasingly decreasing figure in our arms. Feel her bones beneath that thinning layer of skin. Hear every breath in her lungs. She weighs 55 pounds. She won’t eat. In fact, my favorite moment of the entire trip was when I walked into the living room eating a banana, she remarked on how good it looked so I offered her one, to my (and everyone else in the room’s surprise) she accepted and ate almost an entire banana. This is shocking because the woman has been somehow surviving on maybe one spoonful of apple sauce a day for almost three weeks. She refuses food and barely drinks water. It was so delightful that she ate with me, it might be one of the last times that she does.

The incredibly hard thing is that she just thinks that she’s sick. That she has caught the flu. She leaned on my arm and told me that she really needed to get better. So we could go out, and do things. So she could go places with us. What else could I do but tell her that she would get better? And when I said goodbye she said she wanted me to come back for the holidays, I held her hand and told her that I would love to. That I would see her soon.

And to think that my gramma dying is just half of the family drama. My grandfather (same side) has been dating this woman for 12 years or so, and slowly but surely she’s been taking all of this money and possessions. There’s nothing left in the bank, the house is but a shell and his kids (my mom and her siblings) lost power of attorney years ago to her. She’s insane. And she tells him that he’s said things that he hasn’t, which I suppose is only possible because the poor man has dementia. As if the family doesn’t have enough to worry about, they have watch their father be swindled. It’s repulsive. Oh, but she saved all the family photos for the kids, she has no want of them. Only the money, not the memories.

And for me. This has been just bizarre. I haven’t been here since I was 14. Nine years since I’ve seen this place and these people. I got flown in on a whim, only to leave just a fast. I drove to get coffee yesterday, took the car and just figured I would find something if I drove far enough. It’s odd, my dad’s family and my mom’s live in the same town. It’s not terribly large, so I ended up close to my grandparents house without even realizing it. I drove past all these places and just had freak flashbacks. It was like being in a old dream that I had since forgotten, everything suddenly was real and in front of me. I went to the ice cream place that my grandparents always took me to. I visited them and raided the fridge downstairs at the wet bar (which, hilariously, is always fully stocked with chocolate and soda….not beer). I had breakfast at the table with my grandparents and we watched the news together like it was the most normal thing in the world…and it felt like it was.

And now I’m going home for two days, then to Omaha in two days for three days…or two…or four…I don’t know anymore. And I have a midterm tomorrow and a conference on Thursday….away we go.

Here comes the honesty. I’ve spent years without having a significant other. And for those years that I had been hoping to find one I would constantly have these thoughts, they would begin like this: “If I can change/fix (insert random quality of self) then I could probably…” It’s a horrible thing to admit. But after so long I just started to assume that there must have been something strange or wrong with me (I was leaning towards strange). To be frank, I think I’m rather likable, so it really wasn’t much of a self-image thing. Then there was the possibility that I just appeared so comfortable. Because not only have I never dated, but I’m not terribly family oriented and I have no siblings. I’m very content with the disconnect. This fact scares me now though, because I can survive on little communication and affection. I think differently in that regard, I just presume the person busy and don’t mind the lack, which could be viewed as a lack of care on my part as well.

Then we have another factor. Distance. 209 miles of distance. Not so far. I drive more than that in a weekend. However, with two different, conflicting work and school schedules there is a lot of room for flaws. This leads to most/all conversations being phone related. I am not a fan of the phone. I like to be able to see facial reactions. But this is my fault. I wanted to try. I really wanted to try. I just start to wonder how many boring phone conversations he can handle.

Enough of that, school starts tomorrow. Only six credit hours. Class Monday – Thursday night all while still working Wednesday – Sunday. All the free time I’ve taken so for granted will be completely gone as of tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have more interesting things to talk about though, or not considering all of my free time will be spent doing homework at a coffee shop and working at a coffee shop. Hmm…I don’t think it’s possible for me to become any less interesting though.

I’m changing up my eating habits…I feel ill every time I eat and I’m curious if it has something to do with the things that I ingest. I already very rarely eat red meat, chicken and I are on and off again and I don’t drink milk. So, chicken is getting cut off altogether, dairy is going away mostly (and only because completely dairy-free bread is five freaking dollars). I guess it’s almost like being vegan…the making fun of has already begun. I could still eat eggs, I suppose but they actually make me sick as well. Cereal is the only thing that doesn’t. I just don’t think I could survive forever on it, though the thought is rather tasty. This is perhaps the most complicated thing in my life right now, so things are going well. By this time next week I expect to be sobbing into my fundamentals of mathematics workbook. I should have taken a creative writing class. Boo.

I feel as though I really had a legitimate reason for deciding to blog, I forgot it and just ended up with this.

The above is my favorite photo I’ve probably ever taken. Two reasons: Alee and Chad look awesome. I love the way the brick goes back and actually gives the appearance of popping out. 

This photo makes me miss the Westside a lot. I haven’t been there in probably a month. Perhaps Jessica will go with me sometime this week. Or Fresher than Fresh. Or Teahouse. Yesterday I completed my Dave Eggers book collection, the last one that I didn’t have was Zeitoun and I found it yesterday at Half Price. Along with this other book that I simply couldn’t resist after reading this line from the back cover, “You can’t keep a good Amish werewolf down.” How awesome is that? I thought it was pretty great, it’s called Kornwolf.

I park by this door every morning, I’ve always loved it. Lately there have been notes hanging off it every time I walk by, it makes the walk a bit more entertaining. This weekend was one of very, very, very mixed emotions. I’m so glad it’s over. But there were the really great things that happened as well, which made everything worth it.