one. o valencia. the decemberists' the crane wife.

two. objection (tango). shakira's laundry service.

three. ocean and a rock. lisa hannigan's sea sew.

four. oh father. madonna's like a prayer.

five. an olive grove facing the sea. snow patrol's up to now.

six. on fire. switchfoot's the beautiful letdown.

seven. one and only. mary black's shine.

eight. one day main titles. rachel portman's one day (original motion picture soundtrack).

nine. one headlight. the wallflower's bringing down the horse.

ten. one line. p.j. harvey's stories from the city, stories from the sea.

eleven. one sweet love. sara bareilles' little voice.

twelve. one tree hill. u2's the joshua tree.

thirteen. only one. lifehouse's no name face.

fourteen. operation mindcrime. queensryche's operation mindcrime.

fifteen. operation spirit (the tyranny of tradition). live's mental jewelry.

sixteen. opticon. orgy's vapor transmission.

seventeen. ordinary world. duran duran's the wedding album.

eighteen. the other side. what made milwaukee famous' what doesn't kill us.

nineteen. outerspace. cold's thirteen ways to bleed on stage.

twenty. the outlaw torn. metallica's load.

twenty-one. outside. staind's break the cycle.

twenty-two. over and over. rachael yamagata's elephants... teeth sinking into heart.

twenty-three. over my head (cable car). the fray's how to save a life.

twenty-four. overboard. ingrid michaelson's girls and boys. 

twenty-five. ozone. fuel's sunburn.

l is for lifesavers

no. not the candy.

i'm talking about the kind that saves me from crazy. the kindness. the givers. the giving.

friday sucked. it was ugly. a couple of times a year, all the anxiety i feel, all the insecurity and inadequacy and irresponsibility and ugliness, everything hideous inside me swells. that scene in clash of the titans (not the one from a few years ago... not the one with sam worthington, liam neeson and ralph fiennes--what a waste of money that was--but the one from a few decades ago... the one with laurence olivier, maggie smith, burgess meredith... and, yes, harry hamlin). sure the special effects SUCKED. but the story was good. heck, the heart of that story's pretty awesome, i think. it's got some fantastic components. anyway. at the end, andromeda's chained to the cliff and the kraken's rising up out of the water.... and the whole world's certain that she's gonna get gobbled up. until perseus swoops in to save the day, thanks to the wings of pegasus and the head of medusa.

friday, all that ugliness was the kraken. and i was chained to the cliff. (i was lying on the kitchen floor, concentrating on not bashing my head against the ceramic tiles.)

you know what saved me?

my friend meredith. just her smiling face is so often enough to do the trick. i don't see her very often, because she's a very busy girl, but that day, oh, lord, i thanked the heavens she was there. her faith in me is a wondrous thing. her laughter is beautiful. and that i can make her laugh, even when i'm feeling despicable... that's a miracle, too.

my father. i know i'm not the daughter he hoped to have. there're many, many, many things i can't give him. i'm not the coddly type. and he is. very much so. he always wants to hug. to run a hand over my hair or my back. and i almost always balk at that. i don't always like to be touched. that night i looked at him and said, sometimes i wish i could just crawl up into your lap, like i did when i was little. and he just said, you still can. i can't. i really can't. but it mattered to me that i let him know i thought of it, wished for it. that he's proud of me, anyway... that matters, too.

my friends at pappadeaux's, especially the ones who've signed up for swapportunity. one of the servers passed to me two gifts to hand out. and so that night, after i defeated the kraken (however temporary that victory may be... because, unlike perseus, i don't have medusa's head to wield as a weapon), i made myself get up, get out... get over to deaux's and deliver the goods. and it made my heart happy to brighten those girls' days.

there's a song we sang in college... you gave me smiles, so you are my friend. friday? i was capable of inspiring laughter. and i made people smile. despite the darkness. despite the threat. but more... these people made me laugh. they made me smile. they saved me.

and the reason i write this now is because i want you to know, you out there... no matter how small a thing may seem to you, even if it's something so simple as a smile... whatever kindness you can share is all anyone needs to get through an ugly day. that smile? that kindness... that's just as strong a salvation as perseus riding on the winged back of pegasus. it's enough. you're enough. i wanted you to know that.

j is for jenny

i was jenny when i was little. i didn't mind it, but there was a point i preferred jenn...

we moved to conroe when i was ten. for two years prior, i'd not had many friends. in louisiana, there was charlotte. in new mexico, there was monica and kiersten. but mostly, i played by myself. with my barbies and little people. or colored. or went on walks or bike rides.

when we moved here, i befriended the girl across the street, stephanie, who introduced me to traci and erica. stephanie and i played together almost every day that summer. we had a pool in my backyard. she'd come over to swim. or i'd go over to her house and play. before school started, a girl who lived down the street, jennifer, had a pool party. she'd invited me. i was so excited. i'd thought i was making friends.

i didn't stay long at the party because there were boys there. the boys made fun of me. the girls joined in. i walked home. and when school started, stephanie, traci and erica stopped being friendly because they'd realized it wasn't cool to be friends with me.

but there was also jenny, whom i met when mom signed me up for a nearby neighborhood's swim team. together, we rode our bicycles all over the neighborhood. we swam all the time. we stayed over at each others' houses. when i was at her house, she was jenny one, and i was jenny two. when we were at mine, i was one, and she was two.

jenny had straight blonde hair and wore glasses. one day, in junior high, she came to school with permed hair and contacts, which made her prettier, which made the cool kids take notice.

jenny and i always sat at lunch together. then one day, she wasn't at our table. she wasn't there the next day. or the day after that. the other girl who sat with us (i think her name was ginny)... we looked for jenny and found her sitting at one of the long tables with all the cool kids. so we sat with her because we wanted to be with our friend. we sat there the next day. and the next. the number of kids sitting at that table dwindled day by day. the cool kids migrated to another table. the three of us went back to our round table by the window. and after that, jenny and i--we weren't quite as good of friends.

we lived outside the city, between conroe and the woodlands. the district had three high schools: conroe, mccullough and oak ridge. conroe served north montgomery county; mccullough and oak ridge served the south. conroe and mccullough were both five-a schools; oak ridge was a four-a, but its enrollment was close to the five-a mark. my father, the superintendent, devised a plan to boost that enrollment: students in certain areas, like where we lived, could choose one of the five-a schools or oak ridge.

its building was smaller. newer. i'd been to conroe’s campus before. it was big and dark. massive and crowded. my older brother went there. everybody loved him. his peers. his teachers. and his kid sister was an ugly, quiet, clumsy runt. i imagined walking the halls with my peers. i didn't want to be around those people; they didn't want to be around me. i knew i wouldn't make it if i went there. i wouldn't last. it wasn't a hard choice.

i went to oak ridge. jenny went to conroe. after that i only saw her at swim meets. i tried to talk to her once. she barely said a word.

my older brother called me jenny. my younger brother does every now and then. my aunts, uncles and cousins do. outside my family, there’s not many people whom i'll let call me that. i don't feel like a jenny. it's bright and happy. i am neither of those things. not really. not anymore. my friend minn always called me jenny. i thought of her today. every time she saw me, she'd greet me with jenny griffin. like it was a beautiful thing. like i was.

chicken spaghetti: the one my mama makes... courtesy gwen hruska

ingredients:

two quarts (thirteen to fifteen pieces) chicken, diced

four ribs celery, chopped

two large onions, chopped

green pepper, chopped

two cloves garlic, minced

sixteen-ounce can rotel tomatoes, diced

can cream of mushroom soup

tablespoon seasoned salt

teaspoon pepper

tablespoon worcestershire sauce

pound velveeta cheese, diced fine

twelve-ounce package thin spaghetti

preparation:

boil chicken: reserve one quart of broth. while deboning chicken, add celery, green pepper, onion, tomatoes and garlic to broth. let simmer until tender, increase heat bringing water to a boil. add spaghetti (broken into pieces). cook until done (do not overcook). add chicken and remaining ingredients. simmer until cheese melts. put into greased nine-by-thirteen inch casserole. best if made the day before. heat at three-fifty until center is bubbly.

the thirty-fourth question

this post is one of many for a creative nonfiction project i began several years ago. i call it the griffin inquisition. i've asked my friends and family to pose questions, things they want to know about me that would require more than a yes or no for an answer.

the most recent addition comes from my friend, caleb.

you strike me as the kind of person who has a very negative outlook on life, almost cynical. where did it start; what do you think the root cause of it is; why would you continue to think that way; and what are the first steps to repairing the issue.

it's not always that way. i'm capable of seeing good. i do strive to do this, and yes, i know my efforts aren't always the best. i think the biggest issue, really, is that i've grown accustomed to a certain...

people treated me a certain way in my youth and adolescence. and it was exceptionally rare for that way to resemble anything like kindness. this mistreatment started at a very early age, so that by the time i'd reached my teenage years, it was all i knew.

but you want me to tell you when that outlook began to be negative...

i can tell you that, with all the medical issues i faced in infancy, with all the poking and prodding doctors did to determine the necessary remedies for correcting those issues... that when the poking and prodding by my third-grade peers began, i must've been overly susceptible to it. maybe my mind had already begun constructing defense mechanisms. maybe it had subconsciously begun to anticipate pain. i know when my friends stopped being friends, it hurt, and my inability to discern the cause made it hurt even more.

it doesn't take much to make me happy. because any kindness shown to me is such a welcome surprise. like today. i got a box in the mail. i'd forgotten that i'd ordered something. i stopped by the store i use for shipping things (where my mailbox is) to send out a copy of a manuscript to a friend, and, seeing an envelope in my box, i stopped to collect my mail. inside was this tiny, bright green slip of paper telling me i had an oversized package. FOR ME! YAY!

i'm not hard to please.

but it's easy to hurt me. it's what i've come to expect.

the other day, as i walked from the kitchen to the stairs, i looked out the windows--it was a beautiful day, the kind that warms your heart because it's so perfect. i saw a school bus pass and wondered if, in my childhood, my mother had waited there for me. if she had stood where i stood in those rooms, watching me come off the bus and crossing the short distance to our house. i stopped, stared at the road, at the sunlight and shadows upon it. i thought of her standing there, watching my remarkably tiny self... i asked her if she stood there, waiting for me. yes, she'd said. i asked her if she could tell how my day had been before i'd gotten to the door. yes, she'd said. and then she asked me when i was going to put this down.

i hadn't thought of it because i wanted to remember my pain. i'd stood there, thinking of what it must've been like for her. how it must've disappointed her that i couldn't've come running to the door, eager to share what i'd learned that day. my mother was a teacher. she loved school. i did not.

i can't tell you that. it's like it's stored in some wreckage that had sunk to the bottom of an abyss. and some unpleasant experience in my day, some thought, something like a passing school bus will trigger it, jostle it so that pieces of it rise up to float on the surface, and i'm not strong enough to carry them to shore and dispose of them.

why would i continue to think this way? because so often, now, i feel as though i'm invisible. in my childhood and adolescence, too many people made a point of noticing me and my flaws. and then it got to be that they'd rather not see me at all. so they don't look, now. they don't care to.

if i'm going into a building and a gentleman's coming out, he won't hold the door. and all i can think is that if i were prettier, he would've. i know this because i'm a people watcher. i've learned how the world works.

and i don't know which is worse... animosity or ambivalence.

what are the first steps to repairing the issue? oh, i suppose it starts with being better to myself. shucking some pounds and keeping tidy spaces. and trying harder to be more courageous.

the first two things are easy enough.

you get what you give, right? i've been given a whole lot of negative...

after i wrote this, i went outside to sit on one of the benches in pappadeaux's parking lot. it made me sad to write it. and i don't cry in front of people anymore. it's gray out today. and breezy. but it was peaceful, sitting out there, with the clouds and the breeze and the quiet.

i came back in, and tinkered some more with this blog. i was looking at the pictures from my project self love post when another of my friends, aidan, came over and badgered me about taking a happier selfie, so...

the thirty-third question

this post is one of many for a creative nonfiction project i began several years ago. i call it the griffin inquisition. i've asked my friends and family to pose questions, things they want to know about me that would require more than a yes or no for an answer.

the most recent addition comes from my friend, stephanie.

what is your spirit animal?

okay, first of all... stephanie and i are like complete opposites. when she offered this question, my reaction was to sort of blow her off. i mean.... spirit animal? seriously? and when i told her today that i thought it was kind of a bogus question (fun, yes, but bogus), she scoffed at that and said that everyone has one and blah blah blah... google it, she insisted. so i did.

and the first thing i saw was this:

and since i LOVE quizzes (and because when i told her of the existence of such a quiz, her reaction was BAM!), i figured what the hell, why not.

my first reaction was CRAP. why can't i be something cool like a dolphin. a wolf? they're alright, i guess. a spider? ABSOLUTELY NOT. and then i read the summaries (and yes, yall, i know not to take it literally.... bogus, but fun, remember?)

it's just that i am loyal, devoted, passionate. my worst fear IS being alone (because that's usually when i have the hardest time combatting the crazy). and yeah... i'm capable of smothering. of dumping. 

i like the spider's summary better. on my good days, i'm more like that than the wolf.

the thing i find most interesting is that wolves and spiders should watch out for each other. like they are worst enemies. how ironic.

steph, by the way, is a hawk. according to the site, they are the messengers of the spirits. adept with language, hawks might be writers or teachers (she's a bartender, studying to go into real estate). their ability to assess situations impartially means that people often seek their guidance before making decisions. brilliant visionaries, they sometimes forget the mundane details of life like eating, sleeping, or paying bills. (the other day, all she'd had to eat was a banana.) she was quite pleased with this result, raising her arms as though flying and making crazy bird noises. and, since she's a seahawks fan...

anyway. so this was interesting.

find your spirit animal here.

random quarter: the west wing edition

september twenty-second. fifteen years ago. nbc aired the pilot episode of the west wing. i was twenty-six. it's kind of fast-paced, this show. it requires you to pay attention. they talk fast. they walk fast. and then all the sudden shit's happening, and if you didn't catch it two minutes ago, then you'll miss quite a bit. but it's not the politics that inspired me to love this program. it's the people. i never get tired of their stories. so... here are twenty-five of my favorite episodes.

season one

one. a proportional response. 

two. the state dinner.

three. celestial navigation. 

four. white house pro am. 

season two

five. in the shadow of two gunmen. 

six. and it's surely to their credit. 

seven. bad moon rising.

eight. two cathedrals. 

season three

nine. bartlet for america.

ten. h. con one-seven-two. 

eleven. hartfield landing. 

twelve. dead irish writers.

season four

thirteen. twenty hours in america.

fourteen. election night.

fifteen. life on mars.

season five

sixteen. the dogs of war.

seventeen. shutdown.

eighteen. the supremes.

nineteen. memorial day.

season six

twenty. the birnam wood.

twenty-one. king corn.

twenty-two. 2162 votes.

season seven

twenty-three. requiem.

twenty-four. transition.

twenty-five. institutional memory.

ten things i like about myself

one. my voice. many, many days over my forty years or so, it has been the one that thing that has kept me sane. i'll sing almost anywhere. when i was little, i'd sing on the bus on the way to school. as an adult, i'll sing while i'm shopping, while i'm working, while i'm walking. anywhere but a stage. i won't do that. and yet last saturday, after mass, i found myself chatting with that evening's choral leader, saying i wanted to join. we'll see how that goes.

two. the texture of my hair. although in high school, i didn't love it so much. my freshman year, it was, at once, every color under the sun. the roots were black; the tips were green. and in between? brown, then orange, then blonde. i swam, okay? and the only the time i wore a cap was in a meet. in my twenties, it wasn't much better. i've taken much better care of it since then, though. it's very, very soft. i like it a lot.

three. my ability to craft a sentence. my brother was quite arrogant about how he looked--just before he'd leave the house, he'd pause in the foyer, grin at his reflection and say, i am a goddamned good looking man. he was right, of course, but being the good, little sister i am, i had to point out how stupid he sounded. he could brag about that. i can brag about this. i'm a damned fine writer. one of these days, some agent or editor's gonna acknowledge this. hopefully soon.

four. my sense of compassion.

five. my generous nature.

six. the color of my eyes. the shape sucks. but the color... i'm quite fond it.

seven. i love my characters. and since i made them up... can that count? i'm saying yes.

eight. my sense of style. i don't always bother with it when it comes to my attire (and certainly not as much when i'm wearing a damned size twelve as i do when i'm in a six... and i swear on all that is holy, i will be remedying this situation soon), but my personal space, my tastes in film and music and literature (and when i have the money, my wardrobe), they're pretty awesome.

nine. tenacity. this isn't always a good thing. there've been a number of times in my life where i've hung on when i should've let go. but... the number of times when i could've let go, when many might've thought i would've let go but didn't, they far exceed the times i should've. i get back up. sometimes it's a bitch to do it, and i might wonder why the hell i bother with it, but i get up.

ten. i hope. even when it seems silly to do so. i still believe in possibility.

linking up with christy at avoiding atrophy.

it only took eleven years... a letter to my brother

but i think i'll be okay tomorrow. i think i've gotten used to this grief thing. of course, the past few years, the folks have left in the wee, wee hours of the morning, flown to colorado, to your grave. to sit on the concrete bench that is your headstone, sip their coffee and chat with you, like you're still here.

it only really sucks, now, when i think too long about it.

all day today, i wondered where the whammy was. in the past, on the day before, the dread takes the day to creep up on me, so that by the time midnight closes in, all i can think of is you.

but today, this morning, the bitch of a migraine i got seconds after i woke consumed my thoughts. four episodes of the west wing, three advil, a long, hot shower and a giant coca-cola on ice later, the pain receded to a dull ache.

i ran some errands. i edited. i ate.

and now i'm sitting here, at this bar with all these people. and i think i'm alright now. i think tomorrow might just be a day.

then again, the folks'll be here this time around. so i guess my okay tomorrow will depend on what i see when i wake up. on whether they'll be okay.

but for right now, i don't miss you all that much. i think i've gotten used to this.

the blogmopolitan quiz

the quote i tend to live by is: i think we live our lives so afraid to be seen as weak that we die perhaps without ever having been seen at all (alan shore—boston legal).

find the first quiz at two thirds hazel.

and now for the second part...

survey snagged from an old issue of real simple

drinks: coca-cola, dr. pepper, iced tea, cranberry juice, lemonade, gatorade, water, chocolate martini, vodka tonic, pinot grigio.

loves: eleanor and park, the fault in our stars, the language of flowers, ncis, ncis: los angeles, the west wing, steel magnolias, dedication, star trek (the one from four years ago), the aggies, the packers, the patriots, london, san diego...

huntsville, utah

chicken spaghetti, peproni rolls, blue bell ice cream. my brothers, gigantic pains in my ass... but every now and then, they'd surprise me with their awesomeness. my parents.

once: i could hope, and it didn't seem foolish to do so.

what i am really good at: writing.

if i could change places with anyone, living or dead, for one day, who would it be? my brother.

the best decision i ever made was: any time i say screw this shit, i'm going home. examples usually are tied to employment that sucked the joy through every single one of my pores. i made myself stick it out until those bastards almost killed my soul. people shat on me so frequently in my youth, and i took it because i thought i had to. i'll take it as an adult, but only for so long.

what was my mother right about? i should've been better to my brother.

what am i most proud of? these poems. this post. these characters.

something on my mind lately is: i want my own place. i want a fat bank account. and i want to see something i wrote in print and selling well. but really... i want independence.

before i die, i'd like to: travel. love. finish something.

roses and ranunculus

i've this friend. she's the sort of girl who'd go for the hundreds of rose petals spread all over everywhere to celebrate an occasion. she's been married for more than a decade. and on the surface, things between she and her husband seemed pretty perfect. both very sociable people... they had a good group of friends, good jobs, good house. then they became fairly concerned with their standing in society, with their possessions. and then it became an imperative that they have children.

and that's when things went downhill.

it's been ugly ever since.

the friend? she's not the same woman she used to be. she's selfish and self-absorbed. and she's angry, because this supposedly perfect world she's constructed isn't so perfect. and i'm not entirely certain she's realized that part of the reason it isn't is because, while she's found good things for herself, she hasn't been good.

now she and her husband argue over who gets what and when. and they're too tired to bother with those children they had to have.

today, i drove into houston to check a popular florist to see about getting some peonies. it's a small shop... used to be in river oaks... now it's in rice village.

it was pretty busy today. of course it was. a dozen men shopping for their spouses. i overheard one gentleman, a handsome man in this thirties, tell one of the associates that he'd used them before, that they'd put together some arrangements for his girlfriend in the past, that he'd been quite pleased with their work.

another gentleman pointed to two arrangements on the table, both very similar, and asked me which one i liked better.

as complicated as my brain likes to make things, at the heart of it, i'm a pretty simple gal. i don't need a lot. if a guy were to buy me flowers, i'd hope he'd veer toward the buckets in the refrigerated cases... the ones holding the batches of a dozen of one kind. i'd hope he'd choose the ranunculus over the roses. something sunny. because it's winter time, and i hate the gray. or, if he felt like really impressing me, maybe he could've called ahead a couple of weeks in advance and found me some peonies. the white ones with the splashes of red. those are my favorite. they're hard to find right now, but from what i understand, it's not impossible. just takes some time. and a little more money. a handful of either of those, and i'd be content.

but the roses and the lilies and the baby's breath and the ferns... cut in a pretty bouquet and arranged just so.... i don't need perfect.

so i told the guy that i wasn't fond of either of'm. that he should have a look at the ranunculus in those cases over there.

another guy showed me a bouquet of white and red roses cut short in a vase, with a topiary above them cut in a heart shape. he asked me what i thought of it. i hated it, actually. made me think of those horribly cheesy weddings... way too over the top. this particular arrangement cost well over a hundred dollars. i told him, i'd rather a guy spent twenty bucks on some posies and took me out to a nice dinner than a hundred plus on something that was gonna die in a week. that it didn't need to be so much.

it doesn't need to be. it just needs to be good. the people need to be good. my parents they've been married for fifty years. they've seen worse; they've buried a son. they're not perfect. they have just enough. they had children because they wanted them. not because society said they should. not because of how having the children would reflect on them. sure, they fight. my father's the most regimented, patriarchal, stubborn man i've ever met. but he's good to my mother. my mother? she's pretty set in her ways, and stubborn, too. but she's good to my father. and their marriage works because they give instead of take. because she doesn't need hundred dollar bouquets.

ranunculus, by the way, symbolizes something like you're radiant with charms. i love that.

seems to me that a strong relationship isn't determined by the size and style of the arrangement.

but i'm just a single gal. what do i know?

and then i get compliments like this:

now that i have this kindle there are a ton of books i have immediate access to and it's super easy for me to find new books and it's also super easy to reject all the ones that are total shit. and i can always tell if i want to gobble up an entire book in one sitting within the first few pages. WHICH IS YOURS.

because i know good people in this world, yall. like shannon. she's pretty nifty.

that's the thing about pain; it demands to be felt.

there's a moment when you've walked away from a story, out of the theater, into the light, to wait in a crowded restroom filled with women of varying colors and shapes and ages. it's loud in this room--the voices, the laughter, the doors opening and closing, the water running, the dryers droning. it's loud. and glaringly bright.

and you wait for the quiet to come. because you kind of need it.

and then it gets there. and it's awful. because there's just the silence. and this piercing buzz of electricity. and you never feel more alone in your life than in that moment. and all you really want is to be back in the story. in the theater where no one can see you. because once the lights go down, no one cares that you're alone. not even you.

the trouble with the silence is it makes you remember. even if you don't want to. especially then. it paralyzes you. so you're there. and it's louder than those voices and the laughter and the doors and the water and the dryers. and you know you should get up. get out. but you just can't. because... holy fuck.

i watched that awkward moment. and it was so good. a very nice blend of romantic and comedy. seriously. it was really good. most times when i go see a romcom, i leave thinking that was cute. and i can shrug off the sappy. but every now and then...

so finally, finally you find the stamina to move. you wash your hands. you dry them. you open the door. you walk out. toward the exit.

past theaters seventeen and sixteen...

seventeen... the day he found me.

sixteen... the day i lost him.

and it doesn't matter how much time passes or how many men i've dated since or how many of those men have managed to capture my interest (which is actually kind of hard to do). it doesn't matter that i know i was supposed to lose him. it doesn't.

it only matters because all i had to do was find the right words. and i couldn't. all i had to do was hear what he said, not what the ghosts of decades past were chanting in my head. and i couldn't.

it only matters because twenty years later, even with all the horrible, HORRIBLE things i've been shown and told in my life... this here knocks me flat:

you'll never get married because you're too ugly and no one wants to wake up next to something that ugly every morning.

there's nothing you can say to a girl that will crush her soul quite so well as that.

nothing.