best day ever

today ruled so hard.

it all started when josh called me at 7am to say that little richard is coming to town. I AM FINALLY GOING TO SEE LITTLE RICHARD! he will be at the moondog coronation ball this march along with peter noone of herman's hermits, tommy james and the shondells, three dog night and jerry butler. seen 'em all except rich. good 'ol richie. FUCK YES! now i just gotta see chuck berry and fats domino to feel complete.



so i believe i have little richard to thank for setting the tone of the day because everything that followed ruled just as much. the next thing was that i got my computer back after not having it for a week. my friend mike fixed it up so now it works "like butter!" (whatever that means). not having a computer for a week makes me CRAAAAZEEEEE. i finally have to admit what josh has teased me about all along: i am addicted. so sue me.

next up, my cute boyfriend came home and gave me a present for no reason at all. he found me these adorable anchor hair clips and he secretly ordered them and had them sent to his work so i wouldn't see them come in the mail. aw! he knows me so well it's nuts. not just my taste, but the fact that i dig surprises. too fucking cute.



THEN he insisted (absolutely INSISTED!) that he take me on a date. we went to dinner and had great cheeseburgers. i love burgers! and cheesecake for dessert! then we went to buy RECORDS! yay, rock'n'roll! and i got to use all my gift certificates from christmas so i didn't pay a damn cent!



and finally, the perfect way to end the date, we went to buy porn. found some real gems, like "vagina is for lovers," one about nerdy girls wearing glasses (??), one called "mysexspace" (HA!) and the best one we could find, titled "white trash pieces of shit." oh man. can't wait to sit down with a bowl of popcorn for THOSE.



ended the perfect day by announcing the horriblefest 4 lineup, which is very exciting to me. can't wait to see bands like kajun ss, the ladies, the stitches, livefastdie, magnetix, holy shit!, shoot it up, etc. mark your calendars for april 30th-may 2nd! cleveland is about to get a whole lot more horrible.

pogo machine

the other day, pogo decided to hide from everyone.




























she is the baddest little kitten i have ever seen in my life. she was born around the time josh and i started dating, so she is about 7 months old.







seven months old and baaaaaaaaaaad.

"love has no middle term; either it destroys or it saves." -victor hugo

it all started with this little pumpkin.



i found it while unpacking a box of stuff at work. i put it in the cart for my friend heather to price after remarking how cute it was.

"oh, just get it!" she told me, but i held my ground. i'm trying to stop buying junk i don't need because --as sad as this sounds -- i'm running out of room in my house. because i really needed that ceramic monkey bank from the 60s, and yet another record player so that i can have one in every room, ya know?





but the more i thought about it, the more this nagging feeling told me otherwise.

"um, i think i want that pumpkin," i admitted sheepishly. heather laughed, knowing neither one of us can stand the temptation of more useless crap for our house, and took it out of her cart to hand it over.

"you know, THIS is why our boyfriends think we're crazy!" she said. i almost agreed with her, before reconsidering and telling her, "actually, my boyfriend is THE REASON i think i need this dumb thing. having him around makes me want to go home and cook a real dinner every night, and decorate my house for the holidays and stuff." she nodded like she understood, although i'm not really sure she did because she has been with her boyfriend for years and always acts like she doesn't like him.

regardless, that was the realization i came to with the ceramic pumpkin in my hand: josh makes me want to decorate the house at halloween (and various other actions i never thought i would be doing, like cooking gumbo for goodness sakes) because being with him makes the house feel like a home. WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE???

i just read a blog my friend lacey wrote that was similar in mush factor. what are these boys doing that is turning us tough rock'n'roll gals into a regular ol' mashed potato fest? i want to act like i'm completely alarmed, but the truth is, it feels niiiiiiiiiice. it feels like the time my car got snowed in the driveway when i was trying to leave for work in the morning, and finally i had to abandon post, ditch the idea of work for that day, and realize there was nothing else i had to do besides get my frostbitten ass in a steaming hot bubble bath. yeah, that's a lot like what this relationship feels like. i endured the blizzard and now i'm laying back in the tub with a book in one hand and one of those comfy inflatable pillows behind my head. ahhhhhh. thanks, josh.

the first time we officially met, we were at the beachland tavern. i'm not 100% positive, but something tells me we were there to see joe buck. i was with someone else that i was dating at the time. i can't remember if things were unhappy between us yet or not, but eventually they would become painfully so. my friend bob introduced josh to me by pulling him over and lifting up his shirt to show the tattoo of the southern states that he did on josh's stomach. josh didn't bat an eye at his friend introducing him to a couple of strangers that way, and he walked away. he was probably drunk. i recognized him immediately. i had seen him around at various shows here and there, and always wondered who the cute little boy was, but never had the nerve to approach him and find out. later i would learn that he was dating someone else at the time too. they were together for several years, and were almost certainly at the point of unhappiness by the time bob introduced us that night.

months went by. nothing happened. he was living almost an hour away and he didn't venture out to cleveland much unless it was for a show. i was still living back at home with my parents. i invited him to a couple things i thought he might enjoy: a one man band i booked at now thats class, a zombie walk my friend was organizing. of course, i knew these things might interest him because i learned about him on myspace like everyone does these days. in the meantime, my ex and i broke up. i figured he was still seeing someone, but wasn't sure. i decided to take a chance. i sent him a message asking if he wanted to watch "wild zero," my favorite zombie movie. he wrote back sure. a few days later, he wrote again and told me i was being out of line and he didn't think we should hang out after all. i was devastated. even moreso when i realized he deleted me off his friends list. OUCH!

6 months or so went by. i moved into a place of my own. one night in june the band lifetrap was playing a show at now thats class and i decided to go. i was sitting alone on the purple couch because johnny, my concert buddy, had decided a few months earlier that he was "too old" to stay out at shows anymore. i was used to going solo, but didn't like to socialize and spent a lot of time sitting by myself between bands. as i sat there people watching, i could have SWORN i saw josh walk past me and go out the front door. i told myself it probably wasn't him, because i never saw him hanging out there before. he walked back in and we made eye contact. i was humiliated because he snubbed me the way he did months earlier. he sat down next to me and asked with a smile, "so...are we ok?" confused yet smiling because of how lame i knew it was about to sound, i told him, "i don't know, you're the one that deleted me off your myspace." he told me his girlfriend had done it. the girlfriend he was dating back when we met. the girlfriend he was living with, who would go onto his account when he wasn't home and answer his messages pretending to be him. the girlfriend he was no longer dating.

"i quit my job this morning and i'm moving to cleveland," he told me as we sat there. i wondered how soon. "tomorrow," he said laughing. he didn't have a plan about where he was moving or where he would live. all he knew is that he got to work that morning, decided he never wanted to go in again, and drove home. he put in notice at his apartment complex, threw away a bunch of furniture, left a note for his ex (who was still living in the apartment at the time, but was out of the country on vacation), and was in cleveland that night with a friend, talking about moving there in the morning. ha. i knew this kid was crazy. but i also wondered, how weird is that? it's like we were waiting for each other.

we sat on the couch together all night long, only getting up to go in the other room and watch the bands. i noticed (while trying not to get too excited!) that every time i went in a room, i would turn to find josh standing right next to me. when the bands played and things got crazy, he would stand in front of me and make sure i didn't get hit in the head with any flying bottles or garbage cans. i wasn't sure if he kept ending up by me on accident or on purpose. before i left, i handed him a flier. it was for the nobunny/okmoniks show that i booked at the tower the next night. i was afraid he would leave now thats class and it would be months again before we ran into each other. "you should go to this," i told him. he took the flier but i honestly didn't expect to see him again.

the next night i went to see nobunny and the okmoniks, and it was one of the most fun shows i've ever been to. i decorated it like a party with balloons and streamers to surprise them, and they loved it and told me it was one of the best shows on the tour so far.







imagine my surprise when who should stumble in but josh. i couldn't believe he came. he told me much later that he had no real interest in the show (although he did end up enjoying it), but he came because he wanted to see me again. i guess you could call the rest history. that was almost seven months ago, and we have been inseparable since. in those 7 months, we have only spent one day apart (and that was the night he got drunk and accidentally passed out in his grandma's upstairs hallway instead of coming over. ha. he couldn't hear the phone ringing downstairs while i called him all night long, thinking he was dead. good thing we can look back on that now and laugh).

we were only hanging out (every spare minute of the day, but still) for about two weeks when i told him i wanted him to have a key to my place. it seems crazy, but it felt like the right thing to do. i tend to follow my heart instead of my head. he was moved in by the third month. by now, i don't know what i would do without waking up and falling asleep next to him every day.

things fell into place and felt completely natural right from the start. in fact, some things seem like such uncanny coincidences that it prompts me to believe this HAD to happen. this was meant to happen. we were meant to happen.



i have never been with someone who is so perfect for me. and when i think about all the things i would want a person to be/say/do...it really doesn't get any better than this. josh is my other half and one of the greatest people i have ever met. i am so in love with this boy and his friendship is the most important thing in the world to me.

and that is why i had to buy this little teddy bear wearing a devil costume bobbing for apples to put out come october.



thanks a lot, boyfriend.



"genuine romantic love is much more than mere stupefying and intoxicating sex haze...true romantic love is real love. the characteristic mark of the experience, as in the case of all loving, is the blinding revelation that some other being can be more important to the lover than he is to himself."
-j.v.l. casserley

helllllllllllllo, baby.

this is not the big bopper speaking, but that's cool.

i did not start this with the intention of creating a music blog, but so far that's what every reference has to do with. either way, since music is such a huge part of my life, i'm sure it will end up being a huge part of this as well.

to begin: the blog title is from a song - "trash you up" by the manikins. the photo at the top is from a nobunny show at the tower this past summer in june of 2008.

i'm here because this is something that i need to do. more specifically: writing is something i have done my whole life long, and it is something i am extremely comfortable with. i first kept a diary somewhere around third grade when my grandma bought matching ones for me and my two cousins, who were about my same age. i kept the diary periodically throughout my childhood, with large gaps in between when i would forget it existed. months or years would go by, until the next time i unlocked the book with the little gold key to give an update about which boy in my class i had a crush on (always kevin v. or mike w.) or what family gossip was juicy enough to note (uncle wayne secretly ran away to west virginia and got married). i also made sure to write about all the interesting things i accomplished during the course of the day (watching "causbee" on tv or eating pizza for dinner).

on january 1, 1997, my cousin beth and i decided we would both start the new year off by keeping nightly journals. 12 years later, and it is still a part of my bedtime ritual. i have a trunk full of spiral notebooks filled with the blood, sweat and tears that made up (most of) my teenage and young adult life. scary sometimes, sure, but also something i'm glad i did and i wish i would have done sooner.

i had an old online diary that i kept through most of my college years. it documented my first serious relationship, my first major heartbreak, the first time i moved out on my own, and all the ups and downs in between. recently i thought about going back there, but i decided it was best to leave it buried and start fresh. i'm not anxious to revisit some of those memories any time soon, and (as always) some of it is just downright embarrassing to look back on. ha.

so there you have it. and here i am. although i update the blog feature on myspace pretty often, a lot of times i feel like i am censoring myself since i never know who might be reading. to be safe, i think you just have to assume that EVERYONE on your friends list is reading it, and that makes me nervous sometimes. the same can be true for anything posted on the internet, but myspace just makes it seem so much more impersonal. at least this way i feel like i have the slightest bit of privacy, if that makes any sense.

i might like to use this new journal to talk about records that came out or shows i went to or bands that slept over. i might want to write about a good book i just finished, or a new recipe i cooked for the first time (since i now have a boy living with me, cooking has become something of a new hobby). i probably will want to talk about the boy that is living with me, because for the first time in my life i feel like a complete human being who didn't know something was missing in the first place. but regardless of what i end up talking about here, it's still going to be me: brutally honest and unashamed about my feelings and thoughts at this point in my life...a place where i will never exactly be again, but hopefully i will be able to look back on with a smile on my face.