Thursday, May 26, 2005 | by nathan

The Start of Summer….not like I expected…

So to review some of the events of the last few weeks…

Kevin died. That was harsh. Lauren seemed to have been expecting it, but fuck me if I knew how to be there for her. I guess it’s just the Law of Showing Up at work. I’ve never lost a brother-in-law before. The less I say about this, the better…

Major repairs to three out of three cars in the family in the last month. And all that at a time when we’re so broke that it’s becoming critical…as a family we are hemmoraghing money. There is palpalble stress when we are together. I tried to defuse it last night by taking mom and John to see “Monster In Law” and for the most part, it worked. I thank God every day for small miracles.

Carrie Underwood won American Idol. Go Oklahoma.

I’m having to live out of the money Dad gave me for my last tuition payment, since I was just now present enough to find a job. Or, rather, two jobs: working weekends at the OU pool, and, I found out yesterday, during the week at the Upward Bound program at Oklahoma City Community College. Secretarial work. I like - inside, air-conditioned, Monday-Friday 8-5. These are good things.

I am madly in love with Brian. Who knew? He gave me a key to his apartment, which is where I am writing this. I love it here. I go up on the roof and edit “Moving Van People,” then come back inside when I feel the sun getting too hot. It rained last night; it’s perfect outside now. Brian left early this morning for work; he and I lay in bed after we woke up making googly eyes at each other. I forgot what this was like. Currently he is the bright spot in my life, because almost everything else seems to be going wrong: Kevin’s death, mom’s stress, John being home, my car wouldn’t start yesterday (again), and my computer crashed again yesterday.

It’s hard to hold it together most of the time. Thank God for small miracles.

Lauren wants me to return to Beaumont to hang with her for awhile this summer, to help her get through long nights without her husband. Because she is 18 years older than I, we’ve never had your typical brother-sister relationship. But she said she’d love to have me around for as long as I can be there. Okay.

Jaye was there yesterday to help me with my car, which turned out to be a small problem, a side-effect of when my radiator exploded two weeks ago.

I got a good full-time job, and may be able to help mom keep up with some of her bills. I may even be able to afford a new iBook.

God loves me very, very much. This is what gets us through, whether we know it or not.

Monday, May 9, 2005 | by nathan

The End of the Semester

My semester is over. I turned in the novel, and once I started revising it, I realized that - oh dear - it’s terrible. Filled with my worst writerly mistakes. The last day of class we all went to La Luna for chips and salsa (I was craving a margarita but didn’t want to be the only person at the table who was drinking). I sat next to Deborah, and I just realized: “This woman does not like me. Not one bit.” Not a good feeling to have, especially the day you handed her a 258-page novel that will determine your entire grade in a class. ::shivers with fear::

At least I’m getting an A in Dr. Carstarphen’s class.

I finished marking up all the revisions last night. I’ve been using this turquoise pen; it looks like I stabbed Ben Hawkins. (Carnivale joke). The weird thing is that Chapters 1-5 needed the most work, especially since I’ve spent 2 years editing the shit out of those chapters. I could attribute it to how much I’ve learned in my class, and this is a possible reason. But it could also be that I never catch the worst mistakes in a chapter until long after I’ve written it.

What a stressful week. Between this bullshit with my phone, the details of which I will spare you except to say it has been a total fucking nightmare, and finals, and not having had time to work out, or swim, and the fact that I’ve been eating horrible food, I am not feeling at my best. And this week I have to find a job, which is one of the things I am worst at. My interview at Student Media was awful. I was sweating like a whore in church, and my mouth went dry, and I sounded like someone with a brain tumor. Terrible.

Yeesh. At least I got to be a cool song.

Tuesday, May 3, 2005 | by nathan

The Blue House

http://cdbaby.com/cd/bluehouse2

Check out that link. It’s to an awesome band I heard the other night called The Blue House. They played with KC Clifford in Australia and she invited them up to do a couple songs with her. Amazing. Some of the tightest harmony I’ve ever heard.

The KC show was amazing, and not just because of the music. We ended up having so many people there that we had to get two tables. During “Stained Glass” Laurie and Jaye were slow dancing with one another. It was incredibly cute. Also, I found out that KC is friends with Sandra McCracken, whom I love, and who is married to Derek Webb, whom I really love. Small world.

All in all an amazing night. You are getting the incredibly short version because I haven’t swam or worked out in like a week, so I need to get on that. I’m not going to let all the hard work of the past 3 months - and my new ability to fit into my size 31 pants - go to shit because I got busy blogging. Not that I don’t love you guys, but seriously.