Have I mentioned that my parents are moving? They are. Saturday. This Saturday. I’ve been trying to ignore this possibility for the past few months, partially because I never honestly thought it would happen, and partially because it’s a painful thought for several reasons. **Part where I bitch excessively about my parents omitted**

I am getting a little overwhelmed with the idea of losing the house that I grew up in. It’s not like my childhood was all that fabulous, it’s not like we were some big happy family all the time, but it’s still my home base. True, I own a house with my husband now, but there’s this very immature part of me that still feels like a kid whose place in this world is completely relative to her mom. I always felt like that house was my real home, where my roots sprouted and where I developed my sense of myself. That house was always the common denominator, a place to call home in between renting apartments in strange buildings from strange people in strange cities and generally just living tentatively. Even now amid home improvement projects and mortgages, I still feel like that’s my true home. I lived there longer than I lived anywhere.

After Saturday, I will lose all my ties to that house where I put on lip-synching performances in the dining room archway and opened Christmas presents and hugged my grandmother for the last time, all my ties to Legion Place, where I used to play in Aimee’s back yard with Jack and Evan and run through the sprinkler on hot days, all my ties to Closter, where I walked to school and ate lunch at the Red Maple with Melissa and Lisa and Kim and fed ducks at the nature center and trick-or-treated every year, all my ties to Bergen County, where I went to the movies and lifted kids onto the carousel at Paramus Park and drank coffee at the Northvale Diner and kissed boys.

This is all happening very quickly, this adult life of mine. Within the span of a year, I will have bought a house, gotten married, seen my friends have babies, and lost my childhood home. I can hardly bear it.

Ok Conan, I take it back, you can still be my boyfriend.

Last night was my first drawing class at Fleisher. I've been meaning to take a class there for years, and I finally remembered in time to register. I was a bit nervous, but it was a good mix of pretty friendly people, the teacher was completely unintimidating, and it generally just felt great to mix and chat with a bunch of strangers. Our exercise for the first night involved copying geometric shapes from a xerox onto a paper using no rulers or straight edges. The goal was to practice object placement based on relation to other objects on the page, rather than exact measurements. I never realized before how difficult it actually is to draw a straight line. It was a simple enough exercise, but it was so amazingly meditative. I said to the people next to me that I couldn't remember the last time I was able to focus on one thing for so long. It's especially refreshing since these days my job seems to be getting more and more hectic, and I feel like I'm multi-tasking past my brain's ability. To be able to leave work, where I'm doing twenty things at once and being interrupted every five minutes by some other request, and then go spend two hours drawing a triangle feels so luxurious. And if I wind up meeting a few nice people along the way, all the better.

Don't get me wrong, I think Conan O'Brien is one of the greatest people on the face of the earth. He is hilarious in every way and seems like an all around awesome guy. That being said, this writers' strike has got to end, because he must be exhausting himself. It seems like he has no faith that guests who are not in the entertainment field can actually speak on their own, and therefore he has to work extra hard to keep up the laughs. I don't ordinarily watch the show, seeing as how I'm an old lady and I like to go to sleep before 12:30, but sometimes I catch it on the weekend. Tonight he had on some professional skier girl, who actually seemed totally relaxed and probably could have held up her end of the conversation quite well. But instead of asking her open ended questions, he just kept asking these incredibly pointed questions that involved long silly explanations of his own ski misadventures, such as, "So in this video, you're going down this huge cliff. Don't you get scared? Because when I ski, it's like [insert silly self-deprecating explanation of his awkward gangliness here]." Again, I could watch Conan read the phone book, but I feel sort of bad for these people who were actually invited to be on his show, only to be completely talked over by him because he's too afraid that they won't be funny. Normally I think that's a great skill of his, to be able to have on a guest with no personality (like Charlize Theron or Nicole Kidman) and just carry the whole thing himself, but I'm a little disappointed that these days he seems to just presume that anyone he's having on will have nothing to say, so he needs to take over. Sort of like my sister, who gets totally stressed out at parties because she feels that she needs to maintain the fun levels on behalf of everyone. They're working incredibly hard just to keep the plates spinning.

Conan, you know I love you, but maybe we should think about taking a break for a little while, just until you can get yourself together. I'm not saying it would be a permanent thing, it would probably just be good for us to have some space from each other. So good luck, and give me a call when your writers come back.

xoxo,
Kate

I would like to discuss the topic of my last post a bit more, as G got upset about it which led to a more in depth discussion that brought a few things to light.

I think there are several factors at work in my musical disillusionment.

1. I listen to music mostly at work, which is not conducive to paying attention
2. MP3s suck.

1. Most of my time is spent sitting at my desk, and some of that time is spent with my headphones on and iTunes open. There are some days when I can put on my headphones and get lost for hours in a meditative haze of Photoshop and music. But most days, as soon as the headphones go on, the phone rings, or I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched, and turn around to find everyone staring at me, trying to get my attention for some trifling thing. Once I pause iTunes, chances are I'm going to forget to go back to it, and by the time I remember, I'm not in the mood to listen to that particular album anymore. The bottom line, I need to start listening to more music at home where there's not so many distractions.

2. This sort of leads into #1. MP3s are in some ways the downfall of music. Personally, I'm not into file sharing, because I'm old enough and make enough money that I really don't feel all that great not buying the music that I like. I tend to make exceptions for older and richer and deader people, because the estate of Frank Sinatra doesn't really need my $14, so I think of it a bit as a victimless crime if I download that illegally. Of course, it's that $14 that's also helping out smaller bands on the same record label, so I guess maybe that argument isn't so sound after all.

Anyway, everyone loves to brag about file sharing, like, "Hey, I just downloaded four thousand songs for free!" And when are you planning to listen to those four thousand songs? Part of the reason I like to pay for my music is so that I only buy an album or two at a time and so I actually have the opportunity to listen to it.

I've probably said this before, but MP3s create too much musical A.D.D. When I have iTunes open and three thousand songs laid out in front of me, if I start out listening to one album and hit a slow spot, it's too easy to just double click and switch songs or albums entirely. Plus everything just becomes text on the screen. When I think about bands that I absolutely love, I can envision most of the album artwork in my head, and I most likely know each and every song title (except maybe in the case of Beulah, whose song titles make no sense). The albums that I remember best are ones that I purchased, unwrapped, examined the booklet, took out of the case, placed in a cd player, and listened to all the way through. In a way it's like how watching Nova makes you learn things a lot more than reading about it in a text book - it's the combination of using all of your senses to appreciate something that makes it more memorable.

I also realized that my last post made me sound like some sort of romantic weirdo who can't listen to anything unless it makes me want to take a knife to my wrists. There are all kinds of music that affect me, not necessarily just the dramatic emotional twee stuff. I think I more meant that not much music grabs me these days simply in a way that would make me sit up and take notice and want to listen to it over and over.

For the most part, everything I hear is pretty ok, but if I heard it in a bar I wouldn't necessarily recognize who it was or know which album it's on. Like Midlake, whose album I downloaded, and it's pretty good to listen to, but if I heard a random song of theirs, I'm almost positive I wouldn't be able to recognize it.

But then I'll hear something like Jens Lekman, who I recently fell in love with, who just feels very recognizable to me, like I'd always know who he was, what album the song is off of, and probably even be able to sing along to pretty well. Or LCD Soundsystem, who I think are awesome and make me want to dance a lot every time I hear them. So it's not all about only listening to music that makes me cry, I just want to listen to a band that I'd actually be able to pick out of a musical line-up.

What the hell am I going on about again? Ok, I'll leave it at that, because I'm sure nobody gives a crap about the music I listen to.

I'm trying to decide whether I want to redesign this thing, or give it up altogether. I guess I'm always trying to decide that. I'm feeling a little sad-sacky lately, like I'd be writing for this thing that no one reads, except the people I already hang out with, who I can just talk to face to face anyway. But on the other hand, I've been getting back into writing lately and maybe I just need an excuse to do some. If I could just stop being so serious with my entries maybe people would actually want to read it. But I've been getting some compliments about the house blog, so I'm feeling a little more empowered to write more, that perhaps maybe for some reason someone somewhere would want to read stuff written by me. Perhaps.