Sweet Summertime

Summer is finally here :) That means Starbucks Black Tea lemonade, Jimmy Buffet, Bathing suits, Swimming pools, Sunglasses, and Sunscreen. And lots and lots of reading :)

Here are a few of my latest obsessions:

Blue and white antique teapot lamp from Michie's Tavern in Charlottesville...it was a steal and is now perched atop my bookshelf :)

A handful of the books I want to read over the summer...I've knocked out a few already (Kinsella's Remember Me?, Bellows's Wish, Crouch's Girls in Trucks and Quinn's Holly Would Dream are all spectacular without being intellectually tolling). I also need to get my hands on the complete Sherlock Holmes series and a few more Kinsella and Quinn novels.

FLOWERS!!! Our backyard is beautiful this time of year, so I'm really taking advantage of all of the photo ops, since every year we leave for vacation our grass dies while we're away.

I drew this on my last lecture for American Realism and Naturalism and thought I had thrown it away while unpacking, but later found it shoved under my bed. It isn't the greatest piece of artwork, but I thought it was pretty decent for a looseleaf sketch :)

Also, I have been able to catch up on a few movies so far this month, and here are a few recommendations:

The Philadelphia Story, starring Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and Katherine Hepburn

All About Eve, starring Bette Davis (also, on a sidenote, it was Marilyn Monroe's first movie)

The Princess Comes Across, starring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray

Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck

How To Marry A Millionaire, starring Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall

Anchors Aweigh, starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly

and, of course, my all-time favorite: Gone With the Wind.

xoxo e

Books Books Books

One of my really good friends sent me a link to a blog called “Hot Guys Reading Books”, a quirky catalog of attractive men caught reading actual books (and yes, that does not include Playboy) in public. Just think about it for one second, and you’ll realize how revolutionary that is (If you’re interested, here’s the link: hotguysreadingbooks.tumblr.com).

It is so much hotter to find someone of the male species who you can converse on an equivalent literary level. Sure, it may be fun to hang with a guy who can recite The Hangover line by line, and a guy who goes into explicit detail how many different drinks he downed the night before makes for a good laugh later, but a literary connoisseur comes as a pleasant surprise in today’s world. True, women don’t want a genuine book-nerd, but who wouldn’t drool over a cultured male who—as shocking as it may seem—actually likes to read. When the general intrigue dies out, a man with sophisticated interests has more topics of discussion at hand that merely last Sunday’s football game.

Just something to think about.

For lack of a proper transition, here’s my head’s up that I’m switching the topic.

My favorite spot in my newly reorganized room is my bookshelf. That lovely piece of wooden furniture hadn’t been cleaned off in years (hence my overabundance of tween novels, including my collection of Meg Cabot books and various Sanrio memorabilia), and is now a sophisticated spot devoted to books ranging from Sherlock Holmes to novels by Sophie Kinsella and Karen Quinn to my all-time favorite, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I’m actually quite proud of my interior design skills, as I have given that section of my room a Parisian feel, complete with two black Eiffel tower bookends and a pair of old gold candlesticks that I absolutely love.

I have quite some time before I get a Beauty-and-the-Beast-esque library, but I’m off on the right foot. Hey, a girl can dream.

And until then, it’s nice to know that my Beast may actually be literate.

xoxo e

“Where does a story truly begin? In life, there are seldom clear-cut beginnings, those moments when we can in looking back, say that everything started; yet there are moments when fate intersects with our daily lives, setting in motion a sequence of events whose outcome we could never have foreseen”

–A Bend In The Road, Nicholas Sparks

Finally, Finals Week

I’ll give you one guess as to where I am.

If you guessed the library, you get an A+.

It’s really the most frequented spot on campus come finals week. There are loads of people milling in and out of the stacks, toting water bottles and backpacks filled to the brim, sporting sad, tired looks on their red faces as they head to their favorite study destination. Not even Starbucks could wake these people up. Or an earthquake.

Everyone is in gym shorts and tee shirts (it’s all the rage on Sundays and finals week), and the continual rhythm of footsteps (flip flops primarily) reverberates from one side of the room to the other. In other words, unless I get some caffeine, I may pass out from boredom and lack of sleep.

Today I chose the third floor, which has been designated as the “quiet zone”. It’s a little too quiet if you ask my opinion. Besides the footsteps and some girl with sinus issues, it’s as quiet as the Sahara Desert in here (and nearly as hot too). I’m suddenly glad that I remembered my iPod. When I’m left alone with my own thoughts, Lord knows what might happen.

I could actually learn something.

Imagine that.

I’m supposed to be writing my Southern Literature final on moral ambiguity and the process of maturing. Flannery O’Connor, James Agee, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Walker Percy keep me company as I type away on my laptop. Of course, it would be nice if they would strike up conversation and help me with my research. They aren’t exceptionally chatty.

It isn’t particularly exciting, but my roommate and I bagged a table with a magnificent view. We can see the other side of the tracks, Keezell, the Honors Building, and a vast, green landscape of trees, grass, and shrubbery. The wind powers through the leaves outside until it comes to tap on the window while the walls creak and pop to its magnificent force.

I’m terribly distracted.

xoxo e

Suspended

Oh, would you like to swing on a star?

Carry moonbeams home in a jar?

Here Comes the Sun

Describe my perfect day?

Hmm…

It wouldn’t be a birthday, or any holiday…

It would certainly be a rainy day, preferably a Sunday…

An astonishingly ordinary day…

Nothing terribly exciting, nothing exceptional, even…

Just a positively wonderful, ordinary day…

A cozy, stay-in-bed day, with the covers pulled up tight, the perfect concoction of heat and cotton on your skin…

Watching old Jimmy Stewart, Audrey Hepburn, Bing Crosby films, lounging about in pajamas and reading a book…

Listening to the crooners sing you constant lullabies…

Eating when you please, no deadlines to attend to…

Snuggled in the blankets from the morning to the afternoon…

Smiling to yourself for no particular reason at all…

And you’d have company of course, if you wanted…

That certain special someone being lazy, just like you…

With absolutely nothing in the world to do…

No one to impress, no hurry to get dressed…

A lazy, rainy, Sunday

Left to you and your dreams.

xoxo e

My Absolute Favorite Song

A long time ago,
A million years B.C.,
The best things in life
Were absolutely free.
But no one appreciated
A sky that was always blue,
And no one congratulated
A moon that was always new.
So it was planned that they would vanish now and then,
And you must pay before you get them back again.
That's what storms were made for
And you shouldn't be afraid for...
Every time it rains, it rains
Pennies from heaven.
Don't you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven?
You'll find your fortune falling
All over town...
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.
Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers...
If you want the things you love
You must have showers.
So when you hear it thunder,
Don't run under a tree.
There'll be pennies from heaven for you and me.

-Bing Crosby, 1936

xoxo e

Les mélodies lyriques de la langue

Le français est, tout simplement, ma nouvelle obsession. La langue elle-même a quelque chose qui est tout à fait sensuel mélancolique, même-dans la création. Je ne sais pas ce que c'est. C'est un langage mélodique, un reflux continuel et la circulation des notes et des mots. Ou, oui, c'est une marée. Il possède une certaine beauté qui est incomparable à aucune autre langue. Peut-être c'est pour cela que c'est une langue romantique ... un peu d'humour. Mélodies à la dérive dans et hors de l'oreille, rythmique et merveilleuse.

xoxo e

"A box of rain will ease the pain and love will see you through"

Chronicles of the Mind

Do you take life as it's handed to you?

Does this question make you uncomfortable?

Do live in your own little bubble?

Does time tick away as you stare off in space?

Do you not know when, why, or what place?

There's no thought process--of course not. It's a "thanks, have a nice day" mentality, a "Hey, how are you?"

A rolling-off-the-tongue automatic question and answer, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Everything is memorized, it seems.

It's a muttering, sputtering, dazed cloud of really nothing and everything at all

It's the things you notice and the things you don't

The things you've long forgotten, and the things you know you won't,

The forgetting gets old, while the remembering gets painful

And the happiest moments are replayed in your mind

Like a movie reel, with your life as the main feature,

And you watch a caricature of yourself walking down the street

Doing nothing at all, but isn't it significant?

And you're laughing and crying and loving every second of living life

So full of life

An utterly lifeless life

But so full of good intention and looking forward to the future

Reminiscent of the past so that the present seems boring

But oh, those little moments!

When you're most unaware, they creep up on you and pull you out of despair

The despair of your arbitrary existence

As you wait for some excitement. You make your own, you see,

That's what you're for.

Oh, little one, stop and smell the flowers please

There is so much more out there if you take the time to see.

Don't just see it, really look.

Pause for a brief moment, and catch up with yourself.

Don't let life spin around you as you stand motionless.

You feel life in every fiber of your being, but--yet--you stand in an indifferent vacuum of time, motionless.

Here is your LIFE: look at it.

It exists all around you.

It's a face and a place and it's something you touch

It's the smell in the air, it's everything and nothing, it's much

Of the same thing over and over again until you're sick of it all

But you're a creature of consistency, you see?

So STOP.

Look around.

It's insistent, this hypnotic splendor.

It coaxes you into its trance as

The crooning lull of life sings your name;

And you can't help but wonder

As you keep on going under

If it is everything you thought it would be.

And you're drowning, you see, in life itself

An apocalyptic moment, paused, just for you.

You watch it go by

Childhood into adulthood

Memory by memory

Tied neatly in a bow, your own play by play.

Look--quick--before it changes.

Look--quick--and take it in.

Don't let it pass you by

You can learn how to fly

If you want to.

Seconds drag on into minutes, then hours

With each passing day

We speed through the weeks, the months, the years.

And when we get the chance to come up to bat

And make our name renowned

We feel horrifyingly alone in the bright, white lights.

And one solitary voice is heard above the endless chatter:

"Swing, batter, batter, batter"

before it's too late.

xoxo e

Love Letters ©

I want one last lullaby
One more bedtime story told
One final happy ending
Before we both grow old.


I'd be your favorite hello
And your hardest goodbye
You'd be the prince to my fairy tale
And never even try--


I want to be your future
Even if I'm not your past
I don't care if I'm your first kiss
But I want to be your last.


xoxo e

"We skip on by like jaybirds in July"

-Walker Percy,

The Moviegoer

Ripened With Age

The cutest love is elderly.

Okay, that doesn’t sound particularly attractive or even remotely appealing, but it’s true.

I went to visit my grandparents the other day, and for some reason, something occurred to me that had never occurred to me before: they were very much in love.

My grandmother has been (nearly) bedridden for quite some time now (the result of incessant smoking from an early age), and has been confined mostly to the bedroom on the second-floor of their home. She has cable (a modern-day necessity that I keep begging my father to invest in), so she’s occupied during the day, and has frequent visitors. Her brand new cell phone never leaves her side, and she’s always quick to show you her new Hawaiian-sounding ringtone. She’s technologically savvy (somewhat) and has a stack of Archie comic books to occupy her in case nothing on her 300+ channels suits her fancy. I don’t think she minds her situation much.

My grandfather, on the other hand, is a country boy through and through. His “garden” spans for several acres, and is riddled with corn, tomatoes, squash, pears, apples, cucumbers, asparagus, potatoes…if it can grow, he’s grown it. He slaves in the elements for hours on end, winter through summer, year after year, and has now taken on the domestic responsibilities as well. He certainly has a green thumb, and I’d say that the rest of his seven fingers are fairly green as well (he blew the others off when he was little: two while playing with a stick of dynamite and one while chopping wood). Cooking, cleaning, you name it. He’d upstage Martha Stewart any day…and she has all ten fingers.

It’s needless to say that they are two exact opposites…but, as the saying goes, opposites attract.

In this case, they most certainly do.

It was my birthday and my grandmother’s birthday (April 9^th, for those of you who didn’t know), so we rendezvoused to exchange pleasantries and gifts on the big day. The mood was light, the TV was off, and their two Cocker Spaniels were surprisingly behaved.

That’s when I noticed. There wasn’t enough room for us all to sit down, so my side of the family all smushed onto one bed, while Mema sat up in hers and Pop sat at the foot of it. The foot of the bed, and her foot, that is. She slapped him for his mishap and he laughed…and for a brief moment, it was as if they were just two of my friends, a cute couple flirting and laughing and just loving life as it has been handed them.

Who’s to say that their love has lessened with age?

From where I sit, love has no expiration date.

xoxo e

Make today extraordinarily, ordinary.

How Chelsea Handler Handles It

Chelsea Handler's new collection of essays has become my most recent obsession.

It's hilarious of course (as to be expected) but I agree with most everything she says.

She touches on everything from ill-spirited jokes played on her highly-gullible boyfriend to her friend Lydia's redneck wedding to her take on Gingers (shout out to Cara). However, my favorite excerpt thus far is her take on the new lingo of the technological era, in which people insist upon using frequent abbreviations that I, in turn, must translate. The use of hieroglyphics, morse code, and other forms of secret languages in a text message or any other form of computerized communication irks me to no end. I agree whole-heartedly with Chelsea's rant:

"You wouldn't say LOL if you were out to lunch with someone, so why would you write it in an instant message or an e-mail? Just laugh alone in your office or house. I don't need to be notified that you're laughing. If someone is busy laughing, then how do they have the time to be typing the letters LOL?"

Now, I am a huge fan of emoticons, not because they are entirely cute (they aren't, in fact) but because I have found that one's tone does not translate in a text message. Therefore, a smiley face will let the recipient know that I was attempting to be sarcastic, genuine, or entirely mean. It really saves me from a lot of misunderstandings in the long run.

I also use a tremendous amount of "haha"s, so this post could be read as somewhat hypocritical by some. However, let me differentiate between the two: a "haha" is chuckling mildly to oneself, which yes, I do indeed do. On the other hand, I would bet good money that no one is laughing out loud at any text message they receive unless it is from Chelsea Handler herself. Otherwise, you are just chuckling.

I'm terribly happy to get that off my chest. TTFN, LYL, TTYL, BBL, etc. etc. etc. to those of you who LOL.

xoxo e