true story.

Me, on phone to my mother: So Royal Bank of Canada pulled my credit to see if it could do better with my car loan, and it is able to cut my interest rate in half, saving me $80 a month. And by the way, she said I have a 780 FICO. Perfect credit is 800. Just so you know, I'm awesome.

My mother: (Stilted) That's great, Jamie.

Me: IS THIS LIKE THE TIME I BROUGHT HOME MY REPORT CARD AND I GOT A 94 AND YOU ASKED WHY IT WASN'T A 96!?!?!? 780, Mom! Seven eightyyyyy!

My mother: No. I'm quiet because I don't want you to get too full of yourself and buy anything.

My mother, ladies and gentlemen. She can always find the dark cloud in anything.

She Being Brand New

It had been a long weekend: three days of music from Athfest and three days of wearing a neon yellow plastic bracelet on my wrist. When I bought my ticket, I asked the guy to put it on tightly because I can't stand movement on my forearm, and now it was stuck there until I found a pair of scissors. More important than scissors though, what I wanted was a beer.

I meandered into my usual bar of that summer: Village Idiot. The thing that made Village Idiot unique was its chalkboard walls. Pieces of chalk in every color were strewn about the bar. By the end of the night, phone numbers and naked stick figures in sexual positions reminded the city that this was a college town. Every night the chalkboard would be wiped clean, only to be defaced again the next day. It was a comforting feeling about college, starting over every night. Being brand new every night.

Partially drunk I left my crowd and wandered over to the wall by the staircase. I picked up a piece of lime-green chalk and began writing. I quickly worked out a stanza of verses, dancing with the chalk without thinking.

I stepped away and took a sip of beer as I examined my work. As I wondered whether anyone would be able to decipher my drunken scrawl, a random sorority girl approached me.

"Oh my god, I love it!" She slurred as she cooed to me. She pressed her hands between her knees and jumped excitedly. "I am going to call my answering machine and read this into it so I'll be able to remember it tomorrow!"

As she dug through her purse for her phone, a man approached. It was obvious that he wasn't a co-ed. His age, his scruff and his thrift-store clothes revealed that he was a Townie, a member of the underground society that Athens doesn't advertise in its college brochure.

"That's hauntingly beautiful," he said. "Very dark, but beautifully written."

I was secretly thrilled. I turned around to thank him, but his plaid shirt and his hat was familiar.

I eyed him. "I know you. How do I know you?"

He pointed to my neon bracelet. "I just played in Athfest."

"Oh yeah, what band?" I ransacked my brain: Drive-By Truckers, Jucifer, Fuzzy Sprouts.

He was the guitarist for the Jennifer Nettles Band.

The man who plays Jennifer Nettles' own hauntingly beautiful lyrics. The same lyrics I would copy into my notebook while some T.A. rambled on about Classic Greek Mythology. She was my idol. I still remember her lyrics; I don't remember much about Classic Greek Mythology.

And here I was receiving accolades by an extension of her.

As soon as my girlfriend realized he was a quasi-celebrity, she pounced on him, working hard to take him home for the night. I stepped back and watched her pursue him while he gently side-stepped her advances. I took another swig of beer and looked back to my piece of the wall.

It would be brand new tomorrow, but it was pretty alright tonight.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

You know who looks like this during bootcamp? NOBODY. Oh hey, Girl with Makeup on who Is neither Sweating nor Crying, that push-up looks easy, doesn't it?

Scott once described my face during bootcamp as one that was "drained of all hope." I'd like to see that worked into the new advertising campaign.

Psycho killer, fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa

The maintenance man in my building loves to scare the shit out of me. Take, for instance, this morning:

Elevator door opens, the dog and I enter. Inside is Maintenance Man. Maintenance Man reaches hand down for Nikita to sniff, then pats her on the head. He turns and looks at me.

"So she just likes to eat from her bowl and go sit under the bed?"

"..."

Uh, that's exactly what she does. How does Super Psycho Stalker know the habits of my dog that spends 23 hours a day inside my apartment?

I stared at him blankly, tightened my grip on the leash, and then got off the elevator without saying a word.




And then I remembered I asked for the halogen light bulbs in my kitchen to be replaced yesterday.

Dogs Versus Cats

I have a small scar under my left eye. I got it Christmas Eve in the year of our Lord 2004 when I was at my then-boyfriend's parent's house. Nikita, a young dog then, was also with me. She had never seen a cat before and she was obsessed with the smaller four-legged and furry house pet.

Matt stood in the door jamb holding the cat protectively, more for the cat's comfort than from the likes of Nikita: Nikita doesn't have an evil inkling in her 50-pound Husky frame. Nikita raised her nose straight in the air, a la Snoopy, trying to drink more of the cat's scent. I crossed the room and reached down to grab her leather Coach collar to hustle her from the cat's space when the cat went all Kitty Ali on me and attacked my face.

I dropped Nikita's collar and shielded myself; the dog fled the scene of the crime on her own. I felt blood run down my face, then my fingers, and then my arms without even having to look. Matt's father ushered me to the kitchen sink where I dumped the blood I cupped in my hands. I held my face under the faucet until the water ran clear again. It seemed to take forever. The cat had missed my eyeball by less than half an inch and left an two-inch long laceration across my face.

I've never had anyone comment on my scar—it faded into a quiet indentation beneath my lashes—but I notice it every morning when I put on mascara. Every time I spy it, I feel comforted. I have an outward scar to reflect and validate the inward pain resulting from that relationship. A battle wound.

It makes me wish every one of my ex-boyfriend's parents owned cats.

Dance Party

While the rest of the crew was inside the Jacksonville stadium, Bonnie and Will stayed behind to watch the UGA/FL game with me at the tailgate. It had been the day of days: the weather was warm and sunny, friends from both past and present co-mingled seamlessly and there was an endless supply of shade, food and beverage. It was the kind of day that fades around the edges like an old photograph. The details have been creased but the general feeling lasts forever.

We lost. Will dug his toe in the ground and drug it in the dirt. Bonnie leaned her head against the back of her Georgia camping chair. The sun had set and we pulled the tent down in darkness. It appears the only thing we forgot was light. No one had made it back from the stadium yet, and we already emulated their attitudes. We had seen our team lose in overtime on a flat screen set up in the back of a 4Runner; it's another thing to witness a loss in person.

I turned the TV off. "You know what we need?" I called back to Bonnie, "A dance party." The iPod with the party mix that had worked so well before the game was turned back on. Coincidentally, Taio Cruz's "Break Your Heart" began. Our hearts were broken, but our spirit was not crushed.

Bonnie jumped up from the chair and began singing and dancing. It was our ode to the Bulldog Nation: "If you fall for me, I'm only gonna tear you apart/ Told you from the start/ I'm going to break break your break break your heart." I grabbed my cup of hunch punch and took a long swig. And then I danced. I couldn't remember the last time I truly, uninhibitedly danced.

Song after song our boots pounded the sandy dirt as we bounced and swayed and flung our arms to the sky. We danced because we were sad, as if it was the most natural thing to do.

People began filing in from the game; most were pleased to see a couple of girls in red and black singing and laughing. Our friends quietly settled in the empty camping chairs with no movement towards anything but sleep. The dance party had ended.

But not in my heart.

Ode to Blockbuster

This morning I shoved my very last Blockbuster rental through the metal slot and drove to work. Then I sat down at my desk and cancelled my online subscription that I've had since I lived in Athens in 2004. OMG, I've had that plan for 6 years!

They've been making money off of me for the past 6 months. It would take me a week after receiving the movie to finally sitting down and forcing myself to watch it. Sometime ago I was in a 1960's French musical phase and every disc I've been getting in the mail recently has induced a WTF response, because clearly 1960's French musicals HAS to be a transient pastime.

So goodbye Blockbuster, it's now cable and Redbox for me.