2nd Star to the Right :: Neverland. I think I want to live there.

Tomorrow is a day that family and friends traditionally gather to celebrate and give thanks. My family is not unique in that respect. We too will gather to eat, drink and be merry.

By eating and drinking I mean we'll eat ourselves silly with the turkey and all the trimmings. There will be wine and Shirely Temples and coffee and tea after we've had our fill of the bountiful spread.

And by being merry, I mean hurling playful insults, laughing until whatever is in your mouth comes out of your nose and telling stories about each other in order to embarass, harass and generally humiliate each other in front of the guests.

I can't wait to get home.

Happy Turkey Day.

4:00 PM | allison | # |

Why is it that some people can see your potential and make you feel good about the job you do but others look right through you like you're invisible and aren't worth the cost of your train ticket?

I try hard not to let the folks that can't see my potential or willingness to learn get to me. I try very hard. Because if I listened to them I'd never have left my comfortable apartment and night-job at Pizza Hut. But I do have potential and I am willing to learn. I just need a chance, a moment, a mind open enough to see me and what I can do.

Mornings like this one make me want to believe the folks that don't really see me; they make me want to believe that I'm not going work my way up or make a difference.

It's hard, so freaking hard not to let them get to me.

But some days, the folks that don't see your potential are louder than the ones that do.

11:43 AM | allison | # |

This morning I was thinking about moving. I've moved a lot in the last seven years. Three different states and multiple dwellings within each state. The longest I've lived in one place is just over two years. And most of that time, I've lived alone. I had a roommate when I lived in the dorms in college and two roommates when I lived in that awesome duplex my junior year.

And then I moved out on my own. I've mentioned before the crazy little apartment I lived in my senior year of college. I was there for the longest amount of time and loved every single second of it. Well, maybe that's a lie. But I did love it there. And then I moved to Texas; I lived with an aunt and uncle until for a couple of months until I found my own place. I liked that apartment too. Compared to my place in Columbia, it was a palace. And then I moved again, this time back to Chicago. I got a great deal on the apartment I'm in now, in part because the company I work for has an alliance with the management company that runs the complex. My lease comes up for renewal soon and I'm pretty sure I won't get a deal as good as I have now.

I'm getting tired of all the moving. I want to find a place I can stay a while. I want to put pictures up on the wall and know that they're going to be there for a long time. I want to be in once place long enough that my furniture makes indentations in the carpet from being there. I want to live in a place where I don't get new neighbors every month. I want to live in a place where I have four walls that are all mine and no one elses. I want a home that I can come back to every day and feel safe and happy and secure.

And most of all, I want someone to come home to.

8:44 AM | allison | # |

I've been thinking about an old friend since last week. It's taken me that much time to get together in my head what I wanted to say. I started thinking about her last Tuesday morning. As I stepped on the train, I thought I smelled her. I looked around and realized the woman standing behind him was wearing the same perfume my friend used to wear.

I met J during the summers I spent doing theater. We once figured we had actually met when we were six and saw each other only in the summers until about junior high. It was then that we really became good friends. We were opposites in many ways, but alike enough that the differences didn't matter. Now that I think about it, that is probably one of the reasons we got along so well.

At this point in our lives, J and I had spent every summer since we were five working and participating in the summer theatre workshops. Then the summer between our freshman and sophamore years, her family scheduled their summer fishing trip during the first week of our workshop. Both of us were devestated. I'd be alone that summer and J would be stuck on a boat.

We got upset and then we schemed. My parents agreed to let J stay with us while her family went fishing. After some tears, late night phone calls and a little begging, her parents agreed too. She spent two weeks with us. It was two of the best weeks of my life. It made her a part of my family. My parents adored her; my brother got another sister. After that, she would often stop by just to say hello to my family, even if I wasn't home. We celebrated her birthday; she spent time with us at holidays. I went to her school's functions and she went to mine.

J was beautiful, inside and out. She had long, glorious curls that I would have been envious of had I not loved her so much. Her smile was amazing; she literally lit up a room with it. She turned pink when she got emabarrased and her eyes got dark when she was angry. When she was stressed, J would chew her nails down until they bled. And she always wore the same perfume. I could tell if she'd been in the room, just by the scent. It was clean and happy and classy. It was J.

I never questioned why she didn't spend time with her own family during special occassions. I assumed that if she wanted to talk about it she would. I know her mom and dad didn't always get along and her family put a lot of pressure on her to the things they thought she should. But I didn't want to her to feel bad about that. Instead, I worked harder to make her a part of our family.

Once we both could drive, we even worked together. A friend of my mom's had gotten us jobs at the local television station as interns. We worked often and for very little money. But we had a blast.

Our last summer in theatre, we were given plaques. J and I started the summer workshops the first year they began we were the only two who had been there every year since. We spent thirteen summers together.

After that summer, we both went away to different colleges. I went out of state to a large university. She stayed a little closer to home and went to a small, private college. We talked a lot and emailed constantly. She was rooming with someone we had known during our theatre summers. I missed her so much it hurt sometimes. She was my best friend. My sister.

That Christmas, she and her father came to school to pick me up and take me home. Things were somehow different, although I couldn't figure out what. She and another friend spent Christmas Even at our house and we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning.

When we both returned to school, the contact was less frequent. The phone calls shorter; the emails fewer and far between. Something had happened to us. To her. To me. I didn't know what. I still don't.

We'd hear from her every once in a while throughout my college years. She'd stop by the house or call my mom. Everyone in my family tried to talk to her. To find out what we'd done that was keeping her away.

It's been more than five years now since the last time I've spoken or emailed or had any contact with her. She cut us out of her life. I have to believe that she had a reason, although I'm not entirely sure I want to know what that reason is.

I believe that there is a purpose she was in our lives and that we were in hers. Perhaps I'm not going to know what the purposes and reasons are in this life. But every time I smell her and I turn to look, I'm a little disappointed that I don't see her standing there.

8:59 AM | allison | # |

When I was younger, my gradeschool would take field trips every year. Each grade would go someplace different. One year it was the Ice Capades. Another it was the Museum of Science & Industry. And once, we went to the circus.

It was quite a spectacle. All the colors and lights. The clowns both frightened and excited me in ways that hard to explain. I watched in awe as the trapeze artists seemed to actually fly through the air. I was amazed at the size and ferocity of the lions and tigers. The $5 my mom gave me that morning was spent on cotton candy and a flashing necklace that didn't last the bus ride home. And I was jealous that I wasn't one of the children they picked to ride around on the back of an elephant during the finale.

Tonight, I'm going to the circus again. I have to admit that I'm a little hesitant to go - I'm afraid it won't be as exciting or spectacular as I remember. Going to the circus as a child is a memory I don't want to tarnish.

There will dinner and a little drinking before the show and probably enough cotton candy to last me a lifetime. I'll be with friends and sitting in a good seat. But still, I'm a little worried it won't live up to the memory I've got stored away in my head.

On the other hand, am I worrying for nothing? It is, after all, the Greatest Show on Earth.

*Update* The circus still is the Greatest Show on Earth. This is what I remember: there was cotton candy and funny hats. Twirly things that light up. Clowns. Elephants. Singing. Men in tight pants. World famous clowns. Horses. There was cutting in line at the bathroom. More cotton candy. More men in tight pants. Lions, tigers and bears, oh my! Ok, only tigers. But lots of, oh my! The Globe of Death. Singing. Big gyroscopic things that light up. More singing. Spilled beer. And finally, Bailey's Comet, aka setting a man on fire and shooting him out of a big cannon from one side of the arena to the other.

It was awesome.
And I am so going back next year.

8:58 AM | allison | # |

I think today is another one of those character building days that my dad likes to tell me about.

I also think today is another one of those days when I should have called in sick, stayed in my pjs all day and snuggled in bed with a good book and a steaming cup of hot chocolate.

One should be so lucky.

12:08 PM | allison | # |

Sometimes I think it would be helpful if people came with warnings like the MPAA issues to movies.

You know, something like Rated R for pervasive language, drug use, violent anti-social behavior and some sexuality.

Then you can think to yourself maybe you don't really want to sit next to that guy on the train because its a PG-13 kind of day.

2:01 PM | allison | # |

It's official. I'm about to become a statistic. Not the two out of three dentists prefer type of statistic. But a real statistic.

I got a call from Arbitron, baby. I'm gonna change the way you listen to the radio.

Well, maybe not change it.

But I'm definitely going to tell them that as a mid-twenties female I mostly listen to NPR and all but one of the other presets on my radio are classic rock and oldies.

Yup, that's what I'm going to say. And I won't be lying. I don't think I'm quite the demorgraphic they're expecting.

8:51 AM | allison | # |

Some days I feel like a racehorse whose gate hasn't opened.

That's one of my favorite movie lines ever.

And today, entirely appropriate.

8:48 AM | allison | # |