HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME! pretty helmet celebrated it’s conception on Monday, July 25th 2001. four years man! that is longer than most of the relationships i’ve been in.

in honor of our anniversary here is a little Behind The Music: Pretty Helmet.

In the summer of 2001in a cramped construction office in downtown Birmingham, Alabama a young woman was beginning what would become the best and worst thing of of her life. Though she had faced many tragedies already none was as life changing as what she was creating.

I was 22 that summer and after reading and following the life of one of her friends, Andrew, on his website drewslife.com she decided she would start her own web diary. Always content in writing, I was drawn into this world where no one judged and everyone accepted. Her first couple of posts were reminiscint of diary entries but as the months went on she felt more comfortable opening up. For the most part, the posts were comical diatribes about being single, friends, work and everyday life. I felt a sense of relief telling of her anxieties and fears.

Since it’s conception Pretty Helmet has taken on many forms, a web diary, a photoblog, a sounding board, a social commentary, but all have been relatively one in the same. The people I have met through the years because of blogging have made my life more interesting and a little more bearable. I have learned so much about the world and even more about myself.

Thank you all for a fantastic, crazy, heartbreaking, bittersweet four years. I look forward to four more.

All My Love!

some things i have noticed as of late:

uno - high heels suck. seriously…they are the uncomfortable and just plain stupid. despite the fact that they cause varicose veins, poor blood circulation and other maladies, you can’t wear socks with them. come on! socks rock! especially if they are cute toe socks like i have. since working at this new job and having to abide to the corporate dress code i have approximately nine, count ‘em NINE! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 blisters on my feet. every night i have to wash my feet, dry them, and bandage the blisters. i should take stock in band-aid brand bandages.

dos - the newest type of therapy (that i have invented) is SimsTherapy. have a problem with an ex? create them and then leave them in a swimming pool with no way to get out. mortgage got your pockets a little empty? build your house and then bulldoze the bastard. kids driving you up a wall? lock them in their room and before you know it social services comes and takes the little boogers off your hands. hate your neighbors? invite them over for dinner and then throw water balloons at them. it’s new, it’s effective and it’s significantly less costly than a gun and a 20 year prison sentance.

tres - thank goodness that some things only happen once a year. for instance - the OB/Gyn visit. holy blech batman! i could go the rest of my life without having some 70 year old doctor poking at my hoo hah. i didn’t even get a dinner out of it…in fact i had to pay him $25.00. the good news is i am healthy, my cholesterol is low (150) and my heart sounds beeeautiful (his words not mine).

lazy sunday filled with curling up on the couch watching movies and playing Simpson’s Life.

also, discovering music from my old stomping ground of albuquerque. the shins. haunting melodies, overdosed lyrics, sweet electric guitars. check out New Slang. this song reminds me of sitting in my parent’s basement when i was little watching a slide show of colorado. all the beautiful fields of forsythia gently swayed against the wind. my mother’s face, soft and beautiful and her eyes brown, round and warm. and the smell of her skin. almost makes me cry. makes me hate that i have disappointed them. makes me wish i had my mom here.

and a certain ghost will appreciate, if anything, the lyrics to Caring Is Creepy. but if the ghost is who i think he is, he will be good to get the album. or atleast let me mail him a copy. it’s good traveling music.

went out with hemisphere last night. we ate dinner at surin and you guys would be so proud of me…i ate more than just coconut soup! the pot stickies were really good! and no, it’s not that type of pot. i’m a good girl…you know this man! damon showed up an hour late and ate the rest of my soup. what a mooch.

so hemisphere and i were discussing how karma has been kicking my butt as of late. the whole troy thing and then last night while stuffing our faces i see a gaggle of girls standing outside smoking. one of them had a veil on her head and it was apparent that it was a bachelorette party. i recognized one of the girls as being wesley’s (the guy i dated for five years) sister-in-law. the girl with the veil turned around and immediately i got this sinking feeling in my gut. the last time i saw her it was at the plaza and wesley was there and introduced her to me as his girlfriend. put two and two together people.

so yeah, what in the good baby jesus’ name did i do? have i upset the gods? granted, i haven’t paid my tithe and i haven’t even stepped into a church since my wedding but COME ON! this is just mean.

by the way, zach, i noticed that you stole something from me last night and though i don’t want them back (you obviously have more need for an addiction than i) i would like some sort of compensation. i’ll be expecting my teva flip flops via federal express by wednesday.

foul mouthed and blue. trying to repair my head from irreprabable damage. no one likes a sullen girl so i smile a crooked smile and think of pretty things. brought my skeletons out of the closet for a dance; tried to tuck them away again but they are reluctant. sit in front of a box with vacuum tubes for hours trying my fate with little people who exist only because i imagined them. going out for awhile to gain some perspective with the hope that i don’t run into my past. a past that was sweet to the taste and bitter to the heart. phone calls reveal that i’m boring and unassuming. he’s just mad that he didn’t get a cupboard full of poems when he left.

there is a ghost in here. as i push it out, it never leaves. keeps it shoes on my table and leaves cigarette butts in the sink. my ghost will steer a train into the eastern regions of the state but he will still be sitting next to me. dinosaurs overlook this little city and we will sit on picnic tables and listen to each other’s breathing. drinking becomes an evident solution to making situations worse. my ghost whispers in my ear reminding me of staircases and locked record store doors. of standing in crowded rooms with his chin resting on my head. of evaporated milk and unspoken phrases. there is a ghost in here and i hate him. i hate his haunting. i hate to see him go.

you guys want to hear a funny story? no? well, suck it up.
when i was a freshman in college i began dating a guy named troy*, or as i like to refer to him “the guy with short man syndrome”. troy was so great in the beginning. he was thoughtful, sweet, funny, daring and adventurous. he was all of the things that my last boyfriend was not. i would travel an hour and a half both ways just to hang out with him. when he decided to move to hueytown to be closer to work i was overjoyed! because i was only eighteen at the time we spent most of our time at his apartment watching movies and cooking dinners or going to his dad’s house in the country and riding horses. ahhh, we were happy.
about three months into the relationship i started to notice a change in his attitude. specifically, he acted like and told me that i was the stupidest person in the world. one day as we were driving back to birmingham from his dad’s house he went on a tirade about how i would never amount to anything, that i shouldn’t hope for any better work than a counter server at the waffle house, and that if i lost just a few pounds i would atleast be good enough for street work. he was screaming, i was crying, and i wanted to jump out of the car and run away. on another occassion he was pissed off about something trivial and threw an unopened can of soda at me, barely missing my face.
oh, but don’t get me wrong. it wasn’t all bad…he wanted to marry me. yep, that little shit wanted me to walk down the aisle with him and we could live in horrifying bliss for the rest of our lives.
around the ninth or tenth month of the relationship i had had enough. i broke it off the week before memorial day. on memorial day weekend alyce (armed with a baseball bat) and i went to troy’s apartment to get my stuff.
fast forward almost ten years later. i’m at this new job that i like very much. i notice that one of the girls here has pictures of horses on her desk and we start chatting about them. i realize that she has the same last name as troy so just out of pure curiosity i ask her if she knows him. yep, she’s his wife.
hiswife! peopleareyoulisteningbecauseihadanaxietyattackandhadtositdown. he has apparently told her something about me because she then says, “i have asked him not to come up here until i talk to you about it.” wait, are you telling me that there is even a slight chance that he could come waltzing in here and i will be unarmed? if he is here, who’s running hell?
i could act all cool and non-chalant about it but the simple fact is when i see him i will go into some sort of regression and completely freeze up. i won’t be cool and confident, instead i’ll more likely be some dribbling idiot.

i found out just moments ago that a friend of mine is pregnant. a friend who is probably the last person that i could possible conceive (no pun intended) to take care of a baby. if those of you who i have known for years, i.e. irish and tori, can figure out who i am talking about this is not to get out to anyone, under any circumstance.
she seems happy though. i guess that counts for something. the unsettling thing is is that she told me: “he didn’t even think he was able to reproduce”. wait. rewind. do you mean to tell me that he thought he didn’t find it necessary to wear protection even though he was never actually tested for slow swimmers? so you went into this just on his “thought”? it’s called responsibility. how are they going to raise a child on a shoestring budget with him as a pizza maker and her as a bookstore clerk? i guess it could be worse.

this weekend marked another Sidewalk Scramble under my belt. i awoke on saturday morning to five people already setting up their film equipment. within in an hour there was a total of eighteen people in my house. i will admit that when i read the script the night before i thought it was pure crap but i am not the visionary in our house…that would be my husband. as the scenes were filmed i began to see it all coming together - though i think our team was jipped as far as the genre: a buddy romance movie.

here are just a few pics of what went on:

james brown our illustrious production assistant taking a break and scrolling through his iPod.

Liv, an actress in the movie, her boyfriend and chris taking five and reading a collection of The Onion News.

the documentary crew from PBS. they found kev’s stash of old Maxim magazines.

from left to right: stacey, kenn, kevin (not my husband), mia, and michael. shooting the plumber scene in my tiny bathroom.

kenn got the editing done fairly early and turned everything in with time to spare. way to go! i hope you all will be able to come to the viewing on friday, july 15th. it will be held at the alys stevens center. the more people who show up to support us, the better we will be judged. i’m counting on you guys!