petals are soft and life is hard

paula dean uses the same sounding word, all stretched like taffy, for three things: boil, bowl, and ball. sometimes i wonder if her drawl is real. i imagine the ceo of food network, probably in a suit, a coffee stain on his tie, sitting down with his people in a room. let's find an older woman. she could be your grandma, your aunt, your best friend. and she's southern, and she makes comfort food. well, we have this woman, paula dean, waiting in the wings, but her accent isn't strong enough. and i think she's actually from southern illinois. bring her in, and have a vocal coach here by noon. oh, and get that don budge fellow if he's available.

our officiant reminds me of paula dean. she's older and has a drawl. she's very kind. she sings to her dog, and he sings back and his name is josh. josh. we loved what she had written for the ceremony.

we made our invitations, too. simple and clean and reminiscent of everything else we've pulled together for the wedding.

kids are testing today. it's been a year since i blogged the entry with the picture of the pencil next to it. crazy.

i'm trying to (finally) finish a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. eggers is a young adult, my age, trying to make sense of his life. he's cynical and has an intense vocabulary. his sentences are sometimes two words long, sometimes two pages. his life is both boring and difficult. my early 20s has been the hardest part of my life thus far. i realize now that college kids are still kids and essentially still being taken care of. then you have to take your degree and walk somewhere with confidence. when you wander, people feel bad for you, but that's not what you want. you start to think of your age and cringe. i'm old now. the line drawn between childhood and adulthood is behind me. i'm supposed to know what i'm doing. anything that could be written into a basic, mindless autobiography might show that i do know what i'm doing. but what i mean by all of this is that i'm trying to figure out who i am. i'm trying to get to the bottom of it, past the grabbing hands (remember labyrinth? when she falls through the hands?) without them affecting me. they can touch me, but that's all. i hit the bottom and i'm still myself. this is my plan.