Saturday, November 25, 2006

eleven...

my dear brother and my dear sister, today especially you are in my thoughts and in my heart.

i feel amazingly humbled at how lucky i am to experience this life, in its light parts and dark parts, with the two of you.

i love you,
emily

Sunday, October 22, 2006

ahem...

c? why don't you answer the phone when i call? is it because you've spent the weekend at the jackson county fair and you ran off with some carnie?

here's a present for you:

Sunday, October 15, 2006

master plan...

okay, i talked to aunt d today about cousin b's wedding. it looks like i'm gonna be flying into raleigh on that thursday, december 14th. you guys know what december 14th is, right? it's dad's birthday! and it occurred to me today while on the phone with aunt d that i haven't been with dad on his birthday in, oh, THIRTEEN YEARS! how messed up is that? of course, none of you have been with me on my birthday in thirteen years, either, but so it goes...

oh god, wait a minute! i haven't been with ANY member of my immediate family for a birthday in thirteen years! now i feel really crummy!

nonetheless, i have a plan. i can't exactly bake a carrot cake and bring it with me on the plane, because cakes don't travel particularly well. but i can bake a whole bunch of carrot cupcakes and bring them in some sort of tupperware-esque container. so, that's what i'm gonna do. i'm going to make a bunch of carrot cupcakes and on the night of december 14th, we can all celebrate dad's 57th birthday together! with carrot cake, erm cupcakes!

sounds good, yes? don't tell dad. it will be a surprise.

xo,
emily

Saturday, October 14, 2006

but the second mouse didn't die...

...i only thought that it had (or that it was on its way out) when i sent that text message to my brother and sister yesterday. the story goes like this:

i woke up later than i wanted to on friday morning. i had to be at work by 9:00 to help out with pre-trial conferences at the courthouse. so, i'm in a bit of a rush, not really paying attention to details. when i get up, generally the first thing i do is take a shower, and i don't put in my contacts until after i've gotten out of the shower. and, although my sister and brother have been blessed with our mother's genes when it comes to eyesight, i have been stuck with our father's, and i'm blind as a bat without my spectacles or contacts.

so, i take my shower, put in my contacts, am in the process of getting ready for my day. and then i remember the little mouse-y screams that haunted my night, so i go in search of the corpse that milo and kenobi have surely left somewhere for me. and sure enough, i find it...on my couch. there it is! good morning to emily! dead mouse on the couch! so i scoop him up in a coffee filter and dispose of his remains as respectfully as possible, given that i'm running late. then i go back in the bathroom to brush my teeth, and out of the corner of my eye i see something small and dark in the shower. and it's moving!

yep -- it was mouse number two! he was soaking wet, shivering, and in the shower. which means that he was probably in the shower WITH ME, probably hiding in the corner, and i was just too blind to see him! so i do what any rational human being who just saw a mouse while in the middle of her bathroom brushing her teeth would do -- i froze. then once i had unclenched my fingers and toes, i became incredibly sad. because this little guy had clearly been terrorized by the cats all night, and then i half-drowned him in the shower. i am an asshole!

and then, i was faced with a dilemma of ethical proportions.

see, this little mousey didn't look so good. i have no problem with my cats killing mice. that form of mouse-demise seems completely consistent with nature. yet, what do i do with a mouse that isn't dead, but has been left for dead by my cats? do i allow him to continue to suffer? or do i commit a mercy killing to put him out of his misery?

ooooooohhh... killing! kill a tiny, cute, shivering mouse? is this the "right" thing to do? erm...

so, here's what i did... i chickened out. i finished brushing my teeth and i left for work. and i felt like an awful person because i chose not to act. but i couldn't imagine actually being an agent of death! even for a mouse! i mean, what the hell?!

okay, cut to me getting home from a long day at work... i'm on the phone with a friend of mine, sitting on my bed, and all of a sudden, what do i see happening on my bedroom floor?! it's the little mouse! he's walking kinda unsteadily, but he's dried off now. and milo and kenobi are standing on either side of him, watching him. they're not messing with him, other than being a couple of intimidating bullies. they're just watching him. and he looks terrified, the poor little guy!

now, at this point, i HAVE to act. i must! i can't leave him to spend the rest of his days frozen in terror on my bedroom floor. so i grabbed an empty shoebox from under my dresser and cornered him so he'd have to go in the box. now i had tiny-mouse-in-a-box. and then i ran upstairs to michael and steph's apartment to get their advice on what to do next.

"put him outside!" they said! "will you guys come with me?" i said. "okay," they said. so the three of us grabbed a flashlight and traipsed outside with the mouse-in-a-box and went out to the alleyway behind the house and set him free. free! free from the house, free from the cats. i asked him kindly not to visit me again, but to find happiness in nature, where he belongs.

and then, coming back through the backyard we see my landlord, who asks what we're doing, and i say that i caught a mouse and had to let him go, and he says, "and it took all three of you?" and i say, "look, i was scared and i needed the support, okay?" and then we made jokes about me for a while. and i made sad faces.

but at least i didn't have to kill that damn mouse.

and that's the story.

memorialization:

sent C & D a text message yesterday saying something along the lines of how the cats killed another two mice the night before, and ZOINKS! the following exchange between the C's cell phone and mine occurred:

c: ha! i'll zoink you. i'm at faulkner's house.
e: fanfaulkingtastic!

just wanted to keep that one for posterity.

Monday, October 09, 2006

genetic code...

it certainly wasn't intentional on my part, but i've noticed that all three of us in our little posts have included ellipses in the title.

rock rock on.

not fit for human consumption...

this evening i talked to krista. we said this:

emily: so, my brother and sister and i have decided to start a blog.
krista: you have no idea how afraid i was that you were going to say that the three of you were going to start a band.
emily: [sad face]

anyhoo, i was thinking, given the three of us and our (dare i say) tendency to lose steam for things after a while, i'm not going to do anything drastic like link to this blog from my real blog until i see where we end up going with this.

of course, i think we should go wholehog with this, but i'm already a crazy blogger. so, what do i know?

caitlin is going to the jackson county fair this weekend. holy shit, i'm almost jealous. almost.

omigod...

dude. obviously nobody is going to read this but us! that's the fun -- we get to PRETEND like we're writing for an audience, when the truth (the painful and humiliating truth) is that nobody gives a shit except for you, me, and sometimes-daniel.

c, please don't skip too many classes. i don't mean to get all blah-blah-blah about this, but if you ever want to look at my college transcript, you could very clearly tell which classes i attended and which i didn't. so, dude -- go to class. you never ever ever get away with being perpetually late when you get a real job in real life, so you'd better start being on time now.

love,
me

introduction...

today i had a brilliant idea -- what if daniel and caitlin and i start a blog together! like, a sibling blog! a siblog! so, here it is!

why now? well, for starters, this is the only year in which all three of us will be in school simultaneously. and we're at very different points in our education -- caitlin is a wee freshman, daniel is almost done with his bachelor's degree, i'm at the terminus of what probably shouldn't really count as a terminal degree.

and, we're now officially all on our own, can be tried as adults, do our own laundry, et cetera.

plus, we're all brilliant, hilarious, gifted, and are exceptionallay fine writers. that will soon become obvious, as this little site starts to accumulate posts.

long ago, i said of my siblings (and to my siblings) that we each fall into a category -- i'm the smart one, daniel is the talented one, caitlin is the pretty one. (by process of elimination, therefore, i'm boring and ugly, daniel is stupid and ugly, and caitlin is stupid and boring.) of course, none of us is so simple, or so simply described.

whatever we are, as of today, we are emily and daniel and caitlin, embarking on a project together, from various points in our lives and from various locations in the country. this blog will become what it becomes. perhaps it will only be a conversation among a brother and two sisters. perhaps it will be a collaboration. for now it's just... an experiment.

xo,
emily