p.s. i'm funnier than you.

I had an awful dream last night. One that I've had before, but this time with a new twist...
Once again I was getting married, and as always I knew that I didn't want to. The difference is that this time I went through with it!! The day after I told him I wanted a divorce. Making it an even worse version of my regular nightmare.
Optimism. I has it.


Tonight I sifted through a box of old notebooks/sheet music at my mom's house. Here is what I uncovered:
- That I learned NOTHING in high school.
- That I'm way cool for having composed a string quartet version of Elliot Smith's two waltzes on XO in 11th grade.
- That I must have started pretty early on the whole having-awesome-taste-in-music thing.
- Just how much time I devoted to choral music.
- That Sarah and I once planned a hard core band called xDIExARIAx.
- That I used to think Cornerstone was the coolest thing ever.
- That I was sooooo emo.
- That at one point I wasn't awful at drawing.
- That I start writing in lots of notebooks... but have yet to finish one.
- That I used to have a really good friend named Phillip.

That last one sent me through a loop. I found a letter he had written me some November 20th. I didn't even have to look at the return address. I just know that writing.
We've always lived in different cities, but in the booming years of internet, cell phones, and Napster, he wrapped letters around mix tapes. He was one of the greatest friends I've ever had.
He wrote this particular letter about how God had met with him one morning while visiting me at my parents' house. I was asleep upstairs ("snoring like a bear"). He was so full of faith, and when we would talk about things, they just seemed to make much more sense than they did before.
The last time I ever saw him, we were praying feverously across my kitchen table.

If what people have told me is true, Phillip still writes. He's also still in the business of telling people about music they had never heard of before. He gets paid to do both (as he should).

There are certain things that I think about every day. Phillip and his wife are one of those things.
They'd probably hate to know that.







I did an awful thing to a batch of cupcakes tonight.

reflection.

Some might say that I've not been my usual self lately. I guess this could be due to the fact that I took the mirror off my wall, and forgot to ask God each day to make me new. I think I fell back into being someone that I don't like.

Yeah. So I'm kind of, like, wallowing in self-pity or something...
But please understand how much I love melodrama:


My mother gave me a scale, which gives me the good fortune of knowing that I'm 20lbs heavier than I was this time last year. No joke.


Despite that, I've come to the realization that I got "dumped" last semester because this guy didn't like my personality. Which is... awesome.


I read some 2 year old emails the other night. I realized what a raving lunatic (stronger language desperately needed) I was to someone.
I couldn't have possibly been more insulting. And so needlessly.
So much so that if I have a soul, I will start crying the next time I see him.
I don't know how this guy could ever believe that I'm truly sorry.


I caught the bouquet at Dave and Tanya Gordon's wedding the other night. It helped that I was one of 3 single women left standing there.
On that note, I had asked almost every available guy that I feel close to to be my "date". They all turned me down! Every one of them.


:edit::Did I forget to mention that I have been lied to more times this past month than I had ever hoped to be?
Did I forget to mention that every instance of untruth was brought forth by card-carrying Christians?



FINAL EXAMS!!!!!

pray for this.

It's been kind of a mixed month. I've been a bad student. My body is all out of funk. Maybe it's the time of year. This time last year I couldn't even drive myself down the street to school.

My goal is to have this knit before I leave for Italy:







I knocked on my roommate's door the other day. When she opened it I skipped the salutations and asked, "you realize that we're the only two virgins in Atlanta, right?"
She pointed out that there is at least one other. So... at least we're not lonely.

It's almost enough to make me regret not going to a Christian school. I mean, holding down the fort by myself hasn't been a problem, but it gets old when people (even of your own faith) constantly tell you how naïve it is to be so old fashioned.



Yeah, that was awkward... but I just came from a bachelorette party... so I'm feeling liberal. May be deleted in the morning.

spring break 08.

Spring Break started for me last Thursday. It's been a strange mix.
That night we all played video games before the house show at icanfly. As it turns out, I'm really skilled in the virtual fighting arena. Had no idea.

Friday I went to get my hair done at a salon in Newnan. It wasn't a bad experience... but somehow my hair is back to being darker than it was before I started the process. It's also been trimmed down to an awkward length, and is... you know... falling out.
So, it's getting cut off entirely on Wednesday. I should have done that in the first place.
Then my older sister and I went out for birthday sushi with my dad. On the way we stopped for a beer at a place where dark figures from my past work. It put me in a really strange time-warp.
I don't really talk about my life before I became a Christian. Rest assured that you don't want to hear it.

The fun began when we all went to a cabin in Elijay.
It was nice to sit in the quiet for a while. To enjoy my friends without the distractions of television, cell phones, internet, traffic, school, etc.
It was nice to sit down to eat together around one table.

Spiritually speaking, I'm not in the best place that I've ever been. But I must say that I have a much healthier view on community than I ever have.


Lately I've been hearing a lot of "where have you been?"s. And this is my answer:
I've been living.
Being part of such a growing congregation I feel a little lost, and very bored.


What I love about who I have been spending my time with is that we are not homologous. Some of us are Christians. Some aren't. And with that, we don't all have the same moral compass. We don't all do the same things on Sundays. We don't all want nuclear families. We don't all want to graduate. We don't all go to the same places to drink coffee. We don't all smoke cigarettes. We don't all read the same books.
The only thing we all do together is eat and talk. But we do it transparently.
Despite all of our differences, I've never met a group of people who loved each other so boundlessly. Or people who think that each day should be lived 100% intentionally. Or people who aren't afraid to be alone for a little while. Or to ask and answer tough questions. Or to tell an off-color joke. Or be humiliated every so often.

I think that what I stepped away from was the feeling that I needed to be validated by people I find more interesting, or more influential, than myself.
In a way it's no different than my mom not wanting to leave her monetarily corrupt church because her husband is on the "board of trusties".


The problem with Christians is that we think who we are and what we do is so important.
I'd like it better if I thought that who God is and what God does mattered most.

1, 2, 3, 4.

my sister got lucky
married a yuppie
took him for all he was worth
now she's a swinger
dating a singer
i can't decide which is worse

but not me baby
i've got you to save me
aw, you're so bad
the best thing i ever had
in a world gone mad
yer so bad

my sister's ex husband
can't get no lovin
walks around dog-faced and hurt
now he's got nothin
head in the oven
i can't decide which is worse

but not me baby
i've got you to save me
aw, you're so bad
the best thing i ever had
in a world gone mad
yer so bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-tom petty and the heartbreakers


I love being a girl and having girl friends.

my german half...

"i really think that the low selfesteem of girls is the greatest gift that the corporate world and the media have ever made to men, maybe the only gift too. i wonder if any guy in the world would get action if not all the girls would be totally emotioanlly wrecked and neurotic and would hate their bodies.
a women who realized how beautiful she is, that is a real theat to society."

Ladies and gentemen... ICQ and Raphael Köster.

regularity.

Just walked into Octane, like I do most days.
Only today I was greeted by 2 baristas with a question/statement:
"So katie... I hear that you have a really funny blog."
Well, what a coincidence... because I just happen to be hilarious.


I actually read over my blog a few nights ago. The whole thing. All 60something angst-filled posts.

I don't love how much I complain. I guess I do because I feel so urgently about change.
Maybe I was harsh in my last post. But I don't feel like I need to justify that. I assume that it speaks for itself.


After losing my stash, I got copies of some of Elliott Smith's discography last night. Oh. XO! I'm listening to it right now. It's like being all alone in high school again.
Some of my favorite bonds have been made over this album.
I mean, this was practically the peanut butter that held the katie culp/brian smith sandwich together back in the day.
I don't care what you guys say. This is happy music.


For the last month and longer there have been 3 things circulating through my mind:
1. Crime.
2. Motherhood, and how that looks for me.
3. This unknown song...
This one time when I was a kid, my family took a little vacation to a cabin in Wisconsin. It was on a complex with lots of other cabins, and a recreational lodge.
In this lodge I played my first game of ping-pong, worked on legos and puzzles, and probably pet a wood bear statue.
There was this group of teenage girls who would hang out there, too. They controlled the jukebox. There was this song that they played over and over again, and I've been trying to find it.
I remember this one specific instance when one of them shouted, "Woo! It's time for the 'You're So Bad' girls!"
I remember the drums, the guitar, the melody, and the timbre of the voices singing. I remember all the grungy, brown-haired girls walking in rhythm, on top of furniture, circling a beam in the center of the room.
They sang,
"You're so bad. You're the best I ever had. Has the world gone mad? You're so bad."
It sounds corny, but I knew that when I grew up I wanted to be just like those girls. They were completely relaxed. They seemed to really understand what it meant to love something they couldn't hold.

I summon the early 90s. What is that song!?