tuesday . august . seven . two thousand one i completely missed the month of july, journal wise. i kept thinking that i'd have time tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. it's a lesson i seem to learn constantly and yet never put it to practical use: if you don't choose, things get chosen by default. this is a universal truth. updates: the dunk the mayor campaign is now officially over. we gathered a good deal of signatures but the numbers became increasingly depressing as time passed. we hit a point where we needed approximately 7 volunteers to gather signatures once a week until october. we sent out a desperate plea for help to the people who were SUPPOSED to be interested in seeing us succeed. no responses. learned: can't get something on the ballot with out a lot of people, no matter how good, touching or hilarious your cause. so, now i have no job. i've been kinda peeking around for something but i haven't started the full-on panic yet because we're shooting the movie right now. it's actually happening. i've been working my ass off trying to get all the right people together on the right days in the right places and it's paying off. it's fucking amazing to see people show up and do their jobs. we are CREATING together, and i'm blown away. i'm a pretty nasty control freak when it comes to my projects. this is the first one that has involved this many people, and film is a medium i've never worked in before. sometimes i feel like a fraud-failure. not just about this movie, but about almost everything. you stay up at night wondering and worrying when you'll be discovered. i get up in the morning and triple check my clothing: is this outfit really made of fabric or is it INVISIBLE and i'm the only one who can't see it? universal truth #2: if you just pretend you know what you're doing long enough, and keep your eyes forward, you get it done. and by the end, simply by faith and the act of pretending, you actually DO know what you're doing. believe in the process and stuff. (if you use the phrase "...and stuff", can it really be a universal truth?) oh, i forgot! paul and i celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary on june 29th. we've actually been together for a total of 8 years...i say this because it seems to impress other people my age. people have a tendency to think that we're newly weds, because we're consistently nice to each other. it's terrifying to think that most of our peers have not managed to achieve a relationship where the "honeymoon" is over the week after they have sex for the first time. it makes me feel lucky, but i feel pretty proud, too. to celebrate, we went to see don ho at the emerald queen casino...in tacoma. seeing don ho live has been a dream for me since i was 13 years old. i was CRAZY excited. the concert was freakin' awesome, but also really weird. everyone there was super old, although i don't know what i should have expected. don was so great...he's really funny, too. but his whole thing is audience participation and the oldsters were mostly stone silent, so it was kind of a buzz kill. my big dream before was just to see him live in any venue. now i have a new dream, if it's not too greedy....i want to go to hawaii and see him in his natural lounge club environment where we are all free to swing, if you know what i mean. at one point he had a bunch of folks from the audience come up on stage and hula dance while he sang. there were all these old broads up there, making goo-goo eyes at him and swinging their hips (some of which i'm sure have been replaced by now). when he finally had them return to their seats, this one really old woman was just attached to his arm, looking lovingly into his face. he just looked straight faced into the audience for a minute. she started to whisper something in his ear. he listened for a second and said "after the show", while one of the stage hands helped her (read: forced her) off the stage. hilarious! one of my favorite lines of the night: don: (after getting us to sing naughty lyrics in hawaiian) singing and laughing keep you young....make you live longer. so if you have a cranky relative, don't worry. he gonna die before you. teehee! i love that man. and finally, i miss my grandmother. she died in october and it's still really weird and difficult. i heard a woman with a dutch accent (like hers) on television this morning and it was particularly painful. i mean, i think about her a lot, but you try to let it go. it takes effort, but you make a decision not to feel the full weight of the loss 24 hours a day. you tell yourself that time will help, time will ease the sharpness of the void her death creates. sure, occasionally it pops up stronger than is within your control. something reminds you of her (she gave me my first don ho album), or you want to call her on the phone. you remind yourself and you repeat like a mantra that time will help and so you wait. at first, you wait for time to pass, you wait for the sharpness to fade, you just wait. this morning, when i heard that voice that was so much like hers, it brought the sharpness back and i realized: while i was waiting for time to pass, i think part of me was waiting for her to come back. i mean, i know logically that it's not going to happen, but while attempting to console myself with the passage of time, i forgot what it was i was waiting for exactly. waiting for time to pass somehow became waiting for her return and i heard that voice and i wondered "where is she and when is she gonna get here?" as if she's on a trip, or a sabbatical or something. i wonder if it really will get easier eventually?