Happy Holiday, to you and your[s]

Season's greetings, friends! I apologize for the delay in blog posts. I have been busy, which is weird because I don't have a job anymore. Ask me about it! I've been writing and baking a lot, two things I like quite a bit, as well as attempting to prepare for Christmas in Ohio. I will be taking BF with me--I've affectionately dubbed this outing "Will's First Christmas." Subsequently, all of last week was "Katie's First Hanukkah." I think I was pretty good at it. But now I want to impart some modicum of cheer to others because I care. I know that everyone gets a little sad around the holidays, a concept I never fully understood when I was little. As far as I was concerned, Christmas was what everyone waited for, the End All Be All, the pièce de résistance of the entire year! But as you get older, there are other priorities, other things to worry about, and other reasons besides Christmas to get excited (IE: this Lou Malnati's pizza that's about to be delivered.) We as humans are naturally inclined to feel like crap at some point; I think it's the way biology works. And with the recent influx of just the crappiest crap happening, I wanted to personally reach out to each and every one of my friends and families and let them know I'm thinking of them.

But I don't really have time for that. 

Unfortunately,  this idea came to me a little late in the game and I will have to condense everyone's personalized Christmas letters into one . I'm sure you don't mind at all. Just keep an eye out for information that might pertain to you and we should be good to go.

December 20, 2012 

Hello, friend!

How are you? I've been meaning to get in touch ever since I saw the engagement announcement on Facebook. Which reminds me, so sorry to hear about the break up. You were too good for him anyway. And the wedding? It looked beautiful. YOU looked beautiful. It's hard to believe that we're old enough for this kind of stuff, you know? And don't worry--you will be a great dad.

I think about you often and wonder how you are doing. It's hard not to when you've known someone for as long as we've known each other. Even though we only met in college, I will always consider you to be one of my dearest friends. I guess it just goes to show that it doesn't matter how many years are in a friendship, but the number of years that lie ahead! Ha ha. I've been thinking about you and old high school gang lately. We sure knew how to get in trouble, eh? I met all too many people in college who had never partied before and I was like, you should see my crew from back home! You made high school the best time in my life!  I can easily say that college was the best time in my life and I think I have you to thank for that. I can't wait to see you on New Years Eve. I wish I were seeing you some time soon. See you at the reunion? Feel free to visit if you ever find your self in the Windy City--I've got a futon with your name on it! Now is probably not the best time for me to have visitors, though, as I just have so much going on. Maybe in the spring!

Congratulations on your new job! It looks like you're really enjoying it. I always knew that you would amount to something great and have the opportunity to do something you love. And I love reading your work tweets-so funny! It's like I'm right there with you. Don't worry about the job luck--I think it's something we all go through. And can you believe these assholes who tweet from work? Talk about unprofessional, not to mention completely arrogant. Like, who cares, you know? I really am so truly happy for you. I really am so truly pissed that everybody appears to be doing better than me. I really am so truly glad I didn't immediately go to grad school. I should have gone to grad school.

Are you still writing? Are you still performing? Do you ever play the violin anymore? Are you dating anyone? How are classes? How's your mom? How's your dad? Do you think your brother has an actual crush on me or a fake one? Can you read something for me? How are your knees? Do you like Houston? Do you like Portland? Do you like Boston? Do you like Berkley? Do you like Nashville? Is law school hard? Is med school hard? Is living at home hard? Are you famous yet? Do you think you're really moving to France? Are you happy? Have you seen Lincoln? Did you cry when you saw the final pictures from the last day of 30 Rock? Did you get a haircut? How's I.S.? Have you figured out your life yet? Do you miss me?

Best of luck in the new year! Merry Christmas! See you some day!

Katie

There, I think that about covers everything I wanted to say to everybody.

In other exciting news, there was a rat in our apartment this morning. I don't blame him--we have a pretty cozy place that is pulsating with the joy of Christmas. Last night I stayed up with a friend watching Liz & Dick and in order to make it through, we went through a lot of wine. So this morning at 5:30 when my room mate notified me that she had just had a stand off with a rat, I was still filled with holiday cheer as I had just gone to bed two hours before. I was very confused and decided the best thing to do was build a barricade of clothes against my door so the rat couldn't get in. I then considered that the rat could have gotten in the apartment via my closet, so instead of opening my closet and just checking, I built another barricade in front of that door. Then I crept back into bed and proceeded to have alcohol induced rat dreams with images including but not limited to: The Rat King from The Nutcracker, Rat from Fantastic Mr. Fox, Templeton, this creepy guy from high school that everyone referred to as "the rat," and then another guy from college who sported a rat tail and we all knew him as "Rat King, Lord of Hipsters." I was also still thinking about Liz & Dick. So all of this converged in my poor, throbbing head and then I woke up and hid under my covers for awhile because I am not emotionally or physically strong enough to come to fisticuffs with a gigantic, human-sized rat. But then the exterminator came and he set traps all over our kitchen. Can't wait to see if they've worked when I come back from Ohio!

Don't mind me. I'm just eating all your plants and candy and getting away with it.

Tomorrow is the big night where BF and I hop on a train and then wake up in Cleveland on Saturday. If I know him as well as I think I do, though, he will be too excited about being on a train and not sleep at all. Oh, and another thing: I still think Christmas is totally the best. Adulthood can take my money, but it can't take my childlike wonderment and awe for a holiday that is based on sugar and twinkle lights. Tell me, what's so bad about that?

What I'm thinking at 23 years old

After earning a college degree, moving to a new city, and paying all of the bills, there is only one sound conclusion I can muster:

I'm still totally obsessed with The O.C.

A lot of things have stuck with me over the years, particularly the things that also happen to be benchmarks in pop cultural history. I don't think there's anything unique about that--we all have certain memories connected with movies, music, commercials. I think that's just how the mind works. But if you have met me (and maybe you have, I don't know who reads this thing) I have a stupid amount of pop culture knowledge, particularly that which pertains to the screen, whether it be small or large. I have little to no academic memory. Sometimes I think about how my life would have been different had I dedicated the same amount of brain space to "real" information as I have to telling you what every Mighty Duck is up to these days. I love movies, I love television, and when I find something that sticks, it sticks around forever.

Thus The O.C. obsession reveals itself.

The obsession is rooted in being 14 years old and having used the previous 5 to concoct what I thought was a realistic view of high school. I guess high school was my real first obsession, the more I think about it. In 1999 (or there about) I was sneaking off to the basement to watch Dawson's Creek and begging my dad to take me to Blockbuster so I could rent She's All That every weekend. I tried to write my own script inspired by She's All That but it was actually just She's All That with some of the names changed. I remember I wrote the whole thing in pink pen on notebook paper. It was my first large body of work (5 pages, front and back) and I thought it was pretty good. I don't want to go into detail about how I feel and how I've been affected by teen movies. Just know that everything I thought high school would be was more or less defined by Pacey Witter. And yes, he ruined it for every single one of you. But at 14 with only one year until high school, The O.C. entered my life to give me one last glimpse of what it could be like.

Big LOL, right? Like. Seriously, Katie? You used The O.C. as your standard of reality? After years of watching varying degrees of white kids falling in love and finding themselves, you ended it all with The O.C.?

Oh, yeah. That's totally what I did. 

Early on in the watching process, I became very keen to the notion that none of the things on this show would never, ever happen to me. None of them. As much as I wanted Seth Cohen to happen to me, I also knew that he would never ever happen. I liked being in a world that would never exist for me. I rank The O.C. as one of the greatest fantasy epics of my lifetime. I would never look like Marisa or Summer, I would never have a dad like Sandy Cohen, and I would never be so California it hurt. It was pure fantasy in which I willingly immersed myself. So when high school eventually came, I knew exactly what not to expect. I was pretty right, save for a few of my friends whose very big houses intimidated the hell out of me.

For Christmas 2006 I got season one of The O.C. on DVD. I think I must have started watching the show halfway through its first season, so it was very important to me that I had the feeling of "being there from the beginning." TV on DVD during high school was the greatest thing that had ever happened to any of us and you know it just as well as I do. Christmas break was made up entirely of:

Hey, what are you doing?
I don't know I just watched, like, six hours of Grey's Anatomy. 
Cool. I haven't moved from my couch yet either. 

I would dedicate long, late nights to The O.C. I used to only put that kind of time into writing, but that winter I was 100% committed to The O.C. And I loved it. I love it now, especially when I hear the intro to "California" and I know a new episode is starting. Because that's the greatest part of watching a series in bulk, right? The theme music keeps you going. Have you ever watched two seasons of Game of Thrones in less than a week? Because I have and that music makes me want to fight someone or ride a horse or hatch dragon eggs. The point is that hearing the beachy, summer hit, "California" actually makes me think about drinking hot chocolate and still turning on the Christmas tree even though Christmas already happened. The O.C. is, simply, the coziest thing I have. (**For more commentary on the song, ask me about Phantom Planet and my downright adoration and undying love for Jason Schwartzman. It will make you feel sad for me at first but then that knowledge plus knowing who I am will coincide quite nicely.)   

This past summer, TNT re-booted the smash hit 80s drama, Dallas. Like me, my mom is a skeptic, and she initially seemed unsure of the rising-from-the-dead of her favorite television show. It took close to no time at all for her to be just as enthralled as I imagine she was 30 years ago. I guess TV just sticks. TV moves forward like we do (which is why Girl Meets World will be 100% fine, by the way, please relax) and whether we grow with it currently or remember a time in which we did, there's really no better way to document your life than tying it to the fake lives of people you don't know. But I guess we do kind of know them, don't we?

Years from now when I am remembering Chicago, or at least this first year out of college, there will surely be a pattern to the kind of entertainment that affected me most. It seems to me that this time in my life is defined by funny women who make me laugh while teaching me how to also be a funny woman. I will personally thank them some day.

In the mean time, I hope you all are enjoying the early days of December and rearing up for which ever holiday it is you enjoy the most. I also hope you all get the chance to watch the things that make you feel most at home.

Happy Chrismukkah! Now go watch Over the Top!

Quick end note. I'm trying really hard not to ruin the sentimental end of this blog post, so I'll just whisper it here. I WOULD be watching lots of happy things on TV right but COMCAST, YEAH YOU COMCAST, fucked up our cable package and effectively ruined my life. How does that feel, Comcast, knowing that you ruin people's lives day after day? Does it make you feel big? Do you gain satisfaction from being literally the worst service provider ever? You're the worst and I hate you.