big news!

(The Selby's photographs of Hartwood in Tulum, Mexico).

Sorry for the lack of posting, but I got a new j-o-b! As the Assistant Editor at Oklahoma Today Magazine! Holla!

Honestly, I'm really hoping this means more writing. Better writing. A chance to "hone my craft" if you will.

p.s. Right before my interview, I stood in line for coffee with the hard-to-miss "Birdman" from the Denver Nuggets. He asked me about hazelnuts.

Before I even knew I got the job, Walker told me that he thought my meeting "Birdman" was a good sign, a symbolic dove letting me know the flood was almost over.

run hills. eat wings. hang out. and gear up for a run at the lakers while basking in the love of the league's most appreciative fan base.

(Oh, Nenad).

Sunday night Walker and I continued our tradition of attending every single Thunder home playoff game. Along with gulping down a concession stand kosher hotdog and Amber Bock for good luck. There is nothing better. Go Thunder.

Several months ago, I was sitting in a waiting room casually leafing through an NBA preview issue of Sports Illustrated when I became so engrossed in this cover-page story on the Thunder and what this team means to Oklahoma City that I began to tear up.

Not to be too cheesy, but it becomes even more significant in light of today's date, April 19th:

In that way and more, Oklahoma City has done as much to develop the Thunder as the Thunder has done to develop Oklahoma City.

Seven players file into a dimly lit room with gray carpet and a low-slung ceiling on the third floor of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum in late September. They squeeze on to a narrow bench pressed against the back wall. The space has been designed to replicate the hearing room in the basement of the Water Resources Board building that used to be across the street. On a table in the front of the room is a tape recorder, playing a hearing that began at 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995. A man is petitioning to bottle groundwater from his property and sell it. Two minutes into the hearing there's an explosion, followed by sounds of breaking glass and cries for help. Lights flicker, the room in the memorial goes dark, and the faces of the 168 who died in the bombing of the Alfred R. Murrah Federal Building are illuminated on the wall. Two of them, five-year-old Aaron Coverdale and his younger brother, Elijah, catch the eye of guard Eric Maynor. Later, Maynor stares at a glass case holding Aaron's Transformers and Elijah's toy cars, shaking his head.

"You all are a part of this story," the tour guide, Joanne Riley, tells the players. "You are a testimony to how this whole city can rise like a phoenix from the ashes."

When the team moved from Seattle to Oklahoma City, general manager Sam Presti wanted all his players to tour the memorial before their first open practice. Now every new player is taken to the memorial, usually in the weeks leading up to training camp, and sometimes more than once. When guard Royal Ivey came to Oklahoma City for his free-agent visit this summer, he asked Presti about the crowd at the Ford Center, how such a small market generates the most noise in the NBA. The fans have become a source of curiosity around the league, for painting their chests like frat boys, standing for long stretches and commencing a 20-minute ovation for the team three seconds after the season-ending loss to the Lakers. Presti ushered Ivey to the memorial. "It took my breath away," Ivey says. "After that I called my agent. I wanted to be a part of this."



...I would highly recommend reading the rest of the article, with its lines like: They are the organic superteam, farm to table, with 24 appearances coming up on national television, after being scheduled for only three the past two years combined.

Also, I really want one of these shirts.

the rabbit of easter. he bring of the chocolate.

I think I mentioned awhile back that in Peru, Walker surprised me on my birthday with tickets to see David Sedaris on April 18th. (At the time, that date felt ages away).


So last night rolls around and neither of us were really too sure of what to expect - how could this tiny NPR man possibly entertain us for more than 30 minutes? Would it be like stand-up comedy?


It turned out to be a magical evening. I laughed a lot. I felt warm and cozy and thoroughly entertained.
He's just an excellent reader, a world-class storyteller and observer of life. And I don't think there's anything I love more than that.


Plus,
Earlier in the day, I thought to myself, wouldn't it be just super crazy amazing if he read from my favorite book, Me Talk Pretty One Day - a thought I quickly dismissed for its implausibility. He wrote that ages ago and probably never even reads from his books.


But mid-performance he announced that he would be doing something he rarely does because it's close to Easter and he's never read in Oklahoma before, he then proceeded to read aloud from my favorite story in Me Talk Pretty - Jesus Shaves (about a French class trying to cobble together a description of Easter with the language they've so far).
...I was over the moon. It was so delicious and I thoroughly soaked it up.



We also inexplicably waited in line until midnight to meet him and get him to sign a copy of the book he recommended to the audience: Tobias Wolff's The Barrack's Thief.
At one point, Walker had to run out to the closest 7-11 for lemonade, crunchy chips and a KitKat bar. We really wanted to ditch, but we'd been waiting for so long, we had to keep waiting so the initial waiting wouldn't be a complete and utter waste of time. Vicious cycle.
Once we actually got to the table, all three of us (Sedaris included) were so weary we all just kind of stared at each other trying to think up a sufficiently funny name for our trivia team to no avail.

passenger seat.

After running an enjoyably easy Redbud 5K (I love the Redbud and Walker (who abhors running) humors me - though this year he kicked ass), Walker and I marked off another six months by heading to Fort Smith for dinner at Rolando's (so yummy. so so yummy. like seriously, ahhhhh so so so so good).

I spent the three hour ride home lolling in the passenger seat, just completely content and full and moony from my Sangria Margarita - drowsing in and out of sleep with the good kind of tired from a good kind of day. Soaking up everything in seemingly slow motion...

These crazy rolls of heat lightening bursting apart a purple Oklahoma sky to the soundtrack of Nina Simone's Sinnerman. Power!

Slight worries about the drought, like the Oklahoma Dustbowl is ingrained in me or something - (read The Worst Hard Time, so interesting and definitely one of my favorite book titles).

Man, I love the passenger seat. I don't really care about a possible subliminal message - one of my favorite things about being in a relationship is how much I get to utilize the passenger seat.

The crazy ten commandment/Jesus/Abortion is Murder! billboards looming out at me - once they made me really angry and frightened, now they make me smile with their bizarre and ignorant charm.

Occasionally rubbing his shoulder. I'm awake, I promise. Just closing my eyes. I'm so happy you're real.

Yellow glowing gas stations with their Cokes to spur you on. Out of place in a wrinkled dress.

Singing Oklahoma! across the state line.

Dreams of Petra, Bolivia, California, Argentinian vineyards, Guatemala, Nicaragua and endless possibilities. Toes curling at the excitement of the future, a calming sense that (no matter my current unrest and unease) it will inevitably be happy. Safe.

Damien Rice (remember him!?) violin strings and Franz Ferdinand rock n' roll and Lily Allen feminism and deciphering Billy Joel.

Annnnd, we got home just in time to see the Thunder beat the Lakers! Eeee!

the fear.

How can I live my life without committing an act with a giant scissors?

(Joyce Carol Oates).

some sound advice.

"In order to wake up in the morning, I put a little Girl Talk in my coffee."

stick a fork in me, i'm done.

I meant to post this ages ago, but my sister's boyfriend Andrew was pictured in an article in The New York - freaking - Times (see above - second boy from the (correction) right)!

Isn't that epic!? For me, everything would just be downhill from there.

...this makes me even more excited to travel to Providence in June for Meg's graduation!

too true.

Prarie Thunder Bakery sits just below the Midtown Y where I workout some early mornings - and sometimes, especially if it was a particularly grueling workout or a bleak day looms ahead - I like to savor the morning and stop in for a bit.

Having a few pages left to read out of One Day, I decided to stop in this morning to finish it up.

Let's just say the book sent me for a loop I didn't see coming and by the last page I was swimming in gulping tears amongst the coffee and baguette-buying patrons.

I texted Walker on the pretense that I was crying in public (again). And he responded:

"Oh kp...the most emotionally invested reader of all time"

april.

Yum, this bedside is so Kate.

Walker and I watched the documentary Catfish last night - for the first half I couldn't figure out why anyone would even think it was a remotely good idea to film this, but by the second half I was wide-eyed and very moved.

In a small way the character Angela felt unsettling relatable - someone who sometimes can't see the line between a good story and a lie, whose imaginative escapes can make real life disappoint her, letting that spin out of control...

Anyway, without giving too much away, I highly recommend it. Would love to discuss it.

black & whites.

Walker turned his bedroom closet into a darkroom and developed his own photographs - (I took pictures of a few of them with my iPhone, repeated here on purpose because I like the visual affect).

...he also just got funded to learn Hebrew in Israel this summer - whoowhoo!

I'm a constantly amazed girlfriend.