Dear Belle,

I'm sorry, girl. I really am. Please let me start by saying that. If I could have been there with you today, I would have; if I had gotten more than two hours' notice, I would have been on a plane. If it's possible for you to know things like this now, I'm sure you do. It kills me that I couldn't be there for your last hours, and it kills me that I won't be able to keep the promise I made to you the last time I left. "I'll see you soon," I said, kissing your scabby, smelly head. "I'll see you soon."

Belle, girl, I hope one day I'll get to see you again; I guess it just won't be as soon as we had hoped.

We met a little over fourteen years ago. You introduced yourself by grabbing onto my shoelace with your teeth and pulling as hard as you could; you were so excited that you peed on the floor. They had bobbed your tail a bit too short -- more than usual on a cocker spaniel -- so that when you tried to wag, your whole body shook. I was smitten. That night, after we took you home, you fell asleep as I held you; you were so small that you fit in my cupped hands. You were so small back then that we had to watch you as you went outside, fearful that the neighborhood cats might come after you. You were so small that you couldn't make it down the back steps; someone always had to carry you in those first few days. I did it once, and dropped you on your head. You seemed okay... but I'm really sorry about that.

You were so small, but you grew, and as you grew, we grew to love you more and more as we came to realize that you were anything but a typical dog. Sure, you did the usual "dog" things that both delighted and infuriated us -- swimming in the backyard pool (delighted); shredding an entire semester's worth of my mom's college work (infuriated); unrolling an entire roll of toilet paper into a "nest" on the bathroom floor (delighted me and Beth; infuriated Mom and Dad) -- but for all the canine antics you pulled (remember the time you knocked over the Christmas tree? Or rolled in the stagnant runoff water Dad was draining from the pool into the backyard and then came in and rubbed yourself all over the family room sofa? Or ate half of Beth's Halloween candy?), there were dozens of things about you that made you much more than a mischievous court jester.

You were so smart, Belle. Really, you were. You learned to "talk" to us by mimicking the noises we made. You learned to "sit" in a single evening. You were an expert manipulator and a skillful reader of subtle clues; you knew how to finagle your way into an extra treat and exactly at what phase in the dinner preparations some morsel of food might fall from the heavens. You knew what you wanted, and you stopped at nothing to get it.

But you weren't just smart and cunning, lady; you were so much more than that. You were the faithful companion who slept at my feet every night for the better part of eight years. You were the joyful friend who welcomed me home with excited yelps when I came back from school in the afternoons. You weathered my parents' divorce and mourned my mother's departure, perching for days on the family room sofa, looking at the back door, waiting for her to come back. You got through it, just like we did. You were always there with a sympathetic glance or a giant lick to the face; you were a friend, Belle -- in the best way you knew how to be.

Of course, Belle, you got old. We all do. Your health started fading about five years ago, I guess. Your hearing started fading, your skin got scabbier and greasier, and a strange growth showed up on your neck. You spent more and more of your days sleeping; about four years ago, I wrote about how you had started to lose your confidence -- how you started to fear the jump from the floor to the sofa. By the end, you were completely deaf and on your way to being blind. Still, though, you were the same old Belle; queen of the pack, lady of the household, an elderly aristocrat maintaining her pride even through the indignities of old age. I think what happened today -- when they took you in to that last appointment at the vet -- was the right thing for you, Belle. Dad said you couldn't stand up; it was only right that you died with at least some of your dignity intact.

I will miss you, girl. I will miss you trotting to the gate the next time I come home; I will miss fighting with you for space in the easy chair in the family room; I will miss you plopping in the middle of the Christmas decorations when we put up the tree next year, or rooting around in the mass of wrapping paper on Christmas morning -- you always loved Christmas, girl, even more than you seemed to love Thanksgiving; I will miss you wriggling all over with excitement when Grandma comes to visit and I will miss you meting out much-needed discipline to the cat. I will miss seeing you as a little black dot, sniffing back and forth along the property line behind the house. I will miss your friendship. I will miss your love. I will miss your presence in our family. We are all richer for having known you.

I loved you almost as much as I love my family, and liked you better than I like most people. You were a good dog, Belle. I don't know what more to say than that.

Sleep well, friend. I'll miss you.

Love always,

Allison

Oh, holy crap, they let me into law school.

University of Washington, class of 2010.

I'm still shaking.

People shouldn't send good news in little white envelopes.

In other news, it's sunny, and I hear late-afternoon birds out in the garden. It's 50 degrees in January and I'm pretty sure I'm delerious.

But it's okay.

Because they let me in... I have the letter and they let me in.

Eep. There is no way I'm getting to sleep at 6:30 tonight (damnable 3:30 a.m. start time at work)... but I'll be waking up tomorrow with a giant smile on my face.

Off to run.

"I never met a Kentuckian who wasn't coming home."--A.B. "Happy" Chandler

It is indescribably good to be back in Louisville. It's probably good that I'm only here for 10 days; any longer, and I might start entertaining even more thoughts of staying. The pull is undeniable, and like gravity, grows stronger with proximity.

Three days at home have erased all the misery of the last six months; my heart aches at the thought of going back. It's not just work... it's also the feeling of being among strangers, of being so far away from where I belong. Should I come back? How would I come back? What would I do?

Whatever, though; those are thoughts for another day. Today it's domesticity and family and Christmas Eve. All is well, and all difficult decisions can wait until Tuesday, at the least.

Merry Christmas to all...

I dropped my UW Law application in the mail yesterday. It wasn't nearly as frightening as I thought it would be -- although when I pulled the blue metal handle back toward me to check that the envelope had, in fact, fallen into the box and found that the tray came up empty, it did quicken my heart just a little bit. Finality is kind of scary.

I'm used to this, I tell myself. I did this just fine five years ago. It was no problem. Seriously.

I've felt a lot more anxious lately because I've taken to reading law school message boards -- those little cancerous corners of the internet where obsessive kids with stratospheric LSAT scores gather for elliptical discussions on the admissions matrix at "H" (as the ones in the know call Harvard) and squealing frantically about getting a phone call from some bigwig at that same school across the river (as BU's wonderful Professor Samons would sometimes refer to it). These things are sickening, destructive and do terrible things to one's mind and self-esteem; I'd sleep a hell of a lot better if I could just stop visiting www.lawschooldiscussion.com or furtively cruising profiles on www.lawschoolnumbers.com (yes, there's a website where you can post your LSAT/GPA combo... along with what schools you're applying to, and other similarly obsessed law school hopefuls can leave you messages wishing you well for the "cycle" (a phrase, which, to this day, conjures unpleasant images of fourth grade family life class, as my math teacher tried to awkwardly talk us through a filmstrip about the various vicissitudes of womanhood while the boys got to go play outside.)). It's sick and it's weird, but like lemon drop martinis, celebrity gossip websites and reruns of "My Super Sweet 16," it's a completely out-of-character habit I can't seem to quit.

The message boards scare me, sort of, but what gets me most is the little pang of guilt they engender. The people on there tell me (well, not me directly, but you know what I mean) that I should be trying for places like Penn and Duke and Columbia. And that makes me worry that I'm not casting a wider net or setting my sights "higher", as these things go. (And by the way, fuck the U.S. News and World Report rankings. Their magazine sucks; how did they get to be the arbiters of all things academic in this country? Seriously, good for ol' John Silber for never buying into that racket.)

It's completely irrational; I love Seattle; Chris is here, likes his program and likes Seattle; I don't want to move cross-country again; I don't feel some inherent need to go to an Ivy; and I sure as hell don't want to go to law school with the people on those message boards! UW was awesome -- the students seemed intelligent and happy, the professors were great and I got a really solid vibe. The seal on my law degree won't say anything about my worth as a person.

So, yeah. It'll all work out, internet message boards be damned. Of course, UW could decide they don't want my news-producin' ass anyway... in which case, it'll be back to the drawing board.

Anyway, I'm off to make lemon pepper chicken. My dad sent me a Calaphon skillet as an early Christmas gift, and I love it with a passion that should probably be reserved for children or exceptionally good dogs.

Never underestimate the therapeutic power of good cookware.

All for now, kids.

Sunlight is creeping in around the edges of the blinds for the first time since Halloween. I could seriously go roll around in the wet grass right now -- that's how happy I am.

I might be getting off weekend mornings. This would arguably be the best thing to happen to me in six months.

The Wallflowers are on the radio, bringing with them happy memories of Boston -- tooling around Gloucester at the end of summer in Brad's car, singing along with Jakob Dylan with Kiefer and Rachel. Normally, this would make me hopelessly melancholy, but today, I'm just grinning, thinking of how awesome it was to be a carefree college kid, riding in the back of a beat-up Honda on a gorgeous August afternoon. Those were good times. They're gone now, but that's okay. Good times will come again.

One week to Thanksgiving; five weeks from today, I'll be at home. Dear God, I can't wait.

Seattle sun is a precious thing these days. I'd better not waste it.

46 days from now, I get to go home. The countdown's been on since September... but now that the number's under 50, I can't resist obsessing over the ever-shrinking time between me... and 10 sweet, sweet days off work.

30+16; 60-14; 4x10+6 (provided you don't screw up your order of operations). I keep turning the equations over and over in my mind, savoring the promise that this time will pass, that in 6^2+10 days I'll be getting on the red-eye to Detroit, crossing two time zones, killing three hours in the airport lounge, then boarding another plane back to Louisville, home, family and a life a million times removed from the one I'm stuck in now.

And then, when I come back, I'll only have eight more months before it's over for good.

Speaking of, I need to write my law school essay. Dear God, it's high school all over again. I crank out reams of news copy every day, but can't write a goddamn personal statement to save my life.

Somehow it's a lot easier to write about snow in Spokane, slush in North Idaho, child molesters and 40 abandoned Labradoodles than why you'd make a good lawyer.

Three weeks to Thanksgiving. Eight weeks to Christmas.

46 days until I escape -- for a little bit.

I never imagined I'd be counting the days like this. What an odd year.

Ah, well. C'est la vie. Off to work.

Cam, our morning anchor, read my palm at work today.

It was one of those strange things that I sometimes like to believe could only happen in a television newsroom. Believing that people like semi-clarivoyant anchors, brutally sarcastic Southern photographers and blue-streak-swearing assignment editors exist only within the realm of broadcast news is one of the things that's helping me keep my head above water these days. Right now, I'm bobbing back and forth in the great, rolling salty sea of broadcast hell, clutching my fraying life preserver and taking in great gulps of seawater as I wait for the S.S. Law School to come to my rescue. Believing in the singularity of my profession helps me hang on as another wave swells over my soaked, shivering and exhuasted body.

It's been a long five months, sports fans. Sure, my landing has been a lot less rough than most -- I have an okay job; I'm not digging ditches or bagging groceries or selling sweaters at the Gap. I spend my days (and a solid portion of my nights) doing what I thought I wanted to do. But after five months of living on sleeping pills and vending machine coffee, I'm pretty well strung out and sick of it all. Work shows flashes of fulfillment and is even occasionally enjoyable. Mostly, though, I feel about it the way I felt about junior year astronomy lab: it's tedious, irritating and I generally feel like no matter how hard I try, I get the same results. It's something to be endured, to be tolerated; the good news is that it, like astronomy lab, ends eventually. (And, chances are, that unlike with astronomy lab, this job won't require me to stand out on a sixth-floor roof in the middle of December to search for stars in the Boston sky. Then again, I also didn't think they'd ask me to completely abandon any hope of maintaining a regular sleep schedule, a life, or sanity, so it's hard to know.)

As my facebook profile now attests, I spend a lot of time thinking about this time next year. Call it a bit premature, but I'm feeling pretty confident about getting in to law school... and I'm feeling pretty confident that law is what I want to do. At the very least, it buys me a couple more years in something I know I'm good at and the ability to worm my way into a job that won't require me to show up at work at 3 a.m. on a Saturday.

At least, I hope not.

Anyway, about Cam and the palm reading -- she's playing a gypsy tomorrow at a Halloween party at her kids' school, and said she'd been studying a bit of palmistry. She practiced on all of the girls in the newsroom this morning, and when it was my turn, she took at look at my left hand and smiled.

"You have double fate lines," she said. "That's pretty rare."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means you're destined for success," she replied.

I glowed. I realize that palm reading is performance art, but I have to admit that it was nice, for the first time in five months, to have a little bit of affirmation about the future. It was the equivalent of getting a nice sentiment inside a fortune cookie, but I didn't really care. I kept looking back at my left hand all afternoon, mystified at the little lines that apparently say what I want so desperately to be true.

There's no clear path to success in this strange new world, this "real world" that I worked so long to reach. At school, the correlation was clear: show up, work hard, be smart, and do well. I could have written an equation for it. Here, it's hard to know. It's like every day, there are new rules, new traps to navigate, tests of physical endurance and personality rather than intellect. These are much more difficult than anything I ever faced in the academic realm. Give me a thousand lines of Vergil over trying not to cry at the end of a 10-hour overnight shift, after having gotten three hours' sleep, while the news director picks over your scripts and you break out in hives from the allergic reaction that will send you to the hospital the next day. I passed that one, but barely. And I failed once I got home.

I want to believe that success is in the stars; that as long as I keep working hard, no matter how much I feel like I'm spinning my wheels now, it'll eventually get better. That there will be some reward in all of this crap; that the fact that I never call in sick and try not to complain and try my damndest to do well will mean something to someone, even if it doesn't mean a hell of a lot to the people I work for. Maybe I just needed a reminder. Today, the fate lines were it. Tomorrow, maybe it'll be a fortune cookie message, a flash of inspired broadcast copy or another email from a decent law school offering to waive my application fee (today it was Duke and Northwestern; while I realize that means nothing in the grand scheme of things, it was nice to feel at least semi-"recruited").

We'll see. I'm off to watch the news.

Be well, kids.

Ain't nothing like the real world to convince you that grad school would have been a far better choice.

"Am I stupid, or are they stupid?"--Aaron Kellogg ponders the big questions of life, on 7/23/06.

Today meant lots of laughter at work, fruitful journalistic enterprise, sun, warm lake water, good conversation with good friends, Springsteen, open windows, another sunburn, burgers on the grill, beer in the fridge and the Muppet Show on TV.

I may not get to sleep when it's dark out, and it may be hot as balls here, but damn... I love life right now.

It's about 7 p.m. on a Friday night. Work starts in five and a half hours and I really need to sleep, but can't seem to calm down. So, for the edification of all who may care, here's ( a quick rundown of events of varying importance: )

This city, man, this city.

Mountains everywhere; Puget Sound peeking through the buildings on my way to work; farmers' markets in every neighborhood, every weekend; a next door neighbor who's a gardener by trade, has a tiny dog named Luna and says "right on" a lot; a grown man in a cropped fishnet top and a leather diaper dancing to an outdoor concert on Broadway last week; glittering buildings, killer hills and wider streets than I'm used to; people who don't seem to hate life; the list goes on...

We have an apartment and a car. I'm producing on my own at NWCN for the first time this weekend. I got more sleep in the last two days than anyone really should.

Life is pretty awesome.

I'm off to make pancakes and coffee.

I guess the fact that I'm dealing right now with several of the major hassles of adult life means that they won't come back to bite me in the ass later. Or maybe not.

The lastest task (along with finding and establishing an apartment, learning to navigate a new city and trying not to fuck up at my new job): buying a car. I'm about to get moved to overnights at work, so I'll need a way to get from home to work at all hours.

So... yesterday Chris and I headed out to a couple of car lots, hoping to find a used import in the $8000 range. It's not like this should have been that hard; I had seen plenty advertised online in the Seattle area. We were less than impressed with a Toyota on the first lot, which was pretty small anyway, so we decided to head down the street to a place that heralded iself as the "11th Largest Used Car Dealer In The U.S." Surely, I figured, the 11th largest used car dealer in the U.S. would have something worth looking at.

We pulled up to this place's sales office, which was basically a dilapidated wooden shack (the sign out front said "SE HABLA ESPANOL" with a crude drawing of a guy in a sombrero underneath it) with a porch elevated about three feet above the parking lot. We get out of the car and some fat oaf with a goatee lumbers out the front door. This dude looks like Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons", and, as it turns out, is almost as condescending.

Fat Oaf (who never bothers to come down from his perch on the porch) asks us what we're looking for, and I tell him -- an older used Honda or Toyota, in the $8000 range -- and he launches into a lecture on how there are no cars like the one I want around because "Africans and other immigrants" are always trying to buy the same thing (I guess native-born Americans don't buy used cars?). He says the only thing he would have that might even possibly be in my price range is a 1990 Acura parked outside the shack's front door.

Said Acura, I might note, is a shitbox. Molding coming off, screwed up rear bumper, missing hubcap, flaking paint and a huuuuge place inside where it looks like someone took a butcher knife to the driver's side seat.

Fat Oaf continues with his lecture ("I could take you all around these lots looking for the perfect find, but it ain't gonna happen"), I stand there getting angrier and finally just leave. Goddamn asshole. What. The. Hell.

Ugh... more of the same today. I effing hate used car dealerships.

Anyway, in happier news, last night at work, I met a guy who grew up in Charlestown, Indiana and used to work in master control at WHAS.

We traded stories, speaking in the peculiar dialect of Louisville media, talking in rapid-fire shorthand about station rivalries, botched shows of note, Clear Channel, David Camm, Southern accents, Todd Kelley and the ascendancy of WLKY.

This must be what it feels like to be stuck in a foreign country, surrounded by a sea of strangers, and suddenly hear someone speaking your language.

All right, off to shower... and hopefully find both an apartment and a car within the next several hours.

Work today had the vague air of a fever dream, due partially to the fact that the air conditioning was out, partially to the fact that we turned out the studio lights to cut down on the heat, and partially because I spent every waking moment with this in my head.




Goddamn you, Countdown, and your Bananaphone-enriched goodness.

The last memory of my Kentucky girlhood will be of sitting on a driveway somewhere near the Highway 393 exit in Buckner, watching kids I don't really know but like anyway play cornhole on a concrete pad illuminated by the headlights of a pickup truck. People will smoke and have Southern accents; a redheaded boy will show off his rat tail and a wild-eyed country dog will bound back and forth, harassing party guests until they throw its tattered, sopping soccer ball down a dark hill; girls will laugh at their boyfriends' jokes; boys will laugh at each other; mosquitos will bite, planes will pass overhead and I will wonder what it's going to be like to be on one of them come this time tomorrow.

Thanks, Louisville, for a hell of a 22-year run. I will always belong to you; you will always belong to me; and I'll always have a reason to come home.

I leave for Seattle, via Atlanta, in four hours and 16 minutes. I suppose it's time I got moving.

Buying a one-way plane ticket may be one of the most frightening things in the world. Especially when you're starting to have second thoughts on whether where you're going is where you need to be.

I graduated last Sunday, drove to Rochester, New York, on Monday, stayed the night with Chris' family, and got home on Tuesday. Since then, I've been happier than I have in weeks. Weeks. After five months in cold, wet, frustrating Boston, I am suddenly immersed in a beautiful Kentucky spring, surrounded by family and friends and reveling in the beauty of my hometown.

Why is it that, now that I am locked into moving to Seattle, I want to cry every time I think about leaving Louisville?

I know part of it is fear of the unknown; stacked up against a place I know so well and love so well, Seattle, at the moment, can't even hope to compare. I know that, with time, I'll discover its quirky charms and hidden beauties; right now, it's just a picture on a postcard and a few spring break memories, flat and fleeting. But I think part of it is realizing how much I really do just adore Louisville -- and how much of a part of me it really is.

I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different if I had grown up anywhere else. Would I feel as I feel right now if I had spent my first 18 years in Des Moines or Detroit, Greenwich or Greenville? Or even, God forbid, someplace on Long Island... or, worse, upstate New York? Would my hometown be such a fundamental part of who I am? Would I hold my head so high when someone asks me where I'm from?

I'm inclined to say no; I want to believe that I was born and raised in some kind of mid-southern shangri-la, that Louisville is a mystical place, so rich in character that it leaches into the very blood of its natives, giving them some kind of fundamental fire that those not fortunate to be born within the city's bounds can never know.

I am proud to be a Louisvillian the way New Yorkers are proud to be New Yorkers or Bostonians are proud to be Bostonians. It may be silly to feel this way about my little hometown; I know that most of the people in the Northeast (including my own boyfriend) think so. They just don't get it. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in my bio for this COM award I won that I was a "proud daughter of the city of Louisville"; as that line was read just before I accepted my award, I searched the audience (consisting mostly of proud parents who, judging by accents, hailed from New York, New Jersey or Connecticut) for some sign of recognition -- I got nothing but a roomful of blank stares sprinkled with a couple of disapproving glances.

If only they knew, I thought at the time, if only they knew. If only they knew how my heart rose when I crossed the state line on Tuesday evening; if only they knew the pride that swells within me on Derby day -- and how much hearing "my old Kentucky home, far away" means to a Louisville girl stuck in Boston on the most glorious day of the year; if only they could experience (and appreciate) the grace and gentility of this city and its people.

Tonight my friend Josh asked me what holds me here. My answer: my family, first and foremost; a few close friends; at WAVE, the best bunch of co-workers anyone could ask for; and something else, something intangible -- it's the fact that when I'm here, I'm myself again. As much as I piss and moan and bitch about provincialism and close-mindedness and the impossible standards of beauty to which Louisville women between 18 and 30 or so are held, this is my place. This is where I was born, this is where I want to die, and, I'm becoming increasingly sure, is where I want to spend at least part of my adult life.

Why, then, did I just spend $175 on a one-way plane ticket to an unknown city 2,000 miles away? Why did I accept a job offer at a station where I know no one? Why am I going somewhere I have no friends (save Chris) and no family? Do I really enjoy walking without a net that much?

I guess I'd better learn. For now, at least, there's no turning back. And I have a week to love my hometown one last time, at least for awhile.

The skyline will be disappearing out my airplane window a little after 11 a.m. on the 28th. I'd better make this next week count.

Ugh, packing, packing and more packing. I have always hated this particular ritual, and I particularly hate it this time. Maybe it's because it's the last time that the whole "packing up my life" thing isn't coming along as well as I would hope.

It seems so simple: things need to go into boxes; said boxes need to be shipped to Seattle.

But, well, I need to go get a burger and a beer at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain; and I really need to play four square in the lobby of my house.

See the conflict here?

Four square wins every time. As well it should.

Dear Boston University Mail Services,

Thank you for giving me one final "fuck you" as I get on my merry way to the real world. The fact that one of your sticky-fingered employees absconded with the graduation card* my mother sent well over a week ago really makes me feel like a valued part of the university community.

This almost tops sophomore year, also known as The Year Allison Got No Birthday Cards And Had to Explain To Her 80-Year-Old Grandmother That Sometimes People at Boston University Steal Mail. Almost.

And of course, the university's unending pleas for donations of $20.06, $200.60 or $2006.00 have absolutely no trouble finding their way into good ol' 5779.

Screw y'all; I'm going home.

Love,
Allison

*The enclosure, by the way, was a check. So there!

The fact that I was able to tune in a late-night talk show on WHAS radio tonight and thus hear a discussion about Vince Staten's Courier-Journal columns and hear gift baskets from some store on Shelbyville Road being given away, all while driving east on Route 9 between Needham and Boston, Massachusetts, does not make Clear Channel any less of the devil.

But it was pretty cool.

There's something to be said for hearing the WAVE-3 Storm Team Forecast and the "Eighty fouurr... W-H-A-S... Loooeyville!" song while the Prudential and Hancock buildings glitter in the distance.

The signal faded out as I drove down into Kenmore Square, replaced by what sounded like a mixture of mariachi music and highlights from tonight's Bruins game. I switched over to FNX, where I heard "Brass Monkey" for what must have been the fifth time this week. Seriously, what is with Boston radio and that song?

My house smells like woodsmoke and cinnamon, and there's a bigass winter storm headed here this weekend. I'm headed to New Hampshire on Saturday. This should be interesting.

For now, I'm wiped.

Cynthia gave me something beautiful tonight:

Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hurried these constants into morning
only to find them gone

--Anne Sexton