Better

It's funny; I normally hate Valentine's Day with a passion and my life hasn't changed that much, but this year I just really don't care about it. It is not bothering me. I do not wish to take to the tower with a 12 gauge. Somehow, miraculously, I woke up in a far, far better mood than I was in yesterday. I feel calmer and mellower and more in control. Naturally, this transformation required alcohol: first, a two decanter sake lunch at Doc Cheys with my wonderful friend J who calmed me down, and then, after I got home last night, a vodka and cigarette on my front porch by myself. During which I realized that yesterday -

I wrote a poem AND

I took a pretty good picture AND

I made a broccoli quiche (a really good broccoli quiche.)

Thus, my life is not, after all, a waste. It's the little things. Also, then A & I went to Target to wander dazedly around in the fluorescent lights and somehow we had a really great time, laughing hysterically at all the hideous tacky valentines stuff and inspecting the housewares and just in general getting along. It was nice. It was good. And I bought a dark chocolate bar with crushed espresso beans AND a really cute little black dress really cheap. And A gave me a valentine that she had put together with her clients (she works with DD and autistic people) which was also completely hilarious. Maybe Valentine's Day will be bearable after all.

Perfect Fall Day

It was an uncannily perfectly beautiful day and so I went hiking with A & J and both the dogs. It was great and I hereby command that you, whoever you are, must go hiking out at Bent Creek immediately, because you just will not believe how totally beautiful it is. Actually, it's been a pretty awesome weekend here at Hangover Headquarters - yesterday I actually worked on a painting and while it's not done, just having worked on it feels pretty damn great. There are omens and portents abounding, and they're all good - yesterday I walked outside and looked up only to see a red tailed hawk about 6 feet above my head. I could see his whole belly as he swooped by me, chased by 3 angry crows. My friend J says this is a good omen, and since he was utterly dismissive of the jabbering crows, I tend to agree with her. Then today I got a ladybug on my hand just as I reached the highest point of the trail. These are all good omens, happy portents, and so I think the words ominous and portentous must be reclaimed for luck.

Things are actually wonderful lately and it's beginning to unnerve me a little. I'm happy; I like my job; my kids are fine;(sure, M is fucking up at school wildly, but for whatever reason I am not stressing about it. Probably I should be, but I'm not.) the puppy is almost housetrained; my mom's health is only at about low yellow alert & anyway my brother is sort of living there, which takes a lot of the weight off my shoulders and all in all, y'all? I am genuinely cheerful every day. I am feeling alert and creative and beautiful and all kind of good things and to top it off, I'm managing to lose weight and save money. In other words, I seem to have been replaced by a pod person.

I can't thank the aliens enough. This pod person is fabulous. I think I like her and I definitely intend to keep her.

Comments That Make Me Oddly Happy

Yesterday, M called from his sister's car (my car, actually. Argh. Argh argh argh.) on their way home and all he had to say was "Uh, Mom?" and I said, "FINE! Just fine! It's okay with me, but then I'm not making the garlic bread!" and he started laughing and said "Okay." That left me home alone with a big pot of spaghetti while my children went out and ate burgers without me but hell, you know you grab your solitude where you can, and it was, actually, in more than even a passive aggressive way, okay with me. It's a little tight around here since A's boyfriend formally moved in. Argh. Argh argh argh argh.

Then this evening he called me at work and said, "Do you know where I can get a stuffed penguin?" "There's one in the back yard," I said practically, knowing that this was true. Not everyone can say that and it's the little things that mean so much, eventually, in one's childrens' memories. Ah yes, they will say eventually, Mom always had a stuffed penguin or two lying around in the back yard. Possibly they will use this sort of thing to make their future spouses feel inadequate which would actually, in an evil sort of way, be just fine with me.

Unfortunately, though, that wasn't the sort of stuffed penguin he had in mind, since our back yard penguin is a little the worse for wear. He wanted a clean fresh one to, hold on to your hats, give to a Girl. Being the good parent that I am, I said I would go and find one. Well. Hell. You know things have come to a terrible, gentrified pretty pass when a citizen of Asheville, a tax paying citizen and downtown worker such as myself, cannot buy a stuffed penguin in downtown! But alas, it is true. The stupid toy store was closed; TJ Morrison's has gone the way of the dodo, and there was not another stuffed penguin to be found, lo, not even in the whole of the terrifying upscale ghost mall that is the Grove Arcade. "I'll make you one!" I said feverishly on the cel phone and he shrieked, "Noooo!"

He's right. Going up to a Girl and saying creepily, "Here's a penguin. My Mom made it for you." is definitely the short road to social suicide. Even I can see the problems with that one. Pity, because I had some truly awful penguin crafts in mind.

All Good

So, things are really pretty good right now, despite the fact that yes, I confess, I went to Mall Wart this evening and it was every bit as horrendous as one might think. I know that a visit to the Store of Evil is a sign of weakness and lack of resolute purpose on my pansy liberal ass but I wanted to buy a whole bunch of disparate stuff at once and still get home in time to serve dinner at the sophisticated and continental hour of 8:30 p.m. Those women's magazines that tell you never to eat after 7 have clearly never tried to juggle kids, job, dog and so forth, because there is no way, on the night before the first day of high school, that you can make it home before 7:30. Also, I ended up buying 4 quarter goldfish (they cost a quarter; I didn't buy 4 quarters of a goldfish and plan on reassembling him at home) and really, the only place where you can buy horrible frozen breakfast crap, pork chops, boy's jeans, pastel sharpies AND live goldfish is, of course, Mall Wart. And I neeeeeeeeded those things.

So it looks like I have a real and permanent job, and I'm really happy about it. Watch out, friends and acquaintances, because in my job I also look for volunteers, and volunteers make MY life easier; thus, QED, YOU need to volunteer, about which there will shortly be tons more on Blog Asheville. All this has made me realize that although I'm frantic and busy and zooming around (mental note: having 5 cups of serious black coffee is not a good idea when you can't leave the museum unattended to go to the bathroom) I'm actually enjoying myself, feeling challenged and cheerful and hey, the kids are okay, my mom is okay, the dog is okay and the cat is okay. And the new goldfish, while their lives may be short (I'm not sure if the old goldfish are still alive, and if they are, well, sayonara kids, because Uncle & Auntie are easily 4 times your size and they hongry) at least they will be interesting and fraught with the glory that is an outdoor setting as opposed to an aquarium.

I'm knocking on wood, but things are great. And I won best post of the day on Metafilter which makes me feel truly warm and fuzzy and Sally Fieldish (which you can see from my last post in that thread, oops, oh well) because it was on a subject near and dear to my heart and not designed to win a contest, which contest I had completely forgotten existed. On top of all that, my library books were not that overdue, and I rented Aguirre, the Wrath of God, which I fully plan on watching extremely soon. Or as soon as I finish the pork chops, collards and sweet potatoes that will hopefully make up for the Thai curry debacle last night.

My Dream House

house on the lake
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

So I finally figured out where I want to live for the rest of my life and here it is, perched in the middle of a lake, or, well, okay, more like a pond, outside Black Mountain near Camp Rockmont. I went up there today on a work field trip to a quarry which was actually a very awesome way to spend a morning and on the way I saw this fabulous and wonderful thing. I begged my kind boss to stop and let me take a picture and she obliged while I salivated all over the road. I want to live here SO bad. I want to have geraniums in a window box under that window; I want a woodstove for the winters and I will be SET. I just really can't imagine a nicer place to be.

It's a lot like the Moomin's bathing hut, where Too Ticky lives in the wintertime, but a little bigger, so there'd be room for me and a dog. Alas no room for the kids, what a terrible pity - just me and a cat and a dog. And a fishing pole and a good book. Heaven on earth.

Rejuvenating the Spirit and Channeling the Yip Yip Martians

bunny!
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Today is Wednesday, which is to say it's the day I spend an hour with my zen therapist. Today's lesson was about refreshing & rejuvenating the soul - right now I'm feeling very frazzled and harried and I'm doing a lot of things all at once, which means that I'm not doing any of them particularly well. Zen therapist says that that means it is time to drop everything and go refresh myself. So I went for a wander around the Botanical Gardens, where I'd never really been, and I saw this bunny. This bunny let me stalk it until I was quite close, like 10 feet away, snapping all the time. It was fun as hell, waiting til he turned his head, walking three steps, then freezing as he looked at me again. And it did throw me out of my head and into my body, into total "I am a camera" only mode. Which is good for me.

Zen therapist says that I am smart and also that I am very much in touch with my intuitive side and the dreamworld, the unconscious, the symbols, but the problem is that I second guess myself, overanalyze the symbols until they lose all symbolicness (this is via Jung, he says) and I then get tangled up in an indecisive mess of intellectualism vs. intuitive self vs. emotionalism and thus nothing gets done. Zen therapist is right, of course.

However, I also channel the Yip Yip martians, and so I think I'm actually in pretty good shape. I was driving over to Zen therapist's office, late as usual, a bit frantic, and on the Patton Ave. bridge there was a big livestock truck. In the truck were 4 or 5 goats, all huddled together in one corner with the big daddy goat sort of protecting the smaller lady goats. It took me a while to figure out what they were, from a distance and through the bars of the truck, and as I did I went "Yip. . yip. . .calf? Yip. . yip. . goat? Gooooooat!!! Yip yip yip gooooaaaattttsss!!" and then finally as I passed them I yelled out the window "Como estas cabrones?" and they ignored me. It was cool.

Lately I have been reading the Iwanna, because I need a new monitor and possibly a new computer, but instead of reading that section I almost always find myself magnetically pulled to the animals and livestock section. Did you know that goats are amazingly cheap? There are even some free goats in the Iwanna! And chickens are cheap or free too! I can't believe it! I am so tempted to get some goats and chickens I can't stand it. My emotional intuitive side says Go for it! You need goats! And chickens! And possibly a llama and maybe an iguana too! But my intellectual side says, Felicity, you have finally and completely lost your mind.