Well, my front yard looks not unlike Berlin immediately after the fall of the Wall. Much to the joy of the neighborhood association (thank the gods there isn't one, or, if there is, nobody has asked me to join) I have spent the weekend building the kind of raised vegetable beds that can easily double as machine gun emplacements, should the zombie apocalypse decide to happen. The story is long and dull but to the point: I had free cinderblocks from when Adam tore down Annie's decaying shed. Then we went out looking for more free cinderblocks and hit the motherlode in the form of a giant pile behind the stockyard. A lady there said we could take all we wanted, nobody cared, and so yesterday we ferried cinderblocks back and forth until we had around a hundred. Or something, because math is not my strong point and neither is it Adams and we couldn't quite figure out how many were needed to build the bunkers, oops, vegetable beds. Therefore my lawn is covered with cinderblocks and my back hurts.
Today Adam and lovely Ruby, who has somehow suddenly become a Young Lady overnight after having been a Kid for so long, well, ever since she stopped being Danger Baby, anyway, arrived and mortared one full bed of cinderblocks together. Meanwhile, I chipped cement off some of the blocks, which is the kind of highly satisfying job that makes you think you need a harmonica, a straw hat and a striped jumpsuit. Then I raked leaves and wished I knew anything at all about pruning and all in all it was a lot of manual labor fun.
In the middle of all this, or anyway on Friday night, Jodi and Susan and I went over to Annies - soon her website will launch with accompanying launch party, watch for it - and then to the Admiral, which was as always fun and then last night we all went to the circus. The Runaway Circus to be precise, which was full of jugglers and acrobats, most of whom were women. I could wax lengthily on how this represents the kind of giant social shift that took place initially in the 70s and has grown to fruition now, but I won't, here. Buy me a beer and I will expound. Or promise not to, either or.
Then Susan and I drank some beers at my house and then today, after chipping blocks and raking leaves and all that kind of thing, in the middle of which I decided I was having a heart attack, except actually I think I pulled a muscle or something, seeing as how I'm not dead yet as far as I know, Charles had us over for dinner. Some of his neighbors came as well and they were very cool, also, always a bonus, the food was fantastic. There was beer and guitar playing and much laughter and now it is Sunday night; I'm home and that was my weekend.
I still have three dogs. You know there's something wrong with this picture. So come on, somebody needs a dog. This dog. Bonus: you can leave her with me if you travel. I went and looked at the lost dog flyers by Sunny Point and the little grocery and they are not Perdita. They are looking for a long haired dachsund, which is to say, pretty much the only dog breed who is not represented at all in Perdita's tangled, thick and lovely DNA. Free to good home! Perdita!
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
March On
Everything is in bloom. There's a weeping cherry surrounded by daffodils up the street from me that is enough to make long dead Japanese poets take off their clothes and weep in joy; me, I just want to take pictures, although I'm not sure I can do it justice. But possibly my photo might just be better than my Xtreme spring haiku:
Cherry blossoms yeah
And daffodils too, wow, cool
Like, spring or something.
Just possibly, yes, a photo might be slightly better. If I was a long dead Japanese poet I might well not be a remembered one.
With all this spring stuff going on it is time to start gardening. This weekend it is not going to rain, which will be novel, and I am going to haul a whole lot of concrete blocks around so as to make an unsightly Victory Garden of raised beds in my front yard. Possibly the concrete blocks will get mosaiced eventually so as to make them less (or more, depending on your mosaic tolerance) hideous. Or not. But hopefully having them in the front yard will shame me into keeping the vegetable garden weeded and neat instead of letting it turn into the dry shambles of morning glories and grass that is the usual eventual fate of my vegetable gardens.
The backyard also needs work. Somebody hopeful and broke planted a few very small trees back there at one point, neglecting utterly to ponder upon the fact that the backyard is full of large trees already, and they brook no competition. The small trees are trying, but the odds are against them: the combination of almost total shade and three dogs is a bit much for anything to grow in except broken lawn furniture, which flourishes in that microclimate. However, they're blooming tinily, as shown here and staging a minuscule battle against the sea of mud, dogshit and shredded recycling that my backyard has scenically become. In 60 years they might even be 8 feet tall, which I will totally enjoy from my haiku writing coffin under the solarium.
But in the meantime, it's, like, all springy and shit. There are blossoms and pollen and most of the population of Asheville has red eyes and is sneezing. My friend Adam is back in the mountains (without my son, who has been apparently permanently seduced by those tricksy, traitorous, lights of Baltimore and seems to believe that basically starting his adult life is more fun than visiting his Mother. Imagine.) and promises to fix or replace my water heater, so that will be cool and I can stop changing out the towels and then visit fiery death upon the mold civilizations growing along the baseboard there. Hurrah, spring.
Cherry blossoms yeah
And daffodils too, wow, cool
Like, spring or something.
Just possibly, yes, a photo might be slightly better. If I was a long dead Japanese poet I might well not be a remembered one.
With all this spring stuff going on it is time to start gardening. This weekend it is not going to rain, which will be novel, and I am going to haul a whole lot of concrete blocks around so as to make an unsightly Victory Garden of raised beds in my front yard. Possibly the concrete blocks will get mosaiced eventually so as to make them less (or more, depending on your mosaic tolerance) hideous. Or not. But hopefully having them in the front yard will shame me into keeping the vegetable garden weeded and neat instead of letting it turn into the dry shambles of morning glories and grass that is the usual eventual fate of my vegetable gardens.
The backyard also needs work. Somebody hopeful and broke planted a few very small trees back there at one point, neglecting utterly to ponder upon the fact that the backyard is full of large trees already, and they brook no competition. The small trees are trying, but the odds are against them: the combination of almost total shade and three dogs is a bit much for anything to grow in except broken lawn furniture, which flourishes in that microclimate. However, they're blooming tinily, as shown here and staging a minuscule battle against the sea of mud, dogshit and shredded recycling that my backyard has scenically become. In 60 years they might even be 8 feet tall, which I will totally enjoy from my haiku writing coffin under the solarium.
But in the meantime, it's, like, all springy and shit. There are blossoms and pollen and most of the population of Asheville has red eyes and is sneezing. My friend Adam is back in the mountains (without my son, who has been apparently permanently seduced by those tricksy, traitorous, lights of Baltimore and seems to believe that basically starting his adult life is more fun than visiting his Mother. Imagine.) and promises to fix or replace my water heater, so that will be cool and I can stop changing out the towels and then visit fiery death upon the mold civilizations growing along the baseboard there. Hurrah, spring.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Small Irritations
There's a sticker on the paper towel dispenser at work that says "These are made from trees." There's a little leaf on it and under the leaf it helpfully informs you that this sticker will save 100 trees or 1000 trees or 100 pounds of trees or something. The print is small and I can't be bothered to go up and look at it. I have taken against this sticker. For one thing, if paper towels come from trees, then where do stickers come from? Immaculate conception of purely green space fuel that doesn't affect the planet? And also, it's like those baby on board signs that used to be on every other car in the mid 90s. Just as those made me quit my habit of ramming random cars for fun and profit, this sticker is really cramping my style: now I feel guilty when I sit on the toilet at work and compulsively shred paper towels by the hundreds. Now that I know they come from trees, gee. I guess I should cut them in half before drying my hands or something, because the next person who comes into the bathroom is so totally going to use a half paper towel that's sitting by the sink instead of grabbing one out of the dispenser.
In other news, I took all three dogs to the park this morning and didn't manage to lose even one of them. Rats. Three dogs, while a nice idea, is one dog too many for my lifestyle. I've long since resigned myself to the fact that I will always have animals - that's just how I masochistically roll and really, I love the fact that when you sit on the chairs in my living room a puff of dust and dog dander rises to the ceiling - but while two dogs can be laughed off as a charming affectation, three dogs is skating perilously close to the beginning of one of those obsessions where finally the cops have to come and repossess your 857 animals and burn your house down. It would be better not to go there, I feel.
So, gentle reader, do you not need a dog? You do. You need a 6 month old brown girl dog who is very smart and sweet, really you do. Or possibly you need a 6 or 7 year old collie who is awesome at scaring away squirrels. I'm not even going to try to convince you that you need a hyper 2 year old springer spaniel who eats furniture - that's how nice I am - but you need a puppy. Yes, yes you do. Email me and I will give you one.
In other news, I took all three dogs to the park this morning and didn't manage to lose even one of them. Rats. Three dogs, while a nice idea, is one dog too many for my lifestyle. I've long since resigned myself to the fact that I will always have animals - that's just how I masochistically roll and really, I love the fact that when you sit on the chairs in my living room a puff of dust and dog dander rises to the ceiling - but while two dogs can be laughed off as a charming affectation, three dogs is skating perilously close to the beginning of one of those obsessions where finally the cops have to come and repossess your 857 animals and burn your house down. It would be better not to go there, I feel.
So, gentle reader, do you not need a dog? You do. You need a 6 month old brown girl dog who is very smart and sweet, really you do. Or possibly you need a 6 or 7 year old collie who is awesome at scaring away squirrels. I'm not even going to try to convince you that you need a hyper 2 year old springer spaniel who eats furniture - that's how nice I am - but you need a puppy. Yes, yes you do. Email me and I will give you one.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Erin Go Braless
Well, Happy St. Paddy's and all that. I am celebrating by having a Jamesons and soda and a beer back, because I just got home after putting in a nice 12 hour work day and my feet hurt. Downtown is full of twenty somethings in green t-shirts and sparkly wigs falling all over each other on the sidewalk. On three blocks of Biltmore Avenue alone I saw one couple who were clutched in a tight embrace - gods, I'm getting old. Susan and I went to the Admiral on Saturday night for a couple of drinks and there were people dancing. "Look," I said, pointing. "That couple is slow dancing. Do you think we should go over there with a ruler and get them to separate?" - and another couple who were having a nice loud drunken spat all the way up the street. I stopped and gave a dollar to Earl. "How you doin'?" I said, which is code for "Is anybody giving you money?"
And he said, as he usually does, "Not good, baby, not good."
"But these people are all drunk," I said, fishing a dollar out of my purse. "You'd think they'd be generous."
"They just walk right on by me like they don't even see." he said bitterly and I watched for a moment and agreed. Well. It's not like I haven't walked by my share of beggars over the years.
I wore green today just like I do every year. I wore a skirt with green in it and green earrings and green bracelets and even a green camisole although nobody except me saw that, which is somewhat of a pity, because it is a very stridently lime green camisole. It's important to wear green on St. Patrick's day or the anti Irish demons will, um, do something. I've always worn green and forced my children to do so as well, going so far as to actually MAKE my daughter a green skirt before afternoon kindergarten one memorable year, but nothing much has ever resulted from this religious observance. One year somebody did buy me a drink unexpectedly, so, well, I suppose it's all good.
In other news, an old boyfriend found me on Facebook and that was cool, except it suddenly occurred to me while I was driving home that he is now in his mid forties! Agh! How can this be? Old girlfriends of mine have been contacting me via the horrible vortex that is Facebook (I thought I didn't understand it before. Now they have changed the interface. Forget it. You know, I've been active online for a long, long time. I have a blog and I know simple HTML tags and all in all I pride myself on being pretty damn tech savvy, at least when compared to a control group of elderly peasant women from a small country in the Mongolian hills, but Facebook is beyond me. I just cannot figure it out. ) and I realize, in some abstract way that hey, I am over forty and they are therefore over forty but it doesn't seem, somehow, surprising or wrong. Realizing that my old boyfriend Jack from the dim and distant past is now, as he always has been, my age, freaked me right the fuck out. This aging thing is too damn inescapable, I feel. It needs to be caught and stopped now. Although not by becoming a vampire because, ew. Too trendy.
And he said, as he usually does, "Not good, baby, not good."
"But these people are all drunk," I said, fishing a dollar out of my purse. "You'd think they'd be generous."
"They just walk right on by me like they don't even see." he said bitterly and I watched for a moment and agreed. Well. It's not like I haven't walked by my share of beggars over the years.
I wore green today just like I do every year. I wore a skirt with green in it and green earrings and green bracelets and even a green camisole although nobody except me saw that, which is somewhat of a pity, because it is a very stridently lime green camisole. It's important to wear green on St. Patrick's day or the anti Irish demons will, um, do something. I've always worn green and forced my children to do so as well, going so far as to actually MAKE my daughter a green skirt before afternoon kindergarten one memorable year, but nothing much has ever resulted from this religious observance. One year somebody did buy me a drink unexpectedly, so, well, I suppose it's all good.
In other news, an old boyfriend found me on Facebook and that was cool, except it suddenly occurred to me while I was driving home that he is now in his mid forties! Agh! How can this be? Old girlfriends of mine have been contacting me via the horrible vortex that is Facebook (I thought I didn't understand it before. Now they have changed the interface. Forget it. You know, I've been active online for a long, long time. I have a blog and I know simple HTML tags and all in all I pride myself on being pretty damn tech savvy, at least when compared to a control group of elderly peasant women from a small country in the Mongolian hills, but Facebook is beyond me. I just cannot figure it out. ) and I realize, in some abstract way that hey, I am over forty and they are therefore over forty but it doesn't seem, somehow, surprising or wrong. Realizing that my old boyfriend Jack from the dim and distant past is now, as he always has been, my age, freaked me right the fuck out. This aging thing is too damn inescapable, I feel. It needs to be caught and stopped now. Although not by becoming a vampire because, ew. Too trendy.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Mondays
This is a picture of the puppy my neighbor found. I'd been resisting putting any pictures of her up on the web because my brain occasionally gives in to freaky 11 o'clock news style paranoia: someone will see her and claim her and then sell her for evil science research! Or to torture! Or something else really bad will happen! Given that it would take somebody with evil intentions and any minimal amount of Google-fu approximately 3 minutes to track down where I live, work, play, my habits and also a rough idea of my daily schedule, I don't know why I got so much more paranoid about one stray puppy than about myself but there you have it.
However, Perdita has now been living at my house since last Wednesday and I think we need to either find her real owners or a new home ASAP. Therefore, look! Is she not adorable? She's adorable. She's sweet as all get out. She's housetrained. She's good. I love her. And I cannot have three dogs - not now, not ever. Three dogs is one dog too many. Three dogs is one leash more than I have hands for. I'm giving her real owners another couple days to show up and then my neighbor and I are finding her a nice new home.
In other news, I'm cranky. Three straight days of rain exceeds my personal rain management ability by at least one day, sort of like the dogs. The backyard is a sea of mud and so is the kitchen floor. I went to the gym this morning and it was insanely crowded and that's already getting really, really old. I also forgot my towel. I had to work; my lunch was ick; I'm worrying about money; and boo, hiss, whine, complain, bitch and moan. Also, I'm smoking again, goddamnit. That didn't last long. I tried the "only smoking when I drink" thing but that backfired badly: it turns out that if I only smoke when I drink then I go lunging out the door at work at 5 every day with only beer in mind and that's just not going to end well. It's going to end, in fact, with me deciding that I absolutely have to have a slug of whiskey at 11 am or something just so I can have a cigarette: this isn't pretty. So I'm just smoking. Maybe next time, soon, hopefully, the quit will stick. Maybe.
However, Perdita has now been living at my house since last Wednesday and I think we need to either find her real owners or a new home ASAP. Therefore, look! Is she not adorable? She's adorable. She's sweet as all get out. She's housetrained. She's good. I love her. And I cannot have three dogs - not now, not ever. Three dogs is one dog too many. Three dogs is one leash more than I have hands for. I'm giving her real owners another couple days to show up and then my neighbor and I are finding her a nice new home.
In other news, I'm cranky. Three straight days of rain exceeds my personal rain management ability by at least one day, sort of like the dogs. The backyard is a sea of mud and so is the kitchen floor. I went to the gym this morning and it was insanely crowded and that's already getting really, really old. I also forgot my towel. I had to work; my lunch was ick; I'm worrying about money; and boo, hiss, whine, complain, bitch and moan. Also, I'm smoking again, goddamnit. That didn't last long. I tried the "only smoking when I drink" thing but that backfired badly: it turns out that if I only smoke when I drink then I go lunging out the door at work at 5 every day with only beer in mind and that's just not going to end well. It's going to end, in fact, with me deciding that I absolutely have to have a slug of whiskey at 11 am or something just so I can have a cigarette: this isn't pretty. So I'm just smoking. Maybe next time, soon, hopefully, the quit will stick. Maybe.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Home Improvements
I suppose it's inevitable that when you grow up in a family like mine, who treated moving the way some families treat games of Monopoly or touch football - a fun sport to engage in once or twice a year - you wind up always wanting to fix up and change your living space. I knew when I bought this house that it needed some help and I'm all about launching into those projects. Unfortunately, as usual, I have way more enthusiasm than money or skill.
When I was pregnant with Miles, my then husband and I lived in this crazy decaying Victorian mansion in Baltimore, specifically, in Waverly, which has always been one of my favorite Baltimore neighborhoods - it has trees - but which is, um, edgy. Particularly the part where we lived, bordering Govans. The edginess didn't bother us at first (it only started bothering us after the drive by shooting, go figure) and what the hell, it was a really affordable six bedroom house with 15 foot ceilings and a crystal chandelier. Okay, there was no kitchen floor; the roof leaked like a sieve and the whole house leaned - that happens when your main method of structural support is asbestos siding and 200 layers of floral wallpaper. My mother came to visit soon after Miles was born.
"Felicity," she said, looking around despairingly, "A couple coats of paint can't fix everything."
When I was first entering negotiations to buy this house, my mother told me that she'd been describing it to a friend of hers.
"Oh," said the friend knowingly, "A project house."
Yeah, it's a project house. So far I've pulled up the living room carpet, taken down the crazy "shelving" unit that divided the living room from the stairwell, painted the kitchen and cut a large hole in the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Now, the question is, what next? I want to carpet the basement, which currently has blue concrete floors which are a) hideous and b) cold. I want to build a low glass brick wall between the kitchen and the staircase because it will look amazing. I want to paint the blue room white. And, of course, I want to paint murals on the garage and the side of the house where there's just unfinished wood. And, hell, while we're at it, I want to frame out that one room in the basement and add a window and drywall off that other room and, going for broke, frame out and plumb and turn the garage into a charming apartment/studio with a loft. Yeah. The technical term for that one is, I believe, "pipe dream".
So today I looked into glass block. It turns out that you can't just go buy a bunch of glass block and slap it into place; no, you need spacers and mortar and anchors and all kinds of other technical shit that is scaring me, because while a well done glass block wall would look awesome, a really badly done one would, um, not. And the project, which had way too many steps, looked a bit beyond my technical abilities. Also, it's going to cost like $400. Therefore, I'm thinking that instead I'm going to screw sheets of plexiglass on the existing wood there and run Christmas lights through the plexi so that the wall is transparent and lights up. I could also put stuff inside the wall, like poison dart frogs, although that might be a little more upkeep than I wanted. I thought of plastic flowers, but they are too tacky; headless Barbie dolls, but they're too creepy; and pink flamingos, but they're too busy. So I think I will just put in lights. I think I can even do this all by myself. I could be terribly, tragically wrong, of course, but I think it's just vaguely possible.
In other news I got whistled at in the Patton Avenue K Mart parking lot. Yes, oh yes. I know, I'm supposed to be offended and shit but frankly, my dear, the time for offense at a whistle has long since passed. These days, hon, I am thrilled. Perhaps I should wear my hungover and slouching weekend uniform of 15 year old leggings, black cotton skirt, giant Wal Mart men's black thermal undershirt and pea coat with holes in the pockets more often.
When I was pregnant with Miles, my then husband and I lived in this crazy decaying Victorian mansion in Baltimore, specifically, in Waverly, which has always been one of my favorite Baltimore neighborhoods - it has trees - but which is, um, edgy. Particularly the part where we lived, bordering Govans. The edginess didn't bother us at first (it only started bothering us after the drive by shooting, go figure) and what the hell, it was a really affordable six bedroom house with 15 foot ceilings and a crystal chandelier. Okay, there was no kitchen floor; the roof leaked like a sieve and the whole house leaned - that happens when your main method of structural support is asbestos siding and 200 layers of floral wallpaper. My mother came to visit soon after Miles was born.
"Felicity," she said, looking around despairingly, "A couple coats of paint can't fix everything."
When I was first entering negotiations to buy this house, my mother told me that she'd been describing it to a friend of hers.
"Oh," said the friend knowingly, "A project house."
Yeah, it's a project house. So far I've pulled up the living room carpet, taken down the crazy "shelving" unit that divided the living room from the stairwell, painted the kitchen and cut a large hole in the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Now, the question is, what next? I want to carpet the basement, which currently has blue concrete floors which are a) hideous and b) cold. I want to build a low glass brick wall between the kitchen and the staircase because it will look amazing. I want to paint the blue room white. And, of course, I want to paint murals on the garage and the side of the house where there's just unfinished wood. And, hell, while we're at it, I want to frame out that one room in the basement and add a window and drywall off that other room and, going for broke, frame out and plumb and turn the garage into a charming apartment/studio with a loft. Yeah. The technical term for that one is, I believe, "pipe dream".
So today I looked into glass block. It turns out that you can't just go buy a bunch of glass block and slap it into place; no, you need spacers and mortar and anchors and all kinds of other technical shit that is scaring me, because while a well done glass block wall would look awesome, a really badly done one would, um, not. And the project, which had way too many steps, looked a bit beyond my technical abilities. Also, it's going to cost like $400. Therefore, I'm thinking that instead I'm going to screw sheets of plexiglass on the existing wood there and run Christmas lights through the plexi so that the wall is transparent and lights up. I could also put stuff inside the wall, like poison dart frogs, although that might be a little more upkeep than I wanted. I thought of plastic flowers, but they are too tacky; headless Barbie dolls, but they're too creepy; and pink flamingos, but they're too busy. So I think I will just put in lights. I think I can even do this all by myself. I could be terribly, tragically wrong, of course, but I think it's just vaguely possible.
In other news I got whistled at in the Patton Avenue K Mart parking lot. Yes, oh yes. I know, I'm supposed to be offended and shit but frankly, my dear, the time for offense at a whistle has long since passed. These days, hon, I am thrilled. Perhaps I should wear my hungover and slouching weekend uniform of 15 year old leggings, black cotton skirt, giant Wal Mart men's black thermal undershirt and pea coat with holes in the pockets more often.
Friday, March 13, 2009
the flamingos are not looking at you
Okay, I have this puppy. Yes. Yes, I know. I didn't set out to get a puppy; I just made the hideous mistake of answering the door the other morning at around 8:30. My next door neighbor was standing there with a young brown dog on a leash. She told me she'd just found the dog and what should she do? Call Animal Control, I said hard heartedly, but I was wearing my bathrobe, which put me at a psychological disadvantage and my neighbor is persistent, has cats and no fenced yard. This is how Perdita, who I think is a little pit bull, a little retriever, and a lot of god only knows what - a brown chicka brown dog - came into my life. She's been in my house for almost 48 hours and she's running the place already. She can even tire Django out, which is a beautiful thing to see. She is also smart and sweet and housetrained and I cannot believe that her owners haven't come looking for her yet. My neighbor put flyers up and put her on Craigslist; I put her up on BlogAsheville and the West Asheville Ning group and Twitter and yet, nobody
has come forward. Anyway, if you or someone you know is missing a very sweet little brown dog who I think is probably around 6 months old, email me, describe her and take her home before I do something monumentally stupid like say "I'll keep her."
In other news, while I was in Atlanta at the Pogues show I did perhaps the single most uncoordinated thing I've ever done and because it was so idiotic, I have to share the joy with you. First off, you must know that it was hot and crowded at the Tabernacle. Really hot, like sweat dripping down your face, take off your shirt and just stand around in your camisole hot and really crowded. I was standing there holding an almost full beer in a plastic cup and my purse and my camera and, in my fourth hand, something else and yet I wanted to put my hair up because I was, yes, so hot. Therefore I held the beer in my teeth. Picture me now, if you will, with the plastic cup full of beer dangling from my mouth as I was pulling my hair out from under the camera strap and the purse strap. The whole thing wasn't working very well which is probably why I snapped and threw my head back to better free up my hair.
Yeah.
Threw my head back while holding a full cup of beer in my teeth.
Do you know what a full cup of beer does when it's suddenly and with force turned upside down over your face? It goes up your nose, among other things. I had beer everywhere and dabbing at the beer streaming from my nose with elderly kleenex shreds from my purse just wasn't effective - or attractive. And it could have been fatal: I am surprised nobody fell down and died laughing. In a lifetime of uncoordinated actions, I think this wins. On the bright side, it did cool me off. And make me sticky. You know, I probably wasn't sticky enough before that.
has come forward. Anyway, if you or someone you know is missing a very sweet little brown dog who I think is probably around 6 months old, email me, describe her and take her home before I do something monumentally stupid like say "I'll keep her."In other news, while I was in Atlanta at the Pogues show I did perhaps the single most uncoordinated thing I've ever done and because it was so idiotic, I have to share the joy with you. First off, you must know that it was hot and crowded at the Tabernacle. Really hot, like sweat dripping down your face, take off your shirt and just stand around in your camisole hot and really crowded. I was standing there holding an almost full beer in a plastic cup and my purse and my camera and, in my fourth hand, something else and yet I wanted to put my hair up because I was, yes, so hot. Therefore I held the beer in my teeth. Picture me now, if you will, with the plastic cup full of beer dangling from my mouth as I was pulling my hair out from under the camera strap and the purse strap. The whole thing wasn't working very well which is probably why I snapped and threw my head back to better free up my hair.
Yeah.
Threw my head back while holding a full cup of beer in my teeth.
Do you know what a full cup of beer does when it's suddenly and with force turned upside down over your face? It goes up your nose, among other things. I had beer everywhere and dabbing at the beer streaming from my nose with elderly kleenex shreds from my purse just wasn't effective - or attractive. And it could have been fatal: I am surprised nobody fell down and died laughing. In a lifetime of uncoordinated actions, I think this wins. On the bright side, it did cool me off. And make me sticky. You know, I probably wasn't sticky enough before that.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Whirlwind Atlanta Trip With the Pogues
Well, I did it. I went, I saw, I listened, I had a blast, I drank a lot of beer, I smoked cigarettes (yeah, I know, I have no willpower and Atlanta has less stringent smoking rules than Asheville) I traded hilarious stories with people I hadn't seen for almost 30 years and by god I saw the Pogues again for the first time since 1989 and they still rocked to the nth degree. They were awesome. The place they played - the Tabernacle - was awesome (except or even the way the 2nd floor shook and the bouncers started thinning the crowd way out before it collapsed or something so, um, note that if you're going there, stay off the 2nd floor if it's crowded) Atlanta was awesome and in general, awesome, though an overused word, fits the whole trip pretty well. Super fantabulous. Extra specially nifty. You know. All good, my brothers and sisters, all good.
I left Asheville around 1 on Monday. Well. That is, I got to Brevard Road and thought I would stop at the Kwikee mart gas station there and check the oil which I did only to discover that hey, surprise, basically I had no oil. I bought some oil and would have put it in except I couldn't get the damn oil cap off. Therefore I drove it over to the Saturn dealership which is right around the corner in a flaming temper and now I would just like to give them a shoutout because they were REALLY NICE to me. The lovely mechanic not only got my oil cap off but he filled it up with oil and then he checked all the other fluids and put windshield washer fluid in and checked my tires and put air in the tire with the slow leak that I didn't get fixed yet and gave me fatherly advice and told me to be careful in the large scary metropolis of Atlanta and he did all of this immediately as I drove in for no charge whatsoever and, I fear, the loss of his lunch hour. So, Saturn of Asheville is a wonderful place and everybody should go there and get their cars fixed or buy cars or, I don't know, just to hang out.
Then I got to Spartanburg and picked up Hack and petted his nice dog Zak and then we drove on to Atlanta and found our way quite quickly and easily to Manuels Tavern, where I had of course never been before. My friend Lee met us there and also Merrick, an old friend of my brother's who I also vaguely vaguely remember from Charleston way way back in the day and then about six other people, some also from the distant storied Charleston of legend, showed up and a good time was had by all, also dinner and beer.
Then, eventually, we made our way to the concert just in time for the Pogues first song. It was a great show. Here is a video. (I didn't make it.) Shane McGowan looked great. Everyone looked great. It was hot as hell. And, last but not least, I managed to pour beer all over myself - including up my nose - in one of the most amazingly uncoordinated feats of skill I have ever managed. If that was on video I'd be famous at last.
From the concert - and I took a bunch of crowd scene pictures in front that I kind of like and you might as well if you like that kind of thing - we went over to a bar called the Yacht Club in LIttle Five Points to make sure that our beer levels were kept at a constant high and then we went back to Merrick & Jinny's really lovely wonderful house and slept. Huge thank yous to them for being fantastic hosts and not even killing us for coming in late and drunk and making noise. Also, their house is totally beautiful and full of cool stuff and I now have a small case of house envy. The next morning we went out to a nice Cajun brunch - yum bloody mary and fried shrimp po boy, mostly fixed the hangover - and then Haskell and I went to the zoo. The zoo was great. Who knew they had a great zoo in Atlanta? Not, obviously, me. They even had pandas! Pandas eating bamboo! I was forced to go to the gift shop and buy another coffee mug. We wandered around the zoo for a long time - pictures will go up tonight - and then it was time alas to drive back to the Carolinas both South and North and so we did.
I got home and went right over to Susans and hung out a bit with her and Kyle and Jen and then Susan and I ended up at the Admiral for an exquisitely delicious tiny dinner. When I finally got home my dogs were beside themselves and insisted on sniffing every single item of clothing that I'd brought with me, because, okay, I confess: I had been seeing other dogs. And petting them. My god I am a shameless dog harlot and Django and Theo - and Pebble, I swear she's really a very strange looking dog, not a cat at all - know all. It was really funny to watch them all sniffing first the backpack and then my purse and then every single object that came out of the backpack with this intently serious look on their faces, glancing back and forth from each new sniff to my face like the Pet Betrayed.
Anyway, my take from these 40 hours or thereabout is this: it is GOOD to break the hell out of your routine and go and do different fun stuff once in a while. It is GOOD to go and party like a maniac on a Monday night for a change. It is GOOD to see the Pogues. And early 80s Charleston is still very much with me, which is, yeah, GOOD.
I left Asheville around 1 on Monday. Well. That is, I got to Brevard Road and thought I would stop at the Kwikee mart gas station there and check the oil which I did only to discover that hey, surprise, basically I had no oil. I bought some oil and would have put it in except I couldn't get the damn oil cap off. Therefore I drove it over to the Saturn dealership which is right around the corner in a flaming temper and now I would just like to give them a shoutout because they were REALLY NICE to me. The lovely mechanic not only got my oil cap off but he filled it up with oil and then he checked all the other fluids and put windshield washer fluid in and checked my tires and put air in the tire with the slow leak that I didn't get fixed yet and gave me fatherly advice and told me to be careful in the large scary metropolis of Atlanta and he did all of this immediately as I drove in for no charge whatsoever and, I fear, the loss of his lunch hour. So, Saturn of Asheville is a wonderful place and everybody should go there and get their cars fixed or buy cars or, I don't know, just to hang out.
Then I got to Spartanburg and picked up Hack and petted his nice dog Zak and then we drove on to Atlanta and found our way quite quickly and easily to Manuels Tavern, where I had of course never been before. My friend Lee met us there and also Merrick, an old friend of my brother's who I also vaguely vaguely remember from Charleston way way back in the day and then about six other people, some also from the distant storied Charleston of legend, showed up and a good time was had by all, also dinner and beer.
Then, eventually, we made our way to the concert just in time for the Pogues first song. It was a great show. Here is a video. (I didn't make it.) Shane McGowan looked great. Everyone looked great. It was hot as hell. And, last but not least, I managed to pour beer all over myself - including up my nose - in one of the most amazingly uncoordinated feats of skill I have ever managed. If that was on video I'd be famous at last.
From the concert - and I took a bunch of crowd scene pictures in front that I kind of like and you might as well if you like that kind of thing - we went over to a bar called the Yacht Club in LIttle Five Points to make sure that our beer levels were kept at a constant high and then we went back to Merrick & Jinny's really lovely wonderful house and slept. Huge thank yous to them for being fantastic hosts and not even killing us for coming in late and drunk and making noise. Also, their house is totally beautiful and full of cool stuff and I now have a small case of house envy. The next morning we went out to a nice Cajun brunch - yum bloody mary and fried shrimp po boy, mostly fixed the hangover - and then Haskell and I went to the zoo. The zoo was great. Who knew they had a great zoo in Atlanta? Not, obviously, me. They even had pandas! Pandas eating bamboo! I was forced to go to the gift shop and buy another coffee mug. We wandered around the zoo for a long time - pictures will go up tonight - and then it was time alas to drive back to the Carolinas both South and North and so we did.
I got home and went right over to Susans and hung out a bit with her and Kyle and Jen and then Susan and I ended up at the Admiral for an exquisitely delicious tiny dinner. When I finally got home my dogs were beside themselves and insisted on sniffing every single item of clothing that I'd brought with me, because, okay, I confess: I had been seeing other dogs. And petting them. My god I am a shameless dog harlot and Django and Theo - and Pebble, I swear she's really a very strange looking dog, not a cat at all - know all. It was really funny to watch them all sniffing first the backpack and then my purse and then every single object that came out of the backpack with this intently serious look on their faces, glancing back and forth from each new sniff to my face like the Pet Betrayed.
Anyway, my take from these 40 hours or thereabout is this: it is GOOD to break the hell out of your routine and go and do different fun stuff once in a while. It is GOOD to go and party like a maniac on a Monday night for a change. It is GOOD to see the Pogues. And early 80s Charleston is still very much with me, which is, yeah, GOOD.
Ray
This is Ray. He wanted - nay, demanded - to be talked about on this blog so here it is: this is my friend Ray. He was also at the Pogues concert in Atlanta on Monday night. More about that, momentarily but actually I am just now going to highjack Ray's blog post and discuss a blog change that I've been wanting to make for some time now: Real Names.
I'm tired after almost five years of using just the first initials. All my friends names start with J anyway and it makes the blog confusing so that when I go back in time to read the archives I can't figure out who was actually at that party and so on. What, you thought I just was writing this thing for fun? Actually, my memory died years ago when that last vital brain synapse got fried, so I need to write things down now.
However I started with the initial thing to sort of protect people's privacy a little, even though we now know that privacy, in the 21st century or in my bedroom with the transparent blinds, is a myth. So therefore my friends is it going to bug you if I use your first names in the blog from now on? I promise I won't post your full name with birthdate and social security number unless you really piss me off. Or, if you don't want me to use your first name, give me an alias. I will happily use aliases (aliiii?) - the more ridiculous, the better.
Let me know what you think but, as a sort of first step, let me just say, this is Ray.
I'm tired after almost five years of using just the first initials. All my friends names start with J anyway and it makes the blog confusing so that when I go back in time to read the archives I can't figure out who was actually at that party and so on. What, you thought I just was writing this thing for fun? Actually, my memory died years ago when that last vital brain synapse got fried, so I need to write things down now.
However I started with the initial thing to sort of protect people's privacy a little, even though we now know that privacy, in the 21st century or in my bedroom with the transparent blinds, is a myth. So therefore my friends is it going to bug you if I use your first names in the blog from now on? I promise I won't post your full name with birthdate and social security number unless you really piss me off. Or, if you don't want me to use your first name, give me an alias. I will happily use aliases (aliiii?) - the more ridiculous, the better.
Let me know what you think but, as a sort of first step, let me just say, this is Ray.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Sprung Forward
I hate springing forward. Everyone waxes all enthusiastic about light at the end of the day but those few weirdos of us who like to get exercise and dog walking and all that stuff over before we're fully awake and have thought of good excuses to get out of it are now screwed for a month or two. If I get up on time tomorrow it will feel like 6 am (which is never good) and it will be pitch dark. So that kind of sucks and so does this, Asheville: freezing rain by Thursday night. Don't get comfy in those T-shirts & flip flops just yet.
A & I went to see Coraline, which was really good. Also, quite creepy and, in case you care, I don't think I'd take a young child to it. Fourth grade and up because there is some stuff in that movie that is going to haunt me - granted, I scare easier than your average 21st century 9 year old, but still. It was preceded by about four previews for other movies in 3-D, which struck me as kind of weird. I mean, why are they suddenly making a gazillion - well, okay, four - movies in 3-D? And why are none of them a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon? The 3-D glasses have definitely improved though. They were excellently cool in a very Blues Brothers way even though I had to put them on over my real glasses (good thing, you know, that it's dark in the movies.) The minute I pitched them into the recycling box on the way out of the theater I began to regret it. I mean, I paid for them and they were not cheap. That was the most expensive movie experience I've ever had, actually - $9 a ticket plus a $2.50 surcharge for the glasses. And I didn't keep the glasses. I mourn. I fret. Something 3-D might happen late at night and I won't be able to see it. I guess I'm stuck in Flatland forever.
So I'm off to Atlanta tomorrow to see the Pogues. Woot! Shane McGowan and I are both still alive! Go figure! Tuesday if I'm not all hungover and tired perhaps there will be pictures and good stuff like that. It looks like I will have another cat when I get home, too. Oh joy. Oh glee. Oh two opinionated semi Siamese loudly sharing their discontents with the universe all night long. I have lost my mind.
A & I went to see Coraline, which was really good. Also, quite creepy and, in case you care, I don't think I'd take a young child to it. Fourth grade and up because there is some stuff in that movie that is going to haunt me - granted, I scare easier than your average 21st century 9 year old, but still. It was preceded by about four previews for other movies in 3-D, which struck me as kind of weird. I mean, why are they suddenly making a gazillion - well, okay, four - movies in 3-D? And why are none of them a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon? The 3-D glasses have definitely improved though. They were excellently cool in a very Blues Brothers way even though I had to put them on over my real glasses (good thing, you know, that it's dark in the movies.) The minute I pitched them into the recycling box on the way out of the theater I began to regret it. I mean, I paid for them and they were not cheap. That was the most expensive movie experience I've ever had, actually - $9 a ticket plus a $2.50 surcharge for the glasses. And I didn't keep the glasses. I mourn. I fret. Something 3-D might happen late at night and I won't be able to see it. I guess I'm stuck in Flatland forever.
So I'm off to Atlanta tomorrow to see the Pogues. Woot! Shane McGowan and I are both still alive! Go figure! Tuesday if I'm not all hungover and tired perhaps there will be pictures and good stuff like that. It looks like I will have another cat when I get home, too. Oh joy. Oh glee. Oh two opinionated semi Siamese loudly sharing their discontents with the universe all night long. I have lost my mind.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Ah Spring
It was a lovely amazing spring Saturday here with the temperature in the 80s, making last Monday - when, as you will recall, there was snow and ice and winds and frozen things - seem like some kind of crazy impossible dream even more than Mondays usually do. I love weeks like this, when the weather makes absolutely no sense. Because it was so beautiful I took the dogs hiking up at Bent Creek this morning. We got in early enough to avoid most of the crowds and the dogs were good; they didn't jump on a single jogger even though looking at their furry doggy faces you just know they're thinking, "Why would they run if they don't want to be jumped on? Huh?" and, frankly, who can argue with dog logic? We had a nice hike wherein I even cut cross country instead of staying right on the trails, which surprised the dogs and made me feel macho and orienteering oriented.
Then I got my hair cut, which was lovely and then I went to the Patton Avenue Tire Barn and got them to fix my tire. I discovered my flat tire yesterday when I drove around the block to pick up my favorite homeless guy, Earl. I had agreed to drive Earl and Pretty, his wife, out to the motel where they are currently living (and I think somehow, something should be done about this, some housing for Earl & Pretty must be possible) and when I pulled up Earl said, "Red, baby, you know you got a flat tire?"
"Oh," I said cluelessly, "I noticed it was driving a little funny."
So I drove my flat tire over to the gas station on Merrimon & filled the tire and then drove Earl and Pretty way out Patton Avenue, during which drive I learned how Earl has 12 kids and he himself was one of 24 and how he went to Vietnam and how once, he drove a tractor trailer over the old Cooper River Bridge when there was ice on it and at the bottom he just pulled over and got out and walked away. I like Earl, who calls me Red and shouts out to me twice a day, on my way to work in the mornings and on my way back. I stop and talk to him almost every day and although Earl has become a line item in my budget which I can't really afford, I try to help him out as best I can. Dude has one leg. I think that if I had one leg and spent my days sitting by Doc Cheys asking for money I would be one whole hell of a lot less pleasant and cheerful than he is.
Anyway, my tire was fixed and then there was a DITLOA meetup which was also very fun and then Z & H invited me over for a most delicious dinner and now I am home with all the windows open and the lovely spring warm air coming in, right along with a surprising amount of street noises - remember, I moved here in late October. I don't know what this neighborhood is like with the windows open but man, I am so ready to find out.
Then I got my hair cut, which was lovely and then I went to the Patton Avenue Tire Barn and got them to fix my tire. I discovered my flat tire yesterday when I drove around the block to pick up my favorite homeless guy, Earl. I had agreed to drive Earl and Pretty, his wife, out to the motel where they are currently living (and I think somehow, something should be done about this, some housing for Earl & Pretty must be possible) and when I pulled up Earl said, "Red, baby, you know you got a flat tire?"
"Oh," I said cluelessly, "I noticed it was driving a little funny."
So I drove my flat tire over to the gas station on Merrimon & filled the tire and then drove Earl and Pretty way out Patton Avenue, during which drive I learned how Earl has 12 kids and he himself was one of 24 and how he went to Vietnam and how once, he drove a tractor trailer over the old Cooper River Bridge when there was ice on it and at the bottom he just pulled over and got out and walked away. I like Earl, who calls me Red and shouts out to me twice a day, on my way to work in the mornings and on my way back. I stop and talk to him almost every day and although Earl has become a line item in my budget which I can't really afford, I try to help him out as best I can. Dude has one leg. I think that if I had one leg and spent my days sitting by Doc Cheys asking for money I would be one whole hell of a lot less pleasant and cheerful than he is.
Anyway, my tire was fixed and then there was a DITLOA meetup which was also very fun and then Z & H invited me over for a most delicious dinner and now I am home with all the windows open and the lovely spring warm air coming in, right along with a surprising amount of street noises - remember, I moved here in late October. I don't know what this neighborhood is like with the windows open but man, I am so ready to find out.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Crazy Health Kick
I am on a super amazing healthy kick and I would like to share my sense of smug superiority with all of y'all. Ha ha! I haven't had a cigarette in 12 days (yeah, yeah, just forget about last Thursday, would you?) and I went to the gym again today and yesterday I took the dogs to the park for a 40 minute run. Is this not freaky? Are you not astounded? I am. Well, I had to do something to outwit the stress baking. Also, this is how I'm quitting smoking: I'm exercising a lot so I keep on hoicking up really horrible unsavory shit from the depths of my abused lungs and it keeps making me think EWWW this is DISGUSTING EWWW braaargh (that is the patented barfing noise code used in our family) and that in turn makes me think that I am damned if I'm ever going though this fresh hell again so therefore I cannot start smoking again. Besides, I enjoy the people watching at the Y. I am not the fattest, freakiest looking person there, nor am I the skinniest, most beautiful by a long, long run. It's good to be in the middle. I feel normal.
Here, by the way, is what normal looks like naked (via, naturally, Metafilter.) I might at some point (after, probably, the gym has had an effect other than making me feel smug) take some naked pix and send them to this site because I find it a little annoying/disturbing that the vast majority of the pictures are young women and older men. That is because, I think (wild generalization alert!) that young women, even the non traditionally beautiful, are confident that they are young and therefore attractive, while older women think they should be put on the ice floes. Meanwhile, men get more self and body confident with age and it doesn't faze them at all to be 50 and, well, ginormous. Sometimes it should. You see this at the beach occasionally and it's like hooo, daddy! Put on some clothes!
There was a guy in the pool at the Y today who I was totally sure was naked. I was getting my new picture taken for my new gym ID and while I was standing there waiting for the Y person to figure out how to work the ID machine I was watching the pool out the window. I kept seeing this guy doing laps and I was all, wow, he is so naked, that is totally his butt, how liberated they are here, naked swimming, huh, you wouldn't think that would go over well even in Asheville, I wonder if his bathing suit fell off, that would be amusing, perhaps the lifeguard will go racing over there, ha ha, high drama! Then I realized finally that he was merely wearing a completely flesh toned bathing suit. Why? Why was he wearing that? Why is that even manufactured? I do not know.
However so as to leave you with better people watching anecdotes this morning as I was driving down Haywood by the cathedral I saw a lady and her dog who I want to photograph and enter into one of those dog/owner lookalike contests. The dog was fuzzy and round and white and the lady was round and wearing a fuzzy coat and had fuzzy white hair and they were just delightful and it made me happy.
Then I went to the gym? Did I mention my gym trip? Ha ha I am more exercisey than you!!
Oh and also I AM GOING TO ATLANTA TO SEE THE POGUES. On Monday. I have not seen Shane McGowan in the decaying flesh since 1989 when I saw the Pogues and the Violent Femmes and Mojo Nixon in NYC, so I am extremely, but extremely, psyched. Yay yay.
Here, by the way, is what normal looks like naked (via, naturally, Metafilter.) I might at some point (after, probably, the gym has had an effect other than making me feel smug) take some naked pix and send them to this site because I find it a little annoying/disturbing that the vast majority of the pictures are young women and older men. That is because, I think (wild generalization alert!) that young women, even the non traditionally beautiful, are confident that they are young and therefore attractive, while older women think they should be put on the ice floes. Meanwhile, men get more self and body confident with age and it doesn't faze them at all to be 50 and, well, ginormous. Sometimes it should. You see this at the beach occasionally and it's like hooo, daddy! Put on some clothes!
There was a guy in the pool at the Y today who I was totally sure was naked. I was getting my new picture taken for my new gym ID and while I was standing there waiting for the Y person to figure out how to work the ID machine I was watching the pool out the window. I kept seeing this guy doing laps and I was all, wow, he is so naked, that is totally his butt, how liberated they are here, naked swimming, huh, you wouldn't think that would go over well even in Asheville, I wonder if his bathing suit fell off, that would be amusing, perhaps the lifeguard will go racing over there, ha ha, high drama! Then I realized finally that he was merely wearing a completely flesh toned bathing suit. Why? Why was he wearing that? Why is that even manufactured? I do not know.
However so as to leave you with better people watching anecdotes this morning as I was driving down Haywood by the cathedral I saw a lady and her dog who I want to photograph and enter into one of those dog/owner lookalike contests. The dog was fuzzy and round and white and the lady was round and wearing a fuzzy coat and had fuzzy white hair and they were just delightful and it made me happy.
Then I went to the gym? Did I mention my gym trip? Ha ha I am more exercisey than you!!
Oh and also I AM GOING TO ATLANTA TO SEE THE POGUES. On Monday. I have not seen Shane McGowan in the decaying flesh since 1989 when I saw the Pogues and the Violent Femmes and Mojo Nixon in NYC, so I am extremely, but extremely, psyched. Yay yay.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Slump
I am down, which is common for me this time of year. Hell, let's face it, it's not uncommon the other eleven months either anyway. However, I am taking steps to combat this: I went to the gym yesterday. It was actually far less painful than I had anticipated and the Australian guy who explained to me what I was doing wrong (not signing up for a machine & just hopping on; granted, I am socially clueless but there were three open machines for heaven's sake) was very nice about it. Also, I did not fall off the treadmill and I found the locker room. These are good things. I still just want to get into bed and stay there.
I'm also not smoking. I wasn't going to tell anyone about this so that I wouldn't have to hear about it if I failed but it occurs to me that possibly that is just allowing myself to fail again. On the other hand, it's never bothered me before, so, whatever. I'm not smoking and it's not easy. It's been 11 days already if you don't count last Thursday night which I, personally, do not. Thursday night, you are as nothing to me. You didn't happen. Fortunately, I left my cigarettes out there on Thursday night and then they got snowed on and then the dogs ate them (don't get all PETA; they've eaten far worse things than that and been fine) so now I cannot smoke even if I want to. That's okay. It's good. And I keep telling myself that I don't want to smoke; it's just the addiction talking, telling me that I want or like or need a cigarette. Really, I don't want one. Really. I wish.
I know I've quit before, many times, but this time I swear will be it; I'm tired of sore throats and coughing and ah well, all the general things that people get tired of when they decide they don't really want to smoke anymore. The money. The smell. The embarrassing fact that hardly anybody smokes anymore and standing outside alone with a cigarette when you're in your forties is just not as cool and edgy as it was when you were in your twenties. And hey, my skin already looks better.
So I'm not smoking and I'm not drinking because I think if I drink I'll smoke and thus, I have nothing whatsoever to do in the evenings except read bad novels, bake - yeah, yeah, I'm a stress baker, it's weird; I just mailed young M some banana chocolate chip bread - and sniffle about my misspent life. This is getting old. I need some kind of new thing to do after work and before bed. Last night I did this drawing and the night before that I watched Hellboy II, which was awesome, but still, there is some kind of void here that needs filling.
I'm also not smoking. I wasn't going to tell anyone about this so that I wouldn't have to hear about it if I failed but it occurs to me that possibly that is just allowing myself to fail again. On the other hand, it's never bothered me before, so, whatever. I'm not smoking and it's not easy. It's been 11 days already if you don't count last Thursday night which I, personally, do not. Thursday night, you are as nothing to me. You didn't happen. Fortunately, I left my cigarettes out there on Thursday night and then they got snowed on and then the dogs ate them (don't get all PETA; they've eaten far worse things than that and been fine) so now I cannot smoke even if I want to. That's okay. It's good. And I keep telling myself that I don't want to smoke; it's just the addiction talking, telling me that I want or like or need a cigarette. Really, I don't want one. Really. I wish.
I know I've quit before, many times, but this time I swear will be it; I'm tired of sore throats and coughing and ah well, all the general things that people get tired of when they decide they don't really want to smoke anymore. The money. The smell. The embarrassing fact that hardly anybody smokes anymore and standing outside alone with a cigarette when you're in your forties is just not as cool and edgy as it was when you were in your twenties. And hey, my skin already looks better.
So I'm not smoking and I'm not drinking because I think if I drink I'll smoke and thus, I have nothing whatsoever to do in the evenings except read bad novels, bake - yeah, yeah, I'm a stress baker, it's weird; I just mailed young M some banana chocolate chip bread - and sniffle about my misspent life. This is getting old. I need some kind of new thing to do after work and before bed. Last night I did this drawing and the night before that I watched Hellboy II, which was awesome, but still, there is some kind of void here that needs filling.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Snow Again
I wasn't expecting the blizzard of the century; good god, I thought it was just going to be another rainy lonely weekend wherein I didn't feel very well and kind of aimlessly puttered around twittering, reading bad novels and trying futilely to vacuum pet hair out of small Oriental rugs. It's a good thing that I actually got my ass out of the house this morning and took a muffin and a cinnamon roll and the NY Times (picking up the Sunday paper is so poignant these days, you know, I mean it's like what's black and white and red all over and DYING) over to the QOB in the rain. We didn't know it was going to snow; in fact, I was pointing out the tulips in her front yard and telling her about surprising daffodils on the corner. Yes, that was March 1 but apparently somebody's been fucking around with the space time continuum again and we're back in January. Argh.
The snow is beautiful but somehow I am less enthusiastic about this snow day than I have been about all the others. The novelty has worn off and besides, given all the flus I've had lately, I can't really have any fun. Drinking makes me throw up - so does eating, for that matter, so I have high hopes for the diet - and cigarettes make me cough AND throw up which is too much even for a dedicated addict like me. This is horribly like pregnancy: if it was even vaguely possible I'd be peeing on a plastic stick right around now, I must say. Meanwhile, the dogs, for some reason possibly related to the fact that I cleaned the house up (it is fairly embarrassing, yes, to have your dogs think that you only clean up when company is coming) keep assuming that there's a party about to happen. They keep dashing to the door with their tails wagging, barking expectantly but there is nobody there. How metaphoric of them.
Yesterday I finished the first Haruki Murakami book I've ever read: Kafka on the Shore. It was excellent. I want to talk to somebody about it. I have questions. I have comments. I am all excited. It made my brain spin around in circles and I'm almost - not quite, but almost - driven to either google Hegel or ask my philosopher brother to give me the Cliffs Notes version. I'm not used to books doing that. I'm used to books that I can sink into, watch a lot of muscly, very good looking people trade sword blows and quips and save some world vaguely based on middle earth while they're at it and then I can emerge, notice that a week in the real world has gone by and then forget the book entirely. And I like those books a lot, but you know, there are some books - not, alas, all that many - where you can do both: disappear and think. Or, as Kafka on the Shore would have it, lose and find yourself, simultaneously.
In other news, it's been just a little over six months since my mother died. I miss her every day and part of me is still floating a little over my head, looking down, looking for her, looking for me, trying to figure out what there is, now, you know, when my anchor is gone. I hope I'll find my way before I hit the rocks.
The snow is beautiful but somehow I am less enthusiastic about this snow day than I have been about all the others. The novelty has worn off and besides, given all the flus I've had lately, I can't really have any fun. Drinking makes me throw up - so does eating, for that matter, so I have high hopes for the diet - and cigarettes make me cough AND throw up which is too much even for a dedicated addict like me. This is horribly like pregnancy: if it was even vaguely possible I'd be peeing on a plastic stick right around now, I must say. Meanwhile, the dogs, for some reason possibly related to the fact that I cleaned the house up (it is fairly embarrassing, yes, to have your dogs think that you only clean up when company is coming) keep assuming that there's a party about to happen. They keep dashing to the door with their tails wagging, barking expectantly but there is nobody there. How metaphoric of them.
Yesterday I finished the first Haruki Murakami book I've ever read: Kafka on the Shore. It was excellent. I want to talk to somebody about it. I have questions. I have comments. I am all excited. It made my brain spin around in circles and I'm almost - not quite, but almost - driven to either google Hegel or ask my philosopher brother to give me the Cliffs Notes version. I'm not used to books doing that. I'm used to books that I can sink into, watch a lot of muscly, very good looking people trade sword blows and quips and save some world vaguely based on middle earth while they're at it and then I can emerge, notice that a week in the real world has gone by and then forget the book entirely. And I like those books a lot, but you know, there are some books - not, alas, all that many - where you can do both: disappear and think. Or, as Kafka on the Shore would have it, lose and find yourself, simultaneously.
In other news, it's been just a little over six months since my mother died. I miss her every day and part of me is still floating a little over my head, looking down, looking for her, looking for me, trying to figure out what there is, now, you know, when my anchor is gone. I hope I'll find my way before I hit the rocks.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Rainy Weekend
Sick again yesterday. What a shock and surprise - although at least, to vary it a little, this was the stomach variety bug on top of the usual sinus cold variety. I've given up: apparently I'm just going to be an invalid forever. On the bright side, that means that nobody can expect me to wear anything but plaid flannel ever again, so, you know, things are not all bad.
On Thursday evening daughter A and I went to Lowes and Target. We went to Lowes because I need a new hot water heater. Isn't that nifty? Isn't that just faboo? Mine is leaking and, once I had wedged myself and a flashlight into the strange plywood closet where the water heater lurks and heats in darkness, I discovered that it has probably been leaking for some time, given that the mold on the bottom of the closet walls has progressed to the priest/king stage of civilization and is building ziggurats. So, off to Lowes where in my naivete I thought I could just buy a new one. This did not happen. Hot water heaters, it turns out, are expensive, holy fuck, far more expensive than I had thought and also, A (not A my daughter, A my friend who fixes everything in my house) is out of town and getting Lowes to install a hot water heater doubles the damn price of the thing. So I've packed the closet with towels, told the heater to keep on trying its best and asked the mold to perform a sacrifice for drought. When A gets back from Baltimore maybe he can make me a new hot water heater out of old gingerale cans and glue.
I spent a long time at Lowes looking at carpet samples since I've decided I need to carpet the basement. I'm not sure if you can just plunk carpet down on blue painted concrete, though, and again, we have that small problem called limited budget: I don't really want to pay for this carpet or anything. Since I don't particularly care what it looks like and in fact do not care if I end up with about 30 different bits of carpet all next to each other down there, I feel that my carpet should be either free or very cheap indeed. That doesn't seem to be how it works. I've never done carpet before - I'm a hippie; we tear carpet out and spend months pulling staples and then strapping waxy rags onto our children's feet to make the wood floors look better (I have actually done this; ask my kids) - and I'm just not up on all this carpet stuff, besides feeling vaguely that I am betraying my principles. Oh well. I ended up not buying much at all at Lowes; I was going to get some blind liners, since the attractive bamboo Roman shades I hung in the bedroom a couple weeks ago are basically only very slightly less transparent than glass, but as A pointed out, they were expensive; they didn't have exactly the right size; and by the time I was done fucking them up completely by trying to alter them I would have to buy more anyway. I have saved money, yes, but alas, there's still a puddle under the hot water heater; you can still see me walking around the bedroom looking confused and the basement floor is still bright blue concrete.
In other news, I totally saw coyotes on Thursday morning and I would like to stress that. Coyotes! In Asheville! Nobody else seems to understand how totally cool yet kind of scary that is but I swear to you, it is totally cool yet kind of scary. And, sort of vaguely as a result of this, it looks like Pebble's sister Okra might come to live with me. As you may or may not know, Pebble is the daughter of A's cat Izzy. Izzy managed to get herself knocked up in her first heat in a trailer park in Woodfin and yet produced perfectly Siamese looking kittens: go figure. Then, tragically, Izzy disappeared about two or three months ago. Given that A lives right up the street from where I suspect the coyotes live (in that wilderness power company no mans land beyond the dog park along the river) it is possible that Izzy was eaten. At any rate, A then decided that Okra would not be allowed to ever go outside again, which would all be well and good except that A's roommates do not much like cats; A is rarely home and Okra is bored being an only cat. So is Pebble and thus the plan is to move Okra in with me. I can hear young M laughing now: "A got you to take another of her animals!" and yes, it is true that A is very good at finding pets for other people and I'm not entirely sure how it is that I managed to agree to or possibly even suggest this solution to Okra & Pebbles' boredom problems but there you have it: soon I will have two cats and two dogs and even less sanity than I do now.
On Thursday evening daughter A and I went to Lowes and Target. We went to Lowes because I need a new hot water heater. Isn't that nifty? Isn't that just faboo? Mine is leaking and, once I had wedged myself and a flashlight into the strange plywood closet where the water heater lurks and heats in darkness, I discovered that it has probably been leaking for some time, given that the mold on the bottom of the closet walls has progressed to the priest/king stage of civilization and is building ziggurats. So, off to Lowes where in my naivete I thought I could just buy a new one. This did not happen. Hot water heaters, it turns out, are expensive, holy fuck, far more expensive than I had thought and also, A (not A my daughter, A my friend who fixes everything in my house) is out of town and getting Lowes to install a hot water heater doubles the damn price of the thing. So I've packed the closet with towels, told the heater to keep on trying its best and asked the mold to perform a sacrifice for drought. When A gets back from Baltimore maybe he can make me a new hot water heater out of old gingerale cans and glue.
I spent a long time at Lowes looking at carpet samples since I've decided I need to carpet the basement. I'm not sure if you can just plunk carpet down on blue painted concrete, though, and again, we have that small problem called limited budget: I don't really want to pay for this carpet or anything. Since I don't particularly care what it looks like and in fact do not care if I end up with about 30 different bits of carpet all next to each other down there, I feel that my carpet should be either free or very cheap indeed. That doesn't seem to be how it works. I've never done carpet before - I'm a hippie; we tear carpet out and spend months pulling staples and then strapping waxy rags onto our children's feet to make the wood floors look better (I have actually done this; ask my kids) - and I'm just not up on all this carpet stuff, besides feeling vaguely that I am betraying my principles. Oh well. I ended up not buying much at all at Lowes; I was going to get some blind liners, since the attractive bamboo Roman shades I hung in the bedroom a couple weeks ago are basically only very slightly less transparent than glass, but as A pointed out, they were expensive; they didn't have exactly the right size; and by the time I was done fucking them up completely by trying to alter them I would have to buy more anyway. I have saved money, yes, but alas, there's still a puddle under the hot water heater; you can still see me walking around the bedroom looking confused and the basement floor is still bright blue concrete.
In other news, I totally saw coyotes on Thursday morning and I would like to stress that. Coyotes! In Asheville! Nobody else seems to understand how totally cool yet kind of scary that is but I swear to you, it is totally cool yet kind of scary. And, sort of vaguely as a result of this, it looks like Pebble's sister Okra might come to live with me. As you may or may not know, Pebble is the daughter of A's cat Izzy. Izzy managed to get herself knocked up in her first heat in a trailer park in Woodfin and yet produced perfectly Siamese looking kittens: go figure. Then, tragically, Izzy disappeared about two or three months ago. Given that A lives right up the street from where I suspect the coyotes live (in that wilderness power company no mans land beyond the dog park along the river) it is possible that Izzy was eaten. At any rate, A then decided that Okra would not be allowed to ever go outside again, which would all be well and good except that A's roommates do not much like cats; A is rarely home and Okra is bored being an only cat. So is Pebble and thus the plan is to move Okra in with me. I can hear young M laughing now: "A got you to take another of her animals!" and yes, it is true that A is very good at finding pets for other people and I'm not entirely sure how it is that I managed to agree to or possibly even suggest this solution to Okra & Pebbles' boredom problems but there you have it: soon I will have two cats and two dogs and even less sanity than I do now.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Vertigo and Wildness
I'm kind of better. I'm kind of not better, too and I'm living in fear that betterness is just an illusion as it proved to be last time and at any minute I could keel over again. Meanwhile, I have a splitting headache that won't go away; I have to blow my nose entirely too often and I'm tired. The newspaper reports that local schools have tons of kids out and yadda yadda: February. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the comments thread on that story managed not to blame the Democrats, which I was expecting, since the "people" who comment in the Citizen-Times forums usually manage to blame pretty much everything that they don't like - which is to say everything; they don't like much - on the Democrats. They use more unkind terms than Democrat, too, as you can probably imagine and all in all a visit to the comments page generally makes me want to either jump off the planet or boil myself in bleach but then I take solace in remembering that those are not real people commenting. No, those forums provide the preferred online community for that subterranean race of troglodytic reptile people who spend their time jumping over lava rivers, fighting off pterodactyls and performing human sacrifice in bad movies. Once that became clear I found I could read their completely batshit insane comments calmly and anthropologically, which is better than the boiling bleach option and besides, obviously this is the only logical explanation for the cesspits that are the Topix forums.
I am trying to keep illness at bay by, gasp, being healthy. Thus I have managed to walk the dogs twice this week already which is a new pathetic record. This morning I went down to the old park, the French Broad River Park but just as I wait, not me, someone I don't know who is not me, heh - was about to illegally slip the dogs off their leashes so they could get a good run in, they went nuts, barking and generally freaking out. I looked in the direction in which they were barking and saw animals. There were two of them, halfway across the park and you could tell simply from their body language that they were not domesticated, oh no, far from it. Tiny, weirdly shaped deer? I thought wildly, feral dogs? Then I thought, wait, shit, I think those are coyotes! Then I edged up a little closer and one of them crossed the park and I think, I am not positive, but I am close to sure, that they were foxes or, and this is weird, one of them was definitely a fox but the other may have been a dog? No, okay, that's impossible. Looking at the blurry pictures - at the bottom of the post - I'm back at the coyote hypothesis.
Here's why I don't think they were dogs. I grant you that feral dogs or even perfectly non feral family dogs who have taken themselves for a fun jaunt are the most likely scenario at the heavily used river park in Asheville (we are not talking wilderness here, let's face it) but I really don't think these were dogs. They had that impression of wild animal that's hard to define but the minute I glimpsed them I thought wild animal, completely wild animal, unfamiliar wild animal. I put faith in that kind of instinctive reaction; I think our primitive brains add up clues more quickly than our reason.
And then feral dogs in this day and age almost always look more like pit bulls than anything else. Every feral or loose dog I've seen around here - and I've seen my fair share - has had either that tell tale pit look or a whole lot of hound. Even here in WNC where there's a strong ancestral collie strain, the pit bull genes have been hard at work. These animals did not look like pits nor did they look like collies: I have a collie. He does not have a profile or a tail like that.
Whatever species they were, Yoda says: frightened by us they were not. One ran back across the park and the other stood there and looked calmly at us for a while and I thought, you know what? I am going to go in completely the other direction today and leave the dogs on their leashes for a while. And so I did and when I came back they were gone.
It was a nice brush with mystery though and wildness and even a little fear; you can't help but think about rabies in those situations - well, I can't but then I'm neurotic, okay - and how much vets cost and so on. At the same time as the fear, though, there is something in this overly analytical overly populated semi urban 21st century existence of mine that responds with real awe to this kind of brush with wildness, this kind of quick glimpse into the hidden world that lives right up next to the one we see every day. It's a sort of vertigo, realizing that the surface we see is just part of the story and far, far from all. There are wild things, Horatio, right outside your window and we will never know where they came from or where they go.
Oh and yes, I know, these pictures are hopeless. That could be a yeti there or Bigfoot or a tyrannosaurus rex - they are the quintessential UFO photos, these photos and I apologize, but it was early and dark and the animals were far away and, okay, a National Geographic wildlife photographer I am not.
I am trying to keep illness at bay by, gasp, being healthy. Thus I have managed to walk the dogs twice this week already which is a new pathetic record. This morning I went down to the old park, the French Broad River Park but just as
Here's why I don't think they were dogs. I grant you that feral dogs or even perfectly non feral family dogs who have taken themselves for a fun jaunt are the most likely scenario at the heavily used river park in Asheville (we are not talking wilderness here, let's face it) but I really don't think these were dogs. They had that impression of wild animal that's hard to define but the minute I glimpsed them I thought wild animal, completely wild animal, unfamiliar wild animal. I put faith in that kind of instinctive reaction; I think our primitive brains add up clues more quickly than our reason.
And then feral dogs in this day and age almost always look more like pit bulls than anything else. Every feral or loose dog I've seen around here - and I've seen my fair share - has had either that tell tale pit look or a whole lot of hound. Even here in WNC where there's a strong ancestral collie strain, the pit bull genes have been hard at work. These animals did not look like pits nor did they look like collies: I have a collie. He does not have a profile or a tail like that.
Whatever species they were, Yoda says: frightened by us they were not. One ran back across the park and the other stood there and looked calmly at us for a while and I thought, you know what? I am going to go in completely the other direction today and leave the dogs on their leashes for a while. And so I did and when I came back they were gone.
It was a nice brush with mystery though and wildness and even a little fear; you can't help but think about rabies in those situations - well, I can't but then I'm neurotic, okay - and how much vets cost and so on. At the same time as the fear, though, there is something in this overly analytical overly populated semi urban 21st century existence of mine that responds with real awe to this kind of brush with wildness, this kind of quick glimpse into the hidden world that lives right up next to the one we see every day. It's a sort of vertigo, realizing that the surface we see is just part of the story and far, far from all. There are wild things, Horatio, right outside your window and we will never know where they came from or where they go.
Oh and yes, I know, these pictures are hopeless. That could be a yeti there or Bigfoot or a tyrannosaurus rex - they are the quintessential UFO photos, these photos and I apologize, but it was early and dark and the animals were far away and, okay, a National Geographic wildlife photographer I am not.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
More News from the Sickroom
I got sick again, with bells on. I think I'm being punished for some vague sins I committed in 1987 - if I recall correctly, 1987 was kind of a banner year for Felicity sinfulness - so I'm sure I did something dreadful enough for this retribution. Actually, I don't know what the hell is going on; I just know that while I said I was sicker than I'd ever been before in my life in January, that record wouldn't hold long. The past four days I've been sicker than I was in January. This has been no fun at all and I still feel like warmed over . . . something. Something horrible. Not only have I not left my house until today, I have barely even left my bedroom. I was too sick to check my email. Too sick to tweet, even! That is extremely ill, by god, that is your post modern typhoid yellow fever bubonic plague kinda illness right there.
I went to the doctor - a cute doctor, with eyelashes to die for, a doc in the box over on Patton Avenue, with a surly CNA and a dirty floor - on Friday and he gave me antibiotics which have done nothing and which I now suspect of being a placebo. When the fever was spiking on Saturday afternoon at 102 and wouldn't go down and I was contemplating asking somebody to take me to the hospital in between bouts of flying around the desert, I called and begged the doc in the box office for help. They told me to take tylenol and call them tomorrow. I knew that they were closed on Sundays so I hung up embittered, contemplated the conspiracy against me and prepared to die, which I somehow didn't quite manage. Instead I was just miserably, horribly, eternally ill and unable to breathe through my nose or sleep more than three hours at a time and I kept sweating through my pajamas and my sheets.
Now I am at work, dizzy and my ears are ringing but I'm dressed in something other than Mighty Mouse pajama bottoms and I even put on earrings. I don't know why I keep on getting sick like this. I don't know why I got sick just as this blog had a small brush with fame - thank you, Jonathan Carroll and Shakespeare's Sister and everyone for the kind words and suddenly improved page hits, I meant to write something thoughtful and thankful and cogent and possibly even humorous, maybe even wry, god help us all, but instead I decided to become way too involved with a box of Puff's Plus with Aloe and Vicks and damn, opportunity has no doubt fled.
Oh well. I will trade fame, right now, for not getting sick like this every two or three weeks. Because this getting sick every two or three weeks is the fucking pits and it has to stop. I'm about ready to start sacrificing roosters and dancing widdershins around the garage - more, I mean, than usual - or whatever it takes to boost my apparently defunct immune system. Got any weird folk cures? Bring them on. I will try them.
I went to the doctor - a cute doctor, with eyelashes to die for, a doc in the box over on Patton Avenue, with a surly CNA and a dirty floor - on Friday and he gave me antibiotics which have done nothing and which I now suspect of being a placebo. When the fever was spiking on Saturday afternoon at 102 and wouldn't go down and I was contemplating asking somebody to take me to the hospital in between bouts of flying around the desert, I called and begged the doc in the box office for help. They told me to take tylenol and call them tomorrow. I knew that they were closed on Sundays so I hung up embittered, contemplated the conspiracy against me and prepared to die, which I somehow didn't quite manage. Instead I was just miserably, horribly, eternally ill and unable to breathe through my nose or sleep more than three hours at a time and I kept sweating through my pajamas and my sheets.
Now I am at work, dizzy and my ears are ringing but I'm dressed in something other than Mighty Mouse pajama bottoms and I even put on earrings. I don't know why I keep on getting sick like this. I don't know why I got sick just as this blog had a small brush with fame - thank you, Jonathan Carroll and Shakespeare's Sister and everyone for the kind words and suddenly improved page hits, I meant to write something thoughtful and thankful and cogent and possibly even humorous, maybe even wry, god help us all, but instead I decided to become way too involved with a box of Puff's Plus with Aloe and Vicks and damn, opportunity has no doubt fled.
Oh well. I will trade fame, right now, for not getting sick like this every two or three weeks. Because this getting sick every two or three weeks is the fucking pits and it has to stop. I'm about ready to start sacrificing roosters and dancing widdershins around the garage - more, I mean, than usual - or whatever it takes to boost my apparently defunct immune system. Got any weird folk cures? Bring them on. I will try them.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
An Open Letter to the Self Appointed Library Censor
Today was a long, long day at work and everybody is either sick or getting sick or getting over being sick or commenting on how they just can't quite get over this sickness. Me, I am no exception: my throat is sore again and I'm still coughing. I finished all my Patrick O'Brian books, including The Golden Ocean and so after work I headed to the library with visions of tea and literature dancing around in my head. For once I even had my list of various recommendations with me and I ended up with a big fat stack of books to take home. I plopped them on the kitchen counter and put the kettle on to boil and decided to start with a cigarette and Jonathan Carroll: The Wooden Sea.
Well. Some charming soul who also frequents the Pack Library decided that Jonathan Carroll was just too disgustingly fucking profane for his or her ugly ass and took it upon themselves to neatly black out each and every single goddamn fucking swear word with a black ballpoint. Not only that, but they wrote their own suggested alternatives above the black rectangles: poor slobs as opposed to poor fucks and rectal exam as opposed to asshole exam. I am furious. I want to read this book but the vandalism is jarring and throws me off and, as if it could be worse, Carroll, who I have never read before, would appear to be smart and inventive and playful and thus the word, the actual word, the chosen word of the author, is not always immediately apparent and I have to peer through the thicket of black ink to decipher which word he meant to use. Which fine meaningful word full of punch, which Anglo-Saxon epithet, which word that ought to be familiar to anyone over the age of eight in this goddamn culture anyway in which one would hope and believe that for Christ's sake we are over being terrified by the power of, oooh, a word. It's not like he said Voldemort or anything, sheesh.
I'm so outraged that I had to turn on the computer and share this. I suppose I should take the book back over to the library tomorrow and turn it in and tell the librarian and then I guess that, in this era of budget cuts, the library will almost certainly have to live without this particular book, which would be a crying fucking shame. So fuck you, self appointed censor. Fuck you, crazy malignant busybody asshole from hell. Fuck you and the self righteous horse you rode in on, you shithead weevil, inelegant reptile, worthless nattering cretin that you are. Who the FUCK do you think you are to appoint yourself the moralist of the public library? You're insane and ridiculous, is who you are, and I would pity you if I wasn't so filled with scorn.
Well. Some charming soul who also frequents the Pack Library decided that Jonathan Carroll was just too disgustingly fucking profane for his or her ugly ass and took it upon themselves to neatly black out each and every single goddamn fucking swear word with a black ballpoint. Not only that, but they wrote their own suggested alternatives above the black rectangles: poor slobs as opposed to poor fucks and rectal exam as opposed to asshole exam. I am furious. I want to read this book but the vandalism is jarring and throws me off and, as if it could be worse, Carroll, who I have never read before, would appear to be smart and inventive and playful and thus the word, the actual word, the chosen word of the author, is not always immediately apparent and I have to peer through the thicket of black ink to decipher which word he meant to use. Which fine meaningful word full of punch, which Anglo-Saxon epithet, which word that ought to be familiar to anyone over the age of eight in this goddamn culture anyway in which one would hope and believe that for Christ's sake we are over being terrified by the power of, oooh, a word. It's not like he said Voldemort or anything, sheesh.
I'm so outraged that I had to turn on the computer and share this. I suppose I should take the book back over to the library tomorrow and turn it in and tell the librarian and then I guess that, in this era of budget cuts, the library will almost certainly have to live without this particular book, which would be a crying fucking shame. So fuck you, self appointed censor. Fuck you, crazy malignant busybody asshole from hell. Fuck you and the self righteous horse you rode in on, you shithead weevil, inelegant reptile, worthless nattering cretin that you are. Who the FUCK do you think you are to appoint yourself the moralist of the public library? You're insane and ridiculous, is who you are, and I would pity you if I wasn't so filled with scorn.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
There's a Hole in the Wall
A came over, as noted, the day before yesterday and created the most totally wonderful window between the living room and the kitchen. I cannot get over how much better it looks; I keep wandering around going "Wow." This morning when I woke up it was pouring rain, sheets and sheets of rain and, since I went to bed at 8 last night, I was wide awake at 6:45 this morning. Another, less dedicated, woman might have used this time to walk her dogs in the pouring rain or to go to the gym where she hasn't even been yet despite pouring money out of her bank account into the YMCA's coffers, but no, I spent it dusting (cutting holes in drywall = much dust, as does the presence of two dirty dogs) and puttering and realigning tchotchkes into new, better, more House Beautiful positions. Then I just sort of ogled my living room and kitchen while I drank my coffee and walked around and took pictures and thought to myself that I was truly an undiscovered interior design genius and wasn't it nice to be in love with a house again? And I am, I am in love with my house and that is really great.
It feels kind of weird to look around and think, this belongs to me. That is my, my very own, broken gutter that is cascading 4" of rain into the walkway between the garage and the house and that is my very own possibly dead tree that might come down on my roof and that is my unfinished wood floor that will just have to stay unfinished until such time as I am both feeling rich and prepared to pack up the whole upstairs and move to the basement or the West Indies or something for a week to ten days. And it is my very own awesome orange kitchen and my very own stairs and I will probably live here forever. That is a completely weird feeling: I have never thought about living somewhere forever before.
The longest I have ever lived in any one house in my entire life was the six years I spent on Pennsylvania Avenue and when I moved there I had no clue that I'd stay so long. It just sort of happened which, actually, could be said of my life as a whole: no planning, just happening. Here I am doing both - the house happened and now I'm planning to stay. I suppose that means that I had better clean up the dogshit in the backyard (I know, there's a business in town that does just that but I can't quite justify the fees, even though they are not high, but still. I have this gym membership I don't use, you know.) and put in some metal screens. I'm fine with all of it - I love coming home and knowing that I can cut a hole in the wall or write on the windows any time I feel like it, even if I don't. It is awesome.
It feels kind of weird to look around and think, this belongs to me. That is my, my very own, broken gutter that is cascading 4" of rain into the walkway between the garage and the house and that is my very own possibly dead tree that might come down on my roof and that is my unfinished wood floor that will just have to stay unfinished until such time as I am both feeling rich and prepared to pack up the whole upstairs and move to the basement or the West Indies or something for a week to ten days. And it is my very own awesome orange kitchen and my very own stairs and I will probably live here forever. That is a completely weird feeling: I have never thought about living somewhere forever before.
The longest I have ever lived in any one house in my entire life was the six years I spent on Pennsylvania Avenue and when I moved there I had no clue that I'd stay so long. It just sort of happened which, actually, could be said of my life as a whole: no planning, just happening. Here I am doing both - the house happened and now I'm planning to stay. I suppose that means that I had better clean up the dogshit in the backyard (I know, there's a business in town that does just that but I can't quite justify the fees, even though they are not high, but still. I have this gym membership I don't use, you know.) and put in some metal screens. I'm fine with all of it - I love coming home and knowing that I can cut a hole in the wall or write on the windows any time I feel like it, even if I don't. It is awesome.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Win Lose
I found a scratch off ticket in my coat pocket and scratched it off: lo, I did not win anything. I am baffled - baffled, I say - by my persistent failure to win the lottery. The only lottery I ever win is some foreign lottery in either Nigeria or the UK and, doubtful soul that I am, I kind of don't think I ever entered those lotteries anyway, despite those oh so official misspelled emails that come in to my alterego Info. Info is apparently lucky as hell; Felicity, not so much.
Poor S has the cold from hell as does my coworker J. I feel like Typhoid Mary, guilt, guilt. It figures that the only early adapter fashionable thing I can do is colds: I had it first and now everybody is copying me! Sorry about that, y'all. Next time go for the 10 year old leggings look.
However and meanwhile, A is back in town and he has cut a huge hole in the wall between the kitchen and the living room and it looks AWESOME. So that is a win as, I hope, is the duct taped pack of Camels in my purse, since it is the Quit Smoking Plan Day One, whereby I only get 10 cigarettes a day in my special duct taped box for this week and then 9 a day next week and so on until I have quit painlessly and without barely noticing it. Sort of like the idea that you can boil a frog slowly without him noticing - probably just as painless. Yeah. Or the Milo of Crotona thing with the bull - start with the calf, lift it every day, as it grows so will your strength until you are lifting a 700 pound beef on the hoof (who hopefully is still fond of you despite your strange habits) - which I believe does not work either although I have never had occasion to try it. This had better work. I am tired of sore throats and coughing and gasping my way up hills. Goodbye, oh so cool crutch! Goodbye nihilistic punk rock 1940s glamor! Enough of you. We had fun and now, or, well, in 10 weeks, it will all be over.
In other news I had no internet all day at work, which ATT&T swears is our fault and our IT people swear is their fault; eventually, we just gave up and went home. I have no phone at home because Sprint hates me, so there's a sort of almost complete communications breakdown going on here. Oh well. Send a smoke signal or something if you absolutely must contact me; I'll be home for another hour or thereabouts and then going to H's birthday dinner! HAPPY BIRTHDAY H!!! I GOT YOU A VERY AWESOME PRESENT SO YOU HAD BETTER SHOW UP AT YOUR BIRTHDAY DINNER!! And that, I believe, is the news from Riverview.
Poor S has the cold from hell as does my coworker J. I feel like Typhoid Mary, guilt, guilt. It figures that the only early adapter fashionable thing I can do is colds: I had it first and now everybody is copying me! Sorry about that, y'all. Next time go for the 10 year old leggings look.
However and meanwhile, A is back in town and he has cut a huge hole in the wall between the kitchen and the living room and it looks AWESOME. So that is a win as, I hope, is the duct taped pack of Camels in my purse, since it is the Quit Smoking Plan Day One, whereby I only get 10 cigarettes a day in my special duct taped box for this week and then 9 a day next week and so on until I have quit painlessly and without barely noticing it. Sort of like the idea that you can boil a frog slowly without him noticing - probably just as painless. Yeah. Or the Milo of Crotona thing with the bull - start with the calf, lift it every day, as it grows so will your strength until you are lifting a 700 pound beef on the hoof (who hopefully is still fond of you despite your strange habits) - which I believe does not work either although I have never had occasion to try it. This had better work. I am tired of sore throats and coughing and gasping my way up hills. Goodbye, oh so cool crutch! Goodbye nihilistic punk rock 1940s glamor! Enough of you. We had fun and now, or, well, in 10 weeks, it will all be over.
In other news I had no internet all day at work, which ATT&T swears is our fault and our IT people swear is their fault; eventually, we just gave up and went home. I have no phone at home because Sprint hates me, so there's a sort of almost complete communications breakdown going on here. Oh well. Send a smoke signal or something if you absolutely must contact me; I'll be home for another hour or thereabouts and then going to H's birthday dinner! HAPPY BIRTHDAY H!!! I GOT YOU A VERY AWESOME PRESENT SO YOU HAD BETTER SHOW UP AT YOUR BIRTHDAY DINNER!! And that, I believe, is the news from Riverview.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Another Weekend Survived
Finally it is Sunday night and I regret exceedingly to report that I am almost done with the very last Aubrey/Maturin book: Blue at the Mizzen. I hate hate hate coming to the end of books I love and coming to the end of a whole series of books I adore is just that much worse: now what will I do? What will I do with myself now that I'm not hoisting aloft and belaying a line and beholding a snowy petrel on a great ice mountain as I round the horn? Maybe fix the vacuum cleaner. Also, Netflix, on whom I was relying to fill some gaps by sending me The Tudors, sent me discs 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2. Not cool, Netflix. I am wroth.Anyway, it was a pleasant weekend. Yesterday I woke up fairly early and cleaned up the house and then took the QOB, finally recovered from her cold, to the Frugal Framer where they are going to stretch six of her canvases. She actually liked the Frugal Framer and even though she began to balk at the price she told me later that she actually thought it was going to be more. Then we went over to True Blue Art Supplies, best place EVER, and bought some art supplies. It was a pleasant outing and after I took her home I fiddled around and created this drawing, which obviously still has a ways to go but I am kind of fond already of these two beings. I'm planning a big monster mural for the side of the garage and the house and to that end I am going to be drawing a bunch of creatures until I find the ones I want to make huge and big. Look out, neighbors! I also made a whole bunch of little glass tile magnets and then gave some away last night, being as how it was Forcibly Be Reminded of Your Pathetic Single Status Day.
I hate Be Made To Feel Inferior and Inadequate for Being Single Day with the heat of a thousand suns but every year it rolls around like a particularly unpleasant piece of clockwork and this year was no exception. H and my daughter A both brought me chocolate covered strawberries, which sort of softened the blow, but still. So then S & J & I, the leprous singles, and also K & J who kindly went slumming with our leprous single selves, went to Tollivers. We wanted to go to the Admiral, but fuck the Admiral, they had a special Valentines Dinner night and they wouldn't even let us sit at the bar. And there was some kind of benefit going on at the Westville, so creepy Tollivers it was. And Tollivers was duly creepy, particularly when the music started and the bar cleared out like lightning. Then we went on back to S house and today poor S has got a horrible cold. I know this because I left my car at S' last night and walked home at 1:30 in the morning and then went to fetch it this afternoon. I hadn't been for a walk at that hour in a long time and everything was dark and silent and beautiful; it was fun.
Today I have done pretty much nothing. A is in town and he came by and we discussed further plans for the house - the wall comes out this week, yowza yowza, and he got the washing machine working, which I am highly embarrassed to report was a simple matter of turning a valve. Yes, I suck at plumbing. He also gave me a full report on young M, who is pretty much his apprentice and seems to be doing well at it. Young M will soon be Grown Up M, which is sort of terrifying but there you have it: time marches on. So does my waistline and that combined with the fact that I got all winded walking home last night has convinced me: I have to quit smoking and start exercising with a vengeance. So I'm going to quit cigarettes very, very slowly, planning to be all done by early May and I'm totally going to start dieting and really exercising and going to the gym and everything. Tomorrow. Or possibly the day after.
Friday, February 13, 2009
It's Friday and I'm Tired
Well, the week of beer is just about over and my horoscope today told me to diet. That is fairly rude in a horoscope, really - it's supposed to say nice vague things about my nonexistent lovelife, not get all personal with the Lose Some Weight Now Chubbette stuff. Oh well; I'm ignoring it by eating chips from Greenlife and giant cookies leftover from the board meeting last night. That will show you, horoscope! Ha ha!
Yesterday night after the board meeting I went on over to the Asheville Twestival which was a sort of twitter meetup slash charity fundraiser slash networking event slash cheap beer drinking party with silent auction. I have this evil desire to tweet away about how much it sucked just to see how much righteous anger I could stir up among the Asheville twitterers but that would be wrong and anyway, it didn't suck. Well it kind of sucked at first, as many parties do, but we are experienced partygoers, my friends and I, and we stuck it out until the cheap beer kicked in and it got to be quite fun. I actually talked to a few people I didn't know well, which is something of a small triumph for me and a very nice girl gave me a tampon in the ladies room: thank you, generous fellow sufferer in the menstrual wars! They had a machine in there but of course it didn't work - they never do, never - and the coin slots were really skinny, as if it was made for some other form of money that we don't actually have. Anyway, besides the tampax talk, the party was nice. The food was great and there was plenty of it; the beer was, as mentioned twice already (I have my priorities straight) cheap; the music was good and I won a T-shirt & bottle of hot sauce from some BBQ place called Smokin' Js at the silent auction. And then we all went on over to S' house and drank more beer and played "music" which was totally fun but I am, again, tired today.
Oh and I have breaking political news: my friend G is running for city council and I actually gave him some money, my first ever political contribution, so y'all had better vote for him. I don't care if you live here or not; mail it in or something. He will be awesome on city council and he lives in my neighborhood and we can bug him to put in a light at that ridiculous corner where Haywood does its 90 degree turn thing and I fear for my life every day. Also, speed bumps on Riverview, abolishment of annoying people, open source hemp fields on Patton Avenue and some other great things I can't think of right now since I'm too damn tired.
I was tired yesterday too because the meeting with beer I had at the Westville rapidly turned into more of a beer with meeting if you know what I mean. Well, some weeks are like this and actually it beats the pants off staying home with the flu and being miserable. It's even better than staying home and being psychologically tormented by my cat and that's saying something. But now I am tired as hell and I have a sad feeling that all the lime flavored expensive hippie potato chips in the world are not going to wake me up. Ah well. My friend J just called to say that she's not up for our usual Friday Broadways beer drinking ladies night, thank Dionysus, and I will cling to the vain hope that the animals will let me sleep past 8:00 tomorrow morning.
Yesterday night after the board meeting I went on over to the Asheville Twestival which was a sort of twitter meetup slash charity fundraiser slash networking event slash cheap beer drinking party with silent auction. I have this evil desire to tweet away about how much it sucked just to see how much righteous anger I could stir up among the Asheville twitterers but that would be wrong and anyway, it didn't suck. Well it kind of sucked at first, as many parties do, but we are experienced partygoers, my friends and I, and we stuck it out until the cheap beer kicked in and it got to be quite fun. I actually talked to a few people I didn't know well, which is something of a small triumph for me and a very nice girl gave me a tampon in the ladies room: thank you, generous fellow sufferer in the menstrual wars! They had a machine in there but of course it didn't work - they never do, never - and the coin slots were really skinny, as if it was made for some other form of money that we don't actually have. Anyway, besides the tampax talk, the party was nice. The food was great and there was plenty of it; the beer was, as mentioned twice already (I have my priorities straight) cheap; the music was good and I won a T-shirt & bottle of hot sauce from some BBQ place called Smokin' Js at the silent auction. And then we all went on over to S' house and drank more beer and played "music" which was totally fun but I am, again, tired today.
Oh and I have breaking political news: my friend G is running for city council and I actually gave him some money, my first ever political contribution, so y'all had better vote for him. I don't care if you live here or not; mail it in or something. He will be awesome on city council and he lives in my neighborhood and we can bug him to put in a light at that ridiculous corner where Haywood does its 90 degree turn thing and I fear for my life every day. Also, speed bumps on Riverview, abolishment of annoying people, open source hemp fields on Patton Avenue and some other great things I can't think of right now since I'm too damn tired.
I was tired yesterday too because the meeting with beer I had at the Westville rapidly turned into more of a beer with meeting if you know what I mean. Well, some weeks are like this and actually it beats the pants off staying home with the flu and being miserable. It's even better than staying home and being psychologically tormented by my cat and that's saying something. But now I am tired as hell and I have a sad feeling that all the lime flavored expensive hippie potato chips in the world are not going to wake me up. Ah well. My friend J just called to say that she's not up for our usual Friday Broadways beer drinking ladies night, thank Dionysus, and I will cling to the vain hope that the animals will let me sleep past 8:00 tomorrow morning.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Paranoia the Destroyah
It is one of those weeks when I have to drink beer every night. Such things happen once in a while and when they do there is nothing for it but to plunge straight ahead and remind yourself that you really don't need a waistline anymore anyway and isn't that a relief? Thus it is that on Sunday night S & I walked from her house to the Admiral for a couple beers (the walking burned off the calories) and then on Monday I had work to do at home which necessitated the drinking of a couple of beers while I stuffed and stapled (you can't stuff and staple alcohol free, for pity's sake) and last night, which was purely going to be a virtuous night, A came over to eat dinner, chat, check her email and make crafts. Tonight, or, actually in like an hour, I must be at the Westville for a meeting (yeah, yeah, it is a meeting, a meeting with beer!) and then tomorrow night is the hideously named Twestival that I am determined to go to in case I get to meet some new friendly geeks as well as the geeks I already know who are going to be there. Plus it's for a good cause. You should go too. I'm still trying to figure out what to wear.However, that is just a week of beer and not what I was going to blog about at all, which was paranoia. Every time A comes over we seem to manage to work ourselves into a small yet vaguely justified paranoid frenzy. Last week we heard some mysterious thumps right outside and then Theo barked like crazy, so we were convinced there was a burglar out there. He kept on making random thump noises for a while and finally I pointed out that if somebody really was coming in to stalk or burgle or cut you up into little bits, they wouldn't fuck around with making thump noises for an hour or two first. No self respecting psychopath bothers with a whole hour of thumping unless there are a fair amount of teenagers to be gone through first and my house is currently rather delightfully teenager free (although I am missing young M something fierce lately and am ready for him to come home; I wouldn't even mind his friends, no, seriously.)
Last night my worries centered first around the furnace and then around the cat. It got really hot in the house for some reason so I started fretting that the washing machine (R2 as we affectionately call it for its plaintive beeps) had been somehow hooked up not to the hot water pipes that run hot water to the sinks and tub and dishwasher but to the hot water pipes that heat the house. This, I think, would be very bad. I also think it might be impossible or at least supposed to be impossible but at my house, which has a creepy control room so you can watch whatever is going on in the glass room (just in case it's too inconvenient to stand outside any one of its walls which are, you know, made of GLASS) anything is possible. Anyway, the furnace, which goes through propane at a ridiculous rate anyway and has been mysteriously a lot louder lately, has been on my mind a lot, as in, I hope it doesn't either blow up or give me carbon monoxide poisoning or just die: I do not trust my furnace. Therefore, last night when there was a sudden extremely strong smell of propane - well, propane or fuel oil or kerosene, something like that anyway - I went into full paranoia mode and so did A. We went all over inside and outside the house sniffing like beagles but the strange smell vanished as quickly as it had arrived, so who knows? My nose was starting to hurt with all the sniffing and I just gave up and concentrated on the brain cell destroying odor of the A 600 glue we were using for our crafts.
A pointed out that I should get a new furnace, because I worry about mine too much. "Yes," I said, "But remember, I am neurotic."
"Oh right" she said, and we left it at that, which is good because then Pebble got out by wiggling through the screen and she didn't come back until 3:30 this morning, which time I mostly filled by lying in bed thinking about how sad I was going to be when I found her small cat corpse and wondering if the thumping psycho from the other night was still around and would notice the door being open so Pebble could get back in and then wondering why it was that I have dogs who, while they would totally notice another dog trying to break in, would probably not even worry about a person unless they made the mistake of knocking loudly on the door and yelling "Anybody home?" really loud. Ah well.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Car Washes and Dark City
Yesterday, I washed my car. Not only did I wash my car (here's the thing: I can't actually remember the last time I washed my car. And by can't actually remember, I mean that as far as I can tell, it's been more than two years. Possibly quite a lot more than two years.) but I went to one of those vacuum machine things and cleaned the whole damn thing out and vacuumed it. I can't get over it, which I grant you has a certain pathetic quality to it but here I am, driving around in my car (not at this exact moment in time; friends don't let friend drive while blogging) and it's clean and I can see out of all the windows. It's comparatively clean even though I did take the dogs to the river this morning and then drove their soaking muddy selves back home, sigh. And, as you can tell from the masterpiece on the right, there, I took pictures in the carwash. That has to reach some hitherto unrealized level of dorkdom in my life, right there.Last night I watched the movie Dark City. It was really pretty good and nicely creepy and I liked it, so that was fun and Pebble & Theo & I sat there and enjoyed it while I worked on yet another hideous knitted hat that nobody will ever want. If you don't know this movie, it's a sort of sci fi type dark dark movie where it turns out that basically everyone is living in a horrific alien experiment - sort of like the Matrix except without Keanu Reeves and martial arts. There are still long leather coats, though, so all good, and also William Hurt, with whom I am somewhat in love, even more, frankly, than I am in love with Keanu, who I have not loved wholeheartedly since Bill & Ted. Then I came upstairs to go to sleep and as I sat on my bed I looked over at the poster of the Buddha which has been on my bedroom wall since time immemorial and freaked way the hell out because there was no Buddha there. The frame was there and it said Cheap Poster Frames something something in big letters and I thought, oh holy shit, my memories have been replaced and/or somebody crept in and stole my Buddha poster right out of its cheap poster frame which is pretty fucking weird no matter how you cut it and oh my god I guess this means I'm living in some kind of creepy noir sci fi film now: I always suspected as much.
After I had calmed down, however, I remembered that I live in a house inhabited by strange beings, in particular a strange being named Pebble who has recently become unduly fascinated by framed posters on the wall. I know this because she's been trying hard to get my other framed poster (which is one I got from Qoop, of this image and which looks, btw, amazing, so amazing that actually it's almost tacky because you can't tell that I made it and it looks kind of like I went to Ikea and bought a poster) off the wall. So what she apparently did was work hard all day to get the bottom part of the frame off - these are those super cheap poster frames that just have plastic strips all around holding them together - and then the poster, which was just on top of the old label in the cheap frame, slid gently down and behind the bookshelf which is, in fact, exactly where it was. Well. Either that or my memories have been replaced by aliens in long black coats.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Oh Cheese, Thy Name is the Sci Fi Channel
I have had a very lovely peaceful weekend, slightly upset by a phone call Friday night from M. He is okay. Everyone is okay, however, it was a bit traumatic for me: the boy is growing up and there would appear to be little or nothing I can do about it. I would vastly prefer that he was swaddled in cotton wool and safely ensconced on some remote island inhabited only by saints, but unfortunately he's in East Baltimore living the tough life. It's good for him, I know it is, but oh, lord, do I worry. Then, because I'm still working my way through Patrick O'Brian, I remind myself that if this was 200 years ago he would have been at sea already for 9 years or so. I also remind myself that while I may drink too much, I totally do not drink as much as a British naval officer in 1809. Nowhere near. Why I find these reflections comforting, I couldn't tell you but there you are.
Last night I settled down in front of the TV to watch a movie. I have several Netflix movies waiting for me but I had some vague idea that there was something actually on TV that I wanted to watch and lo, I was not disappointed: there was a Sci Fi Channel original movie loosely based on Journey to the Center of the Earth only not Victorian and involving an entire small military group of young women in revealing, sweat soaked wife beaters. Actually, the whole production was apparently secretly funded by the wife beater lobby: that's all anyone was wearing. The wife beater lobby ran out of money about three quarters of the way through the movie, too, and they went quickly from tyrannosaurs and pterodactyls to really, really lame giant spiders. I'm always delighted to find out that there are open savannas and mountains and entire vistas that look a lot like southern California deep in the center of the earth and of course, they're always populated by dinosaurs who apparently fell down there at some point. After all, why not? This one was strangely devoid of freaky human tribes practicing human sacrifice, though, which was a sad oversight, and there was only one river of lava. Lame.
I got comfortable enough to watch the first half of the next movie, too: it was all about some future corporation trying to colonize a remote planet for nefarious motives. The planet was named Oxygen, which I guess will happen in a few years when the names ABC, CNN and Lifetime are already used up. It also looked a whole lot like southern California except that the monsters were all just giant bears. Giant bears suck as monsters, I must say. I find it difficult to really get into blowing bears away and, while I too have a sensible fear of bears, they are still cute, no matter what you do. Anyway, since they never showed the humans and the bears in the same shot, I couldn't quite grasp the giantness of them no matter how many badly written lines emphasized their enormous size and scariness. It might almost make you believe that the whole reason for the movie was that someone had lucked into a whole lot of free bear footage and thus decided to fulfill a lifelong dream: a movie that cut from bear growling to head flying off and rolling down a slope (that was pretty cool and so was the part where the bear swiped the guy's whole midsection out and he just stood there like a Cylon for a few minutes with a photoshopped hole where his side used to be.)
I don't know why I like these movies so much - they're abysmal and even to my non scientific ear, I can tell that they make no sense. "The laser is set to alternate cold and hot which builds up an incredible oscillation which eats it's way through solid rock and lava with no problem!" Huh? What? No. No, sorry, not even an art major will agree with that one. "This entire planet/cavern beneath the earth that looks just like the Hollywood Hills is inhabited by predators only with absolutely no prey species apparent!" Yeah, I don't think so. That many big predators argue that you'd see at least a squirrel or something. "Giant cave bears hunted in packs and their only predator was prehistoric man!" Nope, no, they didn't. "This bear is a cub!" No it isn't. No, it's a sad old bear skin you got from the props closet and the whole muzzle is full of white hair, you idiots. And there you go, I think I just summed up why I like bad movies so very, very much.
Last night I settled down in front of the TV to watch a movie. I have several Netflix movies waiting for me but I had some vague idea that there was something actually on TV that I wanted to watch and lo, I was not disappointed: there was a Sci Fi Channel original movie loosely based on Journey to the Center of the Earth only not Victorian and involving an entire small military group of young women in revealing, sweat soaked wife beaters. Actually, the whole production was apparently secretly funded by the wife beater lobby: that's all anyone was wearing. The wife beater lobby ran out of money about three quarters of the way through the movie, too, and they went quickly from tyrannosaurs and pterodactyls to really, really lame giant spiders. I'm always delighted to find out that there are open savannas and mountains and entire vistas that look a lot like southern California deep in the center of the earth and of course, they're always populated by dinosaurs who apparently fell down there at some point. After all, why not? This one was strangely devoid of freaky human tribes practicing human sacrifice, though, which was a sad oversight, and there was only one river of lava. Lame.
I got comfortable enough to watch the first half of the next movie, too: it was all about some future corporation trying to colonize a remote planet for nefarious motives. The planet was named Oxygen, which I guess will happen in a few years when the names ABC, CNN and Lifetime are already used up. It also looked a whole lot like southern California except that the monsters were all just giant bears. Giant bears suck as monsters, I must say. I find it difficult to really get into blowing bears away and, while I too have a sensible fear of bears, they are still cute, no matter what you do. Anyway, since they never showed the humans and the bears in the same shot, I couldn't quite grasp the giantness of them no matter how many badly written lines emphasized their enormous size and scariness. It might almost make you believe that the whole reason for the movie was that someone had lucked into a whole lot of free bear footage and thus decided to fulfill a lifelong dream: a movie that cut from bear growling to head flying off and rolling down a slope (that was pretty cool and so was the part where the bear swiped the guy's whole midsection out and he just stood there like a Cylon for a few minutes with a photoshopped hole where his side used to be.)
I don't know why I like these movies so much - they're abysmal and even to my non scientific ear, I can tell that they make no sense. "The laser is set to alternate cold and hot which builds up an incredible oscillation which eats it's way through solid rock and lava with no problem!" Huh? What? No. No, sorry, not even an art major will agree with that one. "This entire planet/cavern beneath the earth that looks just like the Hollywood Hills is inhabited by predators only with absolutely no prey species apparent!" Yeah, I don't think so. That many big predators argue that you'd see at least a squirrel or something. "Giant cave bears hunted in packs and their only predator was prehistoric man!" Nope, no, they didn't. "This bear is a cub!" No it isn't. No, it's a sad old bear skin you got from the props closet and the whole muzzle is full of white hair, you idiots. And there you go, I think I just summed up why I like bad movies so very, very much.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Me and Mr. Clean
Last night I cleaned the kitchen and bathroom. Yeah, okay, this is not an earth shattering experience and not all THAT rare, even - although back in the day if I started cleaning up my son would excitedly ask me who was coming over - but I would just like to take this opportunity to shamelessly shill for Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean is The Man, y'all, he is The Shit, he is as a god with his cute little twinkly earring and all. Mr. Clean works. He gets the floor actually clean, which is way more than can be said for the hippy green cleaner I used last time, and his magic erasers actually erase stuff off the stove and all in all my kitchen is so clean that I probably shouldn't ever go into it again. Ditto the bathroom. The rest of the house, not so much, but perhaps this weekend I will find the strength to fix the fucking vacuum cleaner AGAIN and get everything all sparkly nice.In other news I'm still coughing and blowing my nose and so is the QOB. I went over there yesterday morning to see how she was faring in our 2" of snow blizzard and while she is better, she is also still coughing and blowing her nose. I gave her some turkey casserole and a couple of chocolate banana cookies and she was happy. One of these days I am fairly confident that this sickness will all just be an unpleasant memory (she said while knocking nervously on wood.) This is a good thing when you consider that last week, while I was confident of living in my house for the rest of my life, it seemed eminently possible that the rest of my life would be, like, 36 hours long. Barring the unforeseen proverbial runaway bus type thing, I think now it might be more like 36 years. Well, maximum anyway.
Oh and the washer and dryer are working, almost! The dryer is perfect. The washer is unhappy because there is no cold water going into it. Why is there no cold water going into it? I do not know; it's just another one of those plumbing mysteries. It's a fairly important and annoying plumbing mystery, because I tend to dress in persnickety black cotton clothes that respond to hot water by becoming 1/2 their original size, which is really bad for somebody who has been making way too many cookies lately but I think it is a solvable and please please not too expensive problem. However, my amateur opinion is that it probably will involve cutting more holes in the drywall where we cut holes before. Perhaps I should just give up on having drywall at all and call that whole area a plumbing art installation.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Another Snow Day!
I love this winter. Well, okay, I don't love the fact that it's been less than 20 degrees way too much but I do love all the fabulous snow days we're getting and how they remind me of what winter used to be like in these here mountains back before Al Gore invented the intertubes and global warming or something. I may have my facts a bit muddled on that. I might love winter a bit more too now that I live in a house with this modern thing called insulation, of which I had previously been completely ignorant. Insulation: it's not just for suckers after all! Who knew?
Last night was perfect, too, because I actually really knew that it was going to be a snow day - it was hard not to, what with all the, you know, snow - and S came over and we drank some beers and I made cookies, the recipe for which will be at the bottom of this post. They are amazingly good cookies. It is an amazingly good snow day: I have just made an executive decision to stay in my pajamas. In theory I would like to take the dogs out for a walk and take lots of pictures but in reality, fuck that. It's cold out there and I am not taking off my fleecy bathrobe and leopard print slippers, no, not even for art or dogs.
Speaking of dogs, on Sunday A & I went shoe shopping (I bought some amazing boots I can't afford and I love them) and on the way back on Brevard Road we fell madly in love. The car next to us at the light was an old white car with a bumper sticker that said "My mastiff is smarter than your honor student" and the mastiff in question was just completely beautiful and grinning happily out the window at us with this huge giant happy mastiff grin. Even better, the owner of the car in question had a shaved head and the wrinkles on the back of his neck exactly matched the wrinkles on the back of the dog's head and A & I were just completely tickled by this guy and his lovely beat old car and his wonderful dog. Then, unfortunately, the light turned green and he proceeded to drive like an asshole. Damn, dude. You had two women ready to marry you for the sake of your dog and you had to speed off and weave in and out of traffic on Brevard Road of all places? Bah.
However, here it is another fabulous snow day; everything is white; I might just do something weird like grab an icicle and take close up pictures of it on a piece of black velvet, or possibly not. And here are the cookies, because it is cold outside and you need an extra layer of fat to combat it. Yes, yes, you do and besides these have fruit in them which automatically means they are in fact good for you.
These are adapted from an old book by Maida Heatter. She is a genius but extremely anal. I am not so anal; therefore, these cookies are way easier to make than hers.
6 oz semi sweet chocolate
2 cups + 2 tbsp flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 or 3 very ripe bananas
1 1/2 sticks (6 oz) butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
She also adds white chocolate chunks and walnuts and the note from my friend in the margin of this ancient recipe says to add some chocolate chips as well. I did none of these things. The cookies were great.
* Oven: 375.
* Line cookie sheets with aluminum foil. Maida says to use 2 cookie sheets on top of each other but, yeah, right. I am not bothering with that.
* Combine the dry ingredients. You should probably sift them. I did not bother with that either, given that I made these on a beer drinking it's gonna be a snow day tomorrow night.
* Melt the chocolate. Note: wash the spoon & bowl afterwards if you nuke it. I woke up this morning to a perfectly impregnable chocolate covered spoon.
* Mix the softened butter, sugar, vanilla & bananas.
* Add the melted chocolate. Mix.
* Add the eggs. Mix.
* Add the dry ingredients. Mix just until it's all together.
* Add the chips & nuts & chunks if you're going there.
* Use an ice cream scoop to put the cookies on the cookie sheets. Yes, they are very huge. Make sure they're at least 2" apart.
* REFRIGERATE THEM FOR AT LEAST 15 MINUTES. Even I did not skip this step. You must not either or they will just sort of gooily melt and then what will you do?
* Bake for like 20 minutes. They're done when their tops sort of spring back when you touch them. Careful, here, because they have a short window between underdone and burnt bottom.
They are huge and amazingly delicious. Yum snow & cookies!
Last night was perfect, too, because I actually really knew that it was going to be a snow day - it was hard not to, what with all the, you know, snow - and S came over and we drank some beers and I made cookies, the recipe for which will be at the bottom of this post. They are amazingly good cookies. It is an amazingly good snow day: I have just made an executive decision to stay in my pajamas. In theory I would like to take the dogs out for a walk and take lots of pictures but in reality, fuck that. It's cold out there and I am not taking off my fleecy bathrobe and leopard print slippers, no, not even for art or dogs.
Speaking of dogs, on Sunday A & I went shoe shopping (I bought some amazing boots I can't afford and I love them) and on the way back on Brevard Road we fell madly in love. The car next to us at the light was an old white car with a bumper sticker that said "My mastiff is smarter than your honor student" and the mastiff in question was just completely beautiful and grinning happily out the window at us with this huge giant happy mastiff grin. Even better, the owner of the car in question had a shaved head and the wrinkles on the back of his neck exactly matched the wrinkles on the back of the dog's head and A & I were just completely tickled by this guy and his lovely beat old car and his wonderful dog. Then, unfortunately, the light turned green and he proceeded to drive like an asshole. Damn, dude. You had two women ready to marry you for the sake of your dog and you had to speed off and weave in and out of traffic on Brevard Road of all places? Bah.
However, here it is another fabulous snow day; everything is white; I might just do something weird like grab an icicle and take close up pictures of it on a piece of black velvet, or possibly not. And here are the cookies, because it is cold outside and you need an extra layer of fat to combat it. Yes, yes, you do and besides these have fruit in them which automatically means they are in fact good for you.
These are adapted from an old book by Maida Heatter. She is a genius but extremely anal. I am not so anal; therefore, these cookies are way easier to make than hers.
6 oz semi sweet chocolate
2 cups + 2 tbsp flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 or 3 very ripe bananas
1 1/2 sticks (6 oz) butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
She also adds white chocolate chunks and walnuts and the note from my friend in the margin of this ancient recipe says to add some chocolate chips as well. I did none of these things. The cookies were great.
* Oven: 375.
* Line cookie sheets with aluminum foil. Maida says to use 2 cookie sheets on top of each other but, yeah, right. I am not bothering with that.
* Combine the dry ingredients. You should probably sift them. I did not bother with that either, given that I made these on a beer drinking it's gonna be a snow day tomorrow night.
* Melt the chocolate. Note: wash the spoon & bowl afterwards if you nuke it. I woke up this morning to a perfectly impregnable chocolate covered spoon.
* Mix the softened butter, sugar, vanilla & bananas.
* Add the melted chocolate. Mix.
* Add the eggs. Mix.
* Add the dry ingredients. Mix just until it's all together.
* Add the chips & nuts & chunks if you're going there.
* Use an ice cream scoop to put the cookies on the cookie sheets. Yes, they are very huge. Make sure they're at least 2" apart.
* REFRIGERATE THEM FOR AT LEAST 15 MINUTES. Even I did not skip this step. You must not either or they will just sort of gooily melt and then what will you do?
* Bake for like 20 minutes. They're done when their tops sort of spring back when you touch them. Careful, here, because they have a short window between underdone and burnt bottom.
They are huge and amazingly delicious. Yum snow & cookies!
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Snow and Laundry
I was hoping to have a gritty, urban, snowy type photo up here but unfortunately the gritty, urban, snowy photo I took yesterday at the loading dock where I smoke on Mondays just looked stupid and you couldn't see the snow. You couldn't see the snow all night, actually, probably because there wasn't any. I have higher hopes for the snow tonight, except that everybody is all hopeful about it and that usually means it won't happen. As long as it doesn't disrupt the delivery of my washer and dryer, I do not really care. Yes, I am shallow and consumerist and all those bad things, but fuck off, whatever, I am going to be doing laundry in my own home tonight! It's completely pathetic how excited I am about that but hey, you have to figure that it's going to cut way down on the time I spend sitting at the Westville drinking PBR while the laundry tumbles across the street and that has to be good. Right?
Meanwhile, I'm still sniffling and coughing but it's really not that bad anymore. I'm better, basically. Thank the gods. I was going insane - god help the world if I ever become a serious invalid; I don't take well to it - and also, staying bed all week made me finally notice that my house is right on the road and my bedroom is right at the front of my house and, hmmm, maybe it's time for some new blinds. So on Sunday I put up a bunch of pebbly plastic film on the window glass that's supposed to block the view and which sort of does. I cut it in a nice curvy mountainy shape at the top, too, which made me feel crafty and creative. It doesn't really block much, though, just enough so that I can't tell if there's snow on the ground in the mornings, which is a drag, and, I guess, it makes me look far more attractive. When you're as old as I am, a blurry amorphous shape is really all you want anyone ever to see. I should walk around with a whole pebbly glass shield at all times. I also put up new bamboo Roman shades (the Romans, apparently, were way into these things. No vinyl mini blinds for Cassius Caesar!) which are probably less curious eye blocking than the damn ugly vinyl mini blinds were, plus they took me several hours of cursing to put up. However, they look classy as hell. Classy is good. Classy is what we are aiming for, here at the new house with the pink flamingos and the troll dolls in their broken purple reflecting ball and all. Super classy.
Meanwhile, I'm still sniffling and coughing but it's really not that bad anymore. I'm better, basically. Thank the gods. I was going insane - god help the world if I ever become a serious invalid; I don't take well to it - and also, staying bed all week made me finally notice that my house is right on the road and my bedroom is right at the front of my house and, hmmm, maybe it's time for some new blinds. So on Sunday I put up a bunch of pebbly plastic film on the window glass that's supposed to block the view and which sort of does. I cut it in a nice curvy mountainy shape at the top, too, which made me feel crafty and creative. It doesn't really block much, though, just enough so that I can't tell if there's snow on the ground in the mornings, which is a drag, and, I guess, it makes me look far more attractive. When you're as old as I am, a blurry amorphous shape is really all you want anyone ever to see. I should walk around with a whole pebbly glass shield at all times. I also put up new bamboo Roman shades (the Romans, apparently, were way into these things. No vinyl mini blinds for Cassius Caesar!) which are probably less curious eye blocking than the damn ugly vinyl mini blinds were, plus they took me several hours of cursing to put up. However, they look classy as hell. Classy is good. Classy is what we are aiming for, here at the new house with the pink flamingos and the troll dolls in their broken purple reflecting ball and all. Super classy.
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