Summer is indubitably here and I don't like it. I have sweat running down my face; I have to keep my hair up and I'm afraid to wash the dishes because that would require hot water. Last night I woke up over and over again with an inexplicable stuffed nose and my hair soaking wet and all in all, I am feeling extremely sorry for myself. Look, I am a woman of a certain age, which means that my core temperature has been hovering, lately, somewhere around the same mean level as the surface of the sun. Added heat, therefore, is a problem and is probably why I was shrieking and throwing dishes and shoes around this morning although, honestly, that's a perfectly sane and reasonable response to a stubbed toe. Right?
We do not have AC. We do have a cheap and terrible window unit that is lying around in the garage somewhere but even if I wasn't afraid of the killer attack garage mice and the hypothetical, just barely possible, killer attack garage snakes (Audrey claimed out of the blue the other night that snakes love garages. It would explain why the mousetraps have not been sprung. Eeee!) and, hell, why stop there, the killer attack garage gnomes of death, I wouldn't put the AC in a window. You see, each window in this house takes two people, a hammer and an alarming amount of foul language to open or close. That is why they get opened in the spring and closed in the fall and since even I have grasped the fact that running a window AC unit in a room full of open windows accomplishes nothing much else than further destruction of the environment, ozone and, I don't know, happy kittens frolicking on doomed green lawns, I'm not going to do it. So we suffer.
The house has a whole house fan which works miracles when it actually gets cool at night. Asheville should get cool at night. It used to get cool at night, goddamnit, when I was just a young and thoughtless slip of a thing but now the incredible weight of cool that came with all the hipsters has heated up the mountains and we're trapped in a sauna. High eighties and not dropping much below seventy at night is not cutting it: when it doesn't cool off enough in the evening, the whole house fan tries, but it can't really do its job.
It could be worse, I know. I used to live in Charleston, long ago, where even the whole wee slip of a thing who was me, staggering drunkenly from the Fulton House to ACs and back again, bitched more or less continuously about the heat. I also used to live in Baltimore, which is just as bad as Charleston - Baltimore pretty much has the worst of all possible weather patterns, always. I have never forgotten the time I was driving down the JFX with my friend Noelle, coming home from a party in Hampden when the radio said "It's 1:33 am and 104 degrees in downtown!" Actually I have often thought that would make a great beginning for a horror movie and it kind of is, because that sort of heat makes many of the scarier people of East Baltimore, the ones who ordinarily don't often leave their basements, come out. As my then small son said, one blazing day driving down East Pratt Street and looking in shock at a very, very large man on his stoop, "Look! It's a . . it's a NUDIST!" And it might have been. One couldn't tell. So all in all, I know, I'm lucky and it will cool down here again for at least a little while before the summer ends.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Quizzes
Audrey snagged a copy of Real Simple from somewhere and brought it home. We're not much of a magazine household except for the New Yorker, which I have been reading my entire life and intend to continue reading for my entire life, despite the elitism, the cartoon contest on the back page that I hate with the passion of 1000 suns, the annoying ads for stuff I will never be able to afford and wouldn't want even if I won the lottery and the fiction, which is so often of the Overprivileged White Person Sits in Fabulous Kitchen in Connecticut and Ponders Last Affair variety. Wait, though. Not if - when, I mean. When I win the lottery. Power of positive thinking! The Secret! I already promised Miles a Rolls Royce when I win the lottery anyway, which purchase will seriously cut into my ability to buy hideous jewelry and mysterious financial bond thingies.
However, Real Simple, although I have often thought it should be called Real Expensive and pandering as it does to the demographic who believes that buying lots of stuff equals simplifying your life (a demographic to which I most firmly belong, hells yeah) turns out to have that good thing, quizzes. Who doesn't like magazine quizzes? Magazine quizzes used to be the shit, back in the day when you had to find an old envelope and a pencil to take them and the internet hadn't cheapened them by ceaseless repetition into nothingness. Back when they asked the real, the important, the burning questions such as "What is your fashion style?" or, in the case of Cosmo, "How much do you like oral sex?" as opposed to the inane Facebook variety that simply queries "Which boy band are you?" (O Town, not that I would take such a foolish quiz.) Therefore, Audrey administered a Real Simple quiz on my organization style to me with an old envelope and a pencil.
"Do you think everything should have a place and be in its place?" she asked.
"Um," I hazarded, "Theoretically. I mean, yeah, in a sort of Platonic ideal of a house. But, you know, that's impossible in real life."
"We'll say yes," she said firmly and wrote down a number.
"Do you prefer symmetry in artwork and in your home?"
"Gah! No! What a horrible idea!"
"Do you often drive with the empty light flashing?"
"What's the empty light? Oh, do they mean if you're almost out of gas? Well, of course."
"Do you feel guilty if you don't follow the rules when playing board games?"
"Honey, I feel guilty if I knock the little dog off the Monopoly board by accident (or the iron. Actually I had to remove the little dog from Monopoly years ago because otherwise the entire family fights over it. Including me.) Of course I feel guilty. But rules, now, I mean, define "rules.""
She glared at me. "Yes," she said, "I'm putting yes."
There was a silent moment or two of intensive calculation. "You're left brained." she said.
"Whoo hoo!" I cheered, "Wait. That's the bad one. That's the only one where left is bad and right is good, right? It's like that thing Noelle said about free radicals - they sound good but they're bad!"
"That can't be right," said my daughter, "No way are you left brained."
"No," I agreed, "Not possible. The quiz must be wrong."
"Oh wait," said Audrey, "I think I screwed up. You're right brained after all!"
"Yay! What does that mean for my organizational style?"
"It's hopeless," said my daughter sadly. "Hopeless."
See? Quizzes are useful.
However, Real Simple, although I have often thought it should be called Real Expensive and pandering as it does to the demographic who believes that buying lots of stuff equals simplifying your life (a demographic to which I most firmly belong, hells yeah) turns out to have that good thing, quizzes. Who doesn't like magazine quizzes? Magazine quizzes used to be the shit, back in the day when you had to find an old envelope and a pencil to take them and the internet hadn't cheapened them by ceaseless repetition into nothingness. Back when they asked the real, the important, the burning questions such as "What is your fashion style?" or, in the case of Cosmo, "How much do you like oral sex?" as opposed to the inane Facebook variety that simply queries "Which boy band are you?" (O Town, not that I would take such a foolish quiz.) Therefore, Audrey administered a Real Simple quiz on my organization style to me with an old envelope and a pencil.
"Do you think everything should have a place and be in its place?" she asked.
"Um," I hazarded, "Theoretically. I mean, yeah, in a sort of Platonic ideal of a house. But, you know, that's impossible in real life."
"We'll say yes," she said firmly and wrote down a number.
"Do you prefer symmetry in artwork and in your home?"
"Gah! No! What a horrible idea!"
"Do you often drive with the empty light flashing?"
"What's the empty light? Oh, do they mean if you're almost out of gas? Well, of course."
"Do you feel guilty if you don't follow the rules when playing board games?"
"Honey, I feel guilty if I knock the little dog off the Monopoly board by accident (or the iron. Actually I had to remove the little dog from Monopoly years ago because otherwise the entire family fights over it. Including me.) Of course I feel guilty. But rules, now, I mean, define "rules.""
She glared at me. "Yes," she said, "I'm putting yes."
There was a silent moment or two of intensive calculation. "You're left brained." she said.
"Whoo hoo!" I cheered, "Wait. That's the bad one. That's the only one where left is bad and right is good, right? It's like that thing Noelle said about free radicals - they sound good but they're bad!"
"That can't be right," said my daughter, "No way are you left brained."
"No," I agreed, "Not possible. The quiz must be wrong."
"Oh wait," said Audrey, "I think I screwed up. You're right brained after all!"
"Yay! What does that mean for my organizational style?"
"It's hopeless," said my daughter sadly. "Hopeless."
See? Quizzes are useful.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Shopping
I have been resorting to retail therapy more than is my usual wont (wont! wont! What a lovely word, that can be used in so many ways with just the addition of a handy apostrophe.) lately. This is highly stupid, like, 10 out of 10 on the stupid scale since, as we know, my income is essentially nil. That is, the state of North Carolina, in its infinite wisdom, is handing me approximately 3/5 of my previous pathetic salary as long as I log on to their website every week to apologize for not having a job. Also, I must keep a job hunting log of failure, desperation and rejection, which is big time fun, let me tell you. Still, I feel it is my duty to spend this NC money, thus stimulating the economy and also netting me stuff like this pair of not all that hideous and highly comfortable pants for $6.24 from the clearance racks at Target today. Score!
Well. In a strange quirk of personality, fluorescent lights and the smell of fabric softener have the power to cheer me up, and being unemployed gets old. I have time if not money and so I have been doing some shopping. Today, I had things I had to get for Annie anyway, so that was the ostensible reason I was browsing the clearance racks at Target after a visit to Michael's crafts, where I nobly held back from the extremely groovy plastic chip bowl and took away some of those all graphite drawing pencils to which I am so addicted. I need them to draw with and then the dogs eat them, so a constant supply is a necessity. Besides, Michaels is always like a small trip to the nether reaches of the solar system in itself. There are entire Chinese provinces devoted to making peculiar things, like terrifying plaster bobblehead dolls, for Michaels.
Michaels and Target are conveniently located practically next door, so when I left the land of freaky crafts, I went to Target, where I found the aforementioned pants. Then, since I was going to do the dressing room thing anyway, I went ahead and plopped two heinous dresses and a pair of, gods help me, purple cargo shorts into the cart.
The clearance racks at Target are as interesting as clearance racks anywhere. When I'm shopping, whether it's accompanied by the Goodwill screech of hanger against metal rack or the Target / Ross / TJ Maxx searching for the size and price tage, my mind inevitably goes into a sort of stream of consciousness fugue state that swings happily from "What the hell is this dress? It looks like a post ironic take on some kind of construction worker Village People thing? Who would wear this?" to "Oooh, lady with scary hair. Do not look. Scary hair! Scary! Does she know it's scary? Did she pay somebody to do that to her hair?" to "Is that a . . . gingham romper? Oh god, it's a gingham romper. Wouldn't it be kinder to equip all gingham rompers with body heat activated laser beams so that anyone over the age of eight who puts one on is immediately and painlessly dispatched?" The answer to that question, by the way, is yes. Yes, indeed.
In the dressing room, I tried on the post ironic denim dress and it was fabulous, if, that is, you are living in, I don't know, the year 2123 and have a very specific task to accomplish, like, perhaps, mining something radioactive out of one of the smaller Jovian moons. For all other occasions, I felt, it would be unsuitable. Plus it was tight across the hips, a sad factor of my recent existence. Then I tried on a dress that, as far as I could tell, was created when a classic Burberry trench coat had a midlife crisis, felt that it had missed out on disco and thus, in a feat of transmogrification, became a mini dress! A minidress that is, alas, equally inappropriate for the dance floor or the spy novel. Still, points for trying, raincoat! Then I tried on the purple cargo shorts. Yeah, okay, the result of that was pretty much what can be imagined and we will not dwell upon it.
Greatly cheered up - I saved probably $27! I could therefore go and spend that money on nail polish and discount diet drinks! - I left the dressing room and spent the rest of my Target visit ducking around corners to avoid Scary Hair Lady, who was everywhere. Perhaps there were two, identical twins, although that' s the stuff of B rated horror movies everywhere. Ah shopping. I have done my part for the economy, America.
Well. In a strange quirk of personality, fluorescent lights and the smell of fabric softener have the power to cheer me up, and being unemployed gets old. I have time if not money and so I have been doing some shopping. Today, I had things I had to get for Annie anyway, so that was the ostensible reason I was browsing the clearance racks at Target after a visit to Michael's crafts, where I nobly held back from the extremely groovy plastic chip bowl and took away some of those all graphite drawing pencils to which I am so addicted. I need them to draw with and then the dogs eat them, so a constant supply is a necessity. Besides, Michaels is always like a small trip to the nether reaches of the solar system in itself. There are entire Chinese provinces devoted to making peculiar things, like terrifying plaster bobblehead dolls, for Michaels.
Michaels and Target are conveniently located practically next door, so when I left the land of freaky crafts, I went to Target, where I found the aforementioned pants. Then, since I was going to do the dressing room thing anyway, I went ahead and plopped two heinous dresses and a pair of, gods help me, purple cargo shorts into the cart.
The clearance racks at Target are as interesting as clearance racks anywhere. When I'm shopping, whether it's accompanied by the Goodwill screech of hanger against metal rack or the Target / Ross / TJ Maxx searching for the size and price tage, my mind inevitably goes into a sort of stream of consciousness fugue state that swings happily from "What the hell is this dress? It looks like a post ironic take on some kind of construction worker Village People thing? Who would wear this?" to "Oooh, lady with scary hair. Do not look. Scary hair! Scary! Does she know it's scary? Did she pay somebody to do that to her hair?" to "Is that a . . . gingham romper? Oh god, it's a gingham romper. Wouldn't it be kinder to equip all gingham rompers with body heat activated laser beams so that anyone over the age of eight who puts one on is immediately and painlessly dispatched?" The answer to that question, by the way, is yes. Yes, indeed.
In the dressing room, I tried on the post ironic denim dress and it was fabulous, if, that is, you are living in, I don't know, the year 2123 and have a very specific task to accomplish, like, perhaps, mining something radioactive out of one of the smaller Jovian moons. For all other occasions, I felt, it would be unsuitable. Plus it was tight across the hips, a sad factor of my recent existence. Then I tried on a dress that, as far as I could tell, was created when a classic Burberry trench coat had a midlife crisis, felt that it had missed out on disco and thus, in a feat of transmogrification, became a mini dress! A minidress that is, alas, equally inappropriate for the dance floor or the spy novel. Still, points for trying, raincoat! Then I tried on the purple cargo shorts. Yeah, okay, the result of that was pretty much what can be imagined and we will not dwell upon it.
Greatly cheered up - I saved probably $27! I could therefore go and spend that money on nail polish and discount diet drinks! - I left the dressing room and spent the rest of my Target visit ducking around corners to avoid Scary Hair Lady, who was everywhere. Perhaps there were two, identical twins, although that' s the stuff of B rated horror movies everywhere. Ah shopping. I have done my part for the economy, America.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Life in These United States
Audrey's purse was stolen yesterday from her car at Carrier Park. Fortunately, she had her phone with her and no money in her purse, but still, it's a total drag, as everyone knows. There's the bummer of losing the wallet which belonged to her grandmother and then there's the terrible mess of replacing all her ID, bank cards and so on. It is a frustrating unhappy time and the kind of thing that makes you go all Republican for a few minutes - wait! you think. I am the victim here! Yet this is making my life suck! Go ahead government! Start shooting poor people! Then, hopefully, you come to your senses and realize that honestly, the government should not shoot poor people but conceivably, they should totally shoot the bureaucrats. And we should all eat the rich, of course, but that's another story.
I remember when my purse was stolen in Baltimore years ago and I had to go to the DMV for another driver's license, which they decided not to grant me on the grounds that I had no ID, so clearly could not get an ID. This was most unfun - the Mondawmin Mall DMV in Baltimore makes Kafka's castle look like DisneyWorld - and I had to go back three times. Nothing would have ever proceeded and I would probably still be licenseless and gibbering from my cardboard box under the JFX if on the third try I hadn't finally lost it. I took most of the contents of my filing cabinet including the huge folder containing all my mortgage paperwork to the DMV in a big box and dumped it all across the petty bureaucrat guy's desk while screaming incoherently. This worked and I got another driver's license. Due to this incident, I was not sanguine about Audrey's chances of getting another ID.
Therefore, this morning early we went through the filing cabinet to find her some proof of identity. "What about your fifth grade report card?" I said, "Surely no identity thief would be that thorough." She settled on her 9th grade Hereford High School ID card and the commemorative unofficial birth certificate the hospital gave me when she was born, the one with the unbelievably cute little ink stamped foot prints and a grainy black and white photo of Boulder Community Hospital on it. I tried to get her to take her varsity badminton letter - yes, my daughter was on the varsity badminton team and we were all so proud - and maybe her SAT scores or perhaps her tennis camp group picture, but she refused. The DMV, which is overall way nicer in Asheville than in Baltimore, were nice about everything and she eventually got another license.
Or, rather, not a license, because due to all the terrorists who want NC driver's licenses (they use them for currency in Baghdad! Cue frothing at the mouth!) or something (those goddamn brown people from South America! Think they should have driver's licenses! Froth froth rabies greeeeeearrghh snorf snorf! Thank you, modern conservatives, for yet again making everyone's lives that much more annoying) you can't actually get a driver's license at the DMV anymore. No, they can't just make them there; instead, you get a piece of paper that says you have a driver's license and it will come in the mail eventually. In the meantime, of course, you have no picture ID at all and if your bank card has also been stolen and duly reported, you have no way to access your bank account. That is why Audrey is going to Wachovia today with her 5th grade report card and a note from her mom, namely, me, saying that she is in fact my daughter and please can she have some money? We will see if it works.
In other news, I have been on this huge major ska kick all of a sudden, listening to the Specials and the Toasters (that one's even appropriate to the blog post! Whoo! We have context!) and UB40 and Madness and so on and I must say it is making unemployment and the dole and the whole thing, which has been kind of glooming me out a bit lately, much more bearable, because, you know, fuck Reagan youth and Maggie Thatcher is the antichrist and where, oh where, are my checkered wayfarer clones and my pink Chucks?
I remember when my purse was stolen in Baltimore years ago and I had to go to the DMV for another driver's license, which they decided not to grant me on the grounds that I had no ID, so clearly could not get an ID. This was most unfun - the Mondawmin Mall DMV in Baltimore makes Kafka's castle look like DisneyWorld - and I had to go back three times. Nothing would have ever proceeded and I would probably still be licenseless and gibbering from my cardboard box under the JFX if on the third try I hadn't finally lost it. I took most of the contents of my filing cabinet including the huge folder containing all my mortgage paperwork to the DMV in a big box and dumped it all across the petty bureaucrat guy's desk while screaming incoherently. This worked and I got another driver's license. Due to this incident, I was not sanguine about Audrey's chances of getting another ID.
Therefore, this morning early we went through the filing cabinet to find her some proof of identity. "What about your fifth grade report card?" I said, "Surely no identity thief would be that thorough." She settled on her 9th grade Hereford High School ID card and the commemorative unofficial birth certificate the hospital gave me when she was born, the one with the unbelievably cute little ink stamped foot prints and a grainy black and white photo of Boulder Community Hospital on it. I tried to get her to take her varsity badminton letter - yes, my daughter was on the varsity badminton team and we were all so proud - and maybe her SAT scores or perhaps her tennis camp group picture, but she refused. The DMV, which is overall way nicer in Asheville than in Baltimore, were nice about everything and she eventually got another license.
Or, rather, not a license, because due to all the terrorists who want NC driver's licenses (they use them for currency in Baghdad! Cue frothing at the mouth!) or something (those goddamn brown people from South America! Think they should have driver's licenses! Froth froth rabies greeeeeearrghh snorf snorf! Thank you, modern conservatives, for yet again making everyone's lives that much more annoying) you can't actually get a driver's license at the DMV anymore. No, they can't just make them there; instead, you get a piece of paper that says you have a driver's license and it will come in the mail eventually. In the meantime, of course, you have no picture ID at all and if your bank card has also been stolen and duly reported, you have no way to access your bank account. That is why Audrey is going to Wachovia today with her 5th grade report card and a note from her mom, namely, me, saying that she is in fact my daughter and please can she have some money? We will see if it works.
In other news, I have been on this huge major ska kick all of a sudden, listening to the Specials and the Toasters (that one's even appropriate to the blog post! Whoo! We have context!) and UB40 and Madness and so on and I must say it is making unemployment and the dole and the whole thing, which has been kind of glooming me out a bit lately, much more bearable, because, you know, fuck Reagan youth and Maggie Thatcher is the antichrist and where, oh where, are my checkered wayfarer clones and my pink Chucks?
Monday, June 07, 2010
Mondays Are Still Rough: Some Random Shit
GOURDS
I have just been scrubbing gourds on the back porch. These are the gourds of last summer: they've been (literally) mouldering in the garage since the fall. There are about 25 of them, fabulously cool big bottle and birdhouse gourds that somebody - who probably isn't me - could turn into either great works of art or something so tacky it would make Thomas Kinkade wet his pants with joy. That part I may be able to manage. First, however, they have to be scrubbed and that is, as I am finding again, a royal pain in the ass.
I'm not big on scrubbing at the best of times. I mean, hey! Dirt is good for you! It builds up your immunities! You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die! I am all about the dirt, and not so much about the cleaning. Besides, this isn't like just washing out a glass or something. I am used to washing glasses: I have children. They use a separate glass for each sip. Washing the gourds, which are supposed to soak first in a mild bleach solution which they stubbornly refuse to do, being buoyant as only hollow woodenish objects are buoyant, is a major drag. After the soaking you have to scrub them with, preferably, a nylon scrubber to remove not only the mold but also the waxy sort of skin stuff that the mold feasts upon. You are not supposed to use steel wool or anything for fear of scratching them. That would be dandy if it worked. Personally, I am using steel wool, wearing rubber gloves and meditating unhealthily on how all the gourd mold and weird ass gourd waxy skin stuff is going to kill me, probably tomorrow. If, that is, the elderly sandwich I got from Earth Fare doesn't kill me first. So many ways to be morbid!
SOAP FAIL
I have this wonderful green soap with little bits of purple flowers and bits of stem and so on in it. It smells nice and I believe it gets me clean and all but I'm a gardener: I get in the shower to remove small pieces of plant detritus, not to add them. It confuses me when I step out of the bathroom with foliage still all over my skin.
MARY PRANKSTER
I love Mary Prankster. If you have not heard her stuff, you should go listen to it because it is excellent and hardcore and funny and sort of heart wrenching all at the same time. That said, I do not love Mary Prankster as much as my iPod does and I am at the desperation point where I'm going to have to resync the damn thing and remove her. I know, I know, I have to learn to make smart playlists and stop relying on shuffle but frankly this annoys the fuck out of me. I want the iPod to sit on its little iHome being iCute and playing iMusic, which is to say, MyMusic, one random song at a time without a whole ton of repeats, which, you would think, given that there are about 3000 songs on the damn thing, it could manage. But it cannot and it's driving me crazy again.
RELATIONSHIPS
I'm not very good at them and I'm not in one anymore. No big surprise there, no big drama either, although I'm not particularly proud of Saturday night. Well. Sometimes I kind of miss the days when I felt it was okay to emote and freak out all over this blog but, alas or joy, those days are gone. He's a nice guy. I'm not so nice, or something, and I think perhaps I've just been single too long to change. Things fall apart and the center cannot, always, hold. I guess I'll go wash some more gourds now.
I have just been scrubbing gourds on the back porch. These are the gourds of last summer: they've been (literally) mouldering in the garage since the fall. There are about 25 of them, fabulously cool big bottle and birdhouse gourds that somebody - who probably isn't me - could turn into either great works of art or something so tacky it would make Thomas Kinkade wet his pants with joy. That part I may be able to manage. First, however, they have to be scrubbed and that is, as I am finding again, a royal pain in the ass.
I'm not big on scrubbing at the best of times. I mean, hey! Dirt is good for you! It builds up your immunities! You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die! I am all about the dirt, and not so much about the cleaning. Besides, this isn't like just washing out a glass or something. I am used to washing glasses: I have children. They use a separate glass for each sip. Washing the gourds, which are supposed to soak first in a mild bleach solution which they stubbornly refuse to do, being buoyant as only hollow woodenish objects are buoyant, is a major drag. After the soaking you have to scrub them with, preferably, a nylon scrubber to remove not only the mold but also the waxy sort of skin stuff that the mold feasts upon. You are not supposed to use steel wool or anything for fear of scratching them. That would be dandy if it worked. Personally, I am using steel wool, wearing rubber gloves and meditating unhealthily on how all the gourd mold and weird ass gourd waxy skin stuff is going to kill me, probably tomorrow. If, that is, the elderly sandwich I got from Earth Fare doesn't kill me first. So many ways to be morbid!
SOAP FAIL
I have this wonderful green soap with little bits of purple flowers and bits of stem and so on in it. It smells nice and I believe it gets me clean and all but I'm a gardener: I get in the shower to remove small pieces of plant detritus, not to add them. It confuses me when I step out of the bathroom with foliage still all over my skin.
MARY PRANKSTER
I love Mary Prankster. If you have not heard her stuff, you should go listen to it because it is excellent and hardcore and funny and sort of heart wrenching all at the same time. That said, I do not love Mary Prankster as much as my iPod does and I am at the desperation point where I'm going to have to resync the damn thing and remove her. I know, I know, I have to learn to make smart playlists and stop relying on shuffle but frankly this annoys the fuck out of me. I want the iPod to sit on its little iHome being iCute and playing iMusic, which is to say, MyMusic, one random song at a time without a whole ton of repeats, which, you would think, given that there are about 3000 songs on the damn thing, it could manage. But it cannot and it's driving me crazy again.
RELATIONSHIPS
I'm not very good at them and I'm not in one anymore. No big surprise there, no big drama either, although I'm not particularly proud of Saturday night. Well. Sometimes I kind of miss the days when I felt it was okay to emote and freak out all over this blog but, alas or joy, those days are gone. He's a nice guy. I'm not so nice, or something, and I think perhaps I've just been single too long to change. Things fall apart and the center cannot, always, hold. I guess I'll go wash some more gourds now.
Friday, June 04, 2010
Thunder Dogs
If, like me, you are of a philosophical turn of mind, you may have often wondered, why are dogs afraid of thunderstorms? You might even wonder this while your collie mix is making a determined attempt to dig a hole in the computer room closet floor and your springer spaniel is setting new records for most pants per minute, with accompanying drool. You might also think, irritatedly, that dogs might notice that it has fucking thundered every day for two weeks and, honestly, get over it. And then you might wonder why cats are totally unafraid of thunderstorms yet still take everything but perfect, 70 degree sunny weather as a direct slight against them, almost certainly perpetrated by you in some evil, fuddled attempt at a most uncatly joke. That one I cannot answer.
However, I believe I can shed some light on the dogs and storms question. Years ago when my parents lived in Jackson County (Warning! I may already have told this story on this blog! I'm not sure and I don't care enough to check! Old age is like that!) they had a handyman kind of guy who would come around and do landscaping, stuff like that. This guy also had bees, which was highly awesome, because it led to us always having lots of sourwood honey - sourwood honey, if you don't know, is the best honey and will totally spoil you for all regular honey forever - and he was also one of those characters who are all about the folksy, down home yet slightly off kilter stories. Central casting, yes. However.
For whatever reason, my mother's dogs were always terrified of thunderstorms. I don't know why this was; maybe it was something in the way she reacted - although she was totally unafraid of pretty much everything - but I do remember that she had, once, to disassemble her bed to rescue one of the springer spaniels who had gotten stuck underneath it in an effort to escape a Charleston summer thunderstorm. After that adventure that same dog got downers prescribed just for such storms, which is how, some years later, I got to say the immortal words, "No, Mom, please do not mail me the dog tranquilizers. I don't think that's a good idea no matter how afraid I am of flying." on the phone, meanwhile visualizing the slightly crazed and no doubt sitcom worthy high jinks that would ensue from a resultant drug bust. It's all fun and games until somebody ends up in maximum security women's prison!
Back in Jackson County, though, my parents had basset hounds, one of whom was, predictably, terrified of thunderstorms. The other one was not. So one summer day, one dog was having a thunder induced panic attack when the handy guy stopped by.
"I don't know why," said my mother, "only one of them is afraid."
"The other one hasn't been hit yet." said handy guy.
"Hit?" said my mother, confused.
"By lightning," he explained. "Dogs is natural lightning magnets; they all get hit sooner or later. And then they're scared."
You bet they are! Watch out for dogs, people, they attract lightning like trailer parks call to tornadoes! And this probably explains why Django, who never cared a bit about thunderstorms, has suddenly started in the last couple weeks, to freak out almost as much as Theo whenever the rumbling begins. He must have been hit by lightning out in the yard or maybe while asleep under my bed (it's stealthy, that dog drawn lightning) and now, alas, the fear is upon him. What can you do? Dogs is lightning magnets.
However, I believe I can shed some light on the dogs and storms question. Years ago when my parents lived in Jackson County (Warning! I may already have told this story on this blog! I'm not sure and I don't care enough to check! Old age is like that!) they had a handyman kind of guy who would come around and do landscaping, stuff like that. This guy also had bees, which was highly awesome, because it led to us always having lots of sourwood honey - sourwood honey, if you don't know, is the best honey and will totally spoil you for all regular honey forever - and he was also one of those characters who are all about the folksy, down home yet slightly off kilter stories. Central casting, yes. However.
For whatever reason, my mother's dogs were always terrified of thunderstorms. I don't know why this was; maybe it was something in the way she reacted - although she was totally unafraid of pretty much everything - but I do remember that she had, once, to disassemble her bed to rescue one of the springer spaniels who had gotten stuck underneath it in an effort to escape a Charleston summer thunderstorm. After that adventure that same dog got downers prescribed just for such storms, which is how, some years later, I got to say the immortal words, "No, Mom, please do not mail me the dog tranquilizers. I don't think that's a good idea no matter how afraid I am of flying." on the phone, meanwhile visualizing the slightly crazed and no doubt sitcom worthy high jinks that would ensue from a resultant drug bust. It's all fun and games until somebody ends up in maximum security women's prison!
Back in Jackson County, though, my parents had basset hounds, one of whom was, predictably, terrified of thunderstorms. The other one was not. So one summer day, one dog was having a thunder induced panic attack when the handy guy stopped by.
"I don't know why," said my mother, "only one of them is afraid."
"The other one hasn't been hit yet." said handy guy.
"Hit?" said my mother, confused.
"By lightning," he explained. "Dogs is natural lightning magnets; they all get hit sooner or later. And then they're scared."
You bet they are! Watch out for dogs, people, they attract lightning like trailer parks call to tornadoes! And this probably explains why Django, who never cared a bit about thunderstorms, has suddenly started in the last couple weeks, to freak out almost as much as Theo whenever the rumbling begins. He must have been hit by lightning out in the yard or maybe while asleep under my bed (it's stealthy, that dog drawn lightning) and now, alas, the fear is upon him. What can you do? Dogs is lightning magnets.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Stress Baking with Gnomes
Last night I resorted yet again to stress baking. No wonder I am so fat these days: there must be healthier ways to work out one's angst than making chocolate pound cakes in the middle of the night but, on the other hand, it is true that there are few more delicious ones. Besides, my friends and family are not inclined, no matter how many pointed comments they make, to really stop me stress baking: the fruits of my relief from the evils of modern life are pleasing to them. Oddly enough, I have found that nobody ever complains about having too much cake in any real and serious way. At any rate, there is yet again a chocolate pound cake on my kitchen counter - this chocolate pound cake, to be specific - and while extremely tasty, it's a little dry and could use whipped cream, just in case, you know, some of the calories were trying to escape. Also, it used up 10 eggs and 3 sticks of butter, which is sort of alarming in one solitary cake.
While I was making this cake, Audrey was busy trying to clean up the kitchen from the last day or two of, respectively, chicken enchiladas and then steak and potatoes. "You have to stop cooking like this!" she said, "This is ridiculous!"
"Yes," I said sadly, "I know." And then we ate the leftover potatoes.
Meanwhile, the side of the dish drainer was crowded with mason jars. We used them for the tiedying and then washed them and then discovered that they had no real place to live. "Put them somewhere," instructed my daughter. "This kitchen is hopeless."
She is right. This kitchen is kind of hopeless but I like it anyway; still, there was nowhere to put the mason jars. "Wait!" cried Audrey in the tones of one who has had one of those cartoon lightbulbs light up over her head, "Do the gnomes fit in them?"
They did: perfectly. I started putting gnomes in jars.
"This is making me a little uneasy," I said, looking at three gnomes in sealed mason jars. "I feel like they need air holes or something."
Audrey came over to look as I put the jarred gnomes on the shelf next to the army of unjarred gnomes, who were, as usual, marching in formation on the kitchen shelf.
"Look!" she said, putting a gnome in a jar upside down. "We could make. . . snowglobes! Just, you know, glue them down and then fill it up with glitter and water!"
"Yes," I said, carried away with the beauty of this idea, "Gnome snowglobes! We'll never need to buy another Christmas gift!"
"On the other hand," said Audrey, "That's kind of an ugly snowglobe."
"Also," I said, "Large. Larger than your average snowglobe."
There was a little silence. The gnomes in the jars, imprisoned next to the free regiment, regarded us balefully.
"What are they," said Audrey, "POWs or something?"
"Yeah," I said, "They look like they're awaiting execution."
"They need airholes."
"I can't take this," I said, "I feel too guilty." I carefully decanted the gnomes and went out on the porch for a moment with my daughter.
"I think we're probably really weird," she said, "I can't help thinking about possible ways to appease the gnomes in case we've really pissed them off."
"This is wise," I said, "The last thing we want is to come in the kitchen tomorrow and find them all moved around."
And so, just to be on the safe side, we apologized to the army of gnomes. Hopefully they will not be too angry because, man, even with happy gnomes, things already disappear in this house on a regular basis - socks, phone chargers, plates, pint glasses, dog eardrops, that one wooden spoon and, of course, money, which manages to evaporate from my wallet and bank account at a rate that can only be caused by gnome infestation - so angry gnomes, clearly, are just not a risk we can take.
While I was making this cake, Audrey was busy trying to clean up the kitchen from the last day or two of, respectively, chicken enchiladas and then steak and potatoes. "You have to stop cooking like this!" she said, "This is ridiculous!"
"Yes," I said sadly, "I know." And then we ate the leftover potatoes.
Meanwhile, the side of the dish drainer was crowded with mason jars. We used them for the tiedying and then washed them and then discovered that they had no real place to live. "Put them somewhere," instructed my daughter. "This kitchen is hopeless."
She is right. This kitchen is kind of hopeless but I like it anyway; still, there was nowhere to put the mason jars. "Wait!" cried Audrey in the tones of one who has had one of those cartoon lightbulbs light up over her head, "Do the gnomes fit in them?"
They did: perfectly. I started putting gnomes in jars.
"This is making me a little uneasy," I said, looking at three gnomes in sealed mason jars. "I feel like they need air holes or something."
Audrey came over to look as I put the jarred gnomes on the shelf next to the army of unjarred gnomes, who were, as usual, marching in formation on the kitchen shelf.
"Look!" she said, putting a gnome in a jar upside down. "We could make. . . snowglobes! Just, you know, glue them down and then fill it up with glitter and water!"
"Yes," I said, carried away with the beauty of this idea, "Gnome snowglobes! We'll never need to buy another Christmas gift!"
"On the other hand," said Audrey, "That's kind of an ugly snowglobe."
"Also," I said, "Large. Larger than your average snowglobe."
There was a little silence. The gnomes in the jars, imprisoned next to the free regiment, regarded us balefully.
"What are they," said Audrey, "POWs or something?"
"Yeah," I said, "They look like they're awaiting execution."
"They need airholes."
"I can't take this," I said, "I feel too guilty." I carefully decanted the gnomes and went out on the porch for a moment with my daughter.
"I think we're probably really weird," she said, "I can't help thinking about possible ways to appease the gnomes in case we've really pissed them off."
"This is wise," I said, "The last thing we want is to come in the kitchen tomorrow and find them all moved around."
And so, just to be on the safe side, we apologized to the army of gnomes. Hopefully they will not be too angry because, man, even with happy gnomes, things already disappear in this house on a regular basis - socks, phone chargers, plates, pint glasses, dog eardrops, that one wooden spoon and, of course, money, which manages to evaporate from my wallet and bank account at a rate that can only be caused by gnome infestation - so angry gnomes, clearly, are just not a risk we can take.
Monday, May 31, 2010
pistol packin' mama
Yesterday, my friends and I threw a baby shower for our friend Jen at my house. This was more difficult than it sounds, because on Friday night I made the in retrospect terrible decision to drink a few Little Kings with Charlie at the DeSoto. Little Kings, if you don't know, are what they drink in hell. They're like evil alcoholic double agents - they look innocent and seem charming, but they're actually plotting against you. I thought, having encountered them before - Charlie is inexplicably addicted - that if I used Math and was careful with their 7 ounce bottles, I would be okay. I was not okay despite my calculations and neither was he and I highly disrecommend those oh so innocent little green bottles unless, that is, you really were planning to spend a day being completely miserable. So very little got done in preparation for the shower on Saturday and thus I had to get up early on Sunday and go berserk in the kitchen.
That worked out okay, though. Back when we were planning this shower about a month ago I suggested that we tiedye onesies as a party activity and, that being received well, I had duly gone and gotten all the materials we needed for this project as well as some extra baby stuff from the Goodwill. Yeah, I had a baby oriented week last week. First, I dug through baby clothes for 100% cotton stuff at the thrift store, which took me back about two decades to the days when I haunted Value Village for the rare, the elusive, the second hand Hanna Anderson striped baby suit of cuteness. Then I went to Babies R Us, a freaky place where I discovered that there are far cooler baby clothes available to the general public nowadays than there were back then and then I browsed around Amazon and Etsy and Thinkgeek for even more super cool baby stuff. All babies all the time and then, if that wasn't enough, as I was walking back to the car on Haywood Road after buying procion dyes at Earthguild for the shower, I nearly got run over by a giant red plastic bus thing full of infants and toddlers. Now I am terrified and doubling up on the old birth control lest I, like my friend Jen here, end up with more than just a pistol.
I hadn't done any tiedying in years and the directions were not what I was remembering at all, so I called my old tiedye friends in a panic right before the activity was supposed to start. Alas, they didn't really remember all the fiddly little details either, like do you soak the clothes in urea or washing soda or what, but fortunately, the internet never forgets, and here, if you should be interested in this fine old party activity or need to dye your dog* or something, is the recipe we used, which worked out beautifully. We used mason jars and spoons instead of squeeze bottles and everything, including the old Devo t-shirt I used up the dye with, looks great. Okay, yes, this poor child's first words will probably be "I don't want to be a hippie anymore!" but he will be stylin'. Asheville stylin', that is. They came out so well that this morning I briefly considered a career in tiedying baby clothes because nobody in Asheville has ever thought of that before.
Besides tiedying everything in sight, we also ate shrimp and grits and biscuits and mini quiches and egg and caviar dip and deviled eggs and cookies and cake and toasts from homemade bread and managed to drink an entire giant bottle of vodka, so a good time was had by all. All parties should start at 1 in the afternoon, I have decided, because I not only stayed up long after everyone else had departed or gone to bed, I cleaned up the entire house. This was stupid, because now here I am with absolutely no excuses for not getting things, like writing a book or finding a job or starting a party planning business - there's a future in catering tiedye parties! Right? - done.
However I do not intend to let that distract me too long from my life of sloth. Anyway, I've been reading bad murder mysteries from the Goodwill again and I have realized that a body should be showing up in my life any day now, since that seems to be the fate of middle aged women: we find a body, we have sassy back and forth conversations with our girlfriends and our adult children, we discover clues, we meet a handsome, brooding yet sexy homicide detective who is way better than our conveniently dead or divorced husband and then, whoa, we solve the crime. Probably it will turn out, as you can tell from the picture, that Jen did it.
* do not use procion dyes to dye your dog, you idiot. Use food coloring. This is how I made my brother's shih t'zlivingroom, Phineas, red, white and blue for the long departed and much lamented I Am An American Day Parade in east Baltimore, back in the days when I was still looking for 100% cotton maternity clothes in Value Village my own self.
That worked out okay, though. Back when we were planning this shower about a month ago I suggested that we tiedye onesies as a party activity and, that being received well, I had duly gone and gotten all the materials we needed for this project as well as some extra baby stuff from the Goodwill. Yeah, I had a baby oriented week last week. First, I dug through baby clothes for 100% cotton stuff at the thrift store, which took me back about two decades to the days when I haunted Value Village for the rare, the elusive, the second hand Hanna Anderson striped baby suit of cuteness. Then I went to Babies R Us, a freaky place where I discovered that there are far cooler baby clothes available to the general public nowadays than there were back then and then I browsed around Amazon and Etsy and Thinkgeek for even more super cool baby stuff. All babies all the time and then, if that wasn't enough, as I was walking back to the car on Haywood Road after buying procion dyes at Earthguild for the shower, I nearly got run over by a giant red plastic bus thing full of infants and toddlers. Now I am terrified and doubling up on the old birth control lest I, like my friend Jen here, end up with more than just a pistol.
I hadn't done any tiedying in years and the directions were not what I was remembering at all, so I called my old tiedye friends in a panic right before the activity was supposed to start. Alas, they didn't really remember all the fiddly little details either, like do you soak the clothes in urea or washing soda or what, but fortunately, the internet never forgets, and here, if you should be interested in this fine old party activity or need to dye your dog* or something, is the recipe we used, which worked out beautifully. We used mason jars and spoons instead of squeeze bottles and everything, including the old Devo t-shirt I used up the dye with, looks great. Okay, yes, this poor child's first words will probably be "I don't want to be a hippie anymore!" but he will be stylin'. Asheville stylin', that is. They came out so well that this morning I briefly considered a career in tiedying baby clothes because nobody in Asheville has ever thought of that before.
Besides tiedying everything in sight, we also ate shrimp and grits and biscuits and mini quiches and egg and caviar dip and deviled eggs and cookies and cake and toasts from homemade bread and managed to drink an entire giant bottle of vodka, so a good time was had by all. All parties should start at 1 in the afternoon, I have decided, because I not only stayed up long after everyone else had departed or gone to bed, I cleaned up the entire house. This was stupid, because now here I am with absolutely no excuses for not getting things, like writing a book or finding a job or starting a party planning business - there's a future in catering tiedye parties! Right? - done.
However I do not intend to let that distract me too long from my life of sloth. Anyway, I've been reading bad murder mysteries from the Goodwill again and I have realized that a body should be showing up in my life any day now, since that seems to be the fate of middle aged women: we find a body, we have sassy back and forth conversations with our girlfriends and our adult children, we discover clues, we meet a handsome, brooding yet sexy homicide detective who is way better than our conveniently dead or divorced husband and then, whoa, we solve the crime. Probably it will turn out, as you can tell from the picture, that Jen did it.
* do not use procion dyes to dye your dog, you idiot. Use food coloring. This is how I made my brother's shih t'zlivingroom, Phineas, red, white and blue for the long departed and much lamented I Am An American Day Parade in east Baltimore, back in the days when I was still looking for 100% cotton maternity clothes in Value Village my own self.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Yes I Am Still Alive Despite Appearances
You may have noticed that I have not been updating this blog as often as previously. Acute! Clever! Yeah, well, these things happen. Basically, I have been extremely busy. "With what, unemployed slacker?" you might be thinking. Well, you never know!
Here's a short quiz: Has Felicity
a) been negotiating with top level brass at BP, the US State Department and a cadre of friendly aliens straight out of a 1970s animated save the environment kids show to end the oil spill in the gulf by putting on a show with an accompanying vaguely discoesque yet folksy soundtrack?
b) been writing the Great American Novel during breaks from painting the Great American Painting?
c) been on a short vacation to Biarritz, where she communed happily with the far more glamorous ghosts of the fabulous past?
d) been kidnapped by extremists who kept her in an ancient submarine buried deep within a small mountain cave with no wifi access (cruel!) while they plotted what, exactly, they could accomplish by kidnapping this highly influential, if broke, middle aged slightly overweight woman? I'd have been toast, there, if it wasn't for my intrepid gnome army!
or, e) been accomplishing practically nothing energetically but for the most point enjoying the fuck out of it?
It is a tough quiz! It's hard to get absolutely nothing much done and have it take up so much time, it is true. I have been busy though: I have a new phone, a Palm Pre to be specific and it is taking up all my time, what with the apps and the games and the fiddling around and the figuring out of the how to send the text messages and the reading of the email in the morning in bed yet being unable to answer and the endless, quiet, seething worry that perhaps, cool as it is, it is just not as cool as, say, an iPhone or a Droid? The son has a new Droid clone (do you realize that as recently as three years ago, that sentence would make no sense at all outside a sci fi RPG?) and it is most assuredly cool, plus, you can download a shotgun app that makes a nice realistic shotgun noise and, even better, aim it at your mother or your sister and have it take a neatly labeled picture of where you shot them. The Pre does not have this app. Really it is too responsible of a phone for me, leaning as it does towards apps for, god forbid, time management and bible verses. Boo. It does, however, have a real keyboard, which I require lest my text messages come out something like umsno! ;lkjsp? aslkjg asdmr;ajka ^^^6? and then I throw the phone across the room. It also had a couple of mindless games at which I have become a world class expert, particularly the one where you stab the bubbles with your finger and they make a pleasant popping noise and your score keeps going up, up, up and then you look around and realize that several hours have passed and your carpal tunnel is in high gear now, oh good.
So you can see I have been busy! I have kind of sucked at being on the computer but I'm going to change this beginning next week because, despite my cheerful predictions that my savings could take me through the summer, I'm heading rapidly towards financial disaster. Quelle surprise! So there should be more updates beginning soon, same bat place, same bat channel and all that same old bat crap. Guano! Valuable guano! One hopes.
Here's a short quiz: Has Felicity
a) been negotiating with top level brass at BP, the US State Department and a cadre of friendly aliens straight out of a 1970s animated save the environment kids show to end the oil spill in the gulf by putting on a show with an accompanying vaguely discoesque yet folksy soundtrack?
b) been writing the Great American Novel during breaks from painting the Great American Painting?
c) been on a short vacation to Biarritz, where she communed happily with the far more glamorous ghosts of the fabulous past?
d) been kidnapped by extremists who kept her in an ancient submarine buried deep within a small mountain cave with no wifi access (cruel!) while they plotted what, exactly, they could accomplish by kidnapping this highly influential, if broke, middle aged slightly overweight woman? I'd have been toast, there, if it wasn't for my intrepid gnome army!
or, e) been accomplishing practically nothing energetically but for the most point enjoying the fuck out of it?
It is a tough quiz! It's hard to get absolutely nothing much done and have it take up so much time, it is true. I have been busy though: I have a new phone, a Palm Pre to be specific and it is taking up all my time, what with the apps and the games and the fiddling around and the figuring out of the how to send the text messages and the reading of the email in the morning in bed yet being unable to answer and the endless, quiet, seething worry that perhaps, cool as it is, it is just not as cool as, say, an iPhone or a Droid? The son has a new Droid clone (do you realize that as recently as three years ago, that sentence would make no sense at all outside a sci fi RPG?) and it is most assuredly cool, plus, you can download a shotgun app that makes a nice realistic shotgun noise and, even better, aim it at your mother or your sister and have it take a neatly labeled picture of where you shot them. The Pre does not have this app. Really it is too responsible of a phone for me, leaning as it does towards apps for, god forbid, time management and bible verses. Boo. It does, however, have a real keyboard, which I require lest my text messages come out something like umsno! ;lkjsp? aslkjg asdmr;ajka ^^^6? and then I throw the phone across the room. It also had a couple of mindless games at which I have become a world class expert, particularly the one where you stab the bubbles with your finger and they make a pleasant popping noise and your score keeps going up, up, up and then you look around and realize that several hours have passed and your carpal tunnel is in high gear now, oh good.
So you can see I have been busy! I have kind of sucked at being on the computer but I'm going to change this beginning next week because, despite my cheerful predictions that my savings could take me through the summer, I'm heading rapidly towards financial disaster. Quelle surprise! So there should be more updates beginning soon, same bat place, same bat channel and all that same old bat crap. Guano! Valuable guano! One hopes.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Hella Weekend Roundup
Here it is Monday and I have a shit ton of things to do but LO, it is noon and I'm not doing any of them. I attribute this failure of energy partially to a rather over full weekend and mostly to my dreams: last night, while asleep, I snuck into a Modest Mouse concert that turned out to be a) not at the Orange Peel at all and b) not a concert but some kind of simulcast thing with a big screen, which made all my friends leave in disgust. This was smart of them, because shortly afterward the building was attacked by flying saucers full of terrorists with large black mustaches. Evading the terrorists involved a whole lot of stairs, so I woke up tired.
This was one hell of a weekend and by hell, I mean, well, hell. On Friday Charlie and I took Valentino back up to Hot Springs to rejoin the Appalachian Trail and while we were there, we got a tub for an hour, which was lovely. Then back to Asheville and somehow, although now it's all a blur, I think I was sort of crazy busy but at any rate we all ended up at the Admiral. All was as usual in my small PBR drinking world and then we came back home and went to sleep, only to be awakened at 1:15 with the news that young Miles had just been in a major car wreck.
Yeah.
This is not something anyone ever wants to hear although I tell you, as an alarm clock it works rather, um, alarmingly well. I levitated out of bed and into clothes and we jumped into Audrey's car and got down to the end of Haywood Road where my shaken but miraculously unhurt son was standing with a police officer observing the ruins that result from the mating of a 1998 Buick and your common or garden variety telephone pole. It was a one car accident - apparently a truck driver, who was very nice, as was the cop, had started pulling out of a side street onto Haywood and young M had seen him, freaked, swerved, over corrected and gone into the pole. I duly took my son home, gave him tea with lots of honey and an ice pack for his lip, woke him up every four hours to ask him who the president was (you can tell there is no concussion if their reaction to this question contains enough complaining about not being allowed to sleep for gods' sake Mom what is wrong with you content) and then, over the course of the next three days, proceeded to argue with him nonstop about how insurance stinks, life stinks and what the hell is he supposed to do now?
Be glad, I keep saying, that you are alive. I am glad you are alive (well, up until about hour 7 of argument 3a, I was) and that goddamn Buick saved your life and oh, god, my son, part of me still wants to wrap you in bubble wrap and pad your room and just keep you in there, safe, forever, because you terrify me so. Don't have kids. Sure, babies are cute but they grow up to be teenagers and it turns out you still love them helplessly but there is little, or nothing, at that point that you can do about what happens to them.
Anyway. I'm unclear on the details of what we need to do now myself. We need to go down, today, to the police station and get the accident report and then we need to deliver it duly to the insurance company and we need to go to the car and get whatever was inside of it out of it and, I suppose, arrange for it to be towed to a wrecker. Sigh.
So that was Friday. It would be enough for most people, who would then go into suspended animation or something like sensible beings. But no! We are not wimps! Instead, after an afternoon of home repairs and the like, we went on to a rather fabulous party at Restaurant Equipment Galaxy, which is owned by my friend Charles and where, by the way, you should totally go for all your obscure and important used restaurant equipment needs. At the end of the party we got a sudden impromptu - at least I think it was impromptu - performance from Kenny the clown, pictured here juggling fire. There was also a unicycle and more juggling and a balloon was swallowed, which was a little terrifying, and it was highly awesome, so I took too many photographs.
And that, minus a few details like my wonderful daughter who cleaned up the whole kitchen on Sunday thank you thank you thank you, was my weekend. Despite the interludes of great fun, I would prefer never to repeat it, thank you gods. But we are all still healthy and hale and, oh, there are baby wrens in the hanging fuchsia on the porch.
This was one hell of a weekend and by hell, I mean, well, hell. On Friday Charlie and I took Valentino back up to Hot Springs to rejoin the Appalachian Trail and while we were there, we got a tub for an hour, which was lovely. Then back to Asheville and somehow, although now it's all a blur, I think I was sort of crazy busy but at any rate we all ended up at the Admiral. All was as usual in my small PBR drinking world and then we came back home and went to sleep, only to be awakened at 1:15 with the news that young Miles had just been in a major car wreck.
Yeah.
This is not something anyone ever wants to hear although I tell you, as an alarm clock it works rather, um, alarmingly well. I levitated out of bed and into clothes and we jumped into Audrey's car and got down to the end of Haywood Road where my shaken but miraculously unhurt son was standing with a police officer observing the ruins that result from the mating of a 1998 Buick and your common or garden variety telephone pole. It was a one car accident - apparently a truck driver, who was very nice, as was the cop, had started pulling out of a side street onto Haywood and young M had seen him, freaked, swerved, over corrected and gone into the pole. I duly took my son home, gave him tea with lots of honey and an ice pack for his lip, woke him up every four hours to ask him who the president was (you can tell there is no concussion if their reaction to this question contains enough complaining about not being allowed to sleep for gods' sake Mom what is wrong with you content) and then, over the course of the next three days, proceeded to argue with him nonstop about how insurance stinks, life stinks and what the hell is he supposed to do now?
Be glad, I keep saying, that you are alive. I am glad you are alive (well, up until about hour 7 of argument 3a, I was) and that goddamn Buick saved your life and oh, god, my son, part of me still wants to wrap you in bubble wrap and pad your room and just keep you in there, safe, forever, because you terrify me so. Don't have kids. Sure, babies are cute but they grow up to be teenagers and it turns out you still love them helplessly but there is little, or nothing, at that point that you can do about what happens to them.
Anyway. I'm unclear on the details of what we need to do now myself. We need to go down, today, to the police station and get the accident report and then we need to deliver it duly to the insurance company and we need to go to the car and get whatever was inside of it out of it and, I suppose, arrange for it to be towed to a wrecker. Sigh.
So that was Friday. It would be enough for most people, who would then go into suspended animation or something like sensible beings. But no! We are not wimps! Instead, after an afternoon of home repairs and the like, we went on to a rather fabulous party at Restaurant Equipment Galaxy, which is owned by my friend Charles and where, by the way, you should totally go for all your obscure and important used restaurant equipment needs. At the end of the party we got a sudden impromptu - at least I think it was impromptu - performance from Kenny the clown, pictured here juggling fire. There was also a unicycle and more juggling and a balloon was swallowed, which was a little terrifying, and it was highly awesome, so I took too many photographs.
And that, minus a few details like my wonderful daughter who cleaned up the whole kitchen on Sunday thank you thank you thank you, was my weekend. Despite the interludes of great fun, I would prefer never to repeat it, thank you gods. But we are all still healthy and hale and, oh, there are baby wrens in the hanging fuchsia on the porch.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Burning Down the House
My old friends' Carol and Schuyler''s son Valentino is visiting us. He's hiking the Appalachian Trail, the whole thing and having gotten to Hot Springs he decided to take a couple days off. This neatly coincided with a spate of less than perfect hiking weather and so I picked him up and brought him home. We have been showing him Asheville, more or less, or at least the part of it that is this West Asheville house full of dogs and also, Chai Pani and the hula hoopers at Pritchard Park. So we have had Indian food and home made pasta after an evening of familial wrangling over which restaurant to go to - daughter: All Miles will eat is Asian food! Me: Well, make him pick a restaurant. Daughter: He won't. Me: Fuck this, I'm coming home and making pasta - and an evening of hunting and gathering, which is what I call it when I go on strike and point out that my children are not, really, children anymore and for gods' sake somebody else should cook. Then we eat potato chips and cheese toast. Tonight, however, I decided to grill hamburgers.
There is a small hibachi in the garage; I knew this because I had seen it the other day while Charlie and I were in there, he setting mousetraps and me getting all worked up and freaked out over the necessity for said mousetraps. Charlie, when he tolerantly agreed to set the mousetraps, also said he would come over and check them every day. This is good, because I am deathly afraid of rodents of all sizes and Miles charges $2 a mouse for removal. $3 a rat and $5 for a snake or squirrel, but that's neither here nor there. Anyhow, today there was one mouse in a mousetrap which wonderful Charlie kindly disposed of and then, some hours later, it was time for me to go into the garage and find the grill and the charcoal and the lighter fluid, because I was sure that we had those things.
Well. I had to call Charlie and keep him on the phone while I wandered, or, more accurately, sidled - wandered is not exactly the right term for proceeding through my garage, which is more or less stacked to the ceiling with a fascinating variety of stuff ranging from my mother's paintings to Audrey's furniture to, somewhere, I swear, a trash bag full of clean pillowcases - and removed the grill. Then I went hunting for the charcoal but it was gone - the mice must have eaten it - and so I had to go down to the Citgo and buy more. I bought the kind that doesn't need lighter fluid,brought it home and put it in the hibachi up on the corner shelf on the deck. The covered deck, yes, the covered deck made of wood.
I burned my thumb trying to light the coals but then I got them all lit - way lit. As lit, really, as coals can be lit: to the point where there were flames shooting right up into the air and munching hungrily at the porch roof rafters.
"Gotta go!" I said brightly to Charlie, with whom I was talking on the phone, "Burning the house down! Catch you later!" and then I shouted for my daughter, who abandoned her video game to come outside and freak out with me.
"Water!" she said, and I duly filled a stock pot with water.
"But the water will make the flames all go whoosh!" I said,
"Oh god!" she said, "They will!"
"What if," I said, "We each take one handle of it and gently put it on the floor where it won't be so close to the roof?" I held out hot pads.
"No," said Audrey decidedly, eying the three foot flames exploding on every side of the hibachi, "I"m not even going to try to lift that. Get rid of the oxygen! Put the lid on!"
"I'm putting the lid on!" I shouted and did just that. Everything was calm for just about 15 seconds and we were beginning to relax when the flames exploded all around the lid, creeping through the vent holes and everywhere the lid connected to the body. "Baking soda!" I said and proceeded to sprinkle it all over the flaming hibachi. It didn't do much. "It's got to die down soon," I said hopefully and then, slowly, it did. Well, it did right up to the point where I cautiously took the lid off, at which point the accumulated, waiting fireball exploded right up towards the porch rafters again.
"Oh god!" shouted my daughter, "Just throw the water on it."
"Oh hey," said Valentino, wandering in, "What are you guys doing?"
"We're burning down the porch!" I said, "Wanna help?"
Then the flames receded, bit by bit. Miles came upstairs. "What the hell?" he said, "Why does it smell like lighter fluid in here?"
"You missed it!" said his sister, "Mom nearly burned the house down again!"
"And I missed it?" he said disappointedly, moving out onto the porch and feeling the roof. "Whoa," he said, "That's pretty damn hot."
"It'll be okay now," I said, in my role as reassuring parent. "I think I'll just have a beer."
"There vas a vhoosh," said Miles in a Russian accent, "Unt zen zere came ze fireball! Vhoosh!"
And it was okay, even though there was another bad moment when I went out to check on the burgers only to find that the hibachi was in the process of burning through the wooden shelf it was perched on. Miles and I slid a tile under it and stopped that particular disaster and I cooked stuffed burgers and my mother's potatoes of cholesterol deliciousness and then, once the burgers were off, carried the damn hibachi down to the yard to sit in the rain. Phew.The burgers were worth it, actually, they were worth it.
Stuffed Burgers
Like a pound and a half of real ground beef from Earthfare - you must get the real thing so you do not die of some horrible cheap beef disease or suffer a crisis of vegetarian conscience.
finely diced onions, about 1/4 cup or thereabouts. LIke a third of an onion.
2 jalapenos chopped not seeded, god, don't seed them.
some lime juice
worcestershire
Some grated mexican cheese, the kind that comes in the bag that says 4 Kinds of Mexican Cheese!
1/2 a box of Neufchatel, which is to say, slightly less fatty cream cheese. This is mostly to appease your inner dieter.
Mix the beef up with salt & pepper & worcestershire & onioins. Mix the cream cheese up with the jalapenos & lime juice & grated mexican cheese. Make 8 flat burgers. On top of four of the burgers, put a big heaping spoonful of cheese mixture. Put the other burgers on top and shape them all so no cheese is showing and you have a fattish burger with a delicious secret inside. Grill - good luck with that; you're obviously on your own here -- and then eat on Kaiser rolls with mayo and lettuce and ketchup and tomato and whatever else your heart desires. Yum, yum, yum.
There is a small hibachi in the garage; I knew this because I had seen it the other day while Charlie and I were in there, he setting mousetraps and me getting all worked up and freaked out over the necessity for said mousetraps. Charlie, when he tolerantly agreed to set the mousetraps, also said he would come over and check them every day. This is good, because I am deathly afraid of rodents of all sizes and Miles charges $2 a mouse for removal. $3 a rat and $5 for a snake or squirrel, but that's neither here nor there. Anyhow, today there was one mouse in a mousetrap which wonderful Charlie kindly disposed of and then, some hours later, it was time for me to go into the garage and find the grill and the charcoal and the lighter fluid, because I was sure that we had those things.
Well. I had to call Charlie and keep him on the phone while I wandered, or, more accurately, sidled - wandered is not exactly the right term for proceeding through my garage, which is more or less stacked to the ceiling with a fascinating variety of stuff ranging from my mother's paintings to Audrey's furniture to, somewhere, I swear, a trash bag full of clean pillowcases - and removed the grill. Then I went hunting for the charcoal but it was gone - the mice must have eaten it - and so I had to go down to the Citgo and buy more. I bought the kind that doesn't need lighter fluid,brought it home and put it in the hibachi up on the corner shelf on the deck. The covered deck, yes, the covered deck made of wood.
I burned my thumb trying to light the coals but then I got them all lit - way lit. As lit, really, as coals can be lit: to the point where there were flames shooting right up into the air and munching hungrily at the porch roof rafters.
"Gotta go!" I said brightly to Charlie, with whom I was talking on the phone, "Burning the house down! Catch you later!" and then I shouted for my daughter, who abandoned her video game to come outside and freak out with me.
"Water!" she said, and I duly filled a stock pot with water.
"But the water will make the flames all go whoosh!" I said,
"Oh god!" she said, "They will!"
"What if," I said, "We each take one handle of it and gently put it on the floor where it won't be so close to the roof?" I held out hot pads.
"No," said Audrey decidedly, eying the three foot flames exploding on every side of the hibachi, "I"m not even going to try to lift that. Get rid of the oxygen! Put the lid on!"
"I'm putting the lid on!" I shouted and did just that. Everything was calm for just about 15 seconds and we were beginning to relax when the flames exploded all around the lid, creeping through the vent holes and everywhere the lid connected to the body. "Baking soda!" I said and proceeded to sprinkle it all over the flaming hibachi. It didn't do much. "It's got to die down soon," I said hopefully and then, slowly, it did. Well, it did right up to the point where I cautiously took the lid off, at which point the accumulated, waiting fireball exploded right up towards the porch rafters again.
"Oh god!" shouted my daughter, "Just throw the water on it."
"Oh hey," said Valentino, wandering in, "What are you guys doing?"
"We're burning down the porch!" I said, "Wanna help?"
Then the flames receded, bit by bit. Miles came upstairs. "What the hell?" he said, "Why does it smell like lighter fluid in here?"
"You missed it!" said his sister, "Mom nearly burned the house down again!"
"And I missed it?" he said disappointedly, moving out onto the porch and feeling the roof. "Whoa," he said, "That's pretty damn hot."
"It'll be okay now," I said, in my role as reassuring parent. "I think I'll just have a beer."
"There vas a vhoosh," said Miles in a Russian accent, "Unt zen zere came ze fireball! Vhoosh!"
And it was okay, even though there was another bad moment when I went out to check on the burgers only to find that the hibachi was in the process of burning through the wooden shelf it was perched on. Miles and I slid a tile under it and stopped that particular disaster and I cooked stuffed burgers and my mother's potatoes of cholesterol deliciousness and then, once the burgers were off, carried the damn hibachi down to the yard to sit in the rain. Phew.The burgers were worth it, actually, they were worth it.
Stuffed Burgers
Like a pound and a half of real ground beef from Earthfare - you must get the real thing so you do not die of some horrible cheap beef disease or suffer a crisis of vegetarian conscience.
finely diced onions, about 1/4 cup or thereabouts. LIke a third of an onion.
2 jalapenos chopped not seeded, god, don't seed them.
some lime juice
worcestershire
Some grated mexican cheese, the kind that comes in the bag that says 4 Kinds of Mexican Cheese!
1/2 a box of Neufchatel, which is to say, slightly less fatty cream cheese. This is mostly to appease your inner dieter.
Mix the beef up with salt & pepper & worcestershire & onioins. Mix the cream cheese up with the jalapenos & lime juice & grated mexican cheese. Make 8 flat burgers. On top of four of the burgers, put a big heaping spoonful of cheese mixture. Put the other burgers on top and shape them all so no cheese is showing and you have a fattish burger with a delicious secret inside. Grill - good luck with that; you're obviously on your own here -- and then eat on Kaiser rolls with mayo and lettuce and ketchup and tomato and whatever else your heart desires. Yum, yum, yum.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Birthday Week Survived
I made it through the birthday week and all the required partying. It is kind of amazing, really, that I get to keep on having birthdays given the havoc I wreak on my liver and brain cells every May. It's just required, you know, to go out every single night and have way too much fun. Yes, yes, tough life, somebody's gotta do it, etc., etc., and so on. What, I'm supposed to settle down now that I've achieved this advanced age? Unlikely! Too late!
On Friday I went out for sushi and sake with my friend Charlie at Green Tea - that's the one by the Denny's. It's a great restaurant - I have always liked it but I started boycotting it there for a bit because I felt sorry for their turtles. It is, yes, a tad disingenuous to complain about the treatment of aquatic animals in a seafood restaurant - and I had the baby octopus, which is pure evil and purely delicious - but I really like turtles. Thus, I felt that having them in a tank in the atrium floor was not kind, somehow. However, they're still there and presumably okay with being walked on as if they were the older Bush's face on the floor of the Baghdad Hilton and, well, fuck it. I am not overwhelmed with sorrow enough for the turtles to escape my joy at the fact that Green Tea has a patio now so you can watch the scenic back of the Pizza Hut while you eat your baby octopus. When things are burning it is good to fiddle! It's Revelations time - what are a couple of turtles to oil spills and volcanoes and, um, the construction of the traffic circle on Clingman Avenue, a sure sign of the End Times? Besides, we had a long and important conversation to have, which, just in case you are interested, lead to this news update: recent reports of the death of my romantic life and/or short lived most recent relationship were, um, apparently premature. Yay!
That was Friday and a lovely and eventful Friday it was, which led into Saturday - my god, the calendar is just so cyclical in nature and repetitive. Wouldn't it be cooler if just every so often a whole new day got thrown into the mix, so you would think it was Friday but NO, it would be Smorgday or something? Yes, Yes, this would be good and I'm adding it to my Evil Overlord To Do list. On Smorgday, therefore, Susan had a party: our joint birthday party, in fact. We never get to celebrate our birthdays together - being born a month apart makes it tough, usually, even for dedicated women like us to keep up the party on spirit - but this year we managed it. It was a highly awesome party which featured not only heavy drinking but also firearms in the form of an Airsoft pellet pistol that Susan pulled out so we could shoot at her latest yard sculpture.
This was really fun. Guns and beer! I get all nostalgic and enthused! Sure, she later threatened to shoot me for stealing her blue lighter but hey, what's a party without one or two minor death - okay, not death exactly, more like a welt - threats? Besides, guns are educational. It turns out that if you shoot a CD that is dangling from a complex and funky yard assemblage thingie with a pellet gun, the CD does not break. No, it does not break exactly, but the reflective mylar covering on the other side of the CD from where you hit it peels off in an extremely cool bullet hole looking way. This is highly awesome and if you are a good shot, like Susan or Charlie or pretty much anybody but me, you not only get to hear the delightful plink of pellet hitting CD, you get a really funky thing to exclaim over. Science!
Sunday was pretty mellow - it sort of had to be. I finally got to see the real 2012 movie, and I am delighted to report that, as expected, it totally sucks. Watching lava eat LA and then the ocean take down the Himalayas, complete with enlightened lama in lamasery was, though, pretty cool and landing the aircraft carrier on top of the cruise ship in the trough of the tsunami wave was pure genius. End times! So aesthetically satisfying! Anyway, now it is Monday and a cold and gray Monday at that. I am a little worried, now, about my vegetable garden, given the forbidding temperatures lately, but I guess it's just all part of the end of the world as we know it or something. Another reason to drink heavily! Hurrah!
On Friday I went out for sushi and sake with my friend Charlie at Green Tea - that's the one by the Denny's. It's a great restaurant - I have always liked it but I started boycotting it there for a bit because I felt sorry for their turtles. It is, yes, a tad disingenuous to complain about the treatment of aquatic animals in a seafood restaurant - and I had the baby octopus, which is pure evil and purely delicious - but I really like turtles. Thus, I felt that having them in a tank in the atrium floor was not kind, somehow. However, they're still there and presumably okay with being walked on as if they were the older Bush's face on the floor of the Baghdad Hilton and, well, fuck it. I am not overwhelmed with sorrow enough for the turtles to escape my joy at the fact that Green Tea has a patio now so you can watch the scenic back of the Pizza Hut while you eat your baby octopus. When things are burning it is good to fiddle! It's Revelations time - what are a couple of turtles to oil spills and volcanoes and, um, the construction of the traffic circle on Clingman Avenue, a sure sign of the End Times? Besides, we had a long and important conversation to have, which, just in case you are interested, lead to this news update: recent reports of the death of my romantic life and/or short lived most recent relationship were, um, apparently premature. Yay!
That was Friday and a lovely and eventful Friday it was, which led into Saturday - my god, the calendar is just so cyclical in nature and repetitive. Wouldn't it be cooler if just every so often a whole new day got thrown into the mix, so you would think it was Friday but NO, it would be Smorgday or something? Yes, Yes, this would be good and I'm adding it to my Evil Overlord To Do list. On Smorgday, therefore, Susan had a party: our joint birthday party, in fact. We never get to celebrate our birthdays together - being born a month apart makes it tough, usually, even for dedicated women like us to keep up the party on spirit - but this year we managed it. It was a highly awesome party which featured not only heavy drinking but also firearms in the form of an Airsoft pellet pistol that Susan pulled out so we could shoot at her latest yard sculpture.
This was really fun. Guns and beer! I get all nostalgic and enthused! Sure, she later threatened to shoot me for stealing her blue lighter but hey, what's a party without one or two minor death - okay, not death exactly, more like a welt - threats? Besides, guns are educational. It turns out that if you shoot a CD that is dangling from a complex and funky yard assemblage thingie with a pellet gun, the CD does not break. No, it does not break exactly, but the reflective mylar covering on the other side of the CD from where you hit it peels off in an extremely cool bullet hole looking way. This is highly awesome and if you are a good shot, like Susan or Charlie or pretty much anybody but me, you not only get to hear the delightful plink of pellet hitting CD, you get a really funky thing to exclaim over. Science!
Sunday was pretty mellow - it sort of had to be. I finally got to see the real 2012 movie, and I am delighted to report that, as expected, it totally sucks. Watching lava eat LA and then the ocean take down the Himalayas, complete with enlightened lama in lamasery was, though, pretty cool and landing the aircraft carrier on top of the cruise ship in the trough of the tsunami wave was pure genius. End times! So aesthetically satisfying! Anyway, now it is Monday and a cold and gray Monday at that. I am a little worried, now, about my vegetable garden, given the forbidding temperatures lately, but I guess it's just all part of the end of the world as we know it or something. Another reason to drink heavily! Hurrah!
Friday, May 07, 2010
The Mysteries of Time
It is a complete mystery to me, now that I'm unemployed, how I ever managed to get anything done with my actual life and home while I was holding down a full time job. Since I've worked for the better part of 30 years or so, I must have gotten something done - I'm not really sitting around in a smoking ruin, I mean, not more than usual anyway. But as it stands now, it seems as if all I do is run around like crazy trying - with about a 50% success rate - to get things, vital things, utterly important things, done.
Last summer or fall my friend Adam put a new faucet hose bib mysterious plumbing thingie in where the old one leaked. Then in the middle of the winter, despite or perhaps because it was supposed to be patented freeze proof, it duly froze and split and leaked water all through Miles' closet and then was turned off. The other outside faucet is in the wall behind where the iBoiler now sits and somehow, while that was being installed, all access to that faucet was removed. So I have no outdoor spigot anymore and, since it is shaping up to be a hot dry summer, that's a problem. Carrying buckets of water out the front door to the vegetable garden gets old surprisingly fast and also it turns out that most of my buckets, dear Liza, dear Liza, *have a hole or six in them. Annoying as fuck when you're rushing them through the living room, let me tell you.
Therefore I went to Lowes last night to purchase what a friend told me existed: an adapter that will make a garden hose mate seamlessly with a kitchen faucet. The first Lowes guy I met had no idea what that might be so he took me to the Lowes Plumbing Gnome, a grizzled and friendly soul with a long white beard down practically to his hips. "You need to go and get the aerator from your faucet," he told me paternally, "And bring it back here to me."
"That's the little screen-y thing, right?" I said, wondering if that little screen still existed or perhaps had been removed for other uses at some point.
"Yes," he said, "The little screen-y thing."
This morning, therefore, I duly removed the little screen-y thing, which was still there, after I had finished hooking up and unhooking the dishwasher. For some reason my dishwasher must (if you wish to use it, and who doesn't?) be hooked up to the sink with a white plastic adapter thingie that you sort of jam on and squiggle and then the water must be turned on so it can leak sulkily a bit and also wash the dishes. You do not, I have found, want to run the dishwasher without water. Just FYI, in case, you know, you ever wondered.
Anyway, I took the end of the faucet to Lowes where I was saddened to find that the Plumbing Gnome was gone but another older and similarly grizzled plumbing expert guy hooked me right up with a nifty adapter which I brought home and put on the faucet. Then I threaded the hose through the living room and voila, watered the garden and lo, it is all modern conveniences around here again more or less.
This all took up an inordinate amount of time.
It is all in how you measure it, though. I have never entirely understood how people who don't have children measure time, because if you have kids you can kind of count back through the years and think, well, she was six or so that year, so it must have been 1989 when we were in New York. Shorter times than years can be measured by periods - I have been known to think to myself, well, I've had two periods since then, so that's two months - another way in which being male must be baffling and lead to a sort of constant temporal disorientation. But, male or female, you can always kind of count time backwards by the music you were listening to, which is how, on looking last night at a Kenny Scharf image, I ended up listening to Haircut 100 and the Specials for an hour or so, remembering ska. Now if I could just remember what I was listening to when I moved my phone charger, I could get all kinds of things accomplished.
Last summer or fall my friend Adam put a new faucet hose bib mysterious plumbing thingie in where the old one leaked. Then in the middle of the winter, despite or perhaps because it was supposed to be patented freeze proof, it duly froze and split and leaked water all through Miles' closet and then was turned off. The other outside faucet is in the wall behind where the iBoiler now sits and somehow, while that was being installed, all access to that faucet was removed. So I have no outdoor spigot anymore and, since it is shaping up to be a hot dry summer, that's a problem. Carrying buckets of water out the front door to the vegetable garden gets old surprisingly fast and also it turns out that most of my buckets, dear Liza, dear Liza, *have a hole or six in them. Annoying as fuck when you're rushing them through the living room, let me tell you.
Therefore I went to Lowes last night to purchase what a friend told me existed: an adapter that will make a garden hose mate seamlessly with a kitchen faucet. The first Lowes guy I met had no idea what that might be so he took me to the Lowes Plumbing Gnome, a grizzled and friendly soul with a long white beard down practically to his hips. "You need to go and get the aerator from your faucet," he told me paternally, "And bring it back here to me."
"That's the little screen-y thing, right?" I said, wondering if that little screen still existed or perhaps had been removed for other uses at some point.
"Yes," he said, "The little screen-y thing."
This morning, therefore, I duly removed the little screen-y thing, which was still there, after I had finished hooking up and unhooking the dishwasher. For some reason my dishwasher must (if you wish to use it, and who doesn't?) be hooked up to the sink with a white plastic adapter thingie that you sort of jam on and squiggle and then the water must be turned on so it can leak sulkily a bit and also wash the dishes. You do not, I have found, want to run the dishwasher without water. Just FYI, in case, you know, you ever wondered.
Anyway, I took the end of the faucet to Lowes where I was saddened to find that the Plumbing Gnome was gone but another older and similarly grizzled plumbing expert guy hooked me right up with a nifty adapter which I brought home and put on the faucet. Then I threaded the hose through the living room and voila, watered the garden and lo, it is all modern conveniences around here again more or less.
This all took up an inordinate amount of time.
It is all in how you measure it, though. I have never entirely understood how people who don't have children measure time, because if you have kids you can kind of count back through the years and think, well, she was six or so that year, so it must have been 1989 when we were in New York. Shorter times than years can be measured by periods - I have been known to think to myself, well, I've had two periods since then, so that's two months - another way in which being male must be baffling and lead to a sort of constant temporal disorientation. But, male or female, you can always kind of count time backwards by the music you were listening to, which is how, on looking last night at a Kenny Scharf image, I ended up listening to Haircut 100 and the Specials for an hour or so, remembering ska. Now if I could just remember what I was listening to when I moved my phone charger, I could get all kinds of things accomplished.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Army of Gnomes
I have survived another birthday. That always, for some reason, makes me feel relieved and happy, like, okay, another year can go by before I have to think about THAT again. Not only did I survive, I even managed, once the required day of birthday angst was over, to have fun, what with a lovely birthday dinner at Nona Mia, post dinner drinks at the DeSoto, post post drinks drinks at home and many fine gifts, including, from my thoughtful children, who know me well, the army of tiny gnomes pictured here. I hadn't realized that my entire life had up to this point been spent in hopeless yearning for an army of tiny gnomes but now that I have them, I know that it was. All is complete in my universe now and soon my gnomes and I will take over the world. Or something. Something - gnomey. Something that I haven't quite figured out yet but I am confident will be highly excellent when I have.
I have spent the last few days steeping myself in nostalgia. I went through my cookie tins of the past (tm) and even started cracking open the tin of letters, both love and otherwise, but that got to be too much quite quickly. In my Tins of the Past are such treasures as my children's baby teeth - one of these days I'm going to have them made into a grisly bracelet, oh yes I am - and small drawings by a variety of people dating back more than thirty years and notes from friends who had slept on the couch and then decamped and empty, lovingly preserved Yak Paks and, interestingly enough, a copy of one of the first Rolling Stone reviews of the Pogues. When I say a copy, I mean a copy: I typed it out like a slightly more technologically adept medieval scribe in 1985 or thereabouts while sitting at Hy's Charleston apartment with Ray McKee. We had decided that all three of us must have a copy so that we could remember forever that we were linked inextricably to each other and to Shane McGowan through the great chains of drunken Irish bastardry and so I typed us each up a copy, of which, I believe, mine is now the only extant. I am going to scan it at some point, probably when I start scanning all the photo albums - you know, when I've broken both my legs and am snowed in a small deserted cabin in the Yukon. I will be busy in that cabin what with the quilt making and bad novel finishing, but I'll make time for scanning too.
Nostalgia is a strange thing and spending a lot of time in your own past is, I believe, one of those sort of necessary Birthday Rituals that can, like a Ouija board, quickly turn dark and summon up
demons from the conveniently located portal to hell in the garage. This year's ritual was marked by the unsurprising knowledge that, hey, I have not really changed all that much since I was in my late teens or early twenties. I have more wrinkles and cursed gray hair and I am fat now (you know what? I am forgiving myself for being fat from now on. Fuck this, I'm 47 years old and I'm fucking allowed to be fat if I want to be.) but the basic person is still here. I'm a little saner, a little wiser (ha ha! Even I must spew coffee from my nose at that thought!), a little less naive and I definitely have acquired some Mad Skillz at Diverse Stuff like changing copier toner and never, ever buying horizontally striped articles of clothing except socks, but I am still, actually, me. I figured by this time in my life I would have Achieved Something and I haven't, really, except the most important things, which is to say, a sort of semi functional family of relatives and friends who I love unreservedly and who seem, for the most part, to love me back or at least tolerate my quirks. That is pretty goddamn awesome, that is, and it makes all this mid to late forties stuff okay.
I have spent the last few days steeping myself in nostalgia. I went through my cookie tins of the past (tm) and even started cracking open the tin of letters, both love and otherwise, but that got to be too much quite quickly. In my Tins of the Past are such treasures as my children's baby teeth - one of these days I'm going to have them made into a grisly bracelet, oh yes I am - and small drawings by a variety of people dating back more than thirty years and notes from friends who had slept on the couch and then decamped and empty, lovingly preserved Yak Paks and, interestingly enough, a copy of one of the first Rolling Stone reviews of the Pogues. When I say a copy, I mean a copy: I typed it out like a slightly more technologically adept medieval scribe in 1985 or thereabouts while sitting at Hy's Charleston apartment with Ray McKee. We had decided that all three of us must have a copy so that we could remember forever that we were linked inextricably to each other and to Shane McGowan through the great chains of drunken Irish bastardry and so I typed us each up a copy, of which, I believe, mine is now the only extant. I am going to scan it at some point, probably when I start scanning all the photo albums - you know, when I've broken both my legs and am snowed in a small deserted cabin in the Yukon. I will be busy in that cabin what with the quilt making and bad novel finishing, but I'll make time for scanning too.
Nostalgia is a strange thing and spending a lot of time in your own past is, I believe, one of those sort of necessary Birthday Rituals that can, like a Ouija board, quickly turn dark and summon up
demons from the conveniently located portal to hell in the garage. This year's ritual was marked by the unsurprising knowledge that, hey, I have not really changed all that much since I was in my late teens or early twenties. I have more wrinkles and cursed gray hair and I am fat now (you know what? I am forgiving myself for being fat from now on. Fuck this, I'm 47 years old and I'm fucking allowed to be fat if I want to be.) but the basic person is still here. I'm a little saner, a little wiser (ha ha! Even I must spew coffee from my nose at that thought!), a little less naive and I definitely have acquired some Mad Skillz at Diverse Stuff like changing copier toner and never, ever buying horizontally striped articles of clothing except socks, but I am still, actually, me. I figured by this time in my life I would have Achieved Something and I haven't, really, except the most important things, which is to say, a sort of semi functional family of relatives and friends who I love unreservedly and who seem, for the most part, to love me back or at least tolerate my quirks. That is pretty goddamn awesome, that is, and it makes all this mid to late forties stuff okay.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Rereadings
Yesterday, Audrey and I made enormous strides towards transforming the downstairs room into an actual and functioning apartment. Well, it will be more functional when I find somebody who can take the damn door off the hinges and plane the bottom, because since the carpet went in of course it no longer opens. Never mind, there are four doors into that room, which is probably bad feng shui, or possibly it's very good feng shui, because as far as I can figure out, feng shui is all about getting chi into your house and then confusing it enough so it can't leave. More confused energy roaming around the basement! Wait, I have my doubts about that - there's already a teenager down there and more poltergeist activity in the form of vanishing towels, bowls and drinking glasses is maybe not what we need.
However! That is not what this blog post is about. While I was excavating the garage I came across my old novel, the one I wrote when I was about 30. So I reread it last night and this morning. My novel! It sucks! I now apologize to every single person who has ever written a book I have complained about, because it turns out that I wrote a book that can stand on its own as one of the worse things the English language has ever had to guiltily account for.
Still, it was interesting as hell - I laughed, I cried, I thought, my god, if this had ever been published my friends would have taken out an assassination contract on me and quite rightly. It turns out that I'm not a novelist - I'm a blogger who was only slightly hampered, in 1992, by the as yet non existence of blogs. This thing is a historical document of my early twenties and early thirties when, apparently, we were all stoned alcoholics who had sex with each other all the time. Ah, college. The more things change, yes: we're still all stoned alcoholics, for the most part, only slightly better organized ones who no longer, as far as I know, now that we have moved out of the small hothouse environment of downtown Charleston, SC, fuck each other continuously and revel in the resultant drama. Ah, college, or, more realistically, thank god we've outgrown that part. Every character is a thinly veiled real person or possibly, in one or two cases, an odd mishmash of two or three people, with the possible exception of the main love interest, who is clearly made up. Yeah, there were no perfect men around in my life in the eighties, either.
Since the chances of anyone else ever reading this masterpiece are slim, I will hereby give you a synopsis. The book is set in two times simultaneously - yes, this is a problem - and is told sort of in flashbacks. Part of it (the better written part) is set in a small rowhouse in East Baltimore in the early 90s, where a single mother of two children (ha ha! Who do you think that is?) is existing through a snowy winter while many mysteries - and men - from her past slowly begin to reappear. The flashback part takes place in Charleston while our heroine (it's told in first person singular, of course, and this heroine is tall and has long red hair and is an artist and feels awkward and guilty a lot, likes to paint and cook and drink and listens, embarrassingly enough, to Modern English. She is fond of dogs and the Psychedelic Furs and worries about her weight. No, a novelist I apparently am not.) is finishing up an arts degree and living in a group house with a bunch of other entertaining young people. Hello, my old friends! My god, it's. . Linda! And Hy! And Pletch! And Kathy! And Glenn! And both of the two Michaels! What a shock! There they all are, drinking beer at Group Therapy, eating the free buffet at Plato's and listening to the Uncalled Four. Hi, Nick! Paul!
This is all quite entertaining and there's a lot of partner swapping and high drama and drinking of beer and doing of various drugs and then this group goes out on a picnic and finds an alien. Yeah, an alien. Look, even I knew I had to work a plot in here somewhere. They call the alien Quisp because, well, they do, and there are many cultural references and more sex and lots more drinking - I like the way they stash the alien in Scott Finsel's old apartment behind the Pink Palace and then go out drinking - and there are some abortive musings on the nature of godhood and communication and evolution and a few jabs at Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, back, or, rather, future in Baltimore our heroine finds that sitting at home snowed in with two children is a drag. Yeah, I do remember that rather clearly as well. One of the main guys in the book has been arrested in Spain and there are hints of evil government plots and a shit ton of foreshadowing.
Back to Charleston and the eighties, where the entire group - there are way too many main characters in this thing, and their dialogue, while it all sounds the same, to be fair, is not badly done and pretty funny - decide to decamp for Asheville, since evil government agents are rapidly descending on them. In Asheville they learn to communicate with the alien by the use of, first, LSD and, second, a Sony Walkman, which was apparently rather groundbreaking technology to me at the time. All this goes swimmingly and they then develop mad psychic powerz and start floating shit around. Then, alas, the damn things stops, which is weird, because I distinctly remember writing about 100 more pages, including a deathless scene which my friend Ray, an early reader, has been mocking me for ever since - that's the deus ex machina part where, chased up and down a mountain, broke, freaked out and accompanied by an alien, this group of college students just happens to find a fully stocked van parked on the side of the road with keys in it. Handy!
Rereading this thing for the first time in maybe 10 years has been odd. I've been completely engrossed, which I didn't expect and the book itself is both worse and better than I thought it was. I haven't changed very much in the last 17 years, apparently: that is kind of alarming, truth be told. It's full of cultural references that made me crack up - everything from Ashley Gashley and the Creature Double Feature to Shonen Knife, REM, Iran-Contra and such distant cultural touchstones as Ma Bell, long distance bills and the difficulty in programming VCRS is in there. It's a history, is what it is, a history full of in-jokes, and it's kind of charming in its own peculiar way. Huh.
However! That is not what this blog post is about. While I was excavating the garage I came across my old novel, the one I wrote when I was about 30. So I reread it last night and this morning. My novel! It sucks! I now apologize to every single person who has ever written a book I have complained about, because it turns out that I wrote a book that can stand on its own as one of the worse things the English language has ever had to guiltily account for.
Still, it was interesting as hell - I laughed, I cried, I thought, my god, if this had ever been published my friends would have taken out an assassination contract on me and quite rightly. It turns out that I'm not a novelist - I'm a blogger who was only slightly hampered, in 1992, by the as yet non existence of blogs. This thing is a historical document of my early twenties and early thirties when, apparently, we were all stoned alcoholics who had sex with each other all the time. Ah, college. The more things change, yes: we're still all stoned alcoholics, for the most part, only slightly better organized ones who no longer, as far as I know, now that we have moved out of the small hothouse environment of downtown Charleston, SC, fuck each other continuously and revel in the resultant drama. Ah, college, or, more realistically, thank god we've outgrown that part. Every character is a thinly veiled real person or possibly, in one or two cases, an odd mishmash of two or three people, with the possible exception of the main love interest, who is clearly made up. Yeah, there were no perfect men around in my life in the eighties, either.
Since the chances of anyone else ever reading this masterpiece are slim, I will hereby give you a synopsis. The book is set in two times simultaneously - yes, this is a problem - and is told sort of in flashbacks. Part of it (the better written part) is set in a small rowhouse in East Baltimore in the early 90s, where a single mother of two children (ha ha! Who do you think that is?) is existing through a snowy winter while many mysteries - and men - from her past slowly begin to reappear. The flashback part takes place in Charleston while our heroine (it's told in first person singular, of course, and this heroine is tall and has long red hair and is an artist and feels awkward and guilty a lot, likes to paint and cook and drink and listens, embarrassingly enough, to Modern English. She is fond of dogs and the Psychedelic Furs and worries about her weight. No, a novelist I apparently am not.) is finishing up an arts degree and living in a group house with a bunch of other entertaining young people. Hello, my old friends! My god, it's. . Linda! And Hy! And Pletch! And Kathy! And Glenn! And both of the two Michaels! What a shock! There they all are, drinking beer at Group Therapy, eating the free buffet at Plato's and listening to the Uncalled Four. Hi, Nick! Paul!
This is all quite entertaining and there's a lot of partner swapping and high drama and drinking of beer and doing of various drugs and then this group goes out on a picnic and finds an alien. Yeah, an alien. Look, even I knew I had to work a plot in here somewhere. They call the alien Quisp because, well, they do, and there are many cultural references and more sex and lots more drinking - I like the way they stash the alien in Scott Finsel's old apartment behind the Pink Palace and then go out drinking - and there are some abortive musings on the nature of godhood and communication and evolution and a few jabs at Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, back, or, rather, future in Baltimore our heroine finds that sitting at home snowed in with two children is a drag. Yeah, I do remember that rather clearly as well. One of the main guys in the book has been arrested in Spain and there are hints of evil government plots and a shit ton of foreshadowing.
Back to Charleston and the eighties, where the entire group - there are way too many main characters in this thing, and their dialogue, while it all sounds the same, to be fair, is not badly done and pretty funny - decide to decamp for Asheville, since evil government agents are rapidly descending on them. In Asheville they learn to communicate with the alien by the use of, first, LSD and, second, a Sony Walkman, which was apparently rather groundbreaking technology to me at the time. All this goes swimmingly and they then develop mad psychic powerz and start floating shit around. Then, alas, the damn things stops, which is weird, because I distinctly remember writing about 100 more pages, including a deathless scene which my friend Ray, an early reader, has been mocking me for ever since - that's the deus ex machina part where, chased up and down a mountain, broke, freaked out and accompanied by an alien, this group of college students just happens to find a fully stocked van parked on the side of the road with keys in it. Handy!
Rereading this thing for the first time in maybe 10 years has been odd. I've been completely engrossed, which I didn't expect and the book itself is both worse and better than I thought it was. I haven't changed very much in the last 17 years, apparently: that is kind of alarming, truth be told. It's full of cultural references that made me crack up - everything from Ashley Gashley and the Creature Double Feature to Shonen Knife, REM, Iran-Contra and such distant cultural touchstones as Ma Bell, long distance bills and the difficulty in programming VCRS is in there. It's a history, is what it is, a history full of in-jokes, and it's kind of charming in its own peculiar way. Huh.
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Beltane
Beltane is my favorite holiday: it's right near my birthday and it's all about sex. Yeah, well, so this year, as usual, that's not going to be something I need to think about ever again but it's nice to know, I guess, that it's out there at least for the plants and the robins and, I suppose, other people, happy people, people in love - okay, wait, stop. ANYWAY - it's when I feel it's safe to plant the vegetable garden, the danger of frost having gone by and me even starting to feel secure enough to remove the snow measuring sheet from the front door where it is reminding us all of what a swell winter it really was. People say you should wait until Mother's Day but the hell with that; even though it's good old pagan fertility we're celebrating either way, May 1 is a good round number day to get the garden going. Also, it's the day of the herb festival, to which I duly went after spending the morning digging up the vegetable beds and adding composted cow manure and all that lovely kind of thing.
The vegetable beds were full of horrifying white grubs - anywhere from half an inch to almost two inches long, white, shiny, with terrible small legs and, oh god, I think they're eyes. I don't have a clue what these things are but they look alarming and creepy, so I throw them onto the road, where they turn black and die. I killed hundreds of them. I am heartless, sometimes and these grub things skeeve me the hell out. They do kind of look like something a Bushman would eat with glee - they strongly bring to mind one of those films from Anthropology 101 in which the Bushman get all excited about big white horror grubs and start popping them like candy while the American camera guy makes slight urghing noises in the background. I thought of that film and I briefly considered battering and deep frying these suckers on the possibility that I was missing out on a taste sensation, here, but I decided I can live without that taste sensation. Urgh.
At any rate, the vegetable garden is now thoroughly planted and I am excited. I even planted the mystery Asian seeds I bought in Chinatown in San Francisco on the strength of the beauty of their packets and we will see what Little Shop of Horrors stuff they produce. I like not quite knowing exactly what I've planted or where everything is in the garden. This is one of the reasons I always plant random sunflowers all through everything - well, that and the fact that I love sunflowers. The flower garden is done too and as usual, I'm resolutely not telling the flowers that they don't actually get enough sun. They get some. They need to try harder is all, I say, and with a little luck, they will. Eventually there will be dahlias and cosmos and hollyhocks and more sunflowers and daisies of many kinds and echinacea and some odd herb thing that I bought at the festival because the little description on the popsicle stick said that it brings you magic and love and right now, honestly, I could use some of those two things rather badly. Beltane may be a favorite of mind but late April, over the last few years, has not been all that kind to me.
Oh well! In other news at Michael's the other day I bought these completely bizarre little puppet head shaped popsicle stick things. They cost like $2 for about 20 of them and I have already drawn a face on one and started carrying it around so I can hold it up in front of my face and say "Tiny puppet says hello!" to people in a suitably demented voice. I'm going to paint faces on all of them this weekend and then I will have a tiny puppet for all occasions, which should quickly cause my friends and relatives to shun me forever. I can hardly wait.
The vegetable beds were full of horrifying white grubs - anywhere from half an inch to almost two inches long, white, shiny, with terrible small legs and, oh god, I think they're eyes. I don't have a clue what these things are but they look alarming and creepy, so I throw them onto the road, where they turn black and die. I killed hundreds of them. I am heartless, sometimes and these grub things skeeve me the hell out. They do kind of look like something a Bushman would eat with glee - they strongly bring to mind one of those films from Anthropology 101 in which the Bushman get all excited about big white horror grubs and start popping them like candy while the American camera guy makes slight urghing noises in the background. I thought of that film and I briefly considered battering and deep frying these suckers on the possibility that I was missing out on a taste sensation, here, but I decided I can live without that taste sensation. Urgh.
At any rate, the vegetable garden is now thoroughly planted and I am excited. I even planted the mystery Asian seeds I bought in Chinatown in San Francisco on the strength of the beauty of their packets and we will see what Little Shop of Horrors stuff they produce. I like not quite knowing exactly what I've planted or where everything is in the garden. This is one of the reasons I always plant random sunflowers all through everything - well, that and the fact that I love sunflowers. The flower garden is done too and as usual, I'm resolutely not telling the flowers that they don't actually get enough sun. They get some. They need to try harder is all, I say, and with a little luck, they will. Eventually there will be dahlias and cosmos and hollyhocks and more sunflowers and daisies of many kinds and echinacea and some odd herb thing that I bought at the festival because the little description on the popsicle stick said that it brings you magic and love and right now, honestly, I could use some of those two things rather badly. Beltane may be a favorite of mind but late April, over the last few years, has not been all that kind to me.
Oh well! In other news at Michael's the other day I bought these completely bizarre little puppet head shaped popsicle stick things. They cost like $2 for about 20 of them and I have already drawn a face on one and started carrying it around so I can hold it up in front of my face and say "Tiny puppet says hello!" to people in a suitably demented voice. I'm going to paint faces on all of them this weekend and then I will have a tiny puppet for all occasions, which should quickly cause my friends and relatives to shun me forever. I can hardly wait.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
green and clouds and rain and road
Forget all the happy happy joy joy love love spring spring flowers flowers birds birds shit, okay? Just forget all that and focus on, well, the other stuff, the stuff we like, the aesthetic of our formative years, which is to say, sleet, darkness, barbed wire, rats, crushed dreams and big hair. Yeah, the big hair is a problem. On the bright side, the latest haircut does mean I get to keep the unemployment longer. On the dark side, or, fuck, maybe it's the bright side too, because who the fuck knows except possibly Krishna in his unquiet dreams and he isn't telling, I'm single again.
Well, I'm goddamn good at it by now.
Well, I'm goddamn good at it by now.
It Takes Skill
I have somehow achieved a perfect duet of feet: I have terrible, giant, itchy and possibly infected bug bites on my left foot and a nice big clump of poison ivy between the second and third toes of my right foot. What the hell are the odds? Most people would have settled for one or the other, but not me, no, driven by that relentless quest for perfection which has so characterized my life thus far, I have achieved two of the itchiest plagues known to humankind simultaneously. Thank you. It was difficult but I managed it.
The thing about itching, besides the undeniable yet so frustrating fact that if you scratch it gets worse not better (and I scratch; I always scratch; I have always scratched and I will always scratch, world without end) is that it takes up a corner of your mind. Yesterday I was busy as hell running errands around town - I believe I drove up and down Haywood Road at least six times - and while I was thinking efficiently about all the things I had done and was doing and would do, part of my brain was saying, over and over, my feet itch. Itch! My feet! They itch! It gets annoying, rather in the same way a small urinary tract infection will make you oh so annoyingly aware of the fact that you do possess a urinary tract, a thing you ordinarily are completely unaware of the 90% of the time you are not actively peeing.
In other news, I spent yesterday afternoon making these cupcakes and also a couple of sandwiches of magnificence - not one, not two, but three kinds of meat - for several of the men in my life. These cupcakes were fucking ambrosial, y'all, as in, they might be the best things ever and I don't even like cupcakes all that much ordinarily. Not only that, my house smelled amazing and still smells amazing, so I recommend them heartily. This is the recipe I used with these changes: I added fresh grated ginger to the grated carrots - like a scant handful or so; I used half light brown sugar and half white sugar and I tossed in a pinch of nutmeg, a teaspoon or so of vanilla and some lemon juice. Oh and I didn't add the nuts. I don't, for the most part, like nuts in baked goods; they're always kind of an unpleasant surprise. I didn't use his icing either - for the frosting I just mixed a block of cream cheese with 3/4 cup of powdered sugar and about 2 or 3 tablespoons of apricot preserves and a little lemon juice. Enjoy - and you will. You're welcome.
The thing about itching, besides the undeniable yet so frustrating fact that if you scratch it gets worse not better (and I scratch; I always scratch; I have always scratched and I will always scratch, world without end) is that it takes up a corner of your mind. Yesterday I was busy as hell running errands around town - I believe I drove up and down Haywood Road at least six times - and while I was thinking efficiently about all the things I had done and was doing and would do, part of my brain was saying, over and over, my feet itch. Itch! My feet! They itch! It gets annoying, rather in the same way a small urinary tract infection will make you oh so annoyingly aware of the fact that you do possess a urinary tract, a thing you ordinarily are completely unaware of the 90% of the time you are not actively peeing.
In other news, I spent yesterday afternoon making these cupcakes and also a couple of sandwiches of magnificence - not one, not two, but three kinds of meat - for several of the men in my life. These cupcakes were fucking ambrosial, y'all, as in, they might be the best things ever and I don't even like cupcakes all that much ordinarily. Not only that, my house smelled amazing and still smells amazing, so I recommend them heartily. This is the recipe I used with these changes: I added fresh grated ginger to the grated carrots - like a scant handful or so; I used half light brown sugar and half white sugar and I tossed in a pinch of nutmeg, a teaspoon or so of vanilla and some lemon juice. Oh and I didn't add the nuts. I don't, for the most part, like nuts in baked goods; they're always kind of an unpleasant surprise. I didn't use his icing either - for the frosting I just mixed a block of cream cheese with 3/4 cup of powdered sugar and about 2 or 3 tablespoons of apricot preserves and a little lemon juice. Enjoy - and you will. You're welcome.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Buying Carpet
I got an unexpected check in the mail today - whoo! Always the best thing ever! - and I promptly went out with Audrey and spent it on carpet. Yes, I am the most boring person ever: a few weeks ago I was at the Admiral with some of my friends and the talk turned to lottery dreams. "If I was really rich," I said with a faraway look in my eyes, "I'd carpet the basement!" My friend Kyle laughed at me. "That's probably the first time," he said, "that anyone has ever said that sentence." True. It's what middle age does to you - you go from the yacht and round the world trip (this particular lottery fantasy always ends up with me worrying about the dogs falling overboard as we round the horn anyway) to carpeting the basement and maybe a nice entertainment center in burled pine.
Yes, it's not a grandiose dream, but it's mine and as of Friday afternoon, it will be a reality: Enrique the carpet guy will have come and gone and dark green carpet will have replaced the blue concrete - decorated here and there with puddles and stains of uncertain origin, let's not think about those - that's there now. Then we can unload the garage into this room, move Audrey downstairs into the newly glamorous, newly carpeted basement room and I can turn the upstairs room into a studio/office again. That means I get the upstairs and the kids get the downstairs, which is going to help the hell out of everyone's sex life, let me tell you.
I never bought carpet before. I've torn up a fair amount of carpet in my life: I'm supposed to be the kind of person, i.e., vaguely hippie, vaguely liberal, vaguely anti industrial and artsy, who hates carpet and, sure, yeah, absolutely, I'm down with believing that carpet is bourgeois and tacky and also made of some kind of evil chemical slave labor strip mined fibers of ultimate darkness. However, look: not every house has 14" heart of pine boards lurking under the death star wall to wall. My house, for example, has concrete floors downstairs that someone painted bright blue and blue concrete is, well, blue concrete, which is to say, carpet is going to feel a whole lot nicer on the feet. Sure, hardwood would be excellent, but that mystery check wasn't that big and principles only go so far. I just wish I had the guts and the money to have gone for bright purple instead of dark green.
We went to two carpet places. We would have gone to more, but carpet places don't seem to be making it in this economy: two of the four we checked were out of business. We had this theory that Leicester Highway was sort of the epicenter of carpet in this universe but unfortunately, there was only one carpet place and the carpet they had in stock was, um, uninspiring. The carpet was uninspiring but the names for the carpet were amazing. There was one sort of purpley black mottled thing that was called Radical Punk Departure - I wanted to buy that one just for the name but Audrey nixed it because it made her hands go glurgh when she rubbed them across it. Yes, glurgh. The Glurgh Test, as it came to be called, was helpful. You don't want your feet glurghing along in the mornings; it's just too depressing. I was forced to walk away from Radical Punk Departure - in carpet, as in life. There was another brownish carpet called Rustic Barn Wood that was actually the much beloved Baby Shit Brown and one called Bales O' Straw or something like that which was simply inexplicable, bearing no resemblance to straw or bales or, really, anything much at all. We were forced to give up on the Leicester carpet epicenter and tried the other, Brevard Road carpet epicenter, where, as on Leicester Highway, there used to be two carpet places and now there is only one. Maybe there can be only one. I can totally see the salespeople battling it out by dead of night.
On Brevard Road, we met a woman named Tammy who was really nice and, after we had duly admired the demonstration heated floor tile on her desk - add that to my lottery fantasy if you're keeping track, also the sort of carnival glass looking iridescent funky wall tile in the background - she cheerfully and efficiently sold us carpet that was a normal color, called, I believe, Green and did not make our hands go glurgh. There was one bad moment where she asked us if our measurements - we drew the whole room out on graph paper and were proud as hell of our efficient selves - were accurate. We looked at each other. "Um, define accurate," I started to say while Audrey said, "Within 5 inches or so!" brightly and Tammy said that was no problem, she would make sure they measured before they cut. Phew. Carpet at last! All my bourgeois dreams are coming true.
Yes, it's not a grandiose dream, but it's mine and as of Friday afternoon, it will be a reality: Enrique the carpet guy will have come and gone and dark green carpet will have replaced the blue concrete - decorated here and there with puddles and stains of uncertain origin, let's not think about those - that's there now. Then we can unload the garage into this room, move Audrey downstairs into the newly glamorous, newly carpeted basement room and I can turn the upstairs room into a studio/office again. That means I get the upstairs and the kids get the downstairs, which is going to help the hell out of everyone's sex life, let me tell you.
I never bought carpet before. I've torn up a fair amount of carpet in my life: I'm supposed to be the kind of person, i.e., vaguely hippie, vaguely liberal, vaguely anti industrial and artsy, who hates carpet and, sure, yeah, absolutely, I'm down with believing that carpet is bourgeois and tacky and also made of some kind of evil chemical slave labor strip mined fibers of ultimate darkness. However, look: not every house has 14" heart of pine boards lurking under the death star wall to wall. My house, for example, has concrete floors downstairs that someone painted bright blue and blue concrete is, well, blue concrete, which is to say, carpet is going to feel a whole lot nicer on the feet. Sure, hardwood would be excellent, but that mystery check wasn't that big and principles only go so far. I just wish I had the guts and the money to have gone for bright purple instead of dark green.
We went to two carpet places. We would have gone to more, but carpet places don't seem to be making it in this economy: two of the four we checked were out of business. We had this theory that Leicester Highway was sort of the epicenter of carpet in this universe but unfortunately, there was only one carpet place and the carpet they had in stock was, um, uninspiring. The carpet was uninspiring but the names for the carpet were amazing. There was one sort of purpley black mottled thing that was called Radical Punk Departure - I wanted to buy that one just for the name but Audrey nixed it because it made her hands go glurgh when she rubbed them across it. Yes, glurgh. The Glurgh Test, as it came to be called, was helpful. You don't want your feet glurghing along in the mornings; it's just too depressing. I was forced to walk away from Radical Punk Departure - in carpet, as in life. There was another brownish carpet called Rustic Barn Wood that was actually the much beloved Baby Shit Brown and one called Bales O' Straw or something like that which was simply inexplicable, bearing no resemblance to straw or bales or, really, anything much at all. We were forced to give up on the Leicester carpet epicenter and tried the other, Brevard Road carpet epicenter, where, as on Leicester Highway, there used to be two carpet places and now there is only one. Maybe there can be only one. I can totally see the salespeople battling it out by dead of night.
On Brevard Road, we met a woman named Tammy who was really nice and, after we had duly admired the demonstration heated floor tile on her desk - add that to my lottery fantasy if you're keeping track, also the sort of carnival glass looking iridescent funky wall tile in the background - she cheerfully and efficiently sold us carpet that was a normal color, called, I believe, Green and did not make our hands go glurgh. There was one bad moment where she asked us if our measurements - we drew the whole room out on graph paper and were proud as hell of our efficient selves - were accurate. We looked at each other. "Um, define accurate," I started to say while Audrey said, "Within 5 inches or so!" brightly and Tammy said that was no problem, she would make sure they measured before they cut. Phew. Carpet at last! All my bourgeois dreams are coming true.
Monday, April 26, 2010
At Least I Didn't Have to Take a Sick Day
Well, something, either hormones or delayed onset hangover or a virus or, my personal top suspect, Dragon China takeout (damn you, Dragon! You may have won this time but I'll be back! No, wait, I won't. I really, really won't.) laid me utterly low today with the kind of miserable intestinal symptoms you don't want to read about and I don't want to be experiencing. Suffice it to say that I have spent the day in bed, sleeping and having weird as hell dreams and watching episode after episode of Robin Hood on Audrey's laptop. I don't even like this version of Robin Hood - the relatively new one from the BBC - all that much: the only guy in it who is passingly adorable is Guy of Gisbon and I can't have a crush on Guy of Gisbon, I just can't. I have therefore ordered discs of the early 80s British Robin Hood from Netflix, because as I recall, all those Merry Men were smoking hot and also had druids, Celtic gods, a vaguely new age soundtrack and a fog machine, all things sadly lacking from the new rendition.
Spent the weekend having entirely too much fun, which is why this malaise may just be a delayed hangover from hell. On Friday we went out to dinner at Sadie's Seafood Pub. I was kind of dubious about this place but lo, it turns out to be very good and totally affordable and everyone there was cute and nice and the oysters and mussels were out of this world. That was all good and then Charlie and I stayed up way too late drinking beer and talking so it wasn't until like 7:30 the next night that we ventured out into the rain and the new West Fest which isn't WestFest exactly but something else very similar to WestFest but in my neighborhood instead of over by Vermont Avenue. However, just as is the tradition with WestFest, it was totally rained on, so it is good something stays the same. It was actually a lot of fun hanging out in the rain drinking rum and taking pictures; eventually we ended up at the Admiral where we ran into Jodi and Dillon and the evening went on, as it does.
In other news, I'm still unemployed - hard to apply for jobs when you're lying around in bed moaning - and April is just ticking out its last few days. Oh and I have broken up with the Patton Avenue K-Mart for good. No, really, I mean it this time. Patton Avenue K-Mart, you are dead to me now! Nevermore shall I darken your door! Nevermore will your blue light specials inveigle me, no more shall I purchase from you socks and sundry other useful items, no, it cannot be, because K-Mart has broken up with Martha Stewart and when you break up with Martha, baby, you break up with me. I went over there to get Martha Stewart seeds, specifically, her purple green beans and white pumpkins, which are fabulous, as is her cosmos, and discovered from a taciturn individual in the garden department that K-Mart and Martha have had a falling out. I am saddened and this, K-Mart of the deadly insane parking lot, K-Mart that never has a goddamn thing, actually, that I want, is it for us.
Spent the weekend having entirely too much fun, which is why this malaise may just be a delayed hangover from hell. On Friday we went out to dinner at Sadie's Seafood Pub. I was kind of dubious about this place but lo, it turns out to be very good and totally affordable and everyone there was cute and nice and the oysters and mussels were out of this world. That was all good and then Charlie and I stayed up way too late drinking beer and talking so it wasn't until like 7:30 the next night that we ventured out into the rain and the new West Fest which isn't WestFest exactly but something else very similar to WestFest but in my neighborhood instead of over by Vermont Avenue. However, just as is the tradition with WestFest, it was totally rained on, so it is good something stays the same. It was actually a lot of fun hanging out in the rain drinking rum and taking pictures; eventually we ended up at the Admiral where we ran into Jodi and Dillon and the evening went on, as it does.
In other news, I'm still unemployed - hard to apply for jobs when you're lying around in bed moaning - and April is just ticking out its last few days. Oh and I have broken up with the Patton Avenue K-Mart for good. No, really, I mean it this time. Patton Avenue K-Mart, you are dead to me now! Nevermore shall I darken your door! Nevermore will your blue light specials inveigle me, no more shall I purchase from you socks and sundry other useful items, no, it cannot be, because K-Mart has broken up with Martha Stewart and when you break up with Martha, baby, you break up with me. I went over there to get Martha Stewart seeds, specifically, her purple green beans and white pumpkins, which are fabulous, as is her cosmos, and discovered from a taciturn individual in the garden department that K-Mart and Martha have had a falling out. I am saddened and this, K-Mart of the deadly insane parking lot, K-Mart that never has a goddamn thing, actually, that I want, is it for us.
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