The other day I was at Ingles, as I so often am. Along with my weekly portion of diet food and the rather schizophrenic completely non diet food that my son requires to keep his buffalo chicken wing and ranch dressing counts sufficiently high, I bought on the spur of the moment some whole, albeit headless, rainbow trout that looked fresh. Even Granny, the scary checkout lady who has been checking out groceries at the Haywood Road Ingles since I was born, said that they looked like good fish. And Granny should know. I know that I try like hell to avoid having Granny check out my groceries, not because she is bad at it - she is the best, at this point, as you would have to be after forty gazillion years at the West Asheville Ingles, well, either that or a serial killer - but because it makes me feel guilty to have this ancient lady swiping my heavy groceries from one side of the counter to the other. I feel as if I should offer her a chair and an iced tea and swipe my groceries myself, ungrateful middle aged child that I am. However. We must figure that Granny knows fish.
I brought my Granny approved fishes home and put them in the fridge and then last night I made them for dinner. I put lemon slices and sliced shallots and some tarragon inside each one and squirted lemon over the whole fish and broiled them and therefore, you know, yum. They were pretty tasty and all would have been well except that half an hour later I did not feel well at all and neither did Audrey. We felt, actually, as if somebody had slipped some psilocybin mushrooms or some other frightening fungus into the trout. Extreme cottonmouth, dizziness, disorientation, nausea and, for me at least, fear, although honestly, I have in my lifetime had enough experience with psychedelic drugs that you'd think I'd react more with joy than fear.
The terror was mostly the fault of the internet: naturally, I immediately started googling and discovered that some fish farm in England had botulism on their trout once. This of course convinced me we were going to die forthwith. We even called poison control, a desperate move, and they told us to drink lots of water and monitor our symptoms, which we did by saying enlightening things to each other like, "Wow, I feel really weird."
"Me too!"
"What if trout naturally just secrete hallucinogens?" I said hopefully, "And all we are is tripping and it will be fun?"
"Mom," said my daughter, "If trout made you trip than we'd know about it. And every high school student in western North Carolina would be spending their weekends knee deep in the creek."
This was indisputable.
We told Miles, who hadn't been home for dinner, about our imminent demise. "If you get money from this," he said callously on his way back out the door, "I want some. Tell them I ate it too."
"What, you're leaving?" I said, "What if we need you to drive us to the hospital?"
"If I come home," he said, "And find y'all dead on the floor, well,"
"Well what?"
"Well, it would be upsetting." he said, waving and leaving.
Fortunately for young Miles' peace of mind, the symptoms dissipated after about two hours and we were fine, although I think I will not eat trout, particularly farmed trout, again. I'm still wondering what the hell happened. It wasn't really like any food poisoning I've ever heard of but neither was it a feeling I've ever had after dinner. Now, after dosing, yes, sort of, although that's much, much more pleasant and I can't figure out how the drugs met the fish. I mean, I really, really doubt that Granny (although, after all those years, could one blame her?) or anyone else at the Ingles is randomly dosing fish with LSD, although, let's face it, that would be kind of an appealing horror show idea.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Grumble
Blogger has made it hard as hell to delete posts. The fish thing published twice but I can't get entirely rid of it. So here's a stupid placeholder. Grar. Argh. Bitch, whine, moan and complain.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Dream Building
It has been hot the last couple of weeks - you have probably noticed this - and I have been losing weight, which is nice. It seems to go away in the form of sweat, which is arguably less nice, but, hey, as long as it's departing, converting, one assumes, itself into some kind of energy or possibly the speed of light (I never made it all they way through the Tao of Physics) then whatever. And it's a learning experience, because in order to remove the sweat, I'm pursuing a kind of practical doctorate in fan placement.
Everyone who lives in the tropics without air conditioning - and, let's face it, as we move into the 21st century we're all living in the goddamn tropics, now and forevermore - becomes a fan expert and I am no exception. This house has a whole house fan, which is a hidden thing in the ceiling of the hallway, protected by louvers that open up when I flip a switch and start the dull yet comforting roar that means the house fan is on the job. In temperate weather, running that thing at night is enough to cool the house off nicely but it's not enough when it's this hot. Therefore, I've been adding fans. Window fans, box fans, the big round fan in the basement that my son will not relinquish no matter how much I try to bribe him. The fans have to be placed just so and I think about this a lot - probably too much - in order to maximize air flow from one room to another. Also, nobody is allowed to close any doors lest precious coolness be thwarted and the fans, which must be turned on as soon as it cools off outside, must then be turned off before 9 am. This is key, although my children sometimes just flat fail to see the drastic importance of all this. I feel like a personal failure on mornings when it's hotter inside than outside - unfortunately, that's a lot of mornings lately. You see, if it's over 85 in your house when you wake up it means that the day is going to basically suck. This is one of the laws of thermodynamics and thus immutable.
Thinking about air flow is like thinking about carpentry projects, which is what I do while I'm going to sleep. On nights when I have trouble going to sleep I think about other things as well (not THAT. Well, okay, sometimes THAT.) like walking through every house I've ever lived in and long railway journeys through Siberia and what it would be like to live on a spaceship but mostly I think about things I could build and how I could build them. I never actually build any of the things I think about but I am telling you, they would completely rock if I ever got around to it.
Right now I am thinking about shelving every inch of the room that has finally, with the throwing out of the old couch and the subsequent moving of the daughter downstairs, become my workroom / studio / office. I went so far as to go and look at how much it would cost to do this project (like $100, or, in other words, more than I am going to spend) and I even, on that exploratory voyage to Lowes, broke down and bought a drill motor. Yes, that is what most people call one of those electric cordless drills, but my ex husband, who is concerned with the nomenclature of tools, drilled into me that it was in fact a drill motor. Ha ha! A little hardware humor, there! Shoot me now. I'm glad I have it, though. It makes me feel macho and competent, as tools always do, and I like to push the trigger and listen to it go RRRRRRR. I would like it more if it hadn't just stripped out the first couple of screws I was trying to get it to turn - I think you do after all have to drill holes first, which is such a pain in the ass, particularly when you neglect to buy drill bits - but it will be really handy when I get around to making things. Houses. Shelves. Furniture. And other nifty stuff.
Everyone who lives in the tropics without air conditioning - and, let's face it, as we move into the 21st century we're all living in the goddamn tropics, now and forevermore - becomes a fan expert and I am no exception. This house has a whole house fan, which is a hidden thing in the ceiling of the hallway, protected by louvers that open up when I flip a switch and start the dull yet comforting roar that means the house fan is on the job. In temperate weather, running that thing at night is enough to cool the house off nicely but it's not enough when it's this hot. Therefore, I've been adding fans. Window fans, box fans, the big round fan in the basement that my son will not relinquish no matter how much I try to bribe him. The fans have to be placed just so and I think about this a lot - probably too much - in order to maximize air flow from one room to another. Also, nobody is allowed to close any doors lest precious coolness be thwarted and the fans, which must be turned on as soon as it cools off outside, must then be turned off before 9 am. This is key, although my children sometimes just flat fail to see the drastic importance of all this. I feel like a personal failure on mornings when it's hotter inside than outside - unfortunately, that's a lot of mornings lately. You see, if it's over 85 in your house when you wake up it means that the day is going to basically suck. This is one of the laws of thermodynamics and thus immutable.
Thinking about air flow is like thinking about carpentry projects, which is what I do while I'm going to sleep. On nights when I have trouble going to sleep I think about other things as well (not THAT. Well, okay, sometimes THAT.) like walking through every house I've ever lived in and long railway journeys through Siberia and what it would be like to live on a spaceship but mostly I think about things I could build and how I could build them. I never actually build any of the things I think about but I am telling you, they would completely rock if I ever got around to it.
Right now I am thinking about shelving every inch of the room that has finally, with the throwing out of the old couch and the subsequent moving of the daughter downstairs, become my workroom / studio / office. I went so far as to go and look at how much it would cost to do this project (like $100, or, in other words, more than I am going to spend) and I even, on that exploratory voyage to Lowes, broke down and bought a drill motor. Yes, that is what most people call one of those electric cordless drills, but my ex husband, who is concerned with the nomenclature of tools, drilled into me that it was in fact a drill motor. Ha ha! A little hardware humor, there! Shoot me now. I'm glad I have it, though. It makes me feel macho and competent, as tools always do, and I like to push the trigger and listen to it go RRRRRRR. I would like it more if it hadn't just stripped out the first couple of screws I was trying to get it to turn - I think you do after all have to drill holes first, which is such a pain in the ass, particularly when you neglect to buy drill bits - but it will be really handy when I get around to making things. Houses. Shelves. Furniture. And other nifty stuff.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Think I'll Skip This One This Year
I think I'm going to skip Bele Chere this year. This is not exactly an earth shattering decision - I mean, so what? Who cares? There will be 200,000 or so people there with or without me, not one of whom will give a shit that I am absent - but for some reason I feel vaguely guilty about this. I rarely miss Bele Chere; actually, I think this is only the second time in ten years that I haven't bothered to even venture briefly into the fray. This year, though, it's just too hot and I'm a little too battered in body (I think I have to throw my favorite shoes away on the chance that they are behind the recurring and endless poison ivy that is tormenting my feet to the point where I'm thinking maybe life as a double amputee would be preferable) and soul to face it. Besides, there isn't a single band playing that I really want to see, or, more accurately, haven't seen many and many a time before without having to force my way through overheated crowds. So, funnel cakes, sprinklers, street preachers and so on, lukewarm beer, games of spot the mullet and the pregnant teenager, you will have to do it without me this year.
In other news, this diet thing is working. I have lost ten pounds even despite the fact that over the last two weeks I sort of devoted almost all my calorie intake to beer - the stress & trauma diet works just fine, it turns out, if you're already on a big old diet and have stopped eating such delicious things as real bread and real cheese - and I am thrilled. I would be a bit more thrilled if my clothes were suddenly all too big but somehow they are not as much too big for me as I feel they should be. Well. That will come and one day, one beautiful day, I will again fit into the incredibly hideous purple plaid bermuda shorts of doom. That will be a happy day for me - for the rest of the world, not so much.
In other news, this diet thing is working. I have lost ten pounds even despite the fact that over the last two weeks I sort of devoted almost all my calorie intake to beer - the stress & trauma diet works just fine, it turns out, if you're already on a big old diet and have stopped eating such delicious things as real bread and real cheese - and I am thrilled. I would be a bit more thrilled if my clothes were suddenly all too big but somehow they are not as much too big for me as I feel they should be. Well. That will come and one day, one beautiful day, I will again fit into the incredibly hideous purple plaid bermuda shorts of doom. That will be a happy day for me - for the rest of the world, not so much.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Drama and Baggage
A couple of months ago my children and I were discussing the topic of baggage - not the Gucci variety nor even the smart black plaid traveler's satchel on wheels that I slightly covet - and my son said indignantly that I had no baggage. That is, in pyschic and psychosocial terms - in physical terms I am the proud owner of an antique yellow duffel bag much mended with duct tape that serves my infrequent travel needs. I feel that I am also the not so proud owner of a variety of the other kind of baggage; thus, I started laughing as I considered my broke, unemployed, house more or less literally falling down around my ears, three dog owning, two adult children living at home self. My daughter looked with irritation at her brother. "We are the baggage, stupid." she said.
Well, yeah. Things have been dire again this past week around Hangover Headquarters and as usual I find this inhibits my creative process, to put it mildly. I swear to all the gods there are, including the neglected Gods of Dust Behind Baseboards and Vitally Important Cables That Mysteriously Disappear that I am really not a drama queen. I am not out there looking for drama nor attempting to create it when life gets dull. I dearly wish, actually, that I was, because that would mean that life got nice and dull once in a while. Instead, I just seem to lurch from crisis to crisis. I don't have time to go looking for trouble. It finds me on its own just fine.
A lot - maybe even most - of these crises nowadays are actually more the property and concern of my children rather than me but, as every parent knows, that's worse. Childrens' crises come to parents with guilt and grief and worry and the kind of creeping, inexhaustible angst that wraps a nice fuzzy blanket of sorrow and terror around your soul at three in the morning. It's also why I'm not specific about the nature of my griefs, here. I try my damnedest to blog about my kids only in passing or when they do or say something particularly hilarious. Since they are both smart, witty, funny people, that happens rather often, although, at the moment, not so much.
Well! Wasn't that fun? Isn't life just a fucking bucket of joyous warm happy moments, love, puppies and delicious meals? And the thing is, it is - except right there in the bucket is the fact that love is fraught, puppies eat the couch and delicious meals make you fatter than Jabba the Hutt on a good day.
Well, yeah. Things have been dire again this past week around Hangover Headquarters and as usual I find this inhibits my creative process, to put it mildly. I swear to all the gods there are, including the neglected Gods of Dust Behind Baseboards and Vitally Important Cables That Mysteriously Disappear that I am really not a drama queen. I am not out there looking for drama nor attempting to create it when life gets dull. I dearly wish, actually, that I was, because that would mean that life got nice and dull once in a while. Instead, I just seem to lurch from crisis to crisis. I don't have time to go looking for trouble. It finds me on its own just fine.
A lot - maybe even most - of these crises nowadays are actually more the property and concern of my children rather than me but, as every parent knows, that's worse. Childrens' crises come to parents with guilt and grief and worry and the kind of creeping, inexhaustible angst that wraps a nice fuzzy blanket of sorrow and terror around your soul at three in the morning. It's also why I'm not specific about the nature of my griefs, here. I try my damnedest to blog about my kids only in passing or when they do or say something particularly hilarious. Since they are both smart, witty, funny people, that happens rather often, although, at the moment, not so much.
Well! Wasn't that fun? Isn't life just a fucking bucket of joyous warm happy moments, love, puppies and delicious meals? And the thing is, it is - except right there in the bucket is the fact that love is fraught, puppies eat the couch and delicious meals make you fatter than Jabba the Hutt on a good day.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Elder Gods
It has occurred to me that everything that is wrong with this country - and that's a lot - is the fault of Nancy Reagan. Nancy Reagan only did two good things, ever, one of which was coming out for stem cell research and the other of which was replacing the White House china with dishes of such a staggering level of tackiness that I can still snicker at them almost 30 years later. "How do you know these things?" asked my daughter when I trotted out this bit of trivia the other night. "Are you kidding?" I said, "Saying mean things about Nancy Reagan was the basis of all my conversations with my mother for at least eight years." This is not, of course, entirely true but it's true enough.
My friend Susan says that there are some Rastas who believe that Ronald Reagan was the antichrist. I think this may be true. Certainly everything has gone to hell in a handbasket since his presidency and he's the one who started it all: the theocracy, the fervent prudery, the privatization of anything and everything that can be privatized for a profit, the giant growth of the prison industry, the erosion of the middle class, the end of the unions, the destruction of the working class and working poor, the demonization of poverty and, of course, the constant push towards the right that we have endured since the eighties, which has finally lead us to a country where people honestly believe that Obama is actually left wing. Let's not forget the Reagan initiated war on drugs, either, which has effectively destroyed most of what was left of anything resembling a functioning justice system. The fucker - and his wife, I mean, that china - has a lot to answer for. I don't believe in God, really: I prefer my gods multiple, since I feel there's too much work out there for just one and I like having individual small deities to consult on an as needed basis. I sure as hell don't believe in the Bible as anything other than a source for a lot of Renaissance paintings and an occasionally useful historic text, but if there was going to be an antichrist, I think Reagan fits the bill.
Now, to delve into the realms of serious paranoia or a possible screenplay, either / or: get this. If we assume that Reagan was the antichrist, an avatar of evil, an incarnation of doom heralding the end times, than think of his airport. It is generally conceded that Reagan National airport is a clusterfuck of amazing proportions. Well, you see (looks around, drops voice to whisper) that's because the runways are set up in a carefully designed occult web of summoning and every time a plane lands or takes off from one it's creating a more favorable climate for the eventual emergence of the Nameless Ones, who one of these days will break through the tarmac and start munching out on USAir jets. This must be stopped! I've had it with these motherfucking elder gods on this motherfucking plane!
Okay, okay. I know. Sometimes I can't help myself.
My friend Susan says that there are some Rastas who believe that Ronald Reagan was the antichrist. I think this may be true. Certainly everything has gone to hell in a handbasket since his presidency and he's the one who started it all: the theocracy, the fervent prudery, the privatization of anything and everything that can be privatized for a profit, the giant growth of the prison industry, the erosion of the middle class, the end of the unions, the destruction of the working class and working poor, the demonization of poverty and, of course, the constant push towards the right that we have endured since the eighties, which has finally lead us to a country where people honestly believe that Obama is actually left wing. Let's not forget the Reagan initiated war on drugs, either, which has effectively destroyed most of what was left of anything resembling a functioning justice system. The fucker - and his wife, I mean, that china - has a lot to answer for. I don't believe in God, really: I prefer my gods multiple, since I feel there's too much work out there for just one and I like having individual small deities to consult on an as needed basis. I sure as hell don't believe in the Bible as anything other than a source for a lot of Renaissance paintings and an occasionally useful historic text, but if there was going to be an antichrist, I think Reagan fits the bill.
Now, to delve into the realms of serious paranoia or a possible screenplay, either / or: get this. If we assume that Reagan was the antichrist, an avatar of evil, an incarnation of doom heralding the end times, than think of his airport. It is generally conceded that Reagan National airport is a clusterfuck of amazing proportions. Well, you see (looks around, drops voice to whisper) that's because the runways are set up in a carefully designed occult web of summoning and every time a plane lands or takes off from one it's creating a more favorable climate for the eventual emergence of the Nameless Ones, who one of these days will break through the tarmac and start munching out on USAir jets. This must be stopped! I've had it with these motherfucking elder gods on this motherfucking plane!
Okay, okay. I know. Sometimes I can't help myself.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Random Wednesday
Huh, that was weird - a keyboard shortcut posted this long before it was ready. Oh well! Guess I must blog now! Actually, damn, it is far easier to post a link from Blogger proper rather than from Flickr although I don't get that tiny feeling of pride in my own mad basic knowledge of HTML skillz that I do when I type it all in laboriously. Still. And now for something completely different!
LOVE
Have I blogged lately about my great love for China Mieville? No? Have I ever blogged about my great love for China Mieville? Well. Let me fix that. I am in love with China Mieville. I am also, coincidentally, in love with Martin Millar and James McMurtry (I am not posting a link to James. If you don't know who he is it behooves you to google him immediately.) and so clearly, if I threw an apple peel over my left shoulder* it would land on the floor in the shape of an M, which is interesting and totally beside the point. Nevertheless! I have just finished Kraken, Mieville's latest book and I am here to tell you that you should go out and buy it immediately. Perhaps buy several copies, even: the book is great and so, as nice lagniappe, is the cover design. The book, though, the book is completely amazing. I mean, it is wonderfully great even for a book that centers around the random theft of a giant squid, which is perhaps the best plot premise ever (eat your heart out, Dashiell Hammett - why fuck around with a small black statuette of some random bird when you could be chasing a GIANT SQUID?): it is engrossing, thoughtful, beautifully written of course and even occasionally funny as hell. China Mieville is a genius - I mean, a genius, a serious genius - and sometimes he can be somewhat overwhelmingly abstract and intellectual but it is worth it to force your brain to try to keep up. Also, he's gorgeous, OMG, insert various girly stuff here, and I like his politics. Or, well, I think I do, but then British politics are a little opaque to we colonials due to the lack of the overwhelming stupidity factor that Americans seem to find necessary to keep in our own political life. "Why, he's dumb as dirt!" we say proudly and then reelect the bastard to keep on voting against health care and extending unemployment. "Dumb as dirt! Haw! Wouldn't want one of them goddamn smartypants progressives in Washington! Why, no, I don't get why we is so poor now and how come we has lost everything we once had - must be the goddamn terr'ists."
GARDEN
The garden has been really weird this year. It is the beginning of July and yet the garden seems to think it is the middle of August. Thus, all my sunflowers are out, half the peppers are ready, the corn is miserable, small and no good, the beans are done, the cucumbers are finishing and, well, it's not so awesome, actually. Also, borer beetles have killed all my zucchini - little fuckers! Evil insects! Forces of doom! - so for the first time in many years I am facing a zucchini free summer, which is clearly not to be borne. I am baffled in the face of the sudden uselessness of all my carefully hoarded recipes that disguise zucchini. If there is no zucchini to disguise I will probably have to start gluing mustaches on those weird ass Chinese whatever they ares and we don't want that. Or maybe we do.
WII FIT
I am having more fun with the Wii Fit than I probably should. I live in fear that somebody will catch me attempting one of the kindergarten level games, like marching in place, that I enjoy so much and yet am so, so very bad at. I confess: I've never really gotten my right and left straight. Never. Neither has my son, which is one of the reasons why we were so extremely terrible at Tae Kwon Do all those years ago. I am also bad at rhythm, as in, I don't got none and so I am terrible at most of the Wii Fit games, which rely heavily on rhythm and balance for some unknown reason that perhaps will one day become clear to me. But it is fun as hell to try. There are elements of living in the future that I adore and running in place in the basement while virtually following a small cat around an imaginary cartoon island on a large screen in front of me is one of them. As long as nobody ever sees me. I think I should probably wear a fake mustache.
INK
I decided a while ago that I would get another tattoo on my mom's birthday, which is today. Happy Birthday, Mom! Miss you every day - yeah, that's one of those things that you don't know until you lose a parent but let's not go there. It is rough. However. My mother would be completely horrified by this form of tribute - we had a sort of silent don't ask, don't tell thing going on with all the tattoos I already have, which I sort of attempted to keep mostly hidden - but, well, I don't care and I do think that as usual, my own very contrary nature, which is in large part much like her very contrary nature, would continue to amuse her. So, another tattoo is in the works. I already have Snufkin and Little My on my right shoulder blade and it is time to add my very own Moominmamma. Now I have to find a place that will do this today, because with my usual total lack of planning, I have done nothing but pick out a picture. Therefore, I'm out of here and off to find an available artist. Which, interestingly enough, one could also say about my quest for Martin Millar, James McMurtry and China Mieville.
ASTERISK PART
* This is an old fortune telling device that is infallible. Infallible, I tell you! What you do is first you must peel an apple so that the peel comes off all in one piece like a spiral without breaking anywhere. Then you throw it - the peel, not the apple - over your left shoulder and examine what it looks like on the floor. Whatever letter of the alphabet it resembles is the initial of the man you are going to marry. This is tough on people with names beginning with F or T or A or Z - that's why they never marry, as you know, while people whose names start with J and S and C marry often - but hey, my twelve year old self informs me that this method is absolutely the truth.
LOVE
Have I blogged lately about my great love for China Mieville? No? Have I ever blogged about my great love for China Mieville? Well. Let me fix that. I am in love with China Mieville. I am also, coincidentally, in love with Martin Millar and James McMurtry (I am not posting a link to James. If you don't know who he is it behooves you to google him immediately.) and so clearly, if I threw an apple peel over my left shoulder* it would land on the floor in the shape of an M, which is interesting and totally beside the point. Nevertheless! I have just finished Kraken, Mieville's latest book and I am here to tell you that you should go out and buy it immediately. Perhaps buy several copies, even: the book is great and so, as nice lagniappe, is the cover design. The book, though, the book is completely amazing. I mean, it is wonderfully great even for a book that centers around the random theft of a giant squid, which is perhaps the best plot premise ever (eat your heart out, Dashiell Hammett - why fuck around with a small black statuette of some random bird when you could be chasing a GIANT SQUID?): it is engrossing, thoughtful, beautifully written of course and even occasionally funny as hell. China Mieville is a genius - I mean, a genius, a serious genius - and sometimes he can be somewhat overwhelmingly abstract and intellectual but it is worth it to force your brain to try to keep up. Also, he's gorgeous, OMG, insert various girly stuff here, and I like his politics. Or, well, I think I do, but then British politics are a little opaque to we colonials due to the lack of the overwhelming stupidity factor that Americans seem to find necessary to keep in our own political life. "Why, he's dumb as dirt!" we say proudly and then reelect the bastard to keep on voting against health care and extending unemployment. "Dumb as dirt! Haw! Wouldn't want one of them goddamn smartypants progressives in Washington! Why, no, I don't get why we is so poor now and how come we has lost everything we once had - must be the goddamn terr'ists."
GARDEN
The garden has been really weird this year. It is the beginning of July and yet the garden seems to think it is the middle of August. Thus, all my sunflowers are out, half the peppers are ready, the corn is miserable, small and no good, the beans are done, the cucumbers are finishing and, well, it's not so awesome, actually. Also, borer beetles have killed all my zucchini - little fuckers! Evil insects! Forces of doom! - so for the first time in many years I am facing a zucchini free summer, which is clearly not to be borne. I am baffled in the face of the sudden uselessness of all my carefully hoarded recipes that disguise zucchini. If there is no zucchini to disguise I will probably have to start gluing mustaches on those weird ass Chinese whatever they ares and we don't want that. Or maybe we do.
WII FIT
I am having more fun with the Wii Fit than I probably should. I live in fear that somebody will catch me attempting one of the kindergarten level games, like marching in place, that I enjoy so much and yet am so, so very bad at. I confess: I've never really gotten my right and left straight. Never. Neither has my son, which is one of the reasons why we were so extremely terrible at Tae Kwon Do all those years ago. I am also bad at rhythm, as in, I don't got none and so I am terrible at most of the Wii Fit games, which rely heavily on rhythm and balance for some unknown reason that perhaps will one day become clear to me. But it is fun as hell to try. There are elements of living in the future that I adore and running in place in the basement while virtually following a small cat around an imaginary cartoon island on a large screen in front of me is one of them. As long as nobody ever sees me. I think I should probably wear a fake mustache.
INK
I decided a while ago that I would get another tattoo on my mom's birthday, which is today. Happy Birthday, Mom! Miss you every day - yeah, that's one of those things that you don't know until you lose a parent but let's not go there. It is rough. However. My mother would be completely horrified by this form of tribute - we had a sort of silent don't ask, don't tell thing going on with all the tattoos I already have, which I sort of attempted to keep mostly hidden - but, well, I don't care and I do think that as usual, my own very contrary nature, which is in large part much like her very contrary nature, would continue to amuse her. So, another tattoo is in the works. I already have Snufkin and Little My on my right shoulder blade and it is time to add my very own Moominmamma. Now I have to find a place that will do this today, because with my usual total lack of planning, I have done nothing but pick out a picture. Therefore, I'm out of here and off to find an available artist. Which, interestingly enough, one could also say about my quest for Martin Millar, James McMurtry and China Mieville.
ASTERISK PART
* This is an old fortune telling device that is infallible. Infallible, I tell you! What you do is first you must peel an apple so that the peel comes off all in one piece like a spiral without breaking anywhere. Then you throw it - the peel, not the apple - over your left shoulder and examine what it looks like on the floor. Whatever letter of the alphabet it resembles is the initial of the man you are going to marry. This is tough on people with names beginning with F or T or A or Z - that's why they never marry, as you know, while people whose names start with J and S and C marry often - but hey, my twelve year old self informs me that this method is absolutely the truth.
Monday, July 05, 2010
How I Ruined the 4th of July
Whoo, holiday weekend! I hate holiday weekends. I used to like them, back in the dim time before time when I actually had a job and Mondays meant something to me but now that Mondays are just another day when I don't get my quota of junk mail, well, fuck it. I might be missing coupons from Hardees not to mention dubiously existent carpet steam cleaning services that I will never use. Besides, if you're unemployed, you might hypothetically start celebrating this holiday stuff a little early, like, say, Wednesday and then by the time the actual holiday rolls around you are over it, what with the consecutive hangovers and the loss of the diet resolve and the horrible Wii Fit saying you've gained 2 pounds and making rotten cracks about your diet. Hypothetically, that is.
However, holiday weekends and their risks aside, I am an American, no matter how much I tried to tell people I was Canadian back in the early 80s when I was traveling (even going so far as to smoke Rothmans gods help us) and as an American it is my patriotic duty to drink beer and go see fireworks on the 4th of July. Besides, Annie, fired up by the small fireworks at Susan's party last Thursday, wanted to go see real fireworks. Not that the fireworks available at BJs or in all of North Carolina are unreal: they just don't go up in the air. No, they menace your ankles by emitting showers of sparks - all fireworks we can buy here say they emit showers of sparks or shoot flaming balls, a lovely double entendre that I for one would deeply enjoy seeing imagined pyrotechnically. Actually, in a beautiful failure of the Chinese packaging industry, one of the fireworks at Susan's party claimed that it would emit showers of gummy bears. Alas, it did not and so it came about that Annie wanted to go to the big fireworks display.
It is unfortunately rather difficult to take somebody with limited mobility to the downtown Asheville 4th of July celebration. Granted, it would be a hell of a lot easier if said person with the limited mobility admitted that she had it and sat down in a damn borrowed wheelchair which one could then trick up with a horn and some flags and stuff, but no, as far as she's concerned, she's the same as she ever was: it's just the rest of the world that has become inexplicably and rudely complex and fast. So this was a bit of a problem.
We started out the evening by going to a neighborhood block party which was lovely and turned out to be hosted by a Facebook friend of mine. That's always a shock - a facebook friend! Who exists! Who knew? At any rate, we walked on down there and back, slowly, a whole block and then recovered for a bit on Annie's porch while it got, again rather slowly, late enough to where we would not be sitting somewhere waiting for three hours for the fireworks to begin, a process to which I am allergic, particularly in a beer free environment. I had this theory that we could take my brother's car and go up to the top of the Biltmore Ave. parking deck, which is where I used to always go for fireworks because it is the best place. Unfortunately, over the years since I used to do this, other people have discovered that it is the best place and by 7:45, the deck was full. Damn them. I also, of course, used to start out at the New French bar and just dash up 3 flights of steps to the top when I heard the booming begin but, see limited mobility, above, that option didn't seem as if it would work.
My back up plan was to park, using Annie's handy handicap hang tag, in front of the art museum and walk slowly through the park. Well, the art museum was blocked off, all the handicapped spaces were gone too and the park was wall to wall people, so we nixed that. "What about the Wall Street deck?" I said, "I bet we can see both the downtown fireworks and the Biltmore estate ones from there!"
Famous last words. We got up to the top of the deck and parked and stood around for a bit. Then we decided to stand somewhere else and eventually, on a hunch, we moved the car to a different place on the roof. Other people began to appear. One by one they came over to me.
"Is this a good place to watch the fireworks?" they asked, humbly. "Where do they shoot off the fireworks?"
"Why yes," I said, enjoying my new role as fireworks ambassador for my city, "This will be great. You'll be able to see them from over there and there!"
And you would have, too, if somebody hadn't built the Public Interest Building in, like, 1920. Alas, it turns out that seeing the fireworks from the top of the Wall Street Parking deck is damn near impossible - you can only really do it, actually, from the place where we had first parked the car and even there it is less than optimal. Still, there were fireworks. I mean, sort of. You could kind of see parts of them here and there.
"I'm sorry," I said as we climbed back into the car, "That I ruined the 4th of July."
"This place is no good," said my aunt bitterly, referring to Asheville as a whole. "They don't have good fireworks."
"You know," said my brother thoughtfully, "People only started coming up there after we were there. They probably thought we knew what we were doing. So look at it this way - you didn't just ruin the 4th of July for us - you ruined it for all those people as well!"
"Okay, okay," I said, "I will start planning next year's celebration tomorrow. Honestly. It will be better, I swear."
And so it will, because I personally intend to be out of town and asking other people where they watch the fireworks from, I don't know, maybe Uttar Pradesh.
However, holiday weekends and their risks aside, I am an American, no matter how much I tried to tell people I was Canadian back in the early 80s when I was traveling (even going so far as to smoke Rothmans gods help us) and as an American it is my patriotic duty to drink beer and go see fireworks on the 4th of July. Besides, Annie, fired up by the small fireworks at Susan's party last Thursday, wanted to go see real fireworks. Not that the fireworks available at BJs or in all of North Carolina are unreal: they just don't go up in the air. No, they menace your ankles by emitting showers of sparks - all fireworks we can buy here say they emit showers of sparks or shoot flaming balls, a lovely double entendre that I for one would deeply enjoy seeing imagined pyrotechnically. Actually, in a beautiful failure of the Chinese packaging industry, one of the fireworks at Susan's party claimed that it would emit showers of gummy bears. Alas, it did not and so it came about that Annie wanted to go to the big fireworks display.
It is unfortunately rather difficult to take somebody with limited mobility to the downtown Asheville 4th of July celebration. Granted, it would be a hell of a lot easier if said person with the limited mobility admitted that she had it and sat down in a damn borrowed wheelchair which one could then trick up with a horn and some flags and stuff, but no, as far as she's concerned, she's the same as she ever was: it's just the rest of the world that has become inexplicably and rudely complex and fast. So this was a bit of a problem.
We started out the evening by going to a neighborhood block party which was lovely and turned out to be hosted by a Facebook friend of mine. That's always a shock - a facebook friend! Who exists! Who knew? At any rate, we walked on down there and back, slowly, a whole block and then recovered for a bit on Annie's porch while it got, again rather slowly, late enough to where we would not be sitting somewhere waiting for three hours for the fireworks to begin, a process to which I am allergic, particularly in a beer free environment. I had this theory that we could take my brother's car and go up to the top of the Biltmore Ave. parking deck, which is where I used to always go for fireworks because it is the best place. Unfortunately, over the years since I used to do this, other people have discovered that it is the best place and by 7:45, the deck was full. Damn them. I also, of course, used to start out at the New French bar and just dash up 3 flights of steps to the top when I heard the booming begin but, see limited mobility, above, that option didn't seem as if it would work.
My back up plan was to park, using Annie's handy handicap hang tag, in front of the art museum and walk slowly through the park. Well, the art museum was blocked off, all the handicapped spaces were gone too and the park was wall to wall people, so we nixed that. "What about the Wall Street deck?" I said, "I bet we can see both the downtown fireworks and the Biltmore estate ones from there!"
Famous last words. We got up to the top of the deck and parked and stood around for a bit. Then we decided to stand somewhere else and eventually, on a hunch, we moved the car to a different place on the roof. Other people began to appear. One by one they came over to me.
"Is this a good place to watch the fireworks?" they asked, humbly. "Where do they shoot off the fireworks?"
"Why yes," I said, enjoying my new role as fireworks ambassador for my city, "This will be great. You'll be able to see them from over there and there!"
And you would have, too, if somebody hadn't built the Public Interest Building in, like, 1920. Alas, it turns out that seeing the fireworks from the top of the Wall Street Parking deck is damn near impossible - you can only really do it, actually, from the place where we had first parked the car and even there it is less than optimal. Still, there were fireworks. I mean, sort of. You could kind of see parts of them here and there.
"I'm sorry," I said as we climbed back into the car, "That I ruined the 4th of July."
"This place is no good," said my aunt bitterly, referring to Asheville as a whole. "They don't have good fireworks."
"You know," said my brother thoughtfully, "People only started coming up there after we were there. They probably thought we knew what we were doing. So look at it this way - you didn't just ruin the 4th of July for us - you ruined it for all those people as well!"
"Okay, okay," I said, "I will start planning next year's celebration tomorrow. Honestly. It will be better, I swear."
And so it will, because I personally intend to be out of town and asking other people where they watch the fireworks from, I don't know, maybe Uttar Pradesh.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Fitness For Employment
We have a Wii Fit! Yes, we are disgusting materialists who stay in their house all the time and are probably responsible for at least some of the decline of civilization as we know it, but, yeah, whatever, we have a Wii Fit! It is highly awesome and as soon as I learn to do the Segway ride without bending over like some kind of crazed knuckle walking speed skater, I am confident that it will trim my waistline as well as hurting my back. Actually it's amazingly fun. It turns out that I am horrible at step aerobics but that's okay: laughing that hard has to burn some calories in and of itself.
And, I did better at the yoga part than I thought I would. "Wow," said my daughter, "I am impressed with your total yoganess!"
"And I with yours!" I said happily even as we competed viciously for higher yoga points, which I have a feeling is not what any mahatma would recommend. Yoga is always competitive, though. I used to take yoga classes at the YMCA with about 300 other people, all of whom were better at yoga than I was and the competition was fierce. The teacher would be over in the back of the class shaking her head sorrowfully at my pathetic downward facing dog and meanwhile, the guy with the blue stars tattooed on his face - most flexible homeless man in Asheville! - would be tying himself into impressive knots while a squadron of perfectly outfitted ultra yoga young mothers of impeccable hipness gently outdid one another at breathing and breathtaking expense of yoga accessories. I was sure that one day they would all crack and just go on and knife each other holistically but I dropped out - the stress! The pressure! The fact that I don't bend! - before that happy event.
What with the diet and the exercise and all this stuff, I foresee that it is possible I will eventually get back into something vaguely resembling work clothes. This is good, because I actually had an interview this morning. The interview was with a placement/temp type service and my interviewer, who was extremely nice, gently and subtly told me I looked like hell.
"This position," she said, "is in a very conservative office. Do you," beat "Anticipate any problem with, for example, dress?" Oooooh. Ow. This is not what you want to hear when you're sitting there in your best black linen pants, which, are, okay, somewhat snug and a formal - well, formal-ish - top. Then she told me that there's a Goodwill out on Leicester Highway which will give you interview outfits for free. Ow, again. Major ow. I am apparently no better at dressing professionally than I am at step aerobics. I think I'm great at it, usually, in a sort of bohemian unique take on the concept, but perhaps I am wrong in that. Maybe there is a reason why my friends all fall over laughing when I say I feel as if I look corporate that day.
Dress is the least of my worries, though, because I had to fill out one of those terrible interview things where they ask you what your work ethic is and what motivates you. I always want to put down Nonexistent under work ethic and Rum, Sodomy and the Lash under motivating factors but since I actually need money, I did not. I also wanted to say that my ideal supervisor would be one who loosened up on the rack now and then but I didn't put that down either. Although, for god's sake, let's all be honest here: I want to work for money. Money motivates me. My work ethic depends on it. It is, of course, forbidden to mention something so crass as money when you are interviewing for a job. You are supposed to be doing this job for some kind of love of humanity or deep desire to get up close and personal with the really complex parts of Excel. Uh huh. Absolutely. Well. So I put down some nonsense about recognition and team efforts because, again, I need money. Yeah, I am crass and commercial - after all, I have to recoup my small investment (it officially belongs to Audrey) in the Wii Fit.
And, I did better at the yoga part than I thought I would. "Wow," said my daughter, "I am impressed with your total yoganess!"
"And I with yours!" I said happily even as we competed viciously for higher yoga points, which I have a feeling is not what any mahatma would recommend. Yoga is always competitive, though. I used to take yoga classes at the YMCA with about 300 other people, all of whom were better at yoga than I was and the competition was fierce. The teacher would be over in the back of the class shaking her head sorrowfully at my pathetic downward facing dog and meanwhile, the guy with the blue stars tattooed on his face - most flexible homeless man in Asheville! - would be tying himself into impressive knots while a squadron of perfectly outfitted ultra yoga young mothers of impeccable hipness gently outdid one another at breathing and breathtaking expense of yoga accessories. I was sure that one day they would all crack and just go on and knife each other holistically but I dropped out - the stress! The pressure! The fact that I don't bend! - before that happy event.
What with the diet and the exercise and all this stuff, I foresee that it is possible I will eventually get back into something vaguely resembling work clothes. This is good, because I actually had an interview this morning. The interview was with a placement/temp type service and my interviewer, who was extremely nice, gently and subtly told me I looked like hell.
"This position," she said, "is in a very conservative office. Do you," beat "Anticipate any problem with, for example, dress?" Oooooh. Ow. This is not what you want to hear when you're sitting there in your best black linen pants, which, are, okay, somewhat snug and a formal - well, formal-ish - top. Then she told me that there's a Goodwill out on Leicester Highway which will give you interview outfits for free. Ow, again. Major ow. I am apparently no better at dressing professionally than I am at step aerobics. I think I'm great at it, usually, in a sort of bohemian unique take on the concept, but perhaps I am wrong in that. Maybe there is a reason why my friends all fall over laughing when I say I feel as if I look corporate that day.
Dress is the least of my worries, though, because I had to fill out one of those terrible interview things where they ask you what your work ethic is and what motivates you. I always want to put down Nonexistent under work ethic and Rum, Sodomy and the Lash under motivating factors but since I actually need money, I did not. I also wanted to say that my ideal supervisor would be one who loosened up on the rack now and then but I didn't put that down either. Although, for god's sake, let's all be honest here: I want to work for money. Money motivates me. My work ethic depends on it. It is, of course, forbidden to mention something so crass as money when you are interviewing for a job. You are supposed to be doing this job for some kind of love of humanity or deep desire to get up close and personal with the really complex parts of Excel. Uh huh. Absolutely. Well. So I put down some nonsense about recognition and team efforts because, again, I need money. Yeah, I am crass and commercial - after all, I have to recoup my small investment (it officially belongs to Audrey) in the Wii Fit.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Weekends They Come and They Go
I just spent three hours de-virusizing my computer, which is even more highly annoying when one considers that I haven't used the damn thing since some time on Saturday afternoon. Nevertheless, it had managed to get itself all infected and, therefore, this is where I give a shout out to Spybot Search & Destroy, who not only fixed the problem that malwarebytes and avira could not but also have the most adorable software license on the planet.
So what did I do this weekend, seeing as how I was not on the computer? Well, on Friday it was of course time to go to the DeSoto and drink beer with my friends. I get to drink beer on this weight watchers thing, as long as it's light beer and as long as I have barely eaten anything all week - those glorious 35 extra points sure do come in handy for binge drinking! Whoooeee! - so I did that. I also made sure to tease my friend who is in a new relationship. "I know this is corny," he said, blushing, "But a song from West Side Story keeps on going through my head."
"As long as it isn't Officer Krupke," I said, "I think you're good."
Friday night, thus, was fun for all but there is a slight problem with drinking on an empty stomach: to wit, it leads to migraine type headaches on Saturday. Thus I was kind of a mess on Saturday but I gave in to my daughter's blandishments and headed off to the Dillard's clearance center at Biltmore Square Mall so that Audrey could buy a dress for her cousin's wedding next month and I could sit around and be unwell in air conditioning. This worked out quite well: after pulling every dress that looked even slightly reasonable off the racks, I sat in the dressing room. Audrey tried on dresses and I tried not to be sick, so it was all good despite the faint odor of, I swear to god, pee. You can put up with pee smells though, for air conditioning and cheap as hell fashion and she found not just one but two fabulous dresses, so everyone came out happy.
That night I was supposed to go to a party but instead I begged off and went to see Robin Hood instead. Robin Hood! My favorite! With Russell Crowe who is not exactly my favorite but who I would not kick out of bed for snoring and Cate Blanchett, who looks exactly like my friend Luneige and who I like, therefore, by association. I was excited and actually the movie was pretty damn good for a movie that made no sense whatsoever. I mean, none. I mean, plot holes you could drive a medieval ox team through, not to mention history holes that hurt my head. Besides, they had a fight scene on the beach, all half underwater with blood and yet somehow failed to bring in a shark. How could you do that, Ridley Scott? A shark would have redeemed the entire thing. I actually said this out loud in the movie theatre - sorry about that, fellow moviegoers, I was just so excited when I thought that maybe Robin Hood was going to save Maid Marian from a shark with his trusty bow, but alas, the stupid movie was shark free.
Yesterday, I started off cleaning the entire house with the help of an entire pot of coffee. That would have been fine and an achievement in and of itself but then I went many steps further and completely rearranged my bedroom. Redecorating is always so much fun. It always takes just as long as you think it will, right? Ha ha! It takes seven times as long as you think it will and that's not even counting reassembling the bed frame twice. The bed frame is extremely precarious at this point and I am a little worried that if I ever have company again, it's going to turn out to be one of those sitcom worthy events. Duct tape can only do so much. However, that happy event is far off and my room is now immaculate and completely different than it was before.. My back is also different than it was before and that bookcase won't make another move, but oh well, what the hell. I am pleased and the dogs, after some initial confusion, have adjusted themselves to their preferred farting positions directly under my pillow, so all is as normal in my world. Happy Monday!
So what did I do this weekend, seeing as how I was not on the computer? Well, on Friday it was of course time to go to the DeSoto and drink beer with my friends. I get to drink beer on this weight watchers thing, as long as it's light beer and as long as I have barely eaten anything all week - those glorious 35 extra points sure do come in handy for binge drinking! Whoooeee! - so I did that. I also made sure to tease my friend who is in a new relationship. "I know this is corny," he said, blushing, "But a song from West Side Story keeps on going through my head."
"As long as it isn't Officer Krupke," I said, "I think you're good."
Friday night, thus, was fun for all but there is a slight problem with drinking on an empty stomach: to wit, it leads to migraine type headaches on Saturday. Thus I was kind of a mess on Saturday but I gave in to my daughter's blandishments and headed off to the Dillard's clearance center at Biltmore Square Mall so that Audrey could buy a dress for her cousin's wedding next month and I could sit around and be unwell in air conditioning. This worked out quite well: after pulling every dress that looked even slightly reasonable off the racks, I sat in the dressing room. Audrey tried on dresses and I tried not to be sick, so it was all good despite the faint odor of, I swear to god, pee. You can put up with pee smells though, for air conditioning and cheap as hell fashion and she found not just one but two fabulous dresses, so everyone came out happy.
That night I was supposed to go to a party but instead I begged off and went to see Robin Hood instead. Robin Hood! My favorite! With Russell Crowe who is not exactly my favorite but who I would not kick out of bed for snoring and Cate Blanchett, who looks exactly like my friend Luneige and who I like, therefore, by association. I was excited and actually the movie was pretty damn good for a movie that made no sense whatsoever. I mean, none. I mean, plot holes you could drive a medieval ox team through, not to mention history holes that hurt my head. Besides, they had a fight scene on the beach, all half underwater with blood and yet somehow failed to bring in a shark. How could you do that, Ridley Scott? A shark would have redeemed the entire thing. I actually said this out loud in the movie theatre - sorry about that, fellow moviegoers, I was just so excited when I thought that maybe Robin Hood was going to save Maid Marian from a shark with his trusty bow, but alas, the stupid movie was shark free.
Yesterday, I started off cleaning the entire house with the help of an entire pot of coffee. That would have been fine and an achievement in and of itself but then I went many steps further and completely rearranged my bedroom. Redecorating is always so much fun. It always takes just as long as you think it will, right? Ha ha! It takes seven times as long as you think it will and that's not even counting reassembling the bed frame twice. The bed frame is extremely precarious at this point and I am a little worried that if I ever have company again, it's going to turn out to be one of those sitcom worthy events. Duct tape can only do so much. However, that happy event is far off and my room is now immaculate and completely different than it was before.. My back is also different than it was before and that bookcase won't make another move, but oh well, what the hell. I am pleased and the dogs, after some initial confusion, have adjusted themselves to their preferred farting positions directly under my pillow, so all is as normal in my world. Happy Monday!
Friday, June 25, 2010
Summer, Again
I know it is summer now, because my feet and ankles are covered with mosquito bites and poison ivy. Yay! How exciting! Because I am physically incapable of itching without scratching (did the difference between those two words completely absorb anyone else's second grade brain during moments of boredom or is that just me?) soon my feet and ankles will be covered, again, with attractive scabs. Perhaps they will match the purple toenail polish. One can but hope.
In other news, there really is no other news. Mostly what I'm doing these days is dieting, which is boring to do - except for the part where I'm dizzy and out of it all the time, which has become kind of awesome since I decided not to be worried about it and instead to pretend that I was just on drugs - and even more boring to read about. Yesterday, in news of the totally damn thrilling, I even went to the store and bought a bunch of weird ass diet food. I am a little concerned about this - it diminishes my hippie cred considerably and we don't want that - but on the other hand it is amazing to not be completely starving. Fake diet food actually makes you feel full - sure, you're probably dying of some kind of chemical military industrial grade cancer the minute you ingest it, but you feel full, so who cares? It is better than miniature carrots. Almost anything, truth be told, up to and including thumbscrews, is better than gloomily sitting in the kitchen eating miniature carrots in an attempt to stop the hunger pains. And while miniature carrots are bad, dipping them in zero calorie zero fat white gluey stuff that has the nerve to call itself ranch dressing is worse, because then the existential gloom really comes down hard on your soul. I hate it when that happens.
Still, one marches on. One fixed the goddamn bathroom scale and discovered to one's horror that one is approximately the same weight as a humpback whale, a humpback whale who, moreover, has gained more than ten pounds in the last eight months. Therefore, one is fucking determined to become svelte. Svelte, I say. Svelte and scabby.
In other news, there really is no other news. Mostly what I'm doing these days is dieting, which is boring to do - except for the part where I'm dizzy and out of it all the time, which has become kind of awesome since I decided not to be worried about it and instead to pretend that I was just on drugs - and even more boring to read about. Yesterday, in news of the totally damn thrilling, I even went to the store and bought a bunch of weird ass diet food. I am a little concerned about this - it diminishes my hippie cred considerably and we don't want that - but on the other hand it is amazing to not be completely starving. Fake diet food actually makes you feel full - sure, you're probably dying of some kind of chemical military industrial grade cancer the minute you ingest it, but you feel full, so who cares? It is better than miniature carrots. Almost anything, truth be told, up to and including thumbscrews, is better than gloomily sitting in the kitchen eating miniature carrots in an attempt to stop the hunger pains. And while miniature carrots are bad, dipping them in zero calorie zero fat white gluey stuff that has the nerve to call itself ranch dressing is worse, because then the existential gloom really comes down hard on your soul. I hate it when that happens.
Still, one marches on. One fixed the goddamn bathroom scale and discovered to one's horror that one is approximately the same weight as a humpback whale, a humpback whale who, moreover, has gained more than ten pounds in the last eight months. Therefore, one is fucking determined to become svelte. Svelte, I say. Svelte and scabby.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Wednesdays, Huh, What Are They Good For?
It's hot and I have miserable cramps. This has led me to realize that it would only take a good cry for me to actually embody the name of a famous 70s sort of jazz rock group - guess which one? It's not the Grateful Dead, yet, but if the heat and cramps keep up, it damn well could be - which I believe may be one of those things that normal people don't think about, but I do. However! All that matters not, because the PetSmart on Brevard Road has sold out to the PetCo and as a result, all their cheesy aquarium ornaments, plus some dog toys, are on final clearance. As a result of this changeover, the employees are wearing PetCo outfits and saying things like, "We're from PetCo and here to help the PetSmart people get through the changeover!" This is kind of terrifying, because any job that involves you wearing a brown nylon vest and a nametag and being knowledgeable about cash registers and tropical fish should not also be the kind of job where you fly all over the world helping people transition. The transition, which I guess involves having a different name on your paycheck and conceivably some redecorating in the store (which is a good thing, because it will get rid of those signs that said DOGZ TOYZ! in a cheery and soul destroying font) should not, maybe, need professional help. Well, it would be fun to be the transition manager and fly all over the world, assuming, that is, that PetCo is multinational and hey, it probably is, because who can resist small eerie castles like the one pictured, particularly when they're marked down from $15 to $3? I also got a fluorescent pink plastic aquarium flower for 68 cents. 68 cents, people!
I like to think that my fish are happy now, because not only has their decor, which had been sinking steadily since the plant died and the algae eater proved himself not quite up to his task, improved about 110%, but I added new fish. Nothing like new roommates to cheer fish up! Look, the neighborhood has gone downhill! If all else fails they can all now band together and be xenophobic about the newcomers, a bonding experience for all.
In other news, I have begun to harvest some of the freaky mystery Asian vegetables. Remember, on my klonopin fueled trip to the West Coast (I had been waiting all my life to stand on a Pacific beach and exclaim the ocean is on the wrong side! in tones of horror but when it came to it I kind of forgot, plus, it didn't really feel as wrong sideish as it should have) I bought several packets of promisingly weird looking Asian vegetable seeds and brought them home to plant. I was hoping against hope for a sort of Little Shop of Horrors experience in which I get to be that person the villagers come after with the torches and the pitchforks once my army of demonic plants has laid waste the peaceful mountain village of Asheville, but so far everything, with the exception of the eggplants, which firmly refused to grow at all, has been distressingly well behaved.
So I have harvested a few of these. They look and smell a bit like turnips, so I tried chopping, boiling and serving them with butter but the results, frankly, were uninspiring. Sure, if you were in a prison colony or possibly had villagers with pitchforks standing behind you, you could eat them, but in other circumstances, probably not. I ate a few chunks and pretended to be enthusiastic but it was a hollow sham, quickly seen through by my children. Now I wish to know, what are they?
I like to think that my fish are happy now, because not only has their decor, which had been sinking steadily since the plant died and the algae eater proved himself not quite up to his task, improved about 110%, but I added new fish. Nothing like new roommates to cheer fish up! Look, the neighborhood has gone downhill! If all else fails they can all now band together and be xenophobic about the newcomers, a bonding experience for all.
In other news, I have begun to harvest some of the freaky mystery Asian vegetables. Remember, on my klonopin fueled trip to the West Coast (I had been waiting all my life to stand on a Pacific beach and exclaim the ocean is on the wrong side! in tones of horror but when it came to it I kind of forgot, plus, it didn't really feel as wrong sideish as it should have) I bought several packets of promisingly weird looking Asian vegetable seeds and brought them home to plant. I was hoping against hope for a sort of Little Shop of Horrors experience in which I get to be that person the villagers come after with the torches and the pitchforks once my army of demonic plants has laid waste the peaceful mountain village of Asheville, but so far everything, with the exception of the eggplants, which firmly refused to grow at all, has been distressingly well behaved.
So I have harvested a few of these. They look and smell a bit like turnips, so I tried chopping, boiling and serving them with butter but the results, frankly, were uninspiring. Sure, if you were in a prison colony or possibly had villagers with pitchforks standing behind you, you could eat them, but in other circumstances, probably not. I ate a few chunks and pretended to be enthusiastic but it was a hollow sham, quickly seen through by my children. Now I wish to know, what are they?
Monday, June 21, 2010
Weekend Update With Bonus Weirdo Anecdote
Today I have been rather frighteningly efficient. I applied for two jobs. I took the dogs for a run in the woods. And I have started my diet seriously, which meant that I had to spend an hour on the computer figuring out how many points are in the modified vichyssoise I made on Saturday night for my poor friend Susan, who is suffering through dental hell. I tell you, figuring out points is not for the weak. For a few moments there I thought it was possible vichyssoise had over 800 points and, actually, so it probably does, if you eat the whole pot. Which I could do right now without blinking, because I am fucking starving. That is okay, though! At least I don't have dental pain! And besides, the hunger is making me dizzy and if you just relax and go with that, you can pretend you're on drugs.
Speaking of drugs, I am mildly curious as to what the guy who sat down at my table at Broadways on Friday night was on. He was extremely strange and, which is embarrassing, I could not at first discern whether he was a) just being weird or b) a performance artist or c) on heavy, serious drugs or d) completely mentally ill. Eventually I came to the conclusion that it was a combination of c and d but I must be slipping, because I used to be able to sort this stuff out a lot faster. He was not unattractive, although not really all that good looking, but, you know, passable. Well, we are all passable, these days, us old Gen Xers, at least in the right light or lack thereof.
"Tell me a joke," he said when he sat down, so I told him my stock joke, the one about the martians and the gas pump and the wraps his dick around him three times and he laughed immoderately. This joke, which I have been telling for almost 30 years simply because it's the one joke that somehow imprinted itself permanently on my brain one day, is not all that funny. Then he made me tell him the punchline four times. That was art, possibly. Then he made a paper airplane, which would have been art and fine except it was a terrible airplane and I have no patience, really, for poor craftsmanship. I admit that my paper airplanes are pretty terrible but in their defense I say chauvinistically that I am a girl and besides, they would totally work if I had a paperclip. Nobody ever has a paperclip, so that's a good safe lie. Then he leaned in to speak to me. Uh oh, I thought, because by this point I was pretty firmly in the highly medicated and crazy as a shithouse rat camp about this guy.
"Your beer is round," he said carefully. "And your tattoos are round."
Hmmm.
"Are you," he asked, leaning in, "Round?"
Well, that's what the diet is supposed to be addressing. At this point, I found something highly important to do on the other side of the bar and he took himself off to enjoy downtown after five and make gnomic utterances at other people. Downtown After Five, this time featuring Drivin' and Cryin', a band I have a soft spot for of old, mostly because of the Kev'n Kinney song Hey Landlord, was pretty good except actually the sound is not at its best from Broadways' roof deck. Usually, the proximity to cheap beer and the distance from the madding crowd more than make up for this but last Friday ended up just being so loud and muddy that Jodi and I finally split and went to Scullys. On Saturday I did various errands and eventually went over to Susan's to sit around and drink beer and give her the aforementioned cold potato soup. Yesterday I did very little except bring in the first harvest from the garden, consisting of three fabulous cucumbers, a whole mess of green beans and two Chinese mystery vegetables that kind of look and smell and taste like turnips or a cross between turnips and jicamas. I boiled them. They were not delicious but I still have hopes, although it's possible that I'm just starving. Or on drugs. Natural, free drugs.
Speaking of drugs, I am mildly curious as to what the guy who sat down at my table at Broadways on Friday night was on. He was extremely strange and, which is embarrassing, I could not at first discern whether he was a) just being weird or b) a performance artist or c) on heavy, serious drugs or d) completely mentally ill. Eventually I came to the conclusion that it was a combination of c and d but I must be slipping, because I used to be able to sort this stuff out a lot faster. He was not unattractive, although not really all that good looking, but, you know, passable. Well, we are all passable, these days, us old Gen Xers, at least in the right light or lack thereof.
"Tell me a joke," he said when he sat down, so I told him my stock joke, the one about the martians and the gas pump and the wraps his dick around him three times and he laughed immoderately. This joke, which I have been telling for almost 30 years simply because it's the one joke that somehow imprinted itself permanently on my brain one day, is not all that funny. Then he made me tell him the punchline four times. That was art, possibly. Then he made a paper airplane, which would have been art and fine except it was a terrible airplane and I have no patience, really, for poor craftsmanship. I admit that my paper airplanes are pretty terrible but in their defense I say chauvinistically that I am a girl and besides, they would totally work if I had a paperclip. Nobody ever has a paperclip, so that's a good safe lie. Then he leaned in to speak to me. Uh oh, I thought, because by this point I was pretty firmly in the highly medicated and crazy as a shithouse rat camp about this guy.
"Your beer is round," he said carefully. "And your tattoos are round."
Hmmm.
"Are you," he asked, leaning in, "Round?"
Well, that's what the diet is supposed to be addressing. At this point, I found something highly important to do on the other side of the bar and he took himself off to enjoy downtown after five and make gnomic utterances at other people. Downtown After Five, this time featuring Drivin' and Cryin', a band I have a soft spot for of old, mostly because of the Kev'n Kinney song Hey Landlord, was pretty good except actually the sound is not at its best from Broadways' roof deck. Usually, the proximity to cheap beer and the distance from the madding crowd more than make up for this but last Friday ended up just being so loud and muddy that Jodi and I finally split and went to Scullys. On Saturday I did various errands and eventually went over to Susan's to sit around and drink beer and give her the aforementioned cold potato soup. Yesterday I did very little except bring in the first harvest from the garden, consisting of three fabulous cucumbers, a whole mess of green beans and two Chinese mystery vegetables that kind of look and smell and taste like turnips or a cross between turnips and jicamas. I boiled them. They were not delicious but I still have hopes, although it's possible that I'm just starving. Or on drugs. Natural, free drugs.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Dieting
So I am on a diet. I am actually not officially on a diet yet - that starts on Monday - I'm sort of on a starter diet. A trial diet. A diet that is condoned by the Watchers of Weight. Not WeightWatchers, mind - I'm too broke - but the Watchers of Weight, who are a group of dark clad ninja like svelte people who come into your house to torment you mercilessly about your giant fatness. Also, they snatch food from your plate and then laugh heartlessly as they eat it themselves. Then they tease you about your fat clothes. Fear them!
Not really, although it would have its serious awesome points. Speaking of points, what really happened is that a friend of my daughters loaned her a weight watchers calculator. We have decided to launch into counting points, as opposed to calories, obsessively and as a result becoming slim and scornful, not to mention better at math, our own selves. The point system is complex. You take the little calculator and you put in first the calories of the food you just ate (if you do it before you eat you will lose a whole lot more weight, but the misery will double, so it's a toss up) and then the fat content and then the fiber. The calculator then hands you back a point value, to wit, hot dogs are 7 points while blueberries are 1. Some things, like tomatoes, are free: they have no points. Alas, when you add toasted bread and bacon and mayonnaise and lettuce to tomatoes, they gain points. This is frustrating, since I only get 27 points a day. 27! They add up faster than you'd think.
Given the existence of points, I am postulating that there must therefore also be negative points. There must be a way, mathematically, to simply confuse the fat away. Presumably it would involve something that was more or less all fiber. What if I ate 3 cups of celery? Would I go into negative points? I need to go into negative points and soon, too. Those 27 points are not enough and besides, I'm getting obsessive. I've been counting blueberries to make sure I'm okay on the points front. There is little more depressing in this life, I find, than counting fucking blueberries.
Now, you do get overflow points and rather a lot of them: 35 a week! That would be awesome except I fully intend to save all mine up for binge drinking. There are only 2 points in a light beer, which means I can have 16 light beers and a PBR (3 points.) After doing that on a Saturday night, I should be sick for at least 3 days, which would further reduce my point intake and again, lead me into the much desired negative point status.
You can see I have thought this through. My brain has already been sharpened by starvation and there is no system I cannot beat. Look out, thin people! I"m coming to join you! Slowly. Oh, so very slowly.
Not really, although it would have its serious awesome points. Speaking of points, what really happened is that a friend of my daughters loaned her a weight watchers calculator. We have decided to launch into counting points, as opposed to calories, obsessively and as a result becoming slim and scornful, not to mention better at math, our own selves. The point system is complex. You take the little calculator and you put in first the calories of the food you just ate (if you do it before you eat you will lose a whole lot more weight, but the misery will double, so it's a toss up) and then the fat content and then the fiber. The calculator then hands you back a point value, to wit, hot dogs are 7 points while blueberries are 1. Some things, like tomatoes, are free: they have no points. Alas, when you add toasted bread and bacon and mayonnaise and lettuce to tomatoes, they gain points. This is frustrating, since I only get 27 points a day. 27! They add up faster than you'd think.
Given the existence of points, I am postulating that there must therefore also be negative points. There must be a way, mathematically, to simply confuse the fat away. Presumably it would involve something that was more or less all fiber. What if I ate 3 cups of celery? Would I go into negative points? I need to go into negative points and soon, too. Those 27 points are not enough and besides, I'm getting obsessive. I've been counting blueberries to make sure I'm okay on the points front. There is little more depressing in this life, I find, than counting fucking blueberries.
Now, you do get overflow points and rather a lot of them: 35 a week! That would be awesome except I fully intend to save all mine up for binge drinking. There are only 2 points in a light beer, which means I can have 16 light beers and a PBR (3 points.) After doing that on a Saturday night, I should be sick for at least 3 days, which would further reduce my point intake and again, lead me into the much desired negative point status.
You can see I have thought this through. My brain has already been sharpened by starvation and there is no system I cannot beat. Look out, thin people! I"m coming to join you! Slowly. Oh, so very slowly.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Thunder Drugs and TMI Boy
Thunder and Drugs
The weather broke, thank the gods, as you probably have noticed if you live here, broke with one of those afternoon thunderstorms that are so amazingly fabulous for everyone but Theo. Poor, miserable, anxiety prone, panicking Theo goes down to Teenage Wasteland and hides under Miles' bed, where the floor is concrete and no bad things other than dirty dishes and towels from last March can befall him. This would be fine on many levels - the house is far calmer with only two dogs instead of three, go figure - except that he gets stuck. It takes me a couple of hours to figure this out and then I have to go lift the bed off him. When stuck, he lies very still and doesn't answer when he's called. This is a problem. If you, like me, are all occasionally slightly paranoid and prone to being kind of introspective - as I am on some evenings - you think "Oh god, what if he's dead? What if he had a heart attack? What will I do if there's a dead dog stuck under Miles' bed? Should I call 911? Probably not. Bad idea right now. Besides, they might laugh at me. What will I do? What if I freak out? What if we all freak out? Would it be appropriate to run wailing down the street? This could be bad - very bad. Very, very bad." and thus, you see, you're kind of afraid to go down there. But you must and then, honestly, lifting the bed off him is a total relief.
I would take him to the vet for doggie downers but given that there's a thunderstorm every single afternoon, he'd almost certainly get all addicted and then I'd either have to check him in to doggie rehab or face the terrible, motel room wrecking, Keith Moon-esque consequences. You never expect your own dog to become a drug addict but damn, turn around and there he is, pawning his milkbones. Post modern life!
That is a very good link. Yes, yes it is.
TMI Boy
There's a convenience store I frequently frequent which is apparently all run by one large, dysfunctional and sitcom worthy family. Actually, wait, pretty much all convenience stores seem to be run by large dysfunctional families and perhaps I should consider obtaining one as a retirement option if my other plans, namely, taking a lot of heroin and waiting tables at Waffle House or opening a biker bar in Marshall, don't pan out.
At this particular store, though, there is one clerk we like to call TMI Boy. TMI Boy is clearly bored to tears by his job and who can blame him? This is why he likes to come up with Wacky Antics which are almost, but not quite, amusing. Well, I'm being unfair. Sometimes they're amusing and sometimes I'm in a goddamn hurry and then, dude, the small dance routine or the pretending to not know what cigarettes are grows old.
Performance art is what TMI Boy is all about. He likes to talk and the subject he likes to discourse upon is himself, which is how I know more about TMI Boy, from the state of his finances (always dire) to that of his step grandfather (really dead this time) than I really, really want to know. Still! I bitch but also, in certain moods, I get a little frisson - a little frisson, mind you. Tiny. Minuscule, actually. Sort of a frissonette. - of excitement as I pull up, wondering just what thrilling thing I will learn from TMI Boy today.
The weather broke, thank the gods, as you probably have noticed if you live here, broke with one of those afternoon thunderstorms that are so amazingly fabulous for everyone but Theo. Poor, miserable, anxiety prone, panicking Theo goes down to Teenage Wasteland and hides under Miles' bed, where the floor is concrete and no bad things other than dirty dishes and towels from last March can befall him. This would be fine on many levels - the house is far calmer with only two dogs instead of three, go figure - except that he gets stuck. It takes me a couple of hours to figure this out and then I have to go lift the bed off him. When stuck, he lies very still and doesn't answer when he's called. This is a problem. If you, like me, are all occasionally slightly paranoid and prone to being kind of introspective - as I am on some evenings - you think "Oh god, what if he's dead? What if he had a heart attack? What will I do if there's a dead dog stuck under Miles' bed? Should I call 911? Probably not. Bad idea right now. Besides, they might laugh at me. What will I do? What if I freak out? What if we all freak out? Would it be appropriate to run wailing down the street? This could be bad - very bad. Very, very bad." and thus, you see, you're kind of afraid to go down there. But you must and then, honestly, lifting the bed off him is a total relief.
I would take him to the vet for doggie downers but given that there's a thunderstorm every single afternoon, he'd almost certainly get all addicted and then I'd either have to check him in to doggie rehab or face the terrible, motel room wrecking, Keith Moon-esque consequences. You never expect your own dog to become a drug addict but damn, turn around and there he is, pawning his milkbones. Post modern life!
That is a very good link. Yes, yes it is.
TMI Boy
There's a convenience store I frequently frequent which is apparently all run by one large, dysfunctional and sitcom worthy family. Actually, wait, pretty much all convenience stores seem to be run by large dysfunctional families and perhaps I should consider obtaining one as a retirement option if my other plans, namely, taking a lot of heroin and waiting tables at Waffle House or opening a biker bar in Marshall, don't pan out.
At this particular store, though, there is one clerk we like to call TMI Boy. TMI Boy is clearly bored to tears by his job and who can blame him? This is why he likes to come up with Wacky Antics which are almost, but not quite, amusing. Well, I'm being unfair. Sometimes they're amusing and sometimes I'm in a goddamn hurry and then, dude, the small dance routine or the pretending to not know what cigarettes are grows old.
Performance art is what TMI Boy is all about. He likes to talk and the subject he likes to discourse upon is himself, which is how I know more about TMI Boy, from the state of his finances (always dire) to that of his step grandfather (really dead this time) than I really, really want to know. Still! I bitch but also, in certain moods, I get a little frisson - a little frisson, mind you. Tiny. Minuscule, actually. Sort of a frissonette. - of excitement as I pull up, wondering just what thrilling thing I will learn from TMI Boy today.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Summer
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.
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.
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.
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