project 365 #175: grass and tree

project 365 #175: grass and tree
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Yesterday we were supposed to go out to Bat Cave and thence to Lake Lure to take pictures of fat tourists. And we (me and S and puppy Mojo) made it to Bat Cave to visit with our friend D but we didn't make it back down the mountain and into Lake Lure. It was just too nice up there sitting on D's porch drinking beer and talking and being continually buzzed by hummingbirds and watching the dogs play so instead of fat tourists I was forced to take pictures of, like, Nature and shit. Sheesh. It was very relaxing and great and there was even a nice afternoon thunderstorm. Then S & I came back into Asheville where we met C for dinner at the Westville and then went over to his house to admire his garden. I confess, after D's & C's gardens this weekend, I am feeling terrible garden envy and am almost, but not quite, tempted to dig up some of the back forty and see what I can get to grow in this mostly dry almost July. I feel lame only having a few containers of plants and like my Earth Mother cred is all getting ruined.

So everything was nice and mellow and I went to bed at a reasonable hour and all, only to be awakened by the forever damned smoke alarm outside my bedroom at 3:30 this morning. It was really going off, none of that low battery chirping, no, the full throttle wail siren "you are going to die!" mode. I leaped out of bed and got on a kitchen chair and disconnected it and then took the battery out and then spent the next two hours in a state of terrible heightened paranoia whereby I was sure that even though I could smell no smoke whatsoever no matter how hard I strained my nose and also poked it into places where it didn't want to go like the attic crawl space and behind the bookcases just in case, horrors, an electrical outlet had suddenly decided to go berserk and caught randomly on fire, the house was nonetheless on fire and about to kill me and the dogs. Around 5:00 am I decided that if the house had actually been on fire for over two hours I probably would have noticed some change in my environment so I drifted back off to sleep only to wake up again at 9:00 - I am theoretically supposed to be at work at 9:00. I hate Mondays. I hate possessed smoke alarms. The internet tells me that it may have been the humidity that set the damn thing off in which case I guess I am doomed for the rest of the summer.

This has happened to me once before - I had mercifully forgotten the last possessed smoke detector in my life. That was in the bat infested farmhouse in northern Baltimore county where we lived in the late 90s and it also happened in the small hours of the morning not long after we moved in. It was actually worse, though, in that the kids and my boyfriend were all there as well and I believe that M, who was quite small, was frightened and crying and A, who had just started high school, was yelling as she often did and the dog was barking and I'm sure, although I don't remember it, that the cats, of which we had many then, were underfoot. Meanwhile, my boyfriend was wobbling unsteadily on a chair at the top of the stairs trying to disconnect the smoke alarm. Which finally he did, which did not faze the smoke alarm one iota. No, it just kept right on wailing away even though we had pulled the battery out. Then we had to disconnect it from the wall by main force and even then, with no power source whatsoever, it continued to shriek. I remember a conversation between me and said boyfriend about whether we would actually set the house on fire or perhaps electrocute ourselves if we just cut the damn wires with a pair of scissors, goddamnit. I swear to you that this is true. Not only did it never shut up, but then we chucked it far, far out the window towards the woods and you could still hear it chirping distantly which is why I found myself, soon after the sun rose, burying a smoke alarm deep in the earth by the state forest. I felt like a murderer - a very tired murderer who had really pretty much had it up to here with the murdering business.

project 365 #118: loquacious

project 365 #118: loquacious
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

At Pack Place on Sunday - my friend Jason, who is visiting from San Francisco, which is apparently located in an entirely different universe than any of us inhabit. I had long thought as much but he's actually handling the chaos of my house and the vortex of Asheville with admirable aplomb. He got here after days on a Greyhound bus at around 10 am Saturday, at which point we all began drinking vodka and smoking heavily and that, although not the vodka, which we ran out of and had to supplement with PBR, kept us going into Sunday night. I took him for a walk around downtown and did the obligatory tourist thing, or part of it, the part without the waterfalls anyway. It's always kind of cool to see your own city through new eyes and thus I must now push the DILOA exhibit, which is currently on view at the Pack Library downtown and which I personally have not yet seen but intend to tomorrow and in which I have five photos. So go see it. My picture of BJs is up and when I was in there this evening buying Yuengling and Klondike bars (two great tastes, etc.) the BJs guy whose name I can never remember told me that people had already come in to tell him that his picture was up on the wall of the library.

Also. PARTY. Friday. A party to which you will come and leave with much nifty stuff in hand and then I can start packing in earnest.

Project 365 #19: Broadways Evening Two

I went on over to Broadways tonight with my friend J, as is my wont, and it was really a great evening, even though it was a great evening in very odd ways. It was a normal Broadways evening in that I sat there indulging my unrequited crush, which is actually quite pleasant in a kind of Proustian melancholic way and then I got to laugh hysterically with J, which has nothing Proustian whatsoever about it but is great fun and cathartic to boot. Particularly when we realized how totally weird we really both are, and that neither one of us has anything that any normal person might consider as even a faint grasp on reality. Gods, it's good to have friends. And then later, for some odd reason, several people came over and sat down and told us their problems and we attempted to help. I think we need a sign like Lucy's - Psychiatric Help, 5 cents. Or perhaps we could get a profitable business going called Smart Old Chicks. Some of the problems were huge and insurmountable and all we could do was send out good vibes and hope, and some were surmountable but difficult and we could actually give advice, which was nice and felt good. I think we helped a little bit tonight and for the first time in my life I can kind of see the allure of psychology.


I went to the doctor this morning about my knee. It's not broken: I should have just listened to M, who told me firmly that it wasn't broken and I needed just to stay off it. M is often right, as he often reminds me.

The doctor (he seemed nice. It's a terrible personal fault that I look around at a crummy for profit clinic in a borderline neighborhood and then at an older doctor and think, jesus, please tell me that you're not here because you suck so bad. I invented a couple of scenarios whereby a 60-something doctor would be there - besides sucking so bad - like, maybe he went bankrupt for being so altruistic and all and possibly he was married to an evil shrew who took him for all he had and his family cast him out and, well, so on. Not like he's been disbarred or is just imitating a doctor, no, not at all.) Anyway, the older, not particularly involved doctor, moved my knee around a bit and looked at the x-rays (is it because I'm old that they didn't put the lead apron on me for the xrays? Have I passed some kind of terrible Old Woman test now? Used to be they'd put the lead apron on me even if my teeth were getting checked and I swore on a stack of Bibles that there was no baby in my future, and my knee is closer to my (barren, stony) womb than my teeth and nobody asked me a damn thing about babies today. Shit. Just bring on the fucking ice floe, already.) and told me that it wasn't broken. That's good, but on the other hand there may be something else wrong with it and if it isn't better by Tuesday I should go see an orthopedist. Also, they offered me crutches and painkillers, both of which I refused, which is how I got to this paragraph, because as I explained, at Broadways tonight to my friend J: I won't use crutches because I'm no good at them and also they hurt my armpits and make me feel stupid and vulnerable and frankly I'd rather just limp and be in pain, and I won't take prescription drugs because they scare me and make me think I might turn into a weird ass prescription junkie and/or destroy my liver because I am, as we know, a semi unrepentant drinker who prefers to treat broken bones with massive amounts of over the counter ibuprofen and liquor. I am just a medical weirdo, or, I guess, a weirdo period.

Also, I got hit on tonight. I never get hit on and so I don't know how to deal with it so it's a damn good thing J was there because she neatly averted it by telling the guy I had a boyfriend. This guy zeroed in on me and came over and told me he was in looove and bought me a drink and everything. He seemed very nice - I just wasn't interested but I was so utterly flummoxed by having someone hit on me, which never, ever, ever happens, that I just sat there with my mouth hanging open. Which I think he took for a sign of interest.

It was a strange evening all around but lovely for all that. And my knee doesn't hardly hurt at all right now but then a vodka and a bunch of PBRS and yes, goddamnit, I admit it, a half a pack of cigarettes - does make everything feel better.

Bat Cave Garlic

fog countryside
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

I went up to Bat Cave today to visit my friends D & A, and their kids, N the prodigal son & R. It was a gray, misty, rainy day and cold up there on the mountain, where the leaves are just starting to turn. I took my brother, because ever since my brother read this article, he's been obsessed with the idea of becoming an organic gourmet garlic farmer himself, and this idea involved using my backyard as the starter farm. He came over on Friday and looked at my sad excuse for a vegetable garden, which I abandoned to weeds a while back and listened to me explain my vision for the backyard, which involves raised beds which in turn involve a lot of money and an obscene amount of work. "Lot of work," he said dubiously, and I agreed. I don't have that kind of energy for gardening this time of year: I get gardening energy in about March and it begins dwindling in June, only to peter out altogether by August when the weeds get fierce and I never want to see another goddamned green bean again anyway. Garlic, though, must be planted in the fall, thus keeping vampires at bay throughout the wintry months and a good thing too.

Then I bethought myself of my Bat Cave friends, and their large well established garden, so we went on up the mountain today to check it out. Worked like a charm: I am patting myself on the back with the simple joy of the successful matchmaker. Now D & A will have a frequent visitor; my brother B will have somewhere else to go on his motorcycle, and in a few months, we'll all have enough garlic for, well, pretty much anything that requires gigantic amounts of garlic. I knew they would all get along, with visions of garlic millions dancing in their heads, and soon, Bat Cave Garlic will be a reality. A reality with a really great name; I've already got the logo designed in my head.

The Five Hour Haircut, or, Other Tales of Slightly Surreal Weekend

Yesterday, I got my hair cut. Well, let's put that another way: I got my hair FIXED, which involved highlights, lowlights, trimming, consultations, a spell under a rotating space age dryer thingie and FIVE HOURS of work by several dedicated professionals. Also the going price for a small condo in Manhattan, but we won't go into that because, you know, who needs to buy heating oil or food when she is beautiful? The reasoning behind this extravaganza was that it will allow my hair to grow out into it's long neglected natural color (tactfully referred to as "dark blonde with some red" or, more accurately, brown) and let the gray go ahead and do it's thing, thus enabling me to, gulp, "age gracefully" without too much awful trauma in there and meanwhile maintaining a glamourous yet professional appearance. One hopes. Sheesh. The upshot of all this was that I sat for a long long time (do you know how long, boys and girls? Yes, that's right! FIVE hours!) in front of a mirror. I don't think I've ever contemplated my own visage for so long, not even when I was in the throes of adolescent zits and melancholy. It's hard to look at yourself for a protracted period of time when you're as old as I am: you keep hearing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald playing in the background. Either that, or, if you share with me the tragic glory that is the Celtic heritage, you realize that you're starting to look like an early documentary photograph of some fun event like the potato famine or a weeping mother from the Gangs of New York era. I look like I should be clutching my worldly goods on a cart while the British beat my family with sticks and let the cattle graze over my cottage. Yes, my cheekbones are getting more Irish by the moment, as are my giant eyebrows and, thanks Dad, sideburns. Ah the joy that is sideburns. The hairdresser was sympathetic but firm: there's nothing you can do except put pomade on them and hope for the best. Prayer, perhaps. To St. Brigid of the bushy eyebrows and gray sideburns that make us Irish women of a certain age so resemble muppets.

I reeled out into the daylight to discover that I had fabulous hair and a whole bunch of guests from Baltimore waiting impatiently for me at home. There were people here I hadn't seen for many many years; one in particular since she was seven, and now she's thirteen and looks like a particularly stunning twenty two. I commiserated with her mother. All these young teenage children seem to have more self possession, maturity, good looks and fashion sense than I ever have had or ever will, and I include my own son in this daunting category, even if he does spend hours standing in front of the open refrigerator door whining about the lack of food therein. So we all went off to the Brew N' View, which, as I have mentioned I think about a thousand times, is where I always take out of towners. We let the kids pick the table, which meant that we sat next to the Dance Dance Revolution machine, which is why there are approximately a thousand blurry photos of the Dance Dance Revolution machine on my Flickr photostream. Including MOI, since I got up there and, I thought, did not too badly for being a)elderly, b) somewhat intoxicated, c) fat and d) unable to read instructions in Japanese. I got up to Level 2 and the other adults thought that was great but the kids shook their heads pityingly and gently escorted me back to my seat. I'll probably die of some mysterious disease now anyway: I was barefoot at Asheville Pizza. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

It was great to see everyone if somewhat disconcerting to discover that they were not, after all, frozen in time six years ago but have kept right on growing up. A & her boyfriend and I drove up to Bat Cave this morning with muffins for the crew and then slowly made our way home through the apple corridor that is 64, stopping to ooh and ahh over chainsaw bears, a chainsaw wizard and even a remarkably wonderful chainsaw rhinocerous. Yes, a rhinocerous, a beautiful carved thing who was light years better than your usual run of the mill chainsaw bears, raccoons holding signs that say Howdy, and, inexplicably, a life size chainsaw cowboy with two guns drawn. Alas I had forgotten my camera. We bought dusty apples from a creepy old farmstand that had decaying possum and raccoon hides stapled all over it (turns out old WNC hasn't completely disappeared just yet) and somewhat nicer apples from a bright and shiny farmstand that apparently laces their cider with sugar. It's been a nice weekend. And I look fabulous. Right? Right?

Apologies and the Traffic Report

It has come to my (admittedly fleeting) attention that I haven't been a very good friend lately. Many emails have gone unanswered; many phone messages have gone unlistenedto and worst of all, I totally forgot to go to a birthday celebration on Sunday night. So, friends, I'm sorry and I suck. Don't worry, it's not just you: I'm also busily being a bad daughter, bad sister and bad dog owner. I am, however, being a really goddamn good museum employee and also, I think I might be being a good parent, but it's difficult to tell, because my children are pretty much never home. When they are, though, I'm doing a lot of shouting from the kitchen about things like homework and responsibility and duty and good citizenship and, naturally, the dishes, and while it's just vaguely possible that they aren't listening to me, deeply absorbed as they are in such vital occupations as World of Warcraft and watching Fun with Dick and Jane, still, according to the 1952 Dr. Spock, quantity shouting = quality parenting. Things will shake down soon and perhaps I can resume what tattered remnants of my family and social life remain. At least I hope so.

Either that or I'll die of being too busy and in that case I want whatever eventual mythical inheritances are coming my way to go to my kids, because I saw some street kids walking depressedly from the Rescue Mission towards the park, and it put me in a tizzy of worrying about my children, who may yet wake up one day and discover that achieving Level 40 and the resultant fire breathing horse in World of Warcraft does not a useful job resume make. Then I thought about how I had nothing to leave them if I fell over and just died, as sometimes seems likely, particularly in heavy traffic on the Smoky Park Highway Bridge (which bounces alarmingly when you're sitting there at the red light) and I nearly sobbed at the thought of the two poor waifs with noone to buy their frozen junk food or wash their dishes or hear their sadness over the clothes that they must have that their evil parent will not buy. That proceeded into a small Shakespearian frenzy over who would be more likely to kill me for some mythical inheritance: my brothers or my kids? Ah, the time honored question that all mad tyrants are prone to - it is a poser.

I have come to the conclusion, by the way, that there is no good way to leave downtown Asheville at 5:00. No matter which way you go, you will sit there in hot traffic, trying to take blog notes and discovering that stopping and then going 10 feet and then stopping again in a standard shift car is really, and I do mean really, not conducive to taking blog notes. Or much of anything else, really, except wondering what the hell Ms. S.D.A. means on the vanity license plate on the white minivan in front of you and hoping that the rapture comes within the next four minutes. When the rapture comes, the traffic will improve. In the meantime, it's probably better to go have a beer at 5:00 than try to go home.

A Trip to Bat Cave

So my friend D is happily ensconced in her incredibly beautiful new house perched snugly at the top of a mountain in Bat Cave and S and N and I drove up there yesterday to visit her. On the way back we stopped to take pictures of kudzu and cows, since there were plenty of both, although not, sadly, in combination. We rejected some brown and black cows as being not photogenic enough, but these spotted cows are perfectly glamourous and in fact enough to make a Barbizon painter turn faint and green with envy. Kudzu always looks like monsters to me; as if the monsters had been ambling along through the valleys and suddenly been caught up by the vines and stuck there, helpless in a sea of green. Either monsters or fairy tale castles, vistas from another world: things we wouldn't know were there at all until the kudzu captured them for a summer.

D's house is spectacular. It's posh without being ostentatious, homey without being shabby - it reconciles all those good things effortlessly and even has a tiny, wonderful guesthouse and a vegetable garden which the previous owners left fully running along complete with mountains of tomatos and squash and greasy beans. There's a big open field above her and a tiny creek running alongside and woods all around; a dirt road, a patch of lawn and really, what more do you need? I was overcome with jealousy but only briefly; I did my country living time in Maryland and while I enjoyed it, I don't want to go back. I like living near the city, on a bus line, close enough where I can get downtown in a heartbeat and yet still have my big garden. I need people around me or I start to get way too introverted; it doesn't take much for me to forget how to talk to people (shut UP. You should see me when I've actually been alone for days and days and you could tell the difference then.) and get really strange.

Granted my garden is not as good as D's, but then clearly I am much lazier than the people who used to own D's house. I'm great in the spring, but by the time July rolls around I've kind of lost interest, and by August I really can't be bothered. Oh well, you can't change your nature, and mine is just suited to the city, I think, But I'm delighted D is here, with her parrot and guinea pigs and bunnies (the female bunny lives in a big pen with 3 or 4 male guinea pigs who are constantly humping her; she takes it with equanimity and D says so far there have been no hideous mutant guinea rabbits resulting) her salamander and cat and little dog Cookie. I have full intentions of spending a lot of time out there in the country now myself, now that she's here and I can go anytime I please, oh yeah.

Hi, We're From The Internet

It was the internet meetup to end all internet meetups, the ne plus ultra, the supreme, the compleat, the absolute coollest: Bunnystock. Eight people from the internets get together for an Asheville weekend: it was wild and tremendous fun. I'm exhausted today. I had all these plans and things I had to do today - did any of them get done? Hell no. I've just been sitting here obsessively looking at my photos and eating Utz crab chips which the mid Atlantic contingent kindly brought me.

It's funny getting together in Real Life with people you only know online, but not as funny as non internet people think it is. They feel like old friends; there's not much shyness; it's not at all like meeting strangers, because, well, they aren't strangers. They're friends of mine, people I know - from the internet, which to me is pretty much the same thing as knowing them from work, or a class, or wherever it is that you meet your friends. Still, it's a bit odd in the greater social context, and we were all aware of that. So we made a lot of obligatory axe murderer jokes: "Everyone get their issued axe? This is the axe murderer's convention!" and we told waitresses that we were From the Internet, which went over much better than we kind of thought it would. The stigma that used to attach to online socializing seems to be thankfully disappearing.

And now I'm going to bed. Good night!