This is going to be just a short announcement, here, to point out that the Woman Who Does Not Travel, the Woman Who Thinks A Trip to the Greenville/Spartanburg Airport is a Pretty Goddamn Big Deal, in other words, me, is flying to San Francisco next week for a couple of days. Jet set! Whoooeee! Holy shit! And assorted other euphemisms, exclamations and general hooting!
Yeah. I don't quite believe it either but I tell you what, sometimes you just gotta get the hell outta Dodge (and by Dodge, I mean Asheville - clever!) and also sometimes, occasionally you (and by you, I mean me) have an awesome relative who has recently moved to said mythical city of San Francisco who will give you a plane ticket. So I am going to San Francisco. I am currently attempting to decide the necessity of the putting of the flowers in the hair, because, like, if it's totally customary and stuff I guess you have to, otherwise, you know, forget it.
I haven't been on a plane since before 9/11 and I wasn't exactly what you'd call a frequent flyer then. This is because I am unearthly deathly terrified of flying but, well, my desire to get out of here for a while has successfully trumped that fear. Also, I'm not giving myself time to think about it, work myself into a frenzy and refuse to go: I'm just going to leave on either Wednesday night or Thursday morning and fly. This is why, after all, god invented drugs and honey, I got a prescription and I know how to use it. Also, they have bloody marys on planes. I can do this. I will do this. And I am going to do this.
I know nothing whatsoever about San Francisco except that everyone seems to like it. I have been to California exactly once before and I was seven, then, so it is possible that both California and I have changed a bit over the intervening years. When I think of San Francisco, first that damn song comes on in the back of my brain and then I get a montage of Rice-A-Roni TV commercials from the 60s playing in the foreground. Oh wait, and those Armistead Maupin novels! I read those! How are the discos doing?
Anyway. We will return you to your regularly scheduled blog sometime this weekend but in the meantime, let me just say, I AM GOING TO FUCKING SAN FRANCISCO, Y'ALL, NEXT WEEK!
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Addiction Therapy
We all know that I have one of them there addictive personalities. I seem to be able to get addicted to almost anything with the exception of gambling, which strikes me as boring. I tried it - I went to Atlantic City and dutifully lost $100 on the slot machines but the gambling still bored me. Now, the decor, the free drinks and the buffets completely got my attention and were not boring at all, but that's another story. I tried Keno, too, when I lived in Maryland, but it was less interesting than lighting five dollar bills on fire and I know this because I did just that at the same bar on the same night I tried Keno. Alas, nobody except me thought it was funny.
However! Let's talk about my two current addictions! One is new and it is this stupid game. Yes. I have gotten addicted - for about the fortieth time in the last ten years - to a variant of Tetris. There has to be a support group out there. Tetris is old. It is antique. In internet years, which are sort of like dog years only faster, it is positively antediluvian and yet I cannot disconnect the Tetris addiction synapse link in my brain that was forged back in the early 90s when I discovered it for the first time. Not only am I playing that Retris game every time I sit down at my computer (which is also kicking my carpal tunnel back into high gear) but I'm playing a realish Tetris game on a handheld thingie in the bathroom. It's evil. It's sick. On the other hand, believe me when I tell you that I can pack a car or a box like nobody else on earth - Tetris is not all bad.
My other newly rediscovered addiction - and, sicko that I am, I have inextricably involved my daughter in this disease - are Janet Evanovitch's Stephanie Plum novels. If you don't know them, these are totally formulaic somewhat funny semi mystery novels about a bail bondsperson in New Jersey named Stephanie Plum, who, with the help of her varied cast of amusing one dimensional supporting characters, has lots o' misadventures. Also, sex and tons of it. I am cringing in shame as I write this, okay, but at the same time I cannot WAIT to get home, because thanks to Mr. K's Used Books, I still have one more Stephanie Plum book toread devour. I bought three on Sunday. Yeah, no, they don't take long to digest. I could not possibly tell you what is so great about these damn books but I was addicted years ago, beat the addiction, forgot about it and then, lo and damnation, discovered that while I wasn't looking, a whole bunch of new books had come out! So I'm reading them and so is Audrey and our conversations now sound like this:
Me: I don't think it's fair that Stephanie gets both Morelli and Ranger.
Audrey: I KNOW! I was just thinking about that. She should totally give one up. You know (dreamily) Ranger is the perfect man.
Me: Do you really think so? I think I might like Morelli better. But I would totally have sex with Ranger.
Audrey: Absolutely. I don't see how she hasn't done it yet! I think he likes her better because she just keeps him dangling.
Me: I KNOW! It's totally infuriating! She should just fuck him and get it over with! What is wrong with her?
Audrey: It's not even like she's all that.
Slight pause.
Me: Um, we do both realize that these are fictional characters, right?
Audrey, unconvincingly: Oh yes, yes, of course.
However! Let's talk about my two current addictions! One is new and it is this stupid game. Yes. I have gotten addicted - for about the fortieth time in the last ten years - to a variant of Tetris. There has to be a support group out there. Tetris is old. It is antique. In internet years, which are sort of like dog years only faster, it is positively antediluvian and yet I cannot disconnect the Tetris addiction synapse link in my brain that was forged back in the early 90s when I discovered it for the first time. Not only am I playing that Retris game every time I sit down at my computer (which is also kicking my carpal tunnel back into high gear) but I'm playing a realish Tetris game on a handheld thingie in the bathroom. It's evil. It's sick. On the other hand, believe me when I tell you that I can pack a car or a box like nobody else on earth - Tetris is not all bad.
My other newly rediscovered addiction - and, sicko that I am, I have inextricably involved my daughter in this disease - are Janet Evanovitch's Stephanie Plum novels. If you don't know them, these are totally formulaic somewhat funny semi mystery novels about a bail bondsperson in New Jersey named Stephanie Plum, who, with the help of her varied cast of amusing one dimensional supporting characters, has lots o' misadventures. Also, sex and tons of it. I am cringing in shame as I write this, okay, but at the same time I cannot WAIT to get home, because thanks to Mr. K's Used Books, I still have one more Stephanie Plum book to
Me: I don't think it's fair that Stephanie gets both Morelli and Ranger.
Audrey: I KNOW! I was just thinking about that. She should totally give one up. You know (dreamily) Ranger is the perfect man.
Me: Do you really think so? I think I might like Morelli better. But I would totally have sex with Ranger.
Audrey: Absolutely. I don't see how she hasn't done it yet! I think he likes her better because she just keeps him dangling.
Me: I KNOW! It's totally infuriating! She should just fuck him and get it over with! What is wrong with her?
Audrey: It's not even like she's all that.
Slight pause.
Me: Um, we do both realize that these are fictional characters, right?
Audrey, unconvincingly: Oh yes, yes, of course.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Giving Yourself Permission
I gave myself permission to get nothing done this weekend. That was surprisingly helpful: I mean, there are lots and lots of weekends where I get absolutely nothing done unless you count sort of noticing how the light moves across the bedroom ceiling in between naps as getting something done, but usually I feel guilty about it. This is much better, since I have no guilt whatsoever at the moment despite the constant humming presence of all the shit I generally feel guilty about: deep, deep levels of house grunge and ballooning waistline and unwalked dogs and troubled children and the death of fish and the general, you know, messy and utterly lacking in perfection state of my life. I addressed nothing this weekend, instead, I drank a lot of coffee, sat around a lot, went to the fish store with my auntie, went out for pizza and beer with my friend Jay and went for a long walk - without the dogs! - at the Arboretum and I feel fine. Well, fineish. It would be finer if I had gnomes or brownies or something to clean the house and walk the dogs and go to the grocery store and, while they're at it, improve the status of my bank account but the damn things refuse to show up no matter how many saucers of milk I leave out.
I hadn't been to the arboretum for a long time. The guy at the gate was really sweet and let me in at a discount because I didn't have enough cash with me - 8 bucks to go the arboretum these days, goddamn, you young whippersnappers with your 8 bucks, I remember when it was free - and I had a great wander through the woods, which were damp and surprisingly still snowy. I took pictures but most of them sucked: the woods are great but they are not photogenic. It's like, there you are with all the trees and the air smells great and there's a creek burbling away and all is good and you take a picture and it is. . . trees. Lot o' trees, there! Wow, sure are some trees! Yeah, well, some of my best friends are trees and I love them but en masse, they don't photograph so good.
After the arboretum I went over to the used bookstore where I had $42.50 worth of credit and I bought, by some miracle, $42.80 worth of cheap paperbacks to devour, including a book about a flock of sheep who solve a murder mystery, which I had to buy, obviously, because, well, how could I not? With numismatic luck like that, perhaps my lottery chances are not nonexistent after all. Right?
I hadn't been to the arboretum for a long time. The guy at the gate was really sweet and let me in at a discount because I didn't have enough cash with me - 8 bucks to go the arboretum these days, goddamn, you young whippersnappers with your 8 bucks, I remember when it was free - and I had a great wander through the woods, which were damp and surprisingly still snowy. I took pictures but most of them sucked: the woods are great but they are not photogenic. It's like, there you are with all the trees and the air smells great and there's a creek burbling away and all is good and you take a picture and it is. . . trees. Lot o' trees, there! Wow, sure are some trees! Yeah, well, some of my best friends are trees and I love them but en masse, they don't photograph so good.
After the arboretum I went over to the used bookstore where I had $42.50 worth of credit and I bought, by some miracle, $42.80 worth of cheap paperbacks to devour, including a book about a flock of sheep who solve a murder mystery, which I had to buy, obviously, because, well, how could I not? With numismatic luck like that, perhaps my lottery chances are not nonexistent after all. Right?
Friday, February 19, 2010
More Random Shit
Somebody just told me to keep my box of rocks and I believe they are correct. See, I have a box of rocks and shells in the garage that I haven't unpacked in the last three moves and it has occurred to me that perhaps I could part with it. But as we all know, I'm a pack rat and the thought of losing my box of rocks makes me breathe funny. That is okay, because I have thought of a use for it. I will carry it around with me and when it is necessary to chide someone for their stupidity I will point at it and say, "Do you know what you are as dumb as? This. This is what you are as dumb as." I see no flaws in this immaculate plan.
I think my fish oil got old and stopped working; either that, or the sheer overwhelming weight of crazy horrible shit that has landed on my head over the course of the last ten days has just overwhelmed it. Tangentially related, another fish in the aquarium has died. My son inquired why we should keep on buying fish, since they just die. I responded by singing - well, mangling, since I don't know any of the words - that horrible song from the Lion King about the Cycle of Life, which would have been way more apropos if I was a) eating my fish and b) king of them. Perhaps I should be melting them into oil rather than throwing them away. Anyway, I need more fish now. You can mail them to me.
I am not watching the Olympics because I don't really have a TV set. That is to say, there are actually two TV sets, old ones, in the house but they're both downstairs in Teenage Wasteland so the teenagers can play video games on them and watch informercials in the wee hours of the morning. I would kind of like to watch the figure skating - all the other sports bore and confuse me and then I start shouting at the TV because I feel they pay too much attention to the Americans, when I would really prefer to use the Olympics as a sort of National Geographic thing and focus on small, strange countries that have one athlete competing in one obscure unheard of sport. This is probably bad for me, and I don't want to see figure skating enough to venture into teenage wasteland, so I am just not watching. It's okay, though, because the internet is gleefully dissecting the figure skating costumes for me and that is pretty damn awesome.
I think my fish oil got old and stopped working; either that, or the sheer overwhelming weight of crazy horrible shit that has landed on my head over the course of the last ten days has just overwhelmed it. Tangentially related, another fish in the aquarium has died. My son inquired why we should keep on buying fish, since they just die. I responded by singing - well, mangling, since I don't know any of the words - that horrible song from the Lion King about the Cycle of Life, which would have been way more apropos if I was a) eating my fish and b) king of them. Perhaps I should be melting them into oil rather than throwing them away. Anyway, I need more fish now. You can mail them to me.
I am not watching the Olympics because I don't really have a TV set. That is to say, there are actually two TV sets, old ones, in the house but they're both downstairs in Teenage Wasteland so the teenagers can play video games on them and watch informercials in the wee hours of the morning. I would kind of like to watch the figure skating - all the other sports bore and confuse me and then I start shouting at the TV because I feel they pay too much attention to the Americans, when I would really prefer to use the Olympics as a sort of National Geographic thing and focus on small, strange countries that have one athlete competing in one obscure unheard of sport. This is probably bad for me, and I don't want to see figure skating enough to venture into teenage wasteland, so I am just not watching. It's okay, though, because the internet is gleefully dissecting the figure skating costumes for me and that is pretty damn awesome.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
4 Paragraphs WIth No Common Thread
1. I make it a rule to not blog about my job (that would be because, uh, I want to keep it) but I must say that in other places where I have worked, if we had had a day like today the entire staff would be leaving at 4:30 for the nearest bar. Which might be the sensible solution.
2. The weather is supposed to improve this weekend. I'm not sure I believe it. I am so cranky and miserable it's difficult to describe - you would think that it was hormonal but I swear to you that it's not. It's fairly simple, actually: I just want to kill everyone and everything I see and then I would like to cry for a week solid and then, to wash down the tears, I could conceivably get behind eating an entire cake or some girl scout cookies, or, hell, some suitably barbecued girl scouts, because I hate puppies, kittens, unicorns and the universe. Sunlight may help. It may not, too.
3. We sucked at Quizzo last week and it's your fault. Yeah, you. You should have shown up and helped out - I don't care if you live in Kuala Lumpur and had a fever of 107 degrees on Monday. It was just me and Audrey and Jay and his son Dustin, which would be awesome except that Jay and I have essentially the same knowledge base, which means we are almost useless as teammates. Dustin shows promise but he is too young and Audrey did her best but what we really needed was a sports person. Also, I was already tired and cranky (and I flubbed the one art question, which made me more tired and homicidally cranky) and the bar was full of weird kids in their early twenties with giant backpacks and facial piercings. That is unusual for Jack of the Wood, which I stopped going to a few years back because, get this, I began to feel that it was a Gerry bar. As in Geriatric, yes, and since I myself seem to qualify as Gerry in some people's minds, let me tell you that Jack had gotten really really Gerry, as in its customer base was being siphoned off the cafeteria at the Givens Estates. I am pleased to see that it has bounced back and there are now people of all ages there, which is the way bars should be, but the backpack people got on my last nerve. I grant you that last Monday Hugh Jackman naked carrying roses and a six pack of Fat Tire would have gotten on my nerves - unless, conceivably, he had an epic grasp on sports minutiae - but still.
4. Speaking of Hugh Jackman! I watched Wolverine: Origin of Species or whatever it was called; an X-Men spinoff movie purporting to explain where Wolverine came from. Hint: he's older than he looks. Extra spoiler: he has a brother (evil, duh) who is probably going to show up again! More unsurprising spoilers: This was not the absolute best movie I have ever seen. Shocking, I know, but it was just not the creme de la creme of cinema, even in the X-men subgroup. Y'all may not know that I am fond of the X-Men, but, actually, I kind of am. I used to read the comic books whenever I came across one, which was more frequently than you might think. Thus I identified with Rogue, because, let's face it, most of the other female X-Men - the X-Women! - are kind of boring in that they're either All Evil All the Time or annoyingly goody two shoes boring, although none of them with the possible exception of the pointless Jean are as incredibly goody two shoes boring as stupid Cyclops Scott with the laser eyes. Anyway, back in the comic books, Rogue's boyfriend was Gambit and, since I am Rogue, more or less (okay kissing me hardly ever leads to an immediate coma - it usually takes another hour or so) I am happy to report that movie Gambit is frickin' gorgeous. Therefore I have told my daughter that she can have Wolverine as long as I get Gambit and we are both happy with this trade.
2. The weather is supposed to improve this weekend. I'm not sure I believe it. I am so cranky and miserable it's difficult to describe - you would think that it was hormonal but I swear to you that it's not. It's fairly simple, actually: I just want to kill everyone and everything I see and then I would like to cry for a week solid and then, to wash down the tears, I could conceivably get behind eating an entire cake or some girl scout cookies, or, hell, some suitably barbecued girl scouts, because I hate puppies, kittens, unicorns and the universe. Sunlight may help. It may not, too.
3. We sucked at Quizzo last week and it's your fault. Yeah, you. You should have shown up and helped out - I don't care if you live in Kuala Lumpur and had a fever of 107 degrees on Monday. It was just me and Audrey and Jay and his son Dustin, which would be awesome except that Jay and I have essentially the same knowledge base, which means we are almost useless as teammates. Dustin shows promise but he is too young and Audrey did her best but what we really needed was a sports person. Also, I was already tired and cranky (and I flubbed the one art question, which made me more tired and homicidally cranky) and the bar was full of weird kids in their early twenties with giant backpacks and facial piercings. That is unusual for Jack of the Wood, which I stopped going to a few years back because, get this, I began to feel that it was a Gerry bar. As in Geriatric, yes, and since I myself seem to qualify as Gerry in some people's minds, let me tell you that Jack had gotten really really Gerry, as in its customer base was being siphoned off the cafeteria at the Givens Estates. I am pleased to see that it has bounced back and there are now people of all ages there, which is the way bars should be, but the backpack people got on my last nerve. I grant you that last Monday Hugh Jackman naked carrying roses and a six pack of Fat Tire would have gotten on my nerves - unless, conceivably, he had an epic grasp on sports minutiae - but still.
4. Speaking of Hugh Jackman! I watched Wolverine: Origin of Species or whatever it was called; an X-Men spinoff movie purporting to explain where Wolverine came from. Hint: he's older than he looks. Extra spoiler: he has a brother (evil, duh) who is probably going to show up again! More unsurprising spoilers: This was not the absolute best movie I have ever seen. Shocking, I know, but it was just not the creme de la creme of cinema, even in the X-men subgroup. Y'all may not know that I am fond of the X-Men, but, actually, I kind of am. I used to read the comic books whenever I came across one, which was more frequently than you might think. Thus I identified with Rogue, because, let's face it, most of the other female X-Men - the X-Women! - are kind of boring in that they're either All Evil All the Time or annoyingly goody two shoes boring, although none of them with the possible exception of the pointless Jean are as incredibly goody two shoes boring as stupid Cyclops Scott with the laser eyes. Anyway, back in the comic books, Rogue's boyfriend was Gambit and, since I am Rogue, more or less (okay kissing me hardly ever leads to an immediate coma - it usually takes another hour or so) I am happy to report that movie Gambit is frickin' gorgeous. Therefore I have told my daughter that she can have Wolverine as long as I get Gambit and we are both happy with this trade.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Weather and More
On Sunday I got to take pictures of something other than snow and dogs in snow and ice and bleak picnic tables in snow. This was kind of amazing, because frankly I had sort of forgotten what a world that's not completely drawn in shades of black and white looked like, particularly after Friday's unscheduled yet extremely annoying small snowstorm. That was the storm (every Friday like clockwork! Aaaargh!) in which we only got 3.5 inches which somehow rendered all the roads unnavigable. I had to leave my car on Haywood Road and I will never tease my brother about having an SUV again - Audrey nearly had to spend the night at work and she never could make it back to West Asheville, taking shelter finally with a Subaru owning friend.
Anyway, that is normal now that we all live in a snowglobe in the Yukon! Onward to the less normal, also known as Sunday. Audrey and I ventured out of the house and checked out the Mardi Gras parade. I have never actually lived anywhere that had a a Mardi Gras parade before - note that I have lived in Asheville for a decade now - and so it was doubly awesome. It was pretty much what I thought a Mardi Gras parade would be like, only with less nudity, which is understandable given that it was a balmy 27 degrees or so and I could hardly look at the dancers in their skimpy outfits, poor things. It was a short parade with the aforementioned dancers, who were great, and drummers and people in wild, colorful costumes that I have no idea what they represent if they do in fact represent anything other than "Hey! Costumes!" I even got some beads. Then we went and drank some beer at the LAB and I talked to a couple of people I haven't seen in some time, so, all good.
Then it snowed again, or, to be precise, it's sort of still snowing a little bit. I know, this is not the kind of snow they have had in Baltimore, which frankly I am a little - not much, but a little - jealous of because it is Real Snow like we had in December. I remember Baltimore in the great snows of 96 and 93 -my house was on TV because I used young Miles' playpen to hold my parking space! That same young Miles stepped off the stoop in his yellow Winnie the Pooh snowsuit and promptly disappeared in a drift! I had to reach over and pick him up by the peak of his yellow Winnie the Pooh head, thwoop! - and it was kind of exciting, as opposed to this endless snow that never amounts to enough to be exciting but is more than anyone can really cope with. It's always cold and the streets are always just icy enough where you don't really feel that going anywhere is justifiable. Ick, in other words, and I am going stir crazy, in other other words and god almighty, I have never before been so ready for some decent weather.
Anyway, that is normal now that we all live in a snowglobe in the Yukon! Onward to the less normal, also known as Sunday. Audrey and I ventured out of the house and checked out the Mardi Gras parade. I have never actually lived anywhere that had a a Mardi Gras parade before - note that I have lived in Asheville for a decade now - and so it was doubly awesome. It was pretty much what I thought a Mardi Gras parade would be like, only with less nudity, which is understandable given that it was a balmy 27 degrees or so and I could hardly look at the dancers in their skimpy outfits, poor things. It was a short parade with the aforementioned dancers, who were great, and drummers and people in wild, colorful costumes that I have no idea what they represent if they do in fact represent anything other than "Hey! Costumes!" I even got some beads. Then we went and drank some beer at the LAB and I talked to a couple of people I haven't seen in some time, so, all good.
Then it snowed again, or, to be precise, it's sort of still snowing a little bit. I know, this is not the kind of snow they have had in Baltimore, which frankly I am a little - not much, but a little - jealous of because it is Real Snow like we had in December. I remember Baltimore in the great snows of 96 and 93 -my house was on TV because I used young Miles' playpen to hold my parking space! That same young Miles stepped off the stoop in his yellow Winnie the Pooh snowsuit and promptly disappeared in a drift! I had to reach over and pick him up by the peak of his yellow Winnie the Pooh head, thwoop! - and it was kind of exciting, as opposed to this endless snow that never amounts to enough to be exciting but is more than anyone can really cope with. It's always cold and the streets are always just icy enough where you don't really feel that going anywhere is justifiable. Ick, in other words, and I am going stir crazy, in other other words and god almighty, I have never before been so ready for some decent weather.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Let Them Eat Bad Cake
Things are getting kind of stressful and bad again around Hangover Headquarters and no, I am not going to blog about it, because it's all just too fucking depressing for words. So I am stressed again! Whoo! That's cool though: it could be worse. Face it, unless you are actively lying face down in a ditch while zombies gnaw off your fingers and your children get eviscerated while your house burns down and your car insurance gets cancelled, plus you have a telemarketer on the phone, it can always be worse. And we are fortunately not in that situation - yet. We do all have a roof over our heads and health and all that good shit and, if we're not super picky, enough to eat. Or, we would have enough to eat if, driven by despair and madness, I hadn't decided to bake this cake last night.
A couple of years ago I decided to make a cake because it sounded weird and I became intrigued with the pure-D bizarre factors of the recipe. That was a Guinness cake and it was truly horrible - turns out that there's a damn good reason people don't generally mix Guinness into chocolate cake batter. Who knew? This cake is similar: it also sounds weird and has pure-D bizarro world ingredients. Rather than Guinness, it has olive oil in it. Olive oil! What's not to like? And fresh rosemary and pepper and, whoa, cheese, plus, naturally, a cup of sugar and a shit ton of lemon zest. Nifty, I thought, this is unique! This is a new thing! So I made it.
And it did make the kitchen smell heavenly for all the hour and forty minutes that I had it cooking because it turns out that the inside of this cake never cooks. No, never. Never cooks. But that's okay because you can eat off the ends and it actually tastes a lot like lemon pound cake. That is awesome and great right up to the point where you come to a disconcerting chunk of fresh rosemary or an even more disconcerting hunk of black pepper or, get this, the creme de la creme of disconcerting: a piece of rubbery burnt parmigiana cheese! That is not what you want to find lurking in your oily, uncooked lemon pound cake! So it was a total cake disaster. Actually, I am kind of glad, because not only did the house smell wonderful and I saved myself a lot of calories but I laughed hysterically for the first time in some days at the cake and, even funnier, the reactions of my children as they tried to eat it. Twisted, probably, but what the hell, I felt better.
I am down enough where I caught myself trying to come up with a mantra as I was running out for lunch today. Audrey told me how during the last but one snow emergency (hey! There's another one on for tonight! Just fucking shoot me now!) as she was driving home she kept thinking "I am a good, careful, competent driver who knows what she is doing and I can do this." I thought this was very clever of her and decided I should try it myself. Therefore, I started thinking to myself, "I can handle this, because I am a smart, competent, talented, attractive woman who . . . is obsessively fondling a dog biscuit in her coat pocket. Yeah, me!"
So the mantra didn't work. It doesn't matter, though, because in an attempt to lighten up the atmosphere a bit, I then read this uplifting and heart warming short story and then this light, delightful article on why things are the way they are. That is how I know that things can always get worse and, hey, probably will! I don't know about you, but as the snow falls again and a lawyer friend of mine says calmly that the local court system is completely and utterly broken beyond repair and real unemployment rises and grocery prices keep right on going up to the sky and the stock market falls and aging takes its inevitable toll, plus, adding insult to injury, it's fucking Valentines Day again, or, as I like to call it, National Make Single People Feel Even More Like Shit Than Usual Day - my least favorite holiday - I find this thought strangely calming.
Note: Those are not really cheerful articles, okay? But they are very good indeed.
A couple of years ago I decided to make a cake because it sounded weird and I became intrigued with the pure-D bizarre factors of the recipe. That was a Guinness cake and it was truly horrible - turns out that there's a damn good reason people don't generally mix Guinness into chocolate cake batter. Who knew? This cake is similar: it also sounds weird and has pure-D bizarro world ingredients. Rather than Guinness, it has olive oil in it. Olive oil! What's not to like? And fresh rosemary and pepper and, whoa, cheese, plus, naturally, a cup of sugar and a shit ton of lemon zest. Nifty, I thought, this is unique! This is a new thing! So I made it.
And it did make the kitchen smell heavenly for all the hour and forty minutes that I had it cooking because it turns out that the inside of this cake never cooks. No, never. Never cooks. But that's okay because you can eat off the ends and it actually tastes a lot like lemon pound cake. That is awesome and great right up to the point where you come to a disconcerting chunk of fresh rosemary or an even more disconcerting hunk of black pepper or, get this, the creme de la creme of disconcerting: a piece of rubbery burnt parmigiana cheese! That is not what you want to find lurking in your oily, uncooked lemon pound cake! So it was a total cake disaster. Actually, I am kind of glad, because not only did the house smell wonderful and I saved myself a lot of calories but I laughed hysterically for the first time in some days at the cake and, even funnier, the reactions of my children as they tried to eat it. Twisted, probably, but what the hell, I felt better.
I am down enough where I caught myself trying to come up with a mantra as I was running out for lunch today. Audrey told me how during the last but one snow emergency (hey! There's another one on for tonight! Just fucking shoot me now!) as she was driving home she kept thinking "I am a good, careful, competent driver who knows what she is doing and I can do this." I thought this was very clever of her and decided I should try it myself. Therefore, I started thinking to myself, "I can handle this, because I am a smart, competent, talented, attractive woman who . . . is obsessively fondling a dog biscuit in her coat pocket. Yeah, me!"
So the mantra didn't work. It doesn't matter, though, because in an attempt to lighten up the atmosphere a bit, I then read this uplifting and heart warming short story and then this light, delightful article on why things are the way they are. That is how I know that things can always get worse and, hey, probably will! I don't know about you, but as the snow falls again and a lawyer friend of mine says calmly that the local court system is completely and utterly broken beyond repair and real unemployment rises and grocery prices keep right on going up to the sky and the stock market falls and aging takes its inevitable toll, plus, adding insult to injury, it's fucking Valentines Day again, or, as I like to call it, National Make Single People Feel Even More Like Shit Than Usual Day - my least favorite holiday - I find this thought strangely calming.
Note: Those are not really cheerful articles, okay? But they are very good indeed.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Yet Again I Fail to Win the Lottery
I am in a lottery pool. Why yes, I am bad at math, why do you ask? It's my very own tax! Yay! I know, but, look, being in a lottery pool makes my chances of winning go from infinitesimal to infinitesimally less infinitesimal, in that we're playing more numbers each week for the same investment. So far, Susan and Jodi and Audrey and Linda and I are the only players, but we are anticipating more buy in soon. Of course, when we eventually win we'll have to split the proceeds, at which point we will all probably go from being the best of friends to bitter enemies overnight, but we'll save that drama to be relished later, when the shouting starts - "No! One yacht is no longer enough! I must have TWO yachts and you? You deserve only half a yacht! Half a yacht for you, you ignorant slut!"
Anyway, we have been in this pool for a month or two now, ever since we were sitting around at Broadways feeling broke and bitter and cold, those three little adjectives that sum up so much of my life. That was when I insisted that Susan begin this lottery pool she had been talking about ever since her third cousin won big with a pool in West Virginia. Frankly, that part worries me, because I feel that if you even know anyone vaguely, like, say, your third cousin's best friend's hairdresser's mother in law, who won the lottery, than, on the lightening never strikes twice theorem, your own chances to win immediately go to nil. I recognize that there may be a flaw in this logic somewhere, but part of me believes it strongly. Whatever, though, I put superstition aside, because I dearly want to win the fucking thing and I'm never going to get around to actually buying the tickets and doing it by myself. No, what happens with me is I buy lottery tickets and forget that I have them, but Susan is organized and she goes off to Gas Up or BJs (terms of the pool dictate spreading our lottery buy out a bit, just as part of the terms of the Great West Asheville BJs vs. Gas Up Peace Treaty of 2006) and gets them twice a week and then even checks the winning numbers and everything. So far we have not matched one number, not one, which seems to me to be a statistical feat in itself that probably deserves a pity prize from the Lottery Commission, but I doubt they share my views.
Therefore, when I saw on Twitter that the Powerball winning ticket was sold in Asheville, I was sure it had to be us. Alack and alas, though, the news soon escaped that that ticket was sold at the Wilco that's practically in Candler and I know that Susan rarely ventures out that way. Neither do I, for that matter, although I think I have been to that Wilco once, but it was several years ago before we even had a lottery. And so it was: yet again we didn't match a single number and somebody in Candler won, making our chances go down even further. But, well, lightening can strike twice and what the hell, the pool continues. I need that lottery win: it's my retirement plan.
In other news, Audrey's cat can apparently dematerialize and rematerialize at will, which is cool; we came in second - by ONE POINT - at Quizzo last night, which is cooler; and over the weekend I cleaned up Teenage Wasteland and hooked up my ancient stereo to giant 1970s speakers, thus making the entire house shake to old, old Genesis, which is coolest.
Anyway, we have been in this pool for a month or two now, ever since we were sitting around at Broadways feeling broke and bitter and cold, those three little adjectives that sum up so much of my life. That was when I insisted that Susan begin this lottery pool she had been talking about ever since her third cousin won big with a pool in West Virginia. Frankly, that part worries me, because I feel that if you even know anyone vaguely, like, say, your third cousin's best friend's hairdresser's mother in law, who won the lottery, than, on the lightening never strikes twice theorem, your own chances to win immediately go to nil. I recognize that there may be a flaw in this logic somewhere, but part of me believes it strongly. Whatever, though, I put superstition aside, because I dearly want to win the fucking thing and I'm never going to get around to actually buying the tickets and doing it by myself. No, what happens with me is I buy lottery tickets and forget that I have them, but Susan is organized and she goes off to Gas Up or BJs (terms of the pool dictate spreading our lottery buy out a bit, just as part of the terms of the Great West Asheville BJs vs. Gas Up Peace Treaty of 2006) and gets them twice a week and then even checks the winning numbers and everything. So far we have not matched one number, not one, which seems to me to be a statistical feat in itself that probably deserves a pity prize from the Lottery Commission, but I doubt they share my views.
Therefore, when I saw on Twitter that the Powerball winning ticket was sold in Asheville, I was sure it had to be us. Alack and alas, though, the news soon escaped that that ticket was sold at the Wilco that's practically in Candler and I know that Susan rarely ventures out that way. Neither do I, for that matter, although I think I have been to that Wilco once, but it was several years ago before we even had a lottery. And so it was: yet again we didn't match a single number and somebody in Candler won, making our chances go down even further. But, well, lightening can strike twice and what the hell, the pool continues. I need that lottery win: it's my retirement plan.
In other news, Audrey's cat can apparently dematerialize and rematerialize at will, which is cool; we came in second - by ONE POINT - at Quizzo last night, which is cooler; and over the weekend I cleaned up Teenage Wasteland and hooked up my ancient stereo to giant 1970s speakers, thus making the entire house shake to old, old Genesis, which is coolest.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Snowpocalypse III: Return of the Yeti
Another day, another snow day, another lifetime's worth of staring blankly out the window at gray rain and white snow, wondering just why you even bother, thinking about whiskey or possibly laudanum, feeling your soul just seep - SEEP! SEEP! - slowly down into a morass of mud and broken dreams. Ha ha! It's funny because it's true! Also, you're out of staples. Or rather I am - not, like, the potatoes and bread and beer kind; those I waited in line at Ingles for an HOUR last night to obtain, but the actual stapley metal kind - and since it takes staples to hold up the garbage bag that is acting in lieu of the more traditional bucket to contain the leak from the porch roof, that is serious and I might have to take off my gnome pajamas and go get some.
However. This is not just another snowed in cabin fever oh my god do you have to chew so loud post! No, it's a Review. I actually got sent something to review. This, I understand, apparently happens to more successful bloggers constantly but being as how they are more, like, successful, they get stuff like diamond necklaces and ferraris and vacations in Bali and then they go off to Bali draped in diamonds to drive ferraris and then they write blog entries that say stuff like "Hey! Ferraris and diamonds and Bali are most excellent! You should try them!" I have long been awaiting my chance at this largesse and finally, because the world is kind and I am wildly successful, what I got sent to review was two tubes of hangover medicine. Go figure! What a crazy stretch!
So. The stuff came in a black plastic tube, about 2 and a half inches long, that says THC on it in large friendly yet urban red letters. As you can imagine, this got my hopes up. Alas, they mean something completely different. It is you see, what is known as a double entendre. How sophisticated! How annoying! Yet I figured that nobody was going to send me actual THC to review - damn it. Anyway, next to the promising letters THC is the standard lurching martini glass and underneath it all it says the hangover cure (notice how they don't use caps, there. That means they're cool and edgy.) and then it says www.drinkTHC.com. The URL, you will note, is to make sure you don't smoke it by mistake. The directions tell you to drink - not smoke! - the contents of one tube in a glass of water after a night of debauchery.
I was waiting for some true debauchery to arrive but there wasn't much around for a while there and then the dogs, naturally, ate one of the tubes. They seem to be okay - nothing much fazes my dogs, after all - but I figured I had better get right on the debauching so I drank several - 5, to be specific, which is really pretty debauched - beers last night. The sacrifices I make! Anything for the review! Then I drank my THC. No, wait, I smoked - wait. Never. Not me. Anyway, I drank the contents of the tube. It smelled suspiciously like Emergen-C, the tropical variety. It tasted exactly like tropical Emergen-C, although possibly sweeter. Our suspicions (Audrey was part of this experiment but since she is not currently debauching due to a middle ear infection and resultant massive antibiotics and painkillers, she was strictly observing only.) were thus suspiciously aroused and we compared the label to a packet of Emergen-C (note to THC people: next time you should probably choose a blogger who is not, like me, an Emergen-C junkie. I drink it every day, sometimes twice a day. I mean, I knows me some Emergen-C.) and lo, what we had here was basically Emergen-C in less eco-friendly packaging.
Well, to be fair, it isn't exactly Emergen-C, it has 3 extra things in it: milk thistle, L-cysteine and L-glucamine. Oh, and slightly more sugar. Milk thistle is supposed to be good for your liver and I'm going on the scientific premise that anything that begins with L- has got to be good for you, so presumably the THC is extra excellent. I had high hopes. However, this morning I had a headache, which, oddly enough, is exactly what would have happened on any given night that I had 5 beers and drank an Emergen-C. I usually do that every night anyway - I don't know if it helps at all, but, like eating hopping john and collards on New Years Day, it is better to be safe about these things than sorry.
Therefore, here is my review of THC - not, you know, the fun kind, which I have previously reviewed, probably. Dude, if the packaging was a little more friendly - black plastic tube with red and white letters is not doing it for me; it's a lot of tube to throw away for a tiny bit of powder - then it might be slightly, oh slightly, better than Emergen-C, but not much. Still, it's not actively bad for you and it is fairly delicious particularly if you mix it with seltzer, so, hey, whatever! I'm sure I could be feeling worse right now if I hadn't drunk it at all. In summation, six thumbs up, four thumbs down and bring on the ferraris, diamonds and trips to Bali or, actually, pretty much anywhere that isn't Asheville and isn't fucking snowing, sleeting or just plain gruesomely winter miserable.
However. This is not just another snowed in cabin fever oh my god do you have to chew so loud post! No, it's a Review. I actually got sent something to review. This, I understand, apparently happens to more successful bloggers constantly but being as how they are more, like, successful, they get stuff like diamond necklaces and ferraris and vacations in Bali and then they go off to Bali draped in diamonds to drive ferraris and then they write blog entries that say stuff like "Hey! Ferraris and diamonds and Bali are most excellent! You should try them!" I have long been awaiting my chance at this largesse and finally, because the world is kind and I am wildly successful, what I got sent to review was two tubes of hangover medicine. Go figure! What a crazy stretch!
So. The stuff came in a black plastic tube, about 2 and a half inches long, that says THC on it in large friendly yet urban red letters. As you can imagine, this got my hopes up. Alas, they mean something completely different. It is you see, what is known as a double entendre. How sophisticated! How annoying! Yet I figured that nobody was going to send me actual THC to review - damn it. Anyway, next to the promising letters THC is the standard lurching martini glass and underneath it all it says the hangover cure (notice how they don't use caps, there. That means they're cool and edgy.) and then it says www.drinkTHC.com. The URL, you will note, is to make sure you don't smoke it by mistake. The directions tell you to drink - not smoke! - the contents of one tube in a glass of water after a night of debauchery.
I was waiting for some true debauchery to arrive but there wasn't much around for a while there and then the dogs, naturally, ate one of the tubes. They seem to be okay - nothing much fazes my dogs, after all - but I figured I had better get right on the debauching so I drank several - 5, to be specific, which is really pretty debauched - beers last night. The sacrifices I make! Anything for the review! Then I drank my THC. No, wait, I smoked - wait. Never. Not me. Anyway, I drank the contents of the tube. It smelled suspiciously like Emergen-C, the tropical variety. It tasted exactly like tropical Emergen-C, although possibly sweeter. Our suspicions (Audrey was part of this experiment but since she is not currently debauching due to a middle ear infection and resultant massive antibiotics and painkillers, she was strictly observing only.) were thus suspiciously aroused and we compared the label to a packet of Emergen-C (note to THC people: next time you should probably choose a blogger who is not, like me, an Emergen-C junkie. I drink it every day, sometimes twice a day. I mean, I knows me some Emergen-C.) and lo, what we had here was basically Emergen-C in less eco-friendly packaging.
Well, to be fair, it isn't exactly Emergen-C, it has 3 extra things in it: milk thistle, L-cysteine and L-glucamine. Oh, and slightly more sugar. Milk thistle is supposed to be good for your liver and I'm going on the scientific premise that anything that begins with L- has got to be good for you, so presumably the THC is extra excellent. I had high hopes. However, this morning I had a headache, which, oddly enough, is exactly what would have happened on any given night that I had 5 beers and drank an Emergen-C. I usually do that every night anyway - I don't know if it helps at all, but, like eating hopping john and collards on New Years Day, it is better to be safe about these things than sorry.
Therefore, here is my review of THC - not, you know, the fun kind, which I have previously reviewed, probably. Dude, if the packaging was a little more friendly - black plastic tube with red and white letters is not doing it for me; it's a lot of tube to throw away for a tiny bit of powder - then it might be slightly, oh slightly, better than Emergen-C, but not much. Still, it's not actively bad for you and it is fairly delicious particularly if you mix it with seltzer, so, hey, whatever! I'm sure I could be feeling worse right now if I hadn't drunk it at all. In summation, six thumbs up, four thumbs down and bring on the ferraris, diamonds and trips to Bali or, actually, pretty much anywhere that isn't Asheville and isn't fucking snowing, sleeting or just plain gruesomely winter miserable.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Ah Cabin Fever
Yesterday I woke up full of energy - that's always alarming. I suited up in many layers and walked with the camera to Izzys, a coffeeshop on Haywood Road about a mile from my house. It was pretty awesome - I forget how delightful walks without the dogs can be. I had a cup of coffee and sat on the porch and smoked a cigarette and decided to bring Annie over some coffee and a bagel, so I did that. Walking down an icy, deserted road balancing a tray of coffees on one hand is fun. No, really, it is, I swear. You sort of feel like the Uber Waitress - the Server God - and Annie, when she came to the door, was properly astonished and delighted when I said, "Did you order some coffee?"
So that was all good and then I walked all the way home, happily jazzed from the coffees and the snow and the exercise and the fact that I didn't hurt myself or the camera when I slipped on Annie's street, which had everything in common with an Olympic skating rink except the Zamboni. I had two more cups of coffee when I got home because by this time I was sort of more coffee than person, a highly entertaining situation and I felt, why stop? Thus I did all the laundry and vacuumed the house and watered and cut back - really cut back. Perhaps cut back too much. - all the houseplants and cleaned up the porch and went to Sam's Club to buy junk food and then I fixed the leak on the porch roof by stapling a couple of gallon sized plastic bags to it (they were full of ice this morning, which was kind of cool in a creepy wow that's a lot of ice man I need a roofer kind of way. Then I vibrated around for a while complaining about how bored I was. Drugs are great, aren't they?
Today has been nowhere near as productive. I only get one day like that a month at the most, so, hey, I feel that getting the computer/guest/Audrey's room into shape, which it is now, after much cursing and heaving of furniture and vacuuming, is enough. I also replaced the gallon zip lock bags with a large stapled trash bag, which is filling up with roof water even now. It strikes me that perhaps this is not an ideal long term solution but that goddamn leak has resisted all Adam's best efforts for over a year now and, short of replacing the whole porch roof which would cost money I do not have, I can't come up with a better solution. Anyway, it looks kind of cool in a fairly terrible way.
All this snow sponsored activity has been great, but, jesus, enough already. Somebody on Twitter said that they didn't realize I lived in Duluth and actually neither did I, assuming that the twitterite meant by this that I should not live in a cold and snowy place, with which sentiment I heartily agree. Of course, it could have just been some kind of random twitter comment that made no sense. One never knows. What is Duluth, anyway? Is it cold there? I'm not really interested enough to google it. I usually say the Yukon, myself, a lovely word that not only summons up images of Yukon Cornelius and Mr. Neutron, but just sounds cold and snowy. Although given our new, improved weather here, perhaps we can all just use Asheville as shorthand for too much snow now.
So that was all good and then I walked all the way home, happily jazzed from the coffees and the snow and the exercise and the fact that I didn't hurt myself or the camera when I slipped on Annie's street, which had everything in common with an Olympic skating rink except the Zamboni. I had two more cups of coffee when I got home because by this time I was sort of more coffee than person, a highly entertaining situation and I felt, why stop? Thus I did all the laundry and vacuumed the house and watered and cut back - really cut back. Perhaps cut back too much. - all the houseplants and cleaned up the porch and went to Sam's Club to buy junk food and then I fixed the leak on the porch roof by stapling a couple of gallon sized plastic bags to it (they were full of ice this morning, which was kind of cool in a creepy wow that's a lot of ice man I need a roofer kind of way. Then I vibrated around for a while complaining about how bored I was. Drugs are great, aren't they?
Today has been nowhere near as productive. I only get one day like that a month at the most, so, hey, I feel that getting the computer/guest/Audrey's room into shape, which it is now, after much cursing and heaving of furniture and vacuuming, is enough. I also replaced the gallon zip lock bags with a large stapled trash bag, which is filling up with roof water even now. It strikes me that perhaps this is not an ideal long term solution but that goddamn leak has resisted all Adam's best efforts for over a year now and, short of replacing the whole porch roof which would cost money I do not have, I can't come up with a better solution. Anyway, it looks kind of cool in a fairly terrible way.
All this snow sponsored activity has been great, but, jesus, enough already. Somebody on Twitter said that they didn't realize I lived in Duluth and actually neither did I, assuming that the twitterite meant by this that I should not live in a cold and snowy place, with which sentiment I heartily agree. Of course, it could have just been some kind of random twitter comment that made no sense. One never knows. What is Duluth, anyway? Is it cold there? I'm not really interested enough to google it. I usually say the Yukon, myself, a lovely word that not only summons up images of Yukon Cornelius and Mr. Neutron, but just sounds cold and snowy. Although given our new, improved weather here, perhaps we can all just use Asheville as shorthand for too much snow now.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Another Day Another Snowstorm
Yesterday we had a slightly smaller but arguably more intense version of December's Snowpocalypse. I'm calling it Snowpocalypse II: The Snowening because, well, I can. It started with a literal whoosh - I mean there was an audible whooshing noise around 3:00, the heavens opened and the snow started coming down fast and hard. It was hard enough that by 4:30 there was an inch and a half on the ground and the roads were terrible, which gave me some Mom-ish pacing time as I worried about both my children being out in it but then Audrey got home and Miles called to say he was safely at his friends' house and then I felt it was okay to start drinking. Then Audrey's friend Celeste called, unable to make it all the way home from downtown, so she came over to be snowed in with us, and we all started merrily downing the beer. By 6 it was apparent that we were either going to have to be responsible adults and accept that we were going to be out of beer soon or put on eight layers of clothes and walk over to BJs for more.
Responsible adulthood has never really been my forte.
It was fun hiking through the wildly falling snow but it was hard work. Audrey's boots have no traction and the three pairs of socks I was wearing inside my thin rubber boots weren't really keeping my toes all that warm, plus it was hard to keep the camera dry. And it's a long hike to BJs when you're slogging through four or five inches of snow. However, we got there, detouring first to the Admiral where there was a small but jolly crowd gathered. I love the Admiral, but lately I do feel as if I'm kind of 20 years too young for the dinner crowd and 20 years too old for the bar crowd, but then I kind of think that may be my central problem with life in general, particularly in Asheville. Last night's crowd definitely skewed to the 20somethings, which makes sense, since most people my age don't bother walking through blizzards to get beer. They should, though.
We got a suitcase full of PBR cans from BJs and went on over to Susan's house, another exciting walk, this time in five or six inches of snow. She made us dinner, which was delicious and there was much hilarity and drinking of beer and then we realized that we must slog on home.
"This is it," I said, "I'm finding a shortcut."
"But it's dark," said my daughter,
"It has to exist," I said firmly, because this has long been a bugaboo of mine. Susan's house is probably about 1/8 of a mile from mine at most as the crow flies but by road it is a long and wearisome uphill hike of 7/10 of a mile. There used to be a road between my house and her house, too, and according to Google maps there still is.
Google maps is wrong.
We tried part of the old road, but it ended up becoming a driveway, blocked by two brand new houses with stockade fences. Audrey fell down, which didn't make her happy but by this time I was determined. We went back to the road, went a few feet and I said, "Look, we can cut through right here." This is a place I have noted before, where just two houses back to back stand between my road and Susan's road.
"No we can't," said Audrey,
"Yes we can, " I said and did just that. The first house was empty, so that was a cakewalk. I sneaked through the snow along the side of the second house. I started to sneak around the front, too, but I looked up and saw a guy sitting right by the front window. So I sneaked up the steep, steep hill to the side of the house, just as quietly as an intoxicated forty something woman in four layers of clothes - it's hard to sneak when you're roughly twice your normal size and you didn't start out small to begin with - and eight inches of snow can sneak while she and her daughter are sort of whisper yelling at each other.
Me: "Come on, it's not hard."
Audrey: "I can not do this. This is illegal and my knee is going to go out and I already fell down."
Celeste: "That guy is going to hear us, shhh."
Me: "Just walk sideways. Here, grab my arm."
Audrey: "I don't want your stupid arm! I'm going to have to crawl through the snow and it's all your fault!"
Me: "Don't be such a wimp."
Audrey: "This is insane."
We made it though and hopefully we didn't destroy anything while we crawled up through somebody's landscaping. Audrey didn't talk to me for a while but eventually she got over it and we were home in no time. Today I feel a bit foolish about my spy escapade but, well, fuck it. All rules are suspended in the snow.
Responsible adulthood has never really been my forte.
It was fun hiking through the wildly falling snow but it was hard work. Audrey's boots have no traction and the three pairs of socks I was wearing inside my thin rubber boots weren't really keeping my toes all that warm, plus it was hard to keep the camera dry. And it's a long hike to BJs when you're slogging through four or five inches of snow. However, we got there, detouring first to the Admiral where there was a small but jolly crowd gathered. I love the Admiral, but lately I do feel as if I'm kind of 20 years too young for the dinner crowd and 20 years too old for the bar crowd, but then I kind of think that may be my central problem with life in general, particularly in Asheville. Last night's crowd definitely skewed to the 20somethings, which makes sense, since most people my age don't bother walking through blizzards to get beer. They should, though.
We got a suitcase full of PBR cans from BJs and went on over to Susan's house, another exciting walk, this time in five or six inches of snow. She made us dinner, which was delicious and there was much hilarity and drinking of beer and then we realized that we must slog on home.
"This is it," I said, "I'm finding a shortcut."
"But it's dark," said my daughter,
"It has to exist," I said firmly, because this has long been a bugaboo of mine. Susan's house is probably about 1/8 of a mile from mine at most as the crow flies but by road it is a long and wearisome uphill hike of 7/10 of a mile. There used to be a road between my house and her house, too, and according to Google maps there still is.
Google maps is wrong.
We tried part of the old road, but it ended up becoming a driveway, blocked by two brand new houses with stockade fences. Audrey fell down, which didn't make her happy but by this time I was determined. We went back to the road, went a few feet and I said, "Look, we can cut through right here." This is a place I have noted before, where just two houses back to back stand between my road and Susan's road.
"No we can't," said Audrey,
"Yes we can, " I said and did just that. The first house was empty, so that was a cakewalk. I sneaked through the snow along the side of the second house. I started to sneak around the front, too, but I looked up and saw a guy sitting right by the front window. So I sneaked up the steep, steep hill to the side of the house, just as quietly as an intoxicated forty something woman in four layers of clothes - it's hard to sneak when you're roughly twice your normal size and you didn't start out small to begin with - and eight inches of snow can sneak while she and her daughter are sort of whisper yelling at each other.
Me: "Come on, it's not hard."
Audrey: "I can not do this. This is illegal and my knee is going to go out and I already fell down."
Celeste: "That guy is going to hear us, shhh."
Me: "Just walk sideways. Here, grab my arm."
Audrey: "I don't want your stupid arm! I'm going to have to crawl through the snow and it's all your fault!"
Me: "Don't be such a wimp."
Audrey: "This is insane."
We made it though and hopefully we didn't destroy anything while we crawled up through somebody's landscaping. Audrey didn't talk to me for a while but eventually she got over it and we were home in no time. Today I feel a bit foolish about my spy escapade but, well, fuck it. All rules are suspended in the snow.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Random Thoughts Friday
1. Why are cab companies always primary colors? Here in Asheville we have Blue Cab and Red Cab and of course in NY they have Yellow Cab, but you never, ever see Purple Cab or Orange Cab or Mauvish Taupe Cab with a Hint of Fuchsia, do you?
2. The coffee was excellent this morning. It's enough to make you believe in the concept of the supernatural: every single morning I make coffee in the dented and dinged Trailmor camping French press my brother gave me for Christmas about eight years ago. I rinse out yesterday's coffee, boil the water, add two Chinese soup spoons worth of my patented coffee mix (half Cafe Bustelo and half whatever fancy French roast is on sale, yeah, it is delicious and Slightly Cheaper, whoo) pour in the water just as it boils to the same level, leave it alone for five or ten minutes and then settle down with my coffee. The routine never changes. Yet, sometimes it tastes like dirt and leaves - and not, like, really good dirt and leaves either - and sometimes, like this morning, it tastes like the ambrosial caffeinated nectar of the coffee gods. It is baffling and the only possible explanation is that there is a small mysterious creature in the coffee pot who occasionally wakes up and decides to grant me good coffee.
3. As you doubtless know by now, the second Snowpocalypse of the winter is almost upon us. It would have been way better if it had started last night, because then I would be at home right now, but, well, as long as it's apocalyptic enough to keep me home on Monday, okay, I'll deal. I guess. Having been through one Snowpocalypse already, I have mixed feelings about this one. Part of me has the usual excited I-am-nine-years-old-and-it-is-going-to-snow-whooooeeee! feeling and part of me has the newly discovered, post Snowpocalypse 09 I-am-over-forty-years-old-and-snow-is-a-royal-fucking-pain-in-the-ass feeling. However, I am prepared. I went to the Mart of Evil last night and got beer, frozen jalapeno poppers and several other useful items and then I went to Mr. K's used books and stocked up on stuff to read. I have at least seven projects in mind to do - realistically, I need a Snowpocalypse that lasts about two weeks to get them all done - and therefore I say, I'm ready, bring it on.
I cannot, however, get my son to believe in it. I remember when storms would threaten when I was a teenager and my parents would get all excited. My dad would turn on the special weather radio - his pride and joy, that thing - and start taping up the windows and filling the bathtubs with water and drinking vodka tonics and bellowing at his children about impending weather related doom and the importance of Being Prepared while my mother started inventorying the freezer and making shopping lists. Meanwhile, me, the teenage daughter, would roll her eyes and get the hell out as soon as possible because, like, they were so annoying, god, and made no sense, god, as if, it's just a stupid storm and it probably wasn't even going to happen anyway and, god, fuck this, I am so going over to my friend's because she has pot and a copy of Houses of the Holy. Oddly enough - can you imagine? - my teenager seems to react in a similar way when I start telling him to stay where he is, it's going to snow, don't drive that car, be careful and make sure you have bottled water, perhaps you should fill the bathtub. Kids. Go figure.
2. The coffee was excellent this morning. It's enough to make you believe in the concept of the supernatural: every single morning I make coffee in the dented and dinged Trailmor camping French press my brother gave me for Christmas about eight years ago. I rinse out yesterday's coffee, boil the water, add two Chinese soup spoons worth of my patented coffee mix (half Cafe Bustelo and half whatever fancy French roast is on sale, yeah, it is delicious and Slightly Cheaper, whoo) pour in the water just as it boils to the same level, leave it alone for five or ten minutes and then settle down with my coffee. The routine never changes. Yet, sometimes it tastes like dirt and leaves - and not, like, really good dirt and leaves either - and sometimes, like this morning, it tastes like the ambrosial caffeinated nectar of the coffee gods. It is baffling and the only possible explanation is that there is a small mysterious creature in the coffee pot who occasionally wakes up and decides to grant me good coffee.
3. As you doubtless know by now, the second Snowpocalypse of the winter is almost upon us. It would have been way better if it had started last night, because then I would be at home right now, but, well, as long as it's apocalyptic enough to keep me home on Monday, okay, I'll deal. I guess. Having been through one Snowpocalypse already, I have mixed feelings about this one. Part of me has the usual excited I-am-nine-years-old-and-it-is-going-to-snow-whooooeeee! feeling and part of me has the newly discovered, post Snowpocalypse 09 I-am-over-forty-years-old-and-snow-is-a-royal-fucking-pain-in-the-ass feeling. However, I am prepared. I went to the Mart of Evil last night and got beer, frozen jalapeno poppers and several other useful items and then I went to Mr. K's used books and stocked up on stuff to read. I have at least seven projects in mind to do - realistically, I need a Snowpocalypse that lasts about two weeks to get them all done - and therefore I say, I'm ready, bring it on.
I cannot, however, get my son to believe in it. I remember when storms would threaten when I was a teenager and my parents would get all excited. My dad would turn on the special weather radio - his pride and joy, that thing - and start taping up the windows and filling the bathtubs with water and drinking vodka tonics and bellowing at his children about impending weather related doom and the importance of Being Prepared while my mother started inventorying the freezer and making shopping lists. Meanwhile, me, the teenage daughter, would roll her eyes and get the hell out as soon as possible because, like, they were so annoying, god, and made no sense, god, as if, it's just a stupid storm and it probably wasn't even going to happen anyway and, god, fuck this, I am so going over to my friend's because she has pot and a copy of Houses of the Holy. Oddly enough - can you imagine? - my teenager seems to react in a similar way when I start telling him to stay where he is, it's going to snow, don't drive that car, be careful and make sure you have bottled water, perhaps you should fill the bathtub. Kids. Go figure.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Quizzicalo
Last night Audrey and I went to Jack of the Wood for Quizzo. I did this last week too, with my friend Jodi who unfortunately was sick this week. Last week Jodi and I came in tied for seventh place, which we felt was quite respectable for a two person team among many, many teams composed of lots of extremely intelligent people who all knew more about Haiti and Switzerland than we did. Last night, our team of, um, nine or eleven I think - Heather and Aric and Zen, briefly, and Kyle and three people who I had never met before but who were all really cool and extremely smart - tied for third place yet somehow I do not feel brilliant. As Audrey and Kyle and I were driving away in the snow I said, "You know, coming in to this we thought we were pretty smart. But now we know that we is dumb as fuck."
And alas, so it is. We know nothing, it turns out, about popular music or sci fi TV shows from the 1950s or the Golden Globes or, well, much of anything. Basically, we were the comic relief, able to contribute answers only to questions about beer festivals in Asheville (and that's just because I was there, okay, proving that alcoholism has its points) and otherwise stumped. Except we is not all that damn dumb: Kyle totally got the shoutout question about who killed Darth Maul and Audrey got the abolitionist senator from Georgia, even though nobody believed her. Me, I got negative space.
The beer was excellent though and we, or at least me, will be doing it every single week for the next six because, goddamnit, I want to win that vacation to Fort Lauderdale, where I have never been. Granted, a team of eleven or thirty six or whatever people winning is going to make the hotel room a bit cramped - although the collective IQ will be breathtaking - but whatever; I want to go where it is warm. Wonderful as the photography has been around Asheville lately, what with the floods giving way to blizzards giving way to ice floes giving way to more floods, I could really see strolling on a beach in bare feet as a creatively interesting opportunity.
In other news, Django has proven yet again that he can get as wet and muddy as any three other dogs, a talent which you would think could be monetized somehow; Audrey is back from Charleston and I am tired. The fish are all still alive although I have not yet replaced the ones who died a while back. I can't remember if I mentioned this, but the fishtank, we thought for a while, was cursed. It seems to be kind of less cursed at the minute but that does not mean that it is not, actually. It could still be The FishTank of Doom, the Haunted FishTank of Lore, in which fish mysteriously die from no apparent causes, secretly murdered by a vengeful and finny ghost, but without a few more gory deaths, the probability seems to be lessening. I didn't, after all, buy the damn thing from one of those funny small fish shops that appear and disappear in the alleys of fog shrouded major cities.
And alas, so it is. We know nothing, it turns out, about popular music or sci fi TV shows from the 1950s or the Golden Globes or, well, much of anything. Basically, we were the comic relief, able to contribute answers only to questions about beer festivals in Asheville (and that's just because I was there, okay, proving that alcoholism has its points) and otherwise stumped. Except we is not all that damn dumb: Kyle totally got the shoutout question about who killed Darth Maul and Audrey got the abolitionist senator from Georgia, even though nobody believed her. Me, I got negative space.
The beer was excellent though and we, or at least me, will be doing it every single week for the next six because, goddamnit, I want to win that vacation to Fort Lauderdale, where I have never been. Granted, a team of eleven or thirty six or whatever people winning is going to make the hotel room a bit cramped - although the collective IQ will be breathtaking - but whatever; I want to go where it is warm. Wonderful as the photography has been around Asheville lately, what with the floods giving way to blizzards giving way to ice floes giving way to more floods, I could really see strolling on a beach in bare feet as a creatively interesting opportunity.
In other news, Django has proven yet again that he can get as wet and muddy as any three other dogs, a talent which you would think could be monetized somehow; Audrey is back from Charleston and I am tired. The fish are all still alive although I have not yet replaced the ones who died a while back. I can't remember if I mentioned this, but the fishtank, we thought for a while, was cursed. It seems to be kind of less cursed at the minute but that does not mean that it is not, actually. It could still be The FishTank of Doom, the Haunted FishTank of Lore, in which fish mysteriously die from no apparent causes, secretly murdered by a vengeful and finny ghost, but without a few more gory deaths, the probability seems to be lessening. I didn't, after all, buy the damn thing from one of those funny small fish shops that appear and disappear in the alleys of fog shrouded major cities.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Nostalgia Fest 2010
I've spent this entire dark rainy day organizing 2007 and 2008, a strange and possibly pointless task. You see, I launched a giant project about a week or so ago when I decided that it kind of sucked not having actual photo albums. For many years I was completely obsessive about my photo albums - I would get film developed and immediately put it in meticulously ordered albums. I have one for every year from about 1990 (I was too busy having fun in the 80s to give a shit about photography) on, right up to the advent of my first digital camera in 2005. That was when I decided it would be okay just to look at pictures on Flickr because, hey, times had changed and who needs hard copies?
Well. It is not okay, really, and I turn out to need hard copies and so I went ahead and made a photo book of 2009, using Snapfish, who I am happy to recommend. I picked pretty much only images with people in them and ignored art (art can take care of itself - people look at photo albums to see themselves, not some dumbass landscape full of mist.) I was planning to do the same for 06, 07 and 08, or, that is, I was planning it until I got to the checkout, where I was greeted with a crash course in fiscal responsibility and so I decided to do it the old fashioned way.
Yes, of course it is really hardly any less expensive to order prints of all the album worthy photos from three whole years, running at around 230 photos per year, and then go buy old fashioned albums from Target, but, well, it was slightly cheaper. Slightly Cheaper! That's my mantra! I had this idea that when the prints came they would be all neatly organized in the same order in which they were uploaded. Ha ha! I am naive! No, what I got was a box of roughly 600 photos all mixed together and so I have had to sort them by year and by month, using a page of thumbnails as a guide and I am here to tell you that that whole process took about 16 straight hours. My eyes are bleary but everything is done except 2008. 2006 is in a pretty album with a cheesy quote on the front; 2007 is in a nice green album, 2009 was all done online and arrived with a classy purple linen cover and 2008 is going to be black.
It's been interesting, going through each year like this. 2006 was not, it turns out, such a bad year. 2007 was completely insane; a roller coaster year of extremes and craziness and loss and passion and madness and at the time, of course, I thought it was terrible. That was before I realized that the worst 2007 had to offer was equivalent to the best days of 2008. I cannot say much kind about 2008 except that it is thankfully well over and it made me appreciate 2009, a year in which not much happened and, most importantly, nobody I love died. 2009 was okay. It was just fine. Nobody died and it turns out that that is really fucking important, possibly the only ultra important metric, when you go to measuring up years.
In other news, Susan and I went to the Riverlink fundraiser Brews Cruise Winter Warmer yesterday afternoon/evening and it was really fun. We had some great beer and some not so great beer and met some cool new people and I braved the food line and got oysters, yay, and lowcountry boil, even more yay in a way, for my trouble. Then we went to LAB, the incredibly trendy cool new place on Lexington which was, yes, trendy and cool, with exciting curvilinear walls and changing colored lights and a betta in a big jar on the bar and, yeah, it was nifty and the beer is good and perhaps I will return someday in the future when I'm more trendalicious. One can always hope.
Well. It is not okay, really, and I turn out to need hard copies and so I went ahead and made a photo book of 2009, using Snapfish, who I am happy to recommend. I picked pretty much only images with people in them and ignored art (art can take care of itself - people look at photo albums to see themselves, not some dumbass landscape full of mist.) I was planning to do the same for 06, 07 and 08, or, that is, I was planning it until I got to the checkout, where I was greeted with a crash course in fiscal responsibility and so I decided to do it the old fashioned way.
Yes, of course it is really hardly any less expensive to order prints of all the album worthy photos from three whole years, running at around 230 photos per year, and then go buy old fashioned albums from Target, but, well, it was slightly cheaper. Slightly Cheaper! That's my mantra! I had this idea that when the prints came they would be all neatly organized in the same order in which they were uploaded. Ha ha! I am naive! No, what I got was a box of roughly 600 photos all mixed together and so I have had to sort them by year and by month, using a page of thumbnails as a guide and I am here to tell you that that whole process took about 16 straight hours. My eyes are bleary but everything is done except 2008. 2006 is in a pretty album with a cheesy quote on the front; 2007 is in a nice green album, 2009 was all done online and arrived with a classy purple linen cover and 2008 is going to be black.
It's been interesting, going through each year like this. 2006 was not, it turns out, such a bad year. 2007 was completely insane; a roller coaster year of extremes and craziness and loss and passion and madness and at the time, of course, I thought it was terrible. That was before I realized that the worst 2007 had to offer was equivalent to the best days of 2008. I cannot say much kind about 2008 except that it is thankfully well over and it made me appreciate 2009, a year in which not much happened and, most importantly, nobody I love died. 2009 was okay. It was just fine. Nobody died and it turns out that that is really fucking important, possibly the only ultra important metric, when you go to measuring up years.
In other news, Susan and I went to the Riverlink fundraiser Brews Cruise Winter Warmer yesterday afternoon/evening and it was really fun. We had some great beer and some not so great beer and met some cool new people and I braved the food line and got oysters, yay, and lowcountry boil, even more yay in a way, for my trouble. Then we went to LAB, the incredibly trendy cool new place on Lexington which was, yes, trendy and cool, with exciting curvilinear walls and changing colored lights and a betta in a big jar on the bar and, yeah, it was nifty and the beer is good and perhaps I will return someday in the future when I'm more trendalicious. One can always hope.
Friday, January 22, 2010
yet another photo of sunrise over the french broad river
Well, here it is Friday evening and I'm at work, where I'm tallying up people who are wandering into the museum in between listening to jazz. It's kind of restful, actually. Tomorrow I'm going to the winter warmer brew fest, which is thoroughly awesome, because I won tickets and so it means free beer, which is one of my very, very favorite things. Also, oysters, another favorite thing.
How did I win tickets? Well. This is mildly embarrassing, but the truth is that I entered by signing up for a profile at the Mountain Express' personals site, which is still in its infancy, so the odds on me being the one to win the tickets were good - I mean, like one out of eight good. Odds I can get behind! And, so, for the price of free beer and oysters, here I am on another dating site. Nobody so far has contacted me - well, to be fair they've only got about eight people on the site - but I have high hopes.
I don't know why the hell I have these hopes, high or low as the case may be, since I've never had any luck at all on dating sites and in the last few years it's only gotten worse. It used to be that I would at least go out on some awkward and unhappy dates or once in a great while meet somebody who was kind of interesting a couple of times, but as my age advances so do my contacts diminish, until finally nobody wants to meet me except a polygamous bisexual transvestite truck driver from Atlanta, who, to be fair, was thoroughly charming and it's probably too bad that I am so narrow minded and square. See, I don't do long distance anymore. I also no longer date people who are more than 15 years older than me - the other demographic who occasionally makes a halfhearted flirtatious gesture my way - because I'm just getting too old for that nonsense.
We'll see. I have this New Years Resolution - I'll give you a hint: I've already done resolutions in other years that had to do with drugs (do more) and rock n' roll (go to more shows) - and there's only eleven months left, here. You see, my involuntary sanctity has grown wearisome: the poverty, chastity and obedience (to the dogs, I think, I can't quite figure that one out otherwise) thing is getting on my nerves. Ergo, dating sites.
While I'm bitching about that, let me add that poverty too is overrated: I'm looking for some freelance work if you know of any. I can write, more or less, and I also know my way around a spreadsheet. I need a bit more income - in the new century, one job is not enough - as well as the occasional date.
How did I win tickets? Well. This is mildly embarrassing, but the truth is that I entered by signing up for a profile at the Mountain Express' personals site, which is still in its infancy, so the odds on me being the one to win the tickets were good - I mean, like one out of eight good. Odds I can get behind! And, so, for the price of free beer and oysters, here I am on another dating site. Nobody so far has contacted me - well, to be fair they've only got about eight people on the site - but I have high hopes.
I don't know why the hell I have these hopes, high or low as the case may be, since I've never had any luck at all on dating sites and in the last few years it's only gotten worse. It used to be that I would at least go out on some awkward and unhappy dates or once in a great while meet somebody who was kind of interesting a couple of times, but as my age advances so do my contacts diminish, until finally nobody wants to meet me except a polygamous bisexual transvestite truck driver from Atlanta, who, to be fair, was thoroughly charming and it's probably too bad that I am so narrow minded and square. See, I don't do long distance anymore. I also no longer date people who are more than 15 years older than me - the other demographic who occasionally makes a halfhearted flirtatious gesture my way - because I'm just getting too old for that nonsense.
We'll see. I have this New Years Resolution - I'll give you a hint: I've already done resolutions in other years that had to do with drugs (do more) and rock n' roll (go to more shows) - and there's only eleven months left, here. You see, my involuntary sanctity has grown wearisome: the poverty, chastity and obedience (to the dogs, I think, I can't quite figure that one out otherwise) thing is getting on my nerves. Ergo, dating sites.
While I'm bitching about that, let me add that poverty too is overrated: I'm looking for some freelance work if you know of any. I can write, more or less, and I also know my way around a spreadsheet. I need a bit more income - in the new century, one job is not enough - as well as the occasional date.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Big Doin's on Riverview Drive Last Night
Last night started out to be a quiet and ordinary night. My demon son was supposed to meet me at home at 6:00 - I got home just in time after acquiring a carton of cigarettes, a case of cheap beer and a giant bag of dog food at Sam's Club, which made me wonder, as I packed it all into the car, just when I had turned completely into a redneck - and of course he did not. Audrey got home around 8:00 and was about to eat dinner while I, in my cozy I-am-not-leaving-the-house uniform of ghastly yoga pants and thermal shirt and one of my dad's old giant flannel shirts, was curled up in the big chair with a bottle of seltzer and a copy of The Borribles. Suddenly there was a huge thump thump BOOM and the power went out.
"What the fuck?" we said and then I said, "Maybe a transformer exploded," but Audrey, quicker to the draw, said,
"That was a car accident. Oh god what if it's Miles?"
This is not something anyone as a parent wants to contemplate. So we grabbed flashlights and took off running up the street, passing downed power lines and other neighbors emitting cries of alarm and found a pickup on its side in a neighbor's front yard, wheels still spinning and, incongruously, a banjo lying nearby, apparently flung from the wreck. One car looks much like another from underneath in the dark and I could not bear to check too closely to see if it was anyone I knew but Audrey is more intrepid and she investigated further. Turns out the pickup had smashed into two cars on its fast and lurching way down the hill (note that there was no screech of brakes before the thump thump BOOM) and then taken out a whole electric pole before flipping into the neighbor's yard, where it handily removed all their landscaping, garden fence and satellite dish before coming to rest on its side.
The neighbors said that two people who had been in the truck apparently kicked out the windshield and disappeared. They were reasoning, I suppose, that they didn't want to be found lying there on the ground with all the liquor bottles that had also spilled out of the cab. Not to mention the banjo. I can't believe they were hale enough to make it out of the truck; it seemed as if they must be badly hurt. All night there were cops with flashlights going through the woods around my house - these are thick and brushy woods, by the way: if the driver got away, he or she definitely has the world's worst case of poison ivy by now - but I don't know if they ever caught them.
It is a fucking miracle that they or someone else - a dogwalker, another driver, a child - was not killed.
Meanwhile, people kept trying to drive up the street, so I went with my flashlight and directed traffic for a while, turning cars around and telling them what had happened. You'd be surprised at how many people don't get that driving right over downed live power lines is not at all a good idea. Then the emergency people showed up: police and firefighters and eventually the power company. The firefighters blocked the road off right at my house with cones and a flashing truck so that for the next two hours being in my house was like being in some strange and terrible disco. It's a good thing we don't have epilepsy; standing outside was strobe city.
Eventually they moved on up the road to block it a little closer to the actual scene. Then the wreckers came and four big power company trucks and Audrey and I and two of our neighbors stood outside and drank beer and talked and continued directing traffic, since people kept right on speeding up the road. I should have known, but I was surprised at just how fast many people were going as they came up my street. I knew in an abstract way that people speed like crazy but getting up close and personal with it last night was quite eye opening. Lady in the old Subaru wagon, I saw you and if I ever see you again I will kick your ass and I am not kidding at all, not one little bit. If I'd gotten your license plate number I would have turned you in already. You nearly killed me and three other people. Do not drive 55 fucking miles an hour on a narrow windy residential street with a speed limit of 25 mph and if you do, for Christ's sake pay attention to the fact that there are people in the middle of the road shouting and waving flashlights at you, not to mention cop cars and ambulances and fire engines and power company trucks, all flashing more lights than a space shuttle launch, about 200 yards ahead.
That was all exciting but then we went inside and played yahtzee and gin rummy by candlelight (I am going to dump every stupid vanilla candle directly in the trash, yes, and get some unscented ones) and it got dull so we went to bed in the dark, dark, quiet, quiet house. Naturally the power came back on around 2 in the morning and with it all the lights and the music and everything so I staggered up and turned everything off and went back to bed, as a consequence of which I am a bit bleary eyed this morning. Bleary eyed or not, though, I have already fired off an email to my city council member friend pleading for speed bumps. Actually, if you are from Asheville, I am going to ask you to do the same. I was against them myself until last night but I have changed my mind in a major way. Seriously, my road is very unsafe and something needs to be done and done fast before somebody does get killed and comic relief notes like the banjo and the liquor bottles are just not funny anymore.
"What the fuck?" we said and then I said, "Maybe a transformer exploded," but Audrey, quicker to the draw, said,
"That was a car accident. Oh god what if it's Miles?"
This is not something anyone as a parent wants to contemplate. So we grabbed flashlights and took off running up the street, passing downed power lines and other neighbors emitting cries of alarm and found a pickup on its side in a neighbor's front yard, wheels still spinning and, incongruously, a banjo lying nearby, apparently flung from the wreck. One car looks much like another from underneath in the dark and I could not bear to check too closely to see if it was anyone I knew but Audrey is more intrepid and she investigated further. Turns out the pickup had smashed into two cars on its fast and lurching way down the hill (note that there was no screech of brakes before the thump thump BOOM) and then taken out a whole electric pole before flipping into the neighbor's yard, where it handily removed all their landscaping, garden fence and satellite dish before coming to rest on its side.
The neighbors said that two people who had been in the truck apparently kicked out the windshield and disappeared. They were reasoning, I suppose, that they didn't want to be found lying there on the ground with all the liquor bottles that had also spilled out of the cab. Not to mention the banjo. I can't believe they were hale enough to make it out of the truck; it seemed as if they must be badly hurt. All night there were cops with flashlights going through the woods around my house - these are thick and brushy woods, by the way: if the driver got away, he or she definitely has the world's worst case of poison ivy by now - but I don't know if they ever caught them.
It is a fucking miracle that they or someone else - a dogwalker, another driver, a child - was not killed.
Meanwhile, people kept trying to drive up the street, so I went with my flashlight and directed traffic for a while, turning cars around and telling them what had happened. You'd be surprised at how many people don't get that driving right over downed live power lines is not at all a good idea. Then the emergency people showed up: police and firefighters and eventually the power company. The firefighters blocked the road off right at my house with cones and a flashing truck so that for the next two hours being in my house was like being in some strange and terrible disco. It's a good thing we don't have epilepsy; standing outside was strobe city.
Eventually they moved on up the road to block it a little closer to the actual scene. Then the wreckers came and four big power company trucks and Audrey and I and two of our neighbors stood outside and drank beer and talked and continued directing traffic, since people kept right on speeding up the road. I should have known, but I was surprised at just how fast many people were going as they came up my street. I knew in an abstract way that people speed like crazy but getting up close and personal with it last night was quite eye opening. Lady in the old Subaru wagon, I saw you and if I ever see you again I will kick your ass and I am not kidding at all, not one little bit. If I'd gotten your license plate number I would have turned you in already. You nearly killed me and three other people. Do not drive 55 fucking miles an hour on a narrow windy residential street with a speed limit of 25 mph and if you do, for Christ's sake pay attention to the fact that there are people in the middle of the road shouting and waving flashlights at you, not to mention cop cars and ambulances and fire engines and power company trucks, all flashing more lights than a space shuttle launch, about 200 yards ahead.
That was all exciting but then we went inside and played yahtzee and gin rummy by candlelight (I am going to dump every stupid vanilla candle directly in the trash, yes, and get some unscented ones) and it got dull so we went to bed in the dark, dark, quiet, quiet house. Naturally the power came back on around 2 in the morning and with it all the lights and the music and everything so I staggered up and turned everything off and went back to bed, as a consequence of which I am a bit bleary eyed this morning. Bleary eyed or not, though, I have already fired off an email to my city council member friend pleading for speed bumps. Actually, if you are from Asheville, I am going to ask you to do the same. I was against them myself until last night but I have changed my mind in a major way. Seriously, my road is very unsafe and something needs to be done and done fast before somebody does get killed and comic relief notes like the banjo and the liquor bottles are just not funny anymore.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Weekend Update News Team
Let us all now give thanks to St. Martin Luther King Jr. for this day off. Here it is 9:45 in the morning and I am not at work, hurrah, no, I am wandering around my house thinking about repotting plants and trying to keep myself from sinking down into the big comfy chair and reading all day, which is what I've been doing all weekend between baking cakes, battling hangovers and coddling my right foot, which, it turns out, has something awful yet common called acute planar fasciitis. You can google that yourself - every time I start looking at the diagrams of feet on the results my foot seizes up and I start to twitch and moan. It's painful as hell and if that wasn't enough, take my word for this: you never, ever, ever want to allow a strange, skinny old foot doctor to shoot steroids directly into the sole of your foot. No. You don't. But it's slowly getting better and today I'm going to clean up the whole house and take the dogs hiking, or at least that's the plan until one of my children thinks up something else that I must do immediately.
Probably that will be giving my son driving practice, a terrifying procedure. He is not actually a bad driver for a beginner but still there is nothing quite like the pure fear experienced by the parents of beginning drivers to get the old adrenaline racing and the heart attack looming ominously. "It doesn't help when you scream!" he says indignantly and of course he's right, it doesn't help, but hey, it's hardwired into the primitive brain: ancient cave mother must scream equally when a sabertooth lands in front of her and when ancient cave son, driving around narrow streets in ancient cave Buick, accelerates over 20 miles per hour.
The weekend was great: Friday evening I went to the Admiral to sit outside and drink beer with Susan, Zen, Helen and Kyle. Let us all now praise St. Martin again for the clement weather in which you can actually sit outside the Admiral and drink beer at least until the sun goes down and the frost tigers come out. Once that happened we went on over to Susan's house to drink more beer with Jodi and Jay. It was probably too much beer, but, whatever, I kept thinking: all I have to do tomorrow is bake a cake. That's it.
And that was all I did on Saturday: bake a cake. A two layer chocolate devil's food cake with mocha whiskey cream cheese icing, so there. Then it was time for the Capricorn birthday party at Annie's, where there was much merriment and we celebrated Annie's and Bill's and Audrey's and Dianna's birthday party with a giant spread of Chinese food, more beer and the aforementioned cake. Capricorns are all about cake. It says so in the astrology books.
Yesterday I did nothing but read and eat cake. I did make it over to the fabric store because I have these plans to make a skirt and, then, gods help me, I went into that big new used book store by River Ridge, where I bought a bunch of books and am immersing myself happily in them. I'm reading a Peter S. Beagle book called Avicenna which I'm not sure whether I've read before - I would have sworn that at some point I had read every single thing he has ever written, probably twice - but if I did I don't remember it and so it is amazing. And I read a book called Thraxas which was hilarious and terrific as well and I read a Megan Lindholm book called The Windsingers as well as finishing up Cecilia Dart-Thornton's book Weatherwitch, which, I'm sorry to say, Cecilia, was not so terrific because, among other things, it's annoying to have struggled through three whole books full of forsooths and lists and ballads only to stumble upon a plot in the last 100 pages of the third book.
However, I do have one piece of real news: I have heat! Heat! Yes! The iBoiler is cranking away and it's a little disconcerting, actually. All winter walking around my house has been like swimming across a lake: there are pockets of warm and pockets of cold. Now, though, it's just all warm everywhere and I don't even really need fuzzy socks. I fear I will grow soft and weak. I probably will grow soft and weak - in fact, I am already soft and weak if we get right down to it - and that should be a fairly awesome and warm process.
Probably that will be giving my son driving practice, a terrifying procedure. He is not actually a bad driver for a beginner but still there is nothing quite like the pure fear experienced by the parents of beginning drivers to get the old adrenaline racing and the heart attack looming ominously. "It doesn't help when you scream!" he says indignantly and of course he's right, it doesn't help, but hey, it's hardwired into the primitive brain: ancient cave mother must scream equally when a sabertooth lands in front of her and when ancient cave son, driving around narrow streets in ancient cave Buick, accelerates over 20 miles per hour.
The weekend was great: Friday evening I went to the Admiral to sit outside and drink beer with Susan, Zen, Helen and Kyle. Let us all now praise St. Martin again for the clement weather in which you can actually sit outside the Admiral and drink beer at least until the sun goes down and the frost tigers come out. Once that happened we went on over to Susan's house to drink more beer with Jodi and Jay. It was probably too much beer, but, whatever, I kept thinking: all I have to do tomorrow is bake a cake. That's it.
And that was all I did on Saturday: bake a cake. A two layer chocolate devil's food cake with mocha whiskey cream cheese icing, so there. Then it was time for the Capricorn birthday party at Annie's, where there was much merriment and we celebrated Annie's and Bill's and Audrey's and Dianna's birthday party with a giant spread of Chinese food, more beer and the aforementioned cake. Capricorns are all about cake. It says so in the astrology books.
Yesterday I did nothing but read and eat cake. I did make it over to the fabric store because I have these plans to make a skirt and, then, gods help me, I went into that big new used book store by River Ridge, where I bought a bunch of books and am immersing myself happily in them. I'm reading a Peter S. Beagle book called Avicenna which I'm not sure whether I've read before - I would have sworn that at some point I had read every single thing he has ever written, probably twice - but if I did I don't remember it and so it is amazing. And I read a book called Thraxas which was hilarious and terrific as well and I read a Megan Lindholm book called The Windsingers as well as finishing up Cecilia Dart-Thornton's book Weatherwitch, which, I'm sorry to say, Cecilia, was not so terrific because, among other things, it's annoying to have struggled through three whole books full of forsooths and lists and ballads only to stumble upon a plot in the last 100 pages of the third book.
However, I do have one piece of real news: I have heat! Heat! Yes! The iBoiler is cranking away and it's a little disconcerting, actually. All winter walking around my house has been like swimming across a lake: there are pockets of warm and pockets of cold. Now, though, it's just all warm everywhere and I don't even really need fuzzy socks. I fear I will grow soft and weak. I probably will grow soft and weak - in fact, I am already soft and weak if we get right down to it - and that should be a fairly awesome and warm process.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
birthday
It is this child's birthday today and she is whoa very old - 27 - which makes me very old as well. We - the daughter, the son and me - went to Zambras and had tapas and a bottle of wine and it was lovely. And Audrey got carded on her 27th birthday and she is flying high on that one as would we all be.
I cannot believe it has been 27 years since I carried that baby with a shock of thick black hair home from the hospital. I wasn't sure why they were letting teenage me leave the hospital with a baby when I knew nothing about babies - my ex husband whispered, "They haven't asked us for any money yet. Do you think we can do this for free? Birth and boogie?" - and yet we made it: here she is and she is wonderful. I am proud and amazed and now that all these years have passed she's my best friend and that too is amazing. And not much has changed: she woke up this morning and complained that Django was between the mattress and the wall and it was more or less the same as when she woke up around age 7 and complained that Andy the cat was on her face: "I opened my eyes and all I could see was fur!"
Well. This parenthood thing. I am the richer for it and, I believe, so is the world. This is my daughter, who works with the kids that most of us never see or know about, who spends her life making sure that children with all kinds of disabilities get a little better every day. I am so proud of her I could burst and today she is 27.
I cannot believe it has been 27 years since I carried that baby with a shock of thick black hair home from the hospital. I wasn't sure why they were letting teenage me leave the hospital with a baby when I knew nothing about babies - my ex husband whispered, "They haven't asked us for any money yet. Do you think we can do this for free? Birth and boogie?" - and yet we made it: here she is and she is wonderful. I am proud and amazed and now that all these years have passed she's my best friend and that too is amazing. And not much has changed: she woke up this morning and complained that Django was between the mattress and the wall and it was more or less the same as when she woke up around age 7 and complained that Andy the cat was on her face: "I opened my eyes and all I could see was fur!"
Well. This parenthood thing. I am the richer for it and, I believe, so is the world. This is my daughter, who works with the kids that most of us never see or know about, who spends her life making sure that children with all kinds of disabilities get a little better every day. I am so proud of her I could burst and today she is 27.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Ice is Beautiful But Really I'm Over It
I managed to take the dogs out for a run at Hominy Creek this morning - the first time since we were all transported to the Arctic. I took a whole bunch of pictures which you can see on Flickr and they are terrific, wonderful, great pictures - of ice. I was sort of squatting on the ice (this was okay, because I was wearing two pairs of overalls and two pairs of socks and a peruvian ski sweater and a coat and a muffler and two hats and a pair of gloves and a pair of mittens, so although it was somewhat difficult to actually, you know, move, I was nonetheless warm) taking these pictures and thinking, as one does at these times, about how great the pictures were going to be and what a compositional goddamn genius I am and stuff like that when suddenly it occurred to me, "What if I become famous for ice pictures? And my ice pictures are world renowned and National Geographic hires me to go around taking more pictures of ice? And they send me to Antarctica and Greenland and Siberia and, I don't know, maybe Maggie Valley? That would SUCK." I considered ditching all the pictures at this point just to keep the fame at bay but I didn't. You have to suffer for your art so here they are, ice pictures, with the first 16 or so on that page from this morning. I'm not going to Greenland, National Geographic. You can beg but forget it, I want to go to Hawaii instead.
Chances are I'm not going to Hawaii any time soon, but I do get out: we are supposed to go to Hendersonville this evening to pick up my son's new car. Yes, we finally agreed on a car. It is super fancy and green and I probably am paying too much money for it but fuck it, it felt safe and easy to drive and I couldn't take another day of car hunting. I didn't even blog about the car that stalled out on me five times in ten minutes and now hopefully I can consign that particular gruesome memory to oblivion. It's a shame you can't specify which memories to keep and which to lose but drugs just never work that way, or at least the ones I take.
However! This is about Hendersonville, not drugs! What a pity! Still. I don't know if we're going to make it because a) it's snowing again, of course, see point 1, above, "We All Live In the Arctic Now" and b) my right foot has decided to be broken. I didn't do anything, I swear, to prompt this decision on the part of my foot; it made the choice all by itself without me even getting the fun of falling down or jumping around but, whatever, it's been getting worse all day and now I'm not even sure I can hobble the three blocks to the bank or my car. I have made an appointment with a doctor for the morning, which is terrifying, since I usually wait until I'm about better to give up and go to the doctor. I did go to the dermatologist week before last for some bumps on my forehead that had gone away; he confirmed that they were, indeed, gone and told me I had very fair skin. "No!" I said, looking shocked. (I didn't, actually, say this but I wanted to.)
I don't go to doctors much and the last (and only) time I went to a podiatrist was in Baltimore about 15 years ago. That podiatrist was located inside a funeral home, which I thought then and think now was a handy location in case something during the course of the removal of my plantar wart went terribly, horribly wrong. This one is apparently located next to the permanent makeup cosmetic surgery clinic, so if the foot prognosis is bad I'll just hop over and get some permanent eyeliner and maybe a face lift to cheer me up.
Chances are I'm not going to Hawaii any time soon, but I do get out: we are supposed to go to Hendersonville this evening to pick up my son's new car. Yes, we finally agreed on a car. It is super fancy and green and I probably am paying too much money for it but fuck it, it felt safe and easy to drive and I couldn't take another day of car hunting. I didn't even blog about the car that stalled out on me five times in ten minutes and now hopefully I can consign that particular gruesome memory to oblivion. It's a shame you can't specify which memories to keep and which to lose but drugs just never work that way, or at least the ones I take.
However! This is about Hendersonville, not drugs! What a pity! Still. I don't know if we're going to make it because a) it's snowing again, of course, see point 1, above, "We All Live In the Arctic Now" and b) my right foot has decided to be broken. I didn't do anything, I swear, to prompt this decision on the part of my foot; it made the choice all by itself without me even getting the fun of falling down or jumping around but, whatever, it's been getting worse all day and now I'm not even sure I can hobble the three blocks to the bank or my car. I have made an appointment with a doctor for the morning, which is terrifying, since I usually wait until I'm about better to give up and go to the doctor. I did go to the dermatologist week before last for some bumps on my forehead that had gone away; he confirmed that they were, indeed, gone and told me I had very fair skin. "No!" I said, looking shocked. (I didn't, actually, say this but I wanted to.)
I don't go to doctors much and the last (and only) time I went to a podiatrist was in Baltimore about 15 years ago. That podiatrist was located inside a funeral home, which I thought then and think now was a handy location in case something during the course of the removal of my plantar wart went terribly, horribly wrong. This one is apparently located next to the permanent makeup cosmetic surgery clinic, so if the foot prognosis is bad I'll just hop over and get some permanent eyeliner and maybe a face lift to cheer me up.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Quick News Bites!
1. Look, the fish are still alive! But the dogs ate the fish food - dogs love fish food; I know this, but I still left it where they could get it. I wonder if I can feed the fish tiny bits of Italian sausage or something until I make it back to the pet store? The fish food, by the way, was excitingly multi colored and all in tiny perfect circles as if somebody had cut it out of huge sheets of fish food with a hand held hole punch, sort of the way I think political prisoners make confetti in dank extraplanetary dungeons. That's why you shouldn't buy confetti, by the way, it's all just too ironic: all those prisoners, the dungeon, the sheets of happy colored paper, the hole punch and the dismal thought of all the parties with confetti that those prisoners just won't be attending, because they never use confetti in extraplanetary prisons, even on the guards' birthdays. Maybe they throw fish food sometimes.
2. Audrey is almost totally all moved out of her house. Yesterday we went over and packed the last stuff (including many of my books) into boxes. There is no heat at her old house and it's difficult to pack boxes while wearing giant fuzzy yeti paw mittens, but all tasks are manageable if you do them with a bloody mary in a Sigg bottle.
3. Annie is 81! I made a chocolate cake on Saturday and took it over there on Sunday for her.
4. The furnace guy came! Hurrah! I wasn't here but fortunately Adam, who is turning the downstairs room into a really snazzy little apartment, first for Audrey and eventually for rent, was, which was handy, since he let them in. The new boiler is here and it is tiny, tiny, tiny. If it was pink, it would look like a Barbie furnace. Barbie dream house needs an expensive Barbie dream condensing boiler! It is literally about 1/3 the size of the old boiler and I'm not sure if that's good or not. I suppose it is good, but when you are spending that much money on something, you kind of want it to be hulking and gigantic. I suppose instead I must settle for it being dauntingly high tech and I guess it is - furnace by Apple. iBoiler! Holds MP3s, annoying ringtones and warms up the house.
5. I also made a really strange coffee cake. It turns out that if you have a recipe for coffee cake that asks for one type of seasonal fresh fruit and it's January when nothing is fresh except possibly raisins so you decide to go ahead and dump a year old bag of frozen mixed fruit into the batter, you may have made a culinary error. What you get is a kind of Martian coffee cake: it's not bad, exactly, it's just very, very strange. It also turns out that there's a reason people hardly ever cook whole grapes and chunks of honeydew melon and that reason is that they become quite unsettling when cooked. Quite.
2. Audrey is almost totally all moved out of her house. Yesterday we went over and packed the last stuff (including many of my books) into boxes. There is no heat at her old house and it's difficult to pack boxes while wearing giant fuzzy yeti paw mittens, but all tasks are manageable if you do them with a bloody mary in a Sigg bottle.
3. Annie is 81! I made a chocolate cake on Saturday and took it over there on Sunday for her.
4. The furnace guy came! Hurrah! I wasn't here but fortunately Adam, who is turning the downstairs room into a really snazzy little apartment, first for Audrey and eventually for rent, was, which was handy, since he let them in. The new boiler is here and it is tiny, tiny, tiny. If it was pink, it would look like a Barbie furnace. Barbie dream house needs an expensive Barbie dream condensing boiler! It is literally about 1/3 the size of the old boiler and I'm not sure if that's good or not. I suppose it is good, but when you are spending that much money on something, you kind of want it to be hulking and gigantic. I suppose instead I must settle for it being dauntingly high tech and I guess it is - furnace by Apple. iBoiler! Holds MP3s, annoying ringtones and warms up the house.
5. I also made a really strange coffee cake. It turns out that if you have a recipe for coffee cake that asks for one type of seasonal fresh fruit and it's January when nothing is fresh except possibly raisins so you decide to go ahead and dump a year old bag of frozen mixed fruit into the batter, you may have made a culinary error. What you get is a kind of Martian coffee cake: it's not bad, exactly, it's just very, very strange. It also turns out that there's a reason people hardly ever cook whole grapes and chunks of honeydew melon and that reason is that they become quite unsettling when cooked. Quite.
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