LaurieWrites

Lists ahoy

I had put this whole post together, painstakingly I tell you - mostly photos summarizing February, for Leap Day because why wouldn't I post on Leap Day given that the next time it rolls around I could be in a world without blogs, having forever missed the opportunity to post on February 20-effing-9th. And after all this painstakingness, FUCKING (sorry. Only word that fits.) Firefox shut down and ate it. Firefox was all, "Suck it, mama. You're mama's so ugly in your town it's not Halloween, it's YourMamaWeen."

I heard that last week and I laughed for minutes. It's so dumb and yet so enjoyable.

Anyway, if I'd had tears in me at that point of the post explosion I would have cried. I did not, however.

I was blowing off all manner of academic and paid and "paid in clips" assignments to write the post, because February was such an incredibly hectic and photo-filled month in which I posted very little of consequence, as it turned out, and I wanted the pictures to tell the story, at least for my sake. I might try it again but it's a little late at this point.

So here I am. It's March 3. I leave for VIETNAM IN TEN DAYS, oh saints preserve us oh my LORD. I am so not even ready, but given that I've not been ready for even a trip out the door until it actually happens for my whole entire life, this really isn't that much of a newsflash. As much as it makes my life a daring adventure or nothing (or in my case a severely disturbed MadLib) it will not do on this trip. It's one thing when I'm heading across the county and forget my phone or my phone CHARGER or the particular battery for the particular camera that I need for whatever I'm headed out to do (this happens to me, without fail, because I am an idiot stick attention deficit moron. But otherwise I love me.) End up in Vietnam without my right camera battery or charger? I'd lay down in a rice paddy - they grow in the city proper in Hanoi, amazingly enough - and weep.

My story partner is a 19 year old guy who walked across Taiwan last summer and made a documentary about it, probably at the same time that I was prone on the beach sucking down Coronas and taking pictures of my toes. He's got the right amount of youthful idealism to balance me out, and we're getting along fine. Although when he suggested camping, as in "hey it'd be cool to camp on the road to HaLong Bay when we're out covering our story," I got a little peaked. I do not camp at home, just because I never have. I haven't ever. My family didn't and I never really hung out with people who did. I generally enjoy the experience of sleeping indoors, I have to say. I sleep out on the deck at the beach in the summer because the sound of waves, to me, is magic, but then I'm on a deck chair and not the ground.

When Jeff suggested it I was like, hmm. Camping. Vietnamese camping, in unknown territory. Um, okay. I guess if you're going to start, it doesn't really matter where, and now that I'm ripping open the super value meal of my life with my teeth I may as well take it to the wall. I was telling a friend this and she said, "'Camp' is a four-letter word in my world, sister." I guess we'll see how it all plays out.

We're assigned to the industrial corridor story, which will indeed have us heading out to Halong Bay, a beautiful place that's on the Gulf of Tonkin between Vietnam and China. I'll be able to pretend to see CHINA, people, and it'll actually be a body of water away. How cool is that? The bay is a United Nations World Heritage site that was apparently in the running when they redrafted the wonders of the world a couple of years back, although apparently it didn't win.

Anyway, the highway winds out of Hanoi to Halong Bay about three hours east, and our story covers what the industrial growth along this corridor is doing to the area, including the environment. We're going to drive out there the day or so after we get to Vietnam, and it turns out that you can spend the night on junks in the bay. Junks, like in the Little River Band song! And like in Lancelot Link!

My cultural immersion should go swimmingly. Please understand me when I say that I have no idea where I'm going. I have no earthly comprehension of it and I love that.

Posting may be weird again this month, but as I get myself together for this trip I'm going to try to get in the game with NaBloPoMo, mostly because I love the Lists theme for March and my brain could use a daily organization exercise. I've been making a lot of weird lists about music lately, so maybe I'll go with a theme within a theme? I don't know.

Oh, and about the design. Yeah. I had the new black one up, and I kind of liked it, until I talked to my friend Annett who actually reads this page on a regular basis and tells me nice and completely unwarranted things about the way I do go on about my LIFE and mySELF and blahblahblah. Annett is one of the greatest people I know and not just for that reason, I swear. It's because I swear I always laugh with her - as in always always. We make each other laugh. A lot of people do not make me laugh, at least not for the right reasons. When they do I follow them around until they get used to me and agree to be my friend. That's the deal here. So when I called Annett said, "Oh, hi, it's my GOTH FRIEND! I was going to call you and see what was wrong." She kids, she kids, but then when I said that I liked the embossed leaves at the top, she said, "Ghosts! They looked like ghosts!"

So you know, I went all perky with the butterflies, which I can stand because of those moody swirly things and a shade of warm red that makes me really happy. So there you go. Enjoy the warm fuzzy while it lasts. Soon I'll be back to my usual anger with a side of Diet Coke that makes me such a joy to be around.

I'm such a liar. ;)   

You don't really care for music do you

I've been crying off and on for two days. I don't really know what happened, and it hasn't happened in so long that I'm really not pleased. I mean I know my hair is all fucked up and needs help, but really. Just driving down the road to go shopping the other day I was all tweaky about a variety of things and started to feel very weird and bad and self-edit my thoughts and feelings as I am prone to doing so athletically lately. And a frighteningly intense and very specific memory of a neck and a lap popped into my head from out of absolutely nowhere and my heart broke in half over something totally useless and very ancient, and I started crying and crying, I guess because it was so visceral? And then I told myself I was a jerk for crying, which didn't make me stop crying at all, much like when assholes hit their kids and then yell at them to stop crying about it because they'll give them something to cry about, which you ALREADY DID YOU ASSHOLE. My brain is an abusive parent. Great.

All I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. It seems like maybe I ought to have a little bit more to show at this point, but that's a flimsy point to prove.

My dear friend and I discussed it and yes, it is a combination of birthday and holiday blues, a comedown from the concentrated variety of stresses from the past few months and the usual stuff that I can't explain to anyone, really. School was good but it was just...a lot - and it's something no one can really understand because they didn't live it. I get some reactions like "Oh, wow, why are you so busy?" because really it's not like I've gone to basic training or something that seems like it would be that difficult. Still, it was the most intense, demanding thing I've done in a very long time, if ever. This is especially because I just brought it, for lack of a better term, and worked really hard in a compressed period of time to do better than mediocre work, because mediocrity in this case just seems like such a waste and besides I really really hate it as a matter of principle.

Last night there was a meltdown involving differing family expectations (oh please, save us all from those) that triggered another attack of something horrible, and holy mother of God there resulted some deep, pathetic sobbing that hasn't been seen in years and demands that Christmas be cancelled. I seriously stated that I wasn't participating and would like it cancelled, a request that was completely ignored, of course, because no one plays along when I really need them to these days.

Then there's everyone linking to this video which just flattened me completely, and isn't December difficult enough already? (I can't even explain the sobbing), and then...

Then. I'm reading this book. It's called "Love is a Mix Tape", by Rob Sheffield, who writes for Rolling Stone. Rob's wife Renee died almost 10 years ago, suddenly at 31 from a pulmonary embolism. He's moved on to New York after trudging through years of grief in Charlottesville and is now remarried, but this book is an elegy to a woman who loved music and him and with whom he loved music. It is a jewel of a book that I've been waiting to come out in paperback for almost a year, although now I wish I'd gotten it over with and bought it with a coupon in hardcover just to support a book like this.

Shortly after the car breakdown the other day this book made me cry in the passport office, just the sheer emotion, beauty and humor with which he writes about her. I felt lonely for him at the time and co-opted my own lonely place when reading about it, which wasn't much of a stretch. I feel really pissed off that Renee died and that I didn't know Renee and that I don't hang out with more people like Renee. I also think I started feeling somewhere around, oh, the second chapter like no one would ever love me like this again, and quite possibly how maybe they never have, and how sad that was because what's all the fuss about over other things that don't matter at all? THEY DO NOT MATTER AT ALL and we spend so much time on them at the expense of the important things. So when I hit the part that really touched me in the passport office I really wanted to scream really loud, but I tried to act all normal sitting on my hard black plastic chair, like the tears were just a natural response to being in a public agency, which really isn't so far from the truth.

Rob is killing me softly. It was just too much, with the words and music and the way he expresses himself about love and grief and coping with kindness after someone dies or really even at all. First of all, the book is set up in a way that couldn't miss (for me), since every chapter starts with a mix tape list and includes an explanation of how that tape or those songs worked together. Specifically, also the mixes relate to him and Renee in some way, too, which is fascinating to read, especially because in the 90s I was into similar music and have a similar relationship with the culture on a grassroots level that he and Renee had - not that I've dj'd at an indie station like they did, but I've stood on the sidelines of that kind of life and have much the same mindset where it's concerned, where you personalize your relationships with the artists and the tunes so they really are your constant soundtrack whether you realize it or not. I also tend to run in smaller circles of people who get it, although that's something I've gotten away from in recent years. So anyway, I enjoyed his reflections on the music so much.

See, I wanted to date this guy not too long ago. It seemed like a distinct possibility which is pretty cool in and of itself given my complete lack of attachment to anyone for years and an accompanying terror of  interest in putting myself out there again, because it generally becomes such a terrible experience for whatever reason in the long run that I trust nothing where this kind of potential relationship is concerned at this point, especially myself. I love what Rob says about "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Uh no. If it doesn't kill you, it just maims you and leaves you for dead, generally speaking. It's kind of funny when you read it, actually, but you have to have an appreciation for the darkness along wit the light.

Anyway, I knew something was wrong with the situation although a lot of it seemed like it was really right, because this guy is great. So great. And in an alternative universe it could have been fabulous (Alternative. Could have been.) He just - and this sounds so bad and like it really shouldn't matter so much - doesn't get music, not at all, and that seems to have an impact on complementary world views. I don't care that he doesn't play it, and in fact, do you play an instrument? GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME, because you will scorch the very earth I stand on and leave me for dead, you rogue harmonica or whatever player. I mean, not really, but really. But not really. I'm a bit ambivalent about the whole thing at this point. Maybe that's just the price I'll pay, I don't know, and I'll always be that person, "she fell in love with the drummer, another and another."

It doesn't really matter, I just didn't understand this person who is not moved by music in general, who considers it "background noise" and doesn't think to turn it on. I lived with a person like that once, who was pretending to be my boyfriend at the time because he couldn't stand to be without a woman in his domestic situation and he foolishly believed that I was the type to be a placeholder. He listened to radio talk shows and got pissed when I put actual music on. I "took him" to his first concert at the age of 27, and although it was kind of sweet and mildly fun, it just didn't work. If you're 7, I'll dig taking you to your first concert. At 27 it just didn't work. Maybe that does make me a jerk, but for me it was like cooking someone I'm dating the first meal he's ever had so he can learn to eat whereas I've already got it down to a science (and oh wow do I, in that case.) Too weird, too much responsibility, something I don't have the patience for, a trip I need you to already be on with me, not that I help you kick off. It's not something I want to be responsible for, it's just something I really want to do, and that I do indeed do all the time, talk about, and constantly acquire and experience for the rest of my life, all hunter-gatherer like.

The thing is that Rob Sheffield weaves the music into his and Renee's life together so you know it was a hugely important thing for them, and you don't really have to be a music geek, per se, to understand it. It's definitely the third party in their relationship, but like others of that ilk it takes nothing away from them. It adds. It gives them a base for the rest of their common language, as he calls it.

Just gorgeous, a lot of this book. This is the passage that finally did me in, about the night he finally told her that things were shifting for him from friendship to more:

"The minutes dripped by, each one totally bending and twisting my shape. We eventually stopped getting up to flip the tape, and just listened to dead air. I could feel serious changes happening to me the longer I stayed in Renee's room. I felt knots untie themselves, knots I didn't know were there. I could already tell there were things happening deep inside me that were irreversible. Is there any scarier word than "irreversible"? It's a hiss of a word, full of side effects and mutilations. Severe tire damage - no backing up. Falling in love with Renee felt that way. I felt strange things going on inside me, and I knew that these weren't things I would recover from. These were changes that were shaping the way things were going to be, and I wouldn't find out how until later. Irreversible. I remember that we discussed The Towering Inferno that night, the scene with Steve McQueen, the valiant firefighter, and William Holden, the evil tycoon who owns the hotel. William Holden asks, "How bad is it?" and Steve McQueen answers, "It's a fire mister. And all fires are bad!" That's the last thing I remember before I fell asleep."

So go read this book, especially if you care about love and music (please care about those things, I don't know what else you should care about more, really) - and if you've ever made a mix tape or been in love and lost it - at all. It is not all pathos, I promise, although I can't promise it won't make you cry. Still, it's the most interesting and well-written story I've read in a while, sort of an anthropological study of an art form and how two people relate inside of it. 

Yes it's sad but in this week of weirdo breakdowns it actually gives me a particular sort of hope amid the sadness, that maybe I can fix what's broken, although I don't know why I'm extrapolating that from this man's experience exactly because I've not had a loss myself of this magnitude. But I do know from sadness and on that very basic level I can relate to his words and be happy for him that he was able to rebuild and reinvent and recreate, because that's what life really is, a daily act of reinvention. And after he got happy with someone else and in a different city, he was able to write this ode to a woman who apparently made him unafraid to be with her, and in that way seems to have made him less afraid to face the world. He also made me feel really good about holding out for someone who gets it, even if it's decades and decades from now, as it may well be...and equally sad for other reasons. But the bottom line is it's well-written and it speaks to something I can't really grab ahold of yet. When I know, I'll probably, clumsily, try to share that too.

Me:   I don't like it up here.
Dan: Why?
Me:   I used to work here, and it creeps me out.
Dan:  What, it reminds you of Ghostbusters?
Me:   No, not really.
Dan: Oh, I guess the movie actually came out around that time.
Me:   I hate you, Dan.

Tuesday Morning

It's raining again.

"Gloria! I think they've got your numbah! I think they've got the ALIAS!" blares from the end of the hall out of a big boy's cell phone.

"HELLO?"

I imagine that he probably thinks it's some kind of retro-chic song referring to a phone call, perfect for a ringtone...that he wasn't likely even born in 1982, that he doesn't know it was originally an Italian pop song, that it helped to make Laura Branigan a gay icon. And then I remember that she died. Weird.

Or maybe he does know this stuff. Perhaps I underestimate him.

Another boy screams from the other end of the hall.

"I NEED ADDERALL. GODDAMMIT. You ASS."

"I need soup," I think. Adderall would just complicate things.

The Good With the Bad

This is my favorite article I've done this semester so far.

Normally I can't get my articles on the Sentinel Website because they charge for subscriptions, but I guess if they feature your stories it's there for all to see.

Issa is a very cool guy and I can't wait to meet him in person. So far I've only had phone interviews with him and checked out his artwork and documentary.

In other news, I am going to kill this boy in the coffee place with my poisonous x-ray vision. he is now singing hardcore punk a capella (his description, not mine) and recently introduced himself thusly:

"I have the most goyish last name of all time. Laura you’re going to be so disappointed. Yes I am related to the genocidal maniac, Sam Houston. I’m also related to an infamous Confederate pirate. He traveled all over he world sinking Union ships, and he didn’t listen when everyone said, “Dude the war’s over. The south lost.”

Your tomatoes suck

I love grocery shopping. I can't believe it's been more than two years since I first spoke in depth about just how much.

Since I just moved recently, I've been familiarizing myself with my environment, to include a new grocery store. To be honest, I don't like the grocery store near me at all, and it's one of the things that depresses me most about the new spot.(I won't go into the other things. Yet. Denial is still functioning at a really super high level.) It's a mostly shitty store. I judge them solely on produce - first impressions and all - and also, if you can't be bothered to make me a nice salad, I am simply not dealing with you. And since I've moved into a neighborhood that isn't at all wealthy, in fact skewing towards the lower end of the economic scale (at least until you hit the new, overpriced, "urban redevelopment" condos on the other side of the Route), I've noticed that the powers that be must think NO ONE HERE CARES ABOUT DECENT LETTUCE.  It's environmental injustice at its worst, I think, because I've also moved into a really integrated town that skews more African American and Hispanic. I'm one of the few pushing-40 (oh dear GOD it's finally happening.) white women in the store, most of the time. Sometimes the only.

I'm also prone to deep conversations with clerks. And clearly, as my new favorite one indicated, I'm in the very small demographic of people who would actually buy certain unpalatable products on the shelves of her store. Herewith, an inaccurate transcription of my absolute very favorite conversation in recent recorded memory. It makes up for every person who's ever grunted "I'm fine" when I ask them how they're doing.

Me: Hello.
Her (I shamefully do not remember her name but next time I will.): Hey.
(Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan. Stopping at pickled tomatoes.)
Her: Uh, what are these?
Me: Pickled tomatoes. 
Her: These are gross.
Me: No, not really. They're actually really good.
Her: I really don't think so. Look at them. They don't even look right. I thought they was potatoes. They don't even LOOK like tomatoes anymore. They look...WRONG.
Me: Er, actually, I was pretty happy to see you carried them at all. You can normally only get them in delis.
Her (Staring at me like this was a "What's Happenin'" episode, and she was Shirley and I was Rerun): Delis. Hmph. You like pickled things?
Me: Yeah, I do. I like...sour things. Olives. pickles. Gross tomatoes.
Her: I just think that's a bad idea. Like, where did you even FIND those?
Me: Back in the refrigerated section...with the other...umm....refrigerated pickles.
Her: Wow, I've just...I don't know. I've never seen them in here in my LIFE.
Me:Are you a picky eater?
Her: Nah. I just don't like things that look like that.
Me: Well you know, you've really made me think about this, but I think I'm going to have to take my chances. And I'll think about you every time I eat one of my delicious tomatoes.
Her: What?
Man Behind Me, to me: She didn't get it.

I laughed the whole way home.

Steel City Saturday

Day one conclusion: Pittsburgh might be the most humid place on the East Coast. This is a challenging - and unfortunate- lottery to win.

I just woke up, and my hair resembles Rick Allen's, (who is now, by the way, spiritually transformed, playing with Krishna Das, and running the Raven Drum Foundation with his wife.)

Sample quote: "I’d say that Hare Krishna has more energy attached to it in terms of thousands of years of being uttered than “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”"

Right on. Yay for evolution. But I don't know...there's some sick energy concentrated in late-80s ROCK, dude. Don't underestimate it.

Yes, Pittsburgh hair. And also, I'm trapped in some "All the Right Moves" Tom Cruise/Willy Wonka Guinness Factory. Freaky.

Other observations thus far:

1. There is a freaking Bravo here. Pasta Bravo, friends: "Our signature dish-rigatoni tossed with wood-grilled chicken and mushrooms in roasted red
pepper sauce." GUESS WHOSE face will be smack in the middle of a plate of that lovely, lovely stuff before the day is out? RICK ALLEN'S, channeled by ME, that's who! Pour some Pasta Bravo on me, in the name of Krishna Das and drum circles! Please!

We have Brio at home, their upscale version, but it's just not the same. I spent many nights at the Dayton Bravo. I even worked there for two days.

2. Speaking of drums (please see Rick Allen item), I met a nice man named Michael Vignole at the festival who will sell me a handmade bodhran for a reasonable price. He tells me if I have rhythm I can play it. And oh, that's really not a problem. There's a workshop today. I'll be there.

3. Got into an argument - an ARGUMENT, because I apparently have deeply held opinions about such things - with a guy in a Flogging Molly t-shirt at the bar last night about the necessity of indicating that such and such a band is an "IRISH" rock band, and the validity of said "Irish rock" as a genre. I seem to recall posing the question of whether aHa really needed to be labeled a Norwegian band, when "a band who are really just cartoon renditions of men, who also happen to ride reindeer" would suffice. (kidding about the reindeer part.) He totally started it, I swear. I just stated an OPINION. Why bring the noise so fast, huh? Calm DOWN. I know it's alarming when a damned GIRL has drawn a conclusion or two about music, but it might happen again. Prepare yourself for the onslaught. Of course he's from DC. Apparently these guys are supposed to change my mind. Also, Dropkick Murphys! Rawr? Ruh-roh?

4. Sandwiches come with French fries and coleslaw ON THEM here.  Seriously, this place?  Insane. And at 2 a.m.? Insaner. They're open 24 hours a day.

5. I learned in Breezewood, town of motels,  (one of my favorite roadtrip places, honestly) that there is reliable wireless internet access at over 470 truck stops nationwide.  It is not free, however. 

Also, there is a MySpace for truckers, in case your world is missing MyConvoy.

6. Beer monopolies at Irish festivals are a bad idea.

7. Pittsburgh has a ton of bridges.

8. Finally, this town is home to a band called the Corned Beef & Curry Band. Not as trainwrecky as the title could suggest. Bob Bannerjee, fiddle player and vocalist, is a very talented guy. Props to the rest of the crew, too. It was quite a jam session.

More illuminating points later. And some more embarrassing pictures, because that's my self-created job.

Get out the map

So I'm a little weirded out in my new house, in spite of my best efforts not to admit that I'm a little weirded out. My roommates are sweet, and very laidback, so there are no worries there, although it is really interesting for me to live with three people I barely know. I never really did that in college, and I'm a little on the something side of thirty, so this is an interesting time to start. Just part of my overall diabolical, yet subconscious, plan to shake things up. I knew if I was going to flip the script, as it were, I needed to minimize the safety nets, because I do enjoy those, although they just end up strangling me.

It's a big house, lots of doors and windows, and most of the windows are open all the time, so there are all of those new sounds to get accustomed to (and also, do you know how easy it is for someone to come in through a screen, my mother's voice in my head asks?) Plus the floors are hardwood and fairly old, so there are creaks and moans everywhere you step. But it's mostly that I'm hot, I think. I didn't have the good sense to ask the guy who owns the house to put the window air conditioner in, and it's July, and it's incredibly hot in my room. I have two fans but they're not really doing what I need them to do, which is to sit beside me and pat me down with a cool washcloth and feed me ice chips, bastard slacker fans. My landlord offered to put the wall unit in yesterday and I was all blase about it on the surface, like, "Sure, when you're around, sometime, maybe," when on the inside, it was all "MAN I AM BURNING UP. IT IS THE TOWERING INFERNO. WHAT WAS I THINKING?"

(I'm also currently trying to sit on my new papasan cushion that I love, oh how I love and have missed down to the tips of my very fried toes, and it's BURNING THE BACKS OF MY THIGHS. Such a gross place to sweat.)

Anyway, so it's mostly the heat. And it's also that I've moved back to a neighborhood that I used to live very close to, back at a time in my life when I was very, supremely unsettled and young. I was so, so unsettled and unhappy then. Driving down here the other night, I drove past the place where I worked for several years during college, site of many late bloomer, post-adolescent mega-dramas, and I realized that I was driving this road to get home, again, to a place that I actually lived. And Christ Almighty, I missed my mother for a minute, because I am a total idiot and also completely unbalanced, apparently. I had what amounts to a medium-sized panic attack, and wondered what in the hell I had done, and what in the hell I was doing, and going to do FOREVER AND EVERYDAY BECAUSE I WAS BACKTRACKING, OH HOLY HELL, and how maybe I should just pack it in now and start hopping trains and singing Jimmy Cracked Corn out on the prairie, or try out for that new singing bee show with Joey Fatone, because I could really rock the house on that one.

I got a little better by the time I made it up to the sauna of my room, where my brain baked in the heat to the point just past anxiety on the thermometer. By that time I reminded myself that moving down here was a means to a necessary end, that I had things to accomplish and do, and so what if I felt completely displaced, thrown back in my VW version of the Back to the Future car to a place I hung out in when I had a shitload more hair and rocked a pair of suede shorts? (In the genius words of Jessica Simpson, "OHMAGAH!!!!!!!!!) It's good to lose your bearings sometimes so you have to reset them. It's good to be in transition. It's good to move forward, and the discomfort is part of that. It's OKAY to be alone, in a thousand-degree room, for absolutely no reason. Freeing, even.

Fuck off, self-help bullshit. Just, go away.

I know that it is essential that things change for me, and in the fall, when I'm a mile or so away from school instead of a shitty hour commute, I'm going to be happy about it. And when I've had sleep, and am not still vaguely grieving my make-believe world at the beach, I'll feel better. And when I get to Chicago next week, I'll feel way better. It all just keeps moving, the wheel goes round and all that. None of it is static, not the things you want desperately to stay the same, or the things you need so much to change.

I tried to stave off the weirdness of a new place by setting my room up in advance in a way that I like. I've got most of my stuff around me that I need to make me feel nested. Every time I've moved since I got to Dayton, there are a few things I bring into my room first, just so I can make it feel like mine from the beginning. It's as close to a Native American house blessing as I get. These are things I move myself, in my car, because I don't want them to get broken or misplaced, things that are important to me, things I'd save first from a fire if there was an opportunity. I bring my old edition of "Leaves of Grass", a framed collage of pictures of my dogs, a box an ex-boyfriend gave me that used to have pictures in it but now just has some things I like to keep track of, and my pillow.

This is the stuff I care about putting in my new space first. I couldn't really care less whether the couch will fit on the far wall or under the picture window. I'm what you'd call slightly spatially challenged, so I'm no good with configuring what goes where, and whether the dresser will fit up the stairs at that angle (proven mercilessly, again, two weeks ago, as a shower of plaster fell out of the ceiling.) The only, disastrous I might add, time I lived with a man, we dealt with this on the day we moved in. I walked in and put some pictures on the mantle, and a few of my things in the bedroom, and he got pissed, said something about how we needed to work on the furniture first and then deal with the "extras".

Sigh. Here's an unsolicited hint: ONLY move in with him (or her, whatever, pardon the pronouns) if he gets you, and can understand and accept these harmless quirky things in light of your many other wondrous qualities. Seriously. See, I had to clarify that these were not my extras, and after three minutes dropping them off in my new little corner of the world, I'd be right over there to lift up the couch with my pinkie finger while he struggled using two hands. Because once I've got my people and a few of my special things about, then I can fill in the blanks with things I can sit on and eat off of.

Ironically, when I moved out a year later, all the big stuff was mine, so I had to take it all with me, along with my frames and books. When I left, all he had was a folding chair and a big old dining table. I felt bad about it, but these are the choices we make.

I went to the grocery store near my new house tonight. I'd never been there before, and the new place is in a much different neighborhood than my old one. There's a whole aisle of hispanic food, including a "hispanic dairy" category which is new to me. I browsed the aisle to see if there was anything new I could try, and I came across a whole shelf of devotional candles, the tall ones with a rendition of a saint or Jesus or Mary on the outside, typically. They were cheap - $1.69. I considered St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes, but decided to wait on that just in case things seemed much more dire at a point in the future than they currently are (oh please do not make me have to purchase that candle. Ohpleaseohplease.) I picked up the guardian angel candle instead, and I'm putting it on my windowsill, as a focal point for my neuroses about the open windows and the occasional creaky floors. I'll burn it as soon as I'm not afraid of burning down the house, what with the heat and the fans blowing everywhere. I figure it can't hurt.

First Day Back

Me: I need a paperclip.

Nancy: I need a gun.

Cellphone camera retail therapy

I cannot handle "Babel" on any level. It is a horrible film. I hate it. I want it to stop and yet I have challenged myself to watch it all the way through. Why is the current cinematic canon so full of movies that just upset and upset and unnerve and upset? I guess it's a sign of the times.

Regardless, I hate you "Babel". So therefore I'm going to dump some pictures off of my cellphone, to keep my mind off of the poor, nice babysitter lady wandering in the desert.

The first few are from the worst grocery store on the planet, which I was in tonight. The thought of the place makes me extremely unhappy. For example: a drunk woman was on her phone behind me, complaining to SuperFresh customer service that they only had one regular line open, but four self-check lines.

"She SUPPOSED to have more lines open. This is inREXcusable. She is extremely rude. I called you before and I would like another line open."

She had called SuperFresh customer service before. The number was programmed in her phone. That was where the wrinkle in time truly opened up.

Everyone's splitting. Smart. 

I had no clue that Cheez Whiz was a food group, or a distinct grocery store aisle category.

Continuing my very favorite use of "z"  when really it's "s".

I saw this card in Hallmark the other day. I know that if I got fired, it would totally not make me feel better.

They still sell Mickey's in Texas. The fact that Mickey's is still sold at all is cause for great alarm.  Vile.

There's a nice story with this last one but I'll have to save it for later because I am tired. The short version is that that whole "random acts of kindness" thing really does have some merit, if you work it right.