Personal Perestróĭka

I had too much coffee.  I might as well resign myself to being the most useless person ever.

I am so far behind in the stuff I wish I was getting done.  Like days behind, maybe even weeks.  I need to be doing stuff right now.  Well maybe not right now, as I haven’t had much coffee and I still feel a little sleep woozy and weird.  But soon.  I’m hoping that just by writing about it first thing in the am, I will suddenly be more motivated to work on stuff.

Neck still hurts.  Though it’s a bearable level of pain, which seems like an oxymoron, but there it is.

I had to reformat my iPod yesterday and then had some insane hitches trying to get music back on it.  It is all fine now, except I got frustrated and bored and so it’s only like less than a quarter full, which actually seems better.  20 gigs is too much music for me to carry around, since I usually only have it on shuffle anyway.  Less space makes for more conscious choices about what to include.  But I am loving what’s on there right now.  I really do need to remember to rotate out the music on the old ‘Pod, as I love what is on it, but I forget I have so much more wonderful music.  In that vein, todays’ songs are: Beautiful Girls – Girls, Guns and Glory (click to download) and Gia – Dealership (click to download) and Two Doors Down – Dolly Parton (click to download)

Brezny-scope for me this week:
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be, Taurus. Please read that last sentence again, drinking it in as if it were an elixir you’ve been longing for since you were 13 years old. Here are some corollaries: You don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations. There’s no need to strive for a kind of perfection that’s not very interesting to you. You don’t have to believe in ideas that make you sad or tormented, and you don’t have to feel emotions that others try to manipulate you into feeling. In short, you are free to be exactly who you want to be. Celebrate that this Halloween season. Costume yourself as the person you’ve been hiding.

I find that it somehow makes the incredibly stubborn part of me very happy.  Like, Yeah!  I don’t have to be anything you think I am.  Hmm, no, I am not explaining that well, but really, it makes me oddly joyful.

Right now I am going to box up the stuff I should have mailed to my mom a week and half ago, then shower and get to work.  Well, maybe I’ll make a to do list first.  So I can stay on task.  As clearly I am very scattered from the outset today.

(Also anyone who saw the post I made in the middle of the night last night–Sorry, I had to delete as announcing a crush like that makes me feel like such a complete and utter spaz that I couldn’t leave it hanging out there publicly.)

I am voluntarily watching Martha Stewart. My neck still hurts and I am unhappy. But! Martha? Has LL Cool J on!!! And they are making sugar skulls for Dia De Los Muertos!! Seriously, like best thing ever.  Because you know I love Day of the Dead stuff and I am a lady and Ladies Love Cool James.  Ha!  Right after I typed that Martha was just all, “Ladies love…”  And he looked slightly abashed, and said it could also be “Love Life Cool James” which amuses me because it’s kind of like a commandment from God. Heh.

My neck is 50% better today, which is to say 75% better than Sunday and thus should be fine tomorrow, but the still  hurting is SUCKY.  I do not like pain. It is sneaky and mean and should be taken away forever and ever.

Despite the pain and tons of whining, I went last night, when a friend called me, to be ‘background texture’ in a music video shoot.  I think I’ll only be in it for split second, but it was all simultaneously fun, boring and interesting to take part in.

Song for today, for Rhi, for everything: Migraine Months – Cameron McGill (click to download). Yesterday I woke up, rolled over, stretched and then wrenched my neck in some impossible way. I think I pinched a nerve int here somewhere. Spent the morning alternating hot and cold packs with hight does of painkillers and got it down to manageable. I slept alright. I had to wake up to roll over carefully, but was able to find pain-free positions. Today I am 55% better which is to say just annoyed, discomforted and hurty, rather than miserable, and in excruciating pain. I hate getting older. Shit like this didn’t happen when I was younger.

Yesterday Ladybug and I carefully cleaned out our closets, packed away summer clothes and pulled out sweaters. Which was not as fun as it should have been because of the neck. but it’s done and still I am ambivalent about autumn. I never felt this way on the west coast. Maybe fall is only lonely out east, or in Tennessee. I don’t know. Then last night we watched The Nanny Diaries (depressing, not funny, nor romantic and generally full of unlikeable characters, blech) and Penelope (wonderful, sweet, quite funny in parts).

Saturday we went to the huge flea market at the fairgrounds with my pal, CT. We were getting ideas for decorating his house. I think I have good ideas, so now I just need to figure out how to execute them on the cheap. Also CT was wearing his new glasses that I picked out for him. He looks great, super cool, but I’m not sure he’s adjusted to it yet.

This morning I was walking through the neighborhood, admiring fall, and the weird timeless quality East Nashville seems to have some times. I tried to grab a shot with my camera phone but it doesn’t lok good, then I remembered walking along the exact same street last year, the same melancholy fall mood, and taking pictures. So here are last year’s pictures, of the same street, they look much like today does:

There’s this pretty awesome coffee shop that opened next door to my house a few months ago.  A couple weeks ago I decoupaged a card file box with coffee cups and their logo and filled it with alphabetical dividers.  I gave it to them explaining that in Seattle coffee shops had one to keep patrons ‘buy 10 get one free” cards, so people didn’t have to remember to bring them every time.  They were pleased.  But who knew it would be so popular!?! I placed little foam wedges in the back to keep the bards upright when there weren’t very many in there, but alas, it’s jammed full after two weeks.  It looks like they need a second one to break up the alphabet! This morning when I was in there the owner said to me, “I guess Seattle knows something about coffee, huh?”  (He was joking.)   I love my neighborhood.

It is a gorgeous, sunny fall day here.  Ladybug and I are taking CT to the flea market to help him find art for his house.  And tomorrow is closet swap day.  Away go the light summer dresses and little shorts, out come the sweaters, cords and boots.  I’m still ambivalent about this.  I don’t know why, but fall just seems oddly lonely this year.

So I’ve been watching Fringe, which I don’t expect to last, as I don’t get the sense that anyone but me is watching it. I confess that I only started watching it because Joshua Jackson is on it, but I stayed because I love the way they use the location titles (like they are three dimensional words hanging in actual space at the location) and Anna Torv.  She’s pretty, but in this really unconventional way. And I don’t mean exotic, I mean she looks like a real person and she looks photogenically different in different situations.

I had endless stress dreams last night, mostly on a theme of trying to get somewhere but being repeatedly blocked, highlighted by a long sequence of riding a bicycle on the freeway.  I also dreamt that my sister and I had two brothers, one older than me, and one between me and L’il Bug.  I woke up feeling sort of lonely, like an odd sense of loss, that they didn’t really exist.

YA author, Scott Westerfeld, does the math on economics by party control in the federal government. The site is a pro-Dem, pro-Obama site for kids too young to vote.  Interesting site, but Westerfeld’s analysis is definitely far more than I knew about the history of the economy when I was a teenager (or even now, really).

Ladybug and I went saw David Sedaris this past Friday night, one of the things he read was this bit on undecided voters.  It’s quite funnier (though, funnier to hear him read it with the appropriate pauses).

It is my mom’s birthday today.  Hooray Mom!! She is great, as a mom, as a person, as a writer.  I wish everyone was lucky enough to have someone like her in their life, as I am sure the world would be a much better place.

Yesterday I got a subpoena, requesting that I testify in a hearing so that the kids who robbed me get tried as adults rather than in juvenile court. The kids are 17 and there was a gun involved, so, sure, fine.  But man, not to be all whiny baby, but the letter that came with the subpoena was so fucking rude.  Like, sure AG’s office, I’ll help you out, but maybe ask me nicely instead of implying that I’ve already made the criminal choice not to appear, and bitching me out about it in advance. Ugh.  Oh HA!  I was just about to post a sentence from the letter, complaining about it, but now that I re-read it, it is actually saying exactly the opposite of what I originally understood it to say.  Um, yes, suffice to say the letter is not very well written.  So anyway in two weeks I have to appear in court at 8 am.  I wonder if I can get anyone to go with me, just for moral support.

New Lu album.  I’m not sure I can make coherent statements about my level of excitement over this.  So instead I give you: If Wishes Were Horses – Lucinda Williams (click to download)  Most folks seem supremely excited of the Elvis Costello duet, “Jailhouse Tears,” but I have to say I’m kind of over Costello dueting with everyone in the universe, and while I like the song I find Costello fairly unbelievable as the criminal boyfriend.  I mean you hear Costello’s voice and you don’t think, “Yeah, he stole her truck.”  It’s more link, “Maybe he hacked her email and hung around outside her work acting creepy.”  But that’s a tiny tiny tiny complaint, over all I love love love love love love love love the album.  I have to admit the little girl inside me still kind of wants to be Lu when she grows up.  Lu’s my very warped version of a fairy princess.

I am all for fewer bizarre divides between genders, especially surrounding clothes and beauty, but for some reason I find this site vaguely creepy.  Perhaps it’s the way it’s presented, as the concept is a-okay.

Okay, need to go do errands/chores/work/stuff. Ugh ugh ugh.

A few years ago they reformulated the only moisturizer that didn’t make my delicate face hurt.  The new stuff gave me a rash.  I wrote to the company and they suggested that I was misusing the product.  Misusing facial moisturizer.  Right.  They did give me a fat coupon, and I scoured stores and bought the last ten bottles of the old product I could find.  Eventually they ran out and it took me nearly a year to find a comparable moisturizer.  Around the same time Aura Cacia stopped making the hippie perfume I loved so much.  I cound some close-outs online a bought half a dozen bottles.  Now it’s all gone.  I did eventually find another perfume I loved as much, but alas it appears that is also being discontinued.  This week I went to buy facial cleanser, only to discover they are no longer making the one I’ve been using for years.  I can’t even find back stock of it for sale anywhere.  AUGH!  Is this a conspiracy? Is the universe telling me to become a dirty hippie that lives off the grid and doesn’t wash or moisturize (or smell good)?  Should I somehow become less sensitive so I have wider range of products to choose from?  I don’t even know why I am telling you this.  I just wanted to complain, I guess.

I am a mess today.  I read a 300 page book in about 6.5 hours.  Which is swell.  Except I started the book around 12:30 am (you do the math).  Ooops.  So I’m on not much sleep and definitely didn’t achieve half of what I’d hoped to today.  Alas.  I had some other stuff to say, but my poor brain can’t seem to string together any more than this.

I have no idea why I feel so compelled to watch Hope Floats.  I don’t even like Sandra Bullock.  And this movie is pretty depressing. I’ve seen it half a dozen times and yet I picked it over Law & Order.  Granted I’m working, so it’s just background noise, but what is it that makes me choose this?  Harry Connick Jr?  Maybe, seriously, every time his character is on screen I’m like, “where’s mine? I want one just like that.”  Sigh.  Sometimes I am such a girl. Oh man, he just came on screen in a ‘Texas Rebel Radio’ t-shirt. Want want want.

I don’t know why, but I find this article strangely pleasing: Political (neck)ties.

Yesterday I worked out, ate healthy, and worked a long shift.  Today I have not yet gotten dressed and am having potato chips and Little Debbie cakes for lunch.  In my defense I am working today.  Or trying too.  Anyway I’m getting stuff done.  Some stuff.

So it is finally raining here and…the roof is leaking.  More specifically the roof is leaking in my bedroom and in the living room, right over my desk.  Also all the bulbs in the light fixture in my room burned out simultaneously (the maintenance guy doesn’t think it’s related to the leak, but I remain unconvinced).

I had a bunch more I was going to complain about, but I need to go get dressed for my meeting in Mt. Juliet, which really is way farther than I want to drive today.  Boo hoo hoo.

I was going to write about fall.  And rain.  And Chrysanthemums.  Instead I just changed my header image and now I am going to see how well my fancy new snap setter really works.

The AntiCraft blog seems to contain a section that is all bacon crafts. Essentially wearable bacon, some made out of yarn or or what have you, some made from actual bacon.

Today I did not make bacon, I made soup instead.  Here is my recipe for Autumn Beef Barley Soup:

1 lb. stew meat, cut to bite-sized pieces
1 large yellow onion, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pressed
2 cups mushrooms chopped
4 large carrots, cut into coins
2 cups kale, finely chopped
3/4 cup barley
8 cups beef broth

In a big soup pot, add a couple table spoons olive oil and set on medium heat.  Add garlic until lightly golden, add onion and let cook until clear and slightly brown on the edges.  Add meat, stirring occasionally until brown.  Add broth, barley and vegetables (I used the ones above, you use most anything, peas, carrots, and celery make a nice traditional soup, leeks and parsnips make a nice unconventional soup). Add seasonsings (your choice, italian seasoning herb mixes work well–I used a combination of Adobo, grill seasoning and a cup of red wine.)  stir.  Let heat until bubbly (but not boiling), lower heat (to roughly med-low) and let simmer for 2-3 hours.

I served mine with a tablespoon of sour cream and sprinkle of grated cheese.  Crusty bread is good with it too. Nom nom nom!!!

I should have gone to bed 20 minutes ago.  I am unreasonably exhausted, cranky and at loose ends.  Instead I am awake, watching Onegin, a movie about which I know nothing, which is perhaps too boring for this hour in my life. All it has served to do so far is make me wish that I was lying on pillow in a row boat in a little lake on my own huge estate, reading a book on a perfect summer day.  So really it isn’t improving my mood at all.

I can’t decide if I should eat another cookie, eat the rest of the guacamole, or perhaps make some real food.  Or just have a glass of wine. I should be in bed, under the fluffy fall covers, reading and looking forward only to the impending morning sounds of migrating birds.

Amusingly the recent top searches that have brought people to this blog are:

• my head hurts i’m weak
• feel weak and head hurts
• come out of the s&m closet
• overwhelmed and unable to prioritize on
• cops in dreams
• what does whopperjaw mean
• tom waits paper doll
• the land of the sneezes
• crackerjack kinda guy

Very funny.  I’m gonna go out on a limb and pathetically, whinily say there is no crackerjack kind of guy. If there was I’d surely have found him by now.

Hmmm.  Cookies? Wine? Get off my ass, put the computer down and go read in bed?  I should take my lavender kiwi scented candle with me.  It smells lovely.  Maybe it can cure my foul mood and give me dreams of lovelier things.

Wow this DVD has like 9 previews on it. Ridiculous! And most of them are even vaguely similar to the movie. Bleh. Also, yes, Shoot ‘Em Up is a terrible movie. Really terrible. It seems to be entirely a vehicle for Clive Owen to fire guns, say pithy one-liners, and carry a baby around. So, uh, actually it is fucking awesome. However it’s actually Paul Giamatti who is making it suck, which is weird.

Also I am oddly filed with a “Starbucks is not the enemy” rant, but I’ll tamp it down.

Okay, this didn’t start well. I was going to come and write all full of cheer about how much I love my job. How Boss Daddy and Chef Daddy are the best. Even though I complain about work (who doesn’t?) I do love it. Sometimes the light is just exactly right, and it feels so warm and cozy and safe in the restaurant. Sure customers run the entire range from awesome to heinous, but I genuinely like most all my coworkers.

I am quite sure I am losing my mind. My obsession with sewing and crafting is growing at an insane rate. I am starting to look at things like this and think, oh! yeah, I should totally make one of those. I might need an intervention soon.

It is gorgeous outside. Has been for the last few days. But, wow, chilly out this morning. Like genuinely chilly. Oh fall, I can’t stop being ambivalent about you. I want you, I do love you, you know. But still, you are second best, and you mean oncoming winter. So in the end, you will just break my heart, even if I give you all my love.

(I realize sometimes my posts are disjointed and random, but that’s because I often open a window, start typing, then go do other work and come back periodically all day add a sentence or two until I think I am done.)