"One-way streets and square one, The answers don't come from any one direction"
I live in Chicago with my boyfriend T and our mini-menagerie of 3 cats and 2 dogs. I have very little of world-changing importance to contribute but I like to see my words in print so I blog.
Apropos of Nothing
Awesome
City Wendy in the Windy City
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In My Life
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Loobylu
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Not Well Planned
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Pound
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Que Sera Sera
Scott Bateman
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Sparkwood & 21
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Sweetney
The Anchored Nomad
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Things I Am Over
TranceJen
Very Zen
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today
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Yesterday I spent a few blissful minutes contemplating throwing myself under a car. Maybe, I decided, it would not be fair to spring something like that on an unsuspecting driver. Perhaps it would be better to have a bit of a lie down in the middle of a busy street and give the drivers the option of running me over or not. Their choice.
No cause for alarm. I did not, in fact, throw myself under a car or take a nap on the street. It wouldn't have helped the situation. Temporary fix. With my luck, I would only be injured and not killed. I do not have time for recovery. So, I am stuck with the million and one deadlines and the time crunch surrounding the end of the semester. Reality. Hmmm. Not for the weak of heart.
I decided that I did not have enough going on right now so I signed up for a knitting class. I am making a really cool felted bag. Ginormous felted bag. Like this:
And it has to be completed right around the time I a finishing up school. When I decide to juggle, I go for it. Flaming torches, bowling balls, razor sharp machetes. Bring it on.
The up side of all of this is that I seem to be experiencing the annual Spring ManiaTM that seems to hit every year once the sun comes out for more than 20 minutes a day. This allows me to accomplish super human feats and manage on 3 hours of sleep a day. I am feeling that if I were left alone in my house with a few tools and the necessary materials I could finish off our basement and perhaps add on a master bathroom and expand our bedroom. In a week. It is just this dangerous sort of thinking that causes me to stretch myself to the very limits. More, more, more. Of course I can do it!
It also causes me to sing endless choruses of "You Are My Muffin" to the puppies. This is a complete song in honor of the muffiny goodness that is my puppies set to the tune of "You Are My Sunshine". I would be mortified to be caught in the act but I am sure that the neighbors have heard me. What can I say? The pups are an enthusiastic and responsive crowd. They always call for the encore.
Today I feel like smacking everyone. Reaching right through the Internet, stopping my car on the street, jumping over the phone lines. Hard slaps for everyone. Except, of course, for you.
Last night we went to see Van Morrison and had a rocking good time. I splurged on the good seats which ended up being better seats because the usher guy mis-read our tickets and seated us in row 10 instead of row 19. I kept waiting for the people who actually had the row 10 tickets to show up and evict us but, wonder of wonders, that never happened. And so we got to be very close and I am sure that that enhanced the experience oh so much.
My observations:
1. Van Morrison is a tiny little man. Like, Mick Jagger or Prince tiny. But larger around than either of those examples.
2. He re-mixed a couple of his standards and they were okay.
3. Bass solos, drum solos and saxophone solos are among the most excruciating experiences I can think of.
4. Of course, we sat right by the one guy who was smoking pot. I don't begrudge him. It is no worse to me than the drunk lady who kept breathing her boozy breath on me. But he had some rank ass pot that smelled like it had been stored in an ashtray or scraped off the floor and mixed with bits of lint and cat hair. Dude, spring for the good stuff.
5. Aforementioned boozy breathing lady launched into a flailing dance that I cannot begin to describe. I do not think that her spazzitude can be wholly attributed to the drink. This was a special kind of uncoordinated.
6. To the loud, lady complaining in the line on the way out: sometimes musicians play for more than an hour and a half. Frequently though, your 60 year old rockers do not rock quite as long. A good, solid 90 minute set is acceptable. Sorry. That's what happens. Just be happy that he was coherent and that he was not drunk enough to fall off the stage during the middle of a song.
7. I really, really wanted to smack people last night.
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On a happier note, we have constructed another, larger raised bed for vegetables. And by we, I mean I asked for a raised bed, bought the bricks and nagged T until he got it done. This worked out so well last year that we needed more room. I have planted almost all of my veggies and I am ready for the middle of Summer. We have also begun construction on a smallish patio in the upper back yard. It is going to be the perfect place to go with a book and an iced tea.
I made a couple of awesome meals this weekend. Saturday night was beef kabobs on the grill with cous-cous, sauteed green beans and mushrooms. Sunday was a slow-cooked French Onion soup and, for dessert, home made carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Another reason I am looking forward to Summer is that I cook all the time. I like the chopping and the sauteeing and the marinating. It is relaxing. And delicious. Two of my top criteria for determining how much fun I am having.
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And, finally, I discovered a bluebell plant in an out of the way corner of the yard:
I cannot tell you how happy this made me.
We have lived in our house for going on three years. The first planting that I did was in the front of the house. One of the first plants that I put in was a dwarf iris. It has never bloomed. Until now. This was waiting for me when I got home today.
Sometimes I am amazed at the depths of my laziness.
It has begun to be that time of year when I don Gap capri pants as my standard uniform. I like the breeze on my ankles and when the day comes that I can put on sandals, I truly rejoice. There is something about practically bare feet that means it is summer. As I have mentioned before, the first pedicure of the Spring is one of my favorite things.
Yesterday I noticed that I had begun to have a little stubbly growth on my legs. Okay, more than a little stubbly growth, but since I am not a very hairy girl it was not so noticeable until recently. It was ruining the breezy summertime effect of the capri pants. This morning when I went to put on my pants I remembered the hairy-ness and thought to do something about it. So, I got a razor and lifted my foot into the sink and shaved. Just the portion of my leg that shows at the bottom of the capri pants. Not an inch more.
Because shaving all the way to the knee was just too much work. Sad, huh?
Yesterday I had "Sweet Child O Mine" stuck in my head all day. Most surprising thing about that was just how much of the lyrics I knew. Today I have "Driver 8" by REM stuck in my head. Nothing too surprising with that one. But it does seem a bit obscure. In spite of the eleventy million times I listened to the album in 1984.
Dearest Internet you know I love you. We have the kind of symbiotic, co-dependent relationship I have been seeking my entire life to find. But I must warn you that you are beginning to piss me off. Just a little bit. I have begun to see this surge in my site references for people looking for images of Fred Durst. Not on regular Google Image searches but on the Google proxy image searches for every country in the rest of the world. Especially Canada. And, I love you Canada but I can no longer tolerate seeing the name Fred Durst in my stats. Because I made a passing reference and linked to a very smarmy "sex-ay" photo of Mr. Durst one time. In fact I was comparing Vanilla Ice to him in an unflattering manner. Once. Once people. That was all it took and now I am the place to go for all things Durst. So, I am just going to say this one time. Slowly and quite clearly. I am not a fan of Durst or Limp Bizkit or any of the other white boy pseudo-rap/rock bands of that time period. I am not going to have pictures or concert reviews or squeally girl fan love screeds posted here. I believe that there are some such sites on the Internet. I think there may even be a band site or a personal Durst site. I have deleted the photo of Mr. Durst that I had linked to and I am of a mind to delete the entire post.
Don't make me have to with hold affection to teach you a lesson.
Okay, we crawl back out from under our rock. My, it is bright out here.
I finished all of the five papers that I had to write last week. I also turned in my latest photo project. In order to make this all happen on schedule, I worked late into the night and took the day off on Thursday. I have now produced all of the major work for two of my classes, it is a bit of a coast from here on. But in the other two classes, there is yet more work to be done. Fortunately it is not of the research and/or express written opinion type.
Then there was Easter. I love Easter. I enjoy the general lack of pressure that Easter brings. It is not all hyped bullshit like Christmas. I love to make the Easter baskets. I like egg-shaped everything. We do not actually have an egg hunt but if there were children to hunt the eggs we would do so. This year I made baskets for my son and his girlfriend. I bought lots of little toys and gee gaws and candy. They loved them as I expected they would. I did not make a basket for T this year. I don't think he gets as enthused by it as I do. He picks out the candy and then his basket sits on the top of his dresser, untouched, until the following year. So, no basket for you who cannot appreciate the joy that is the basket of gifts.
For Easter dinner this year we joined T's family for a brunch/buffet. I do not, as a rule, eat at the buffet. I am not a fan. In fact, I am quite leery of the buffet as a food service delivery system. I am creeped out by the people standing over the tables and picking through the various dishes. In the restaurant industry you become very skeptical of the cleanliness and quality of food handling in general. But we commonly refer to the buffet as the barf-ay. Someone always gets sick. But I did not want to be the difficult one. We already have enough difficult eaters in the group. Enough difficult people. So, I would not let T make my views of the buffet known. We went and ate and I carefully selected my food from among the less scary items. But last night T got his Easter gift after all. Food poisoning. Poor guy was moaning and heaving half the night. I left him home today with instructions to push the fluids. I feel sorry for him. I really, really do. But I am happy to say that I will not have to be the one to veto any future plans for buffet style dining.
From Salon:
Dennis Hopper wants you to know he's not about to start second-guessing the commander in chief:
"I voted for Bush, and I don't have anything to disapprove of. I think the results of what is happening [in Iraq] is disappointing, but it doesn't have to do with the President."
I think the may be empirical evidence of the brain-deadening effects of long term drug use. Just a thought.
I have been writing papers. You know, all of those papers that I was going to have plenty of time to write at work? Yeah, those papers. In the last week I have written a medium-sized paper on The Use of the Goddess Athena in Greek Art. I have written a short paper and a review on the poetry reading we attended featuring Kevin Stein who is the Poet Laureate for Illinois. I have written a short paper proposing a sequel or an updated version of one of the Akira Kurosawa films we viewed in class. I have written a short paper about Guernica, the Picasso painting. And I created an artwork inspired by the book Picasso's War. I am currently wading through the writing of a rather massive paper about Feminism and the Subjugation of Women with particular focus on the absence of women's accomplishments in traditional history texts. Words. Lots of damned words. Oh, did I mention that I also had a Photography assigment due this week? And I am woefully behind in my Graphic Arts class but I will begin to catch up once this hellacious week has finally gone by.
Hmph.
Because I am as tired of looking at my feet as everyone else is:
Click on this photo for more pictures of pretty flowers.
Sign #1:
First pedicure of the season in preparation for the flip flop/sandal season
Sign #2:
Lots of people complaining about Daylight Savings Time. For the record, I could do without it.
Sign #3:
Even more green, growing things in the garden. Official first trip to the nursery to begin planning the planting and growing.
Sign #4:
Constant need to nap.
