True Grit
So it seems that Iraqis turned out in greater numbers for their "election with terrorism" than U.S. citizens did for the presidential election. I'm so impressed, but it puts us to shame! We get 60% of voters going to the polls in an ordinary year; they get that many under an occupation and the threat of death for voting! It seems many of them, by voting, were shutting tight the coffin lid on Saddam Hussein's regime.
I liked seeing the pictures of women with blue fingertips, but it bothered me that so many of them were wearing the chador. Not that I am against that in principle--for many it is a political statement or a religious statement rather than a symbol of oppression. But from what I hear, many Iraqi women have started covering themselves because it's safer for them to walk the streets that way. I'm really worried about what the new constitution will bring for women in Iraq. I hope they don't lose their rights.
Day of Noodles
Damn, I worked my body this weekend. Saturday I did the Krav Maga combo and Yoga, which sure as hell wasn't beginner. I can't do the balancing poses at all, and of course the person who is wobbling all over the place and putting her feet down screws everyone else up. And I was in the front row, so I could see myself and my chocolate flab. Then I came home and planted some tulips. Yeah, so I plant tulips at the end of January. So what if last year's tulips are already breaking the soil? And on Sunday, I cleaned our bathroom. It takes me an hour every time to scrub one puny shower that barely fits two people. I felt so virtuous by the time I was done that I made Todd look at it. "Clean enough for the Virgin Mary!" he said. Now when Rufus drinks water from it after our showers, at least he'll have clean drinking water.
But the reason for the title is our two restaurant meals of the day: pho and leftover pasta from Village Tavern the night before. We went to Pho 79 again, over by the new Pacific Ocean Market, and got the soup. Actually, soup is all they serve, and it's all beef broth with noodles and meat--you can get tendon and tripe if you really want to! How did this ever get to be a restaurant craze? We'll soon have 3 pho restaurants within a block of each other. I guess city planners think Vietnamese people like to converge. Todd says Pho 79 is more authentic than Pho 12 (where are numbers 13 through 79 anyway?), but I can't tell.
I felt the same way when Louisville approved a Home Depot and Lowe's right next to each other. Because you know one is so different from the other!
And after all these noodles, we watched the end of
Troy (thanks,
SSaS) from the sex scene on. That's a noodle of a more pleasing sort.
My body is floating in space
If you can identify the source of the quote above, I'll ... I'll ... mention that on my next blog. I swear.
I got the J. Jill catalogue today, and one of their t-shirts gave me a flashback to my junior high gym outfit. In those days (the 1970s) we were required to wear a gym outfit, which was a lovely one-piece double-knit thing with blue shorts and a blue and gray striped sleeveless top and a zipper running from groin to neck. I hope schools have stopped torturing middle schoolers with ugly one-size-fits-all outfits--if they even have middle school gym anymore. I can't remember if we had to wear those things in the winter, and I'm pretty sure that when we had dancing lessons in gym class, we could wear regular clothes. Of course, the regular clothes hardly compensated for the anxiety of inching forward through the line, girls on one side and guys on the other, and wondering what nerd you were going to have to dance with. I learned the hora in that class, though I can't remember it now. I learned how to do simple vaults--flying over a vault at high speed was about as much ecstasy as I ever got in junior high. I even took a crack at the balance beam, though it terrified me.
I hated middle school, but sometimes I wish I could go back and get the body I had then. For years now I've been trying to tame my flabby middle. I get down to the high 140s and then up I go again. I'd like to feel my waist without pinching 2 inches. The problem is I have an equally great desire to eat chocolate at all times. I had a piece of fudge last night, a huge chunk of chocolate cake the night before--and at those times, the way my stomach was sticking out in Krav Maga today doesn't occur to me.
The nicest thing about being a teenager was that I could eat anything I wanted and still be 115 pounds. I didn't have the body issues then that so many people have now. So many girls (and even guys) worry about dieting before they've even gotten to college. I was lucky not to go through that.
Now, I guess, everyone worries about being fit. Teenagers in the 1970s didn't care so much. Title 9 had just been passed in 1972; girls were just beginning to participate in sports when I got to middle school in 1974. There was a willowy blond named Brooke who went out for the boys' track team because there wasn't a girls' team at Center High School in Kansas City. I asked her once if she could keep up with the boys, and she said no, they were faster.
The only time I've been perfectly fit in my life was my first semester of college. I was on the crew team at Georgetown for that semester, and we had to jog down to the boathouse, carry the sculls to the dock, and then row for an hour and a half. Rowing is the perfect exercise, believe me, but I couldn't stand having to get up at 5:30 every morning, and I was never one of those people who could party until 3 am Friday night and then get up early Saturday to row.
Lots of times I wish I'd stayed on the team another semester so that I could have been in a real race. There was one time when we were out on the Potomac (it was really polluted in those days; you couldn't drink it from the boat) in an eight (it really has 9 people because the coxswain is crouched in the bow [or is it the stern?] calling out strokes). And we got a rhythm going that felt amazing--all of us rowing in time. I tried to recreate that feeling at the 20-year reunion last June, but when I got to the boathouse, there were all these super-competitive men talking about "balance" and "pull" and only a couple women. I thought, crap, I don't want to get in a race here; I just want to get out on the water and row for the first time in 20 years. So I skipped it. Maybe I'll row sometime on the Boulder reservoir; there's a club there.
A few notes on politics
I just wrote a letter to Colorado's new senator, Ken Salazar, asking him to vote against Alberto Gonzales for attorney general. After all, as
New Donkey says, he's the "Poster Boy for Torture."
***
And there's the message from a friend of mine talking about the "nuclear option" in the Senate (the Republicans are so mad about Democrats blocking 10 out of 204 Bush nominees for judgeships that they want to end the practice of filibusters).
Sign the petition against the nuclear option at People for the American Way:
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspxSenators are supposed to "advise and consent" on nominations for judgeships. Democrats need the filibuster so that they can prevent some of the radical judges the Republicans appoint from actually getting onto our courts.
***
Check out
Sex Scenes at Starbucks' post on the anniversary of Auschwitz. It's awesome.
Random Naked Slamming
We're not going to the naked party.
It's very sad.
How do we know people who like to party naked, you may well ask? This way: Todd plays Ultimate Frisbee 3 seasons of the year. A select group of frisbee players formed the Boulder Conviviality Society, which gets together for amateur theater and parties. And a subgroup of that society is having the naked party.
But we can't go because Todd has to do sound work for
Orpheus Descending. I was really looking forward to trying to be naked for an entire day. I haven't done that since college, when I once spent a day in bed with my Brit boyfriend. Of course, that's not quite the same because we were under the covers. And lying there all day gave me quite the headache!
What if I got cold, I wondered? What if I left wet spots on the furniture? Would I be able to refrain from measuring penises with my eyes? With comparing the sag of my breasts to the twenty-something next to me? All in all, I thought it would be a great exercise in self-discovery. Or at least endurance.
Time to finish mourning and move on.
***
Cannon Mine Coffee Shop in Lafayette had a poetry slam tonight. BUT, only about half the people performing had any idea what a slam is. For one thing, the old but delightful Brit guy who won read his poems from a piece of paper--you're supposed to recite from memory at a slam or make it up on the spot! At least there weren't any poets doing that sing-song thing with their voice: duh duh daaaaaaaaaaaa (rising tone) over and over again. And two girls sang, quite well. My favorite was a girl named Kay Kron, who sounded a lot like Ani DiFranco and recited everything from memory. She should have won. Oh well, she's auditioning for Julliard in a couple of weeks and I'm sure she'll be a star soon--she was beautiful enough. I also liked Kris Mayer, who had some kind of speech impediment but still managed to enchant us with her voice. My friend Silvine, a fellow copyeditor, was there too and read some clever poems. We were commiserating each other about copyediting the big bad witchcraft book, and I managed to scandalize the Christians at the next table with talk about demonology.
***
I bought 4 pairs of shoes today and 2 pairs of pants. At least 1 pair of shoes goes right back to DSW because they don't match the skirt after all! I'll never find shoes to match that particular shade of burgundy. But I found a pair of black shoes to do justice to my Cat in the Hat tights. You see, my husband bought me red and white striped tights for Christmas in an effort to make me more hip, and it's my spousal duty to wear them in public at least once. I found a skirt to go with them at Gracie's in Aspen, but when I was walking around in those tights, I got SUCH a look from a passing teenager. Obviously she didn't think I was hip--she thought I was a desperate old woman trying to look cool. Of course, I've always thought that clothes designed for teenagers are some of the tackiest crap around. So I'm not too anxious to live down to her standards.
Everyday Gifts
Not much happened today, but I'm tired.
I came home after Krav Maga and researched a couple of poets on my computer. Cecila Vicuna is reading Friday, and Stacy Gillett Coyle is reading Saturday. I think I'll drag Todd to that reading. Vicuna sounded a little too postmodern for me.
Rufus got up on my lap while I was surfing and fell asleep with his head propped on the keyboard. Small tufts of cat hair clung to the wrist rest. I looked down at him and watched him breathe. I told him he was a gift.
If I don't go to the reading tomorrow night, I can stay home and watch a couple of Tom Cruise movies. Since September, I've been watching his movies in chronological order, starting with
Endless Love. The next one is
Born on the Fourth of July. So far, it seems like every movie has a conflict with a father figure--most of them problematic. It fits his personal history, I suppose, but it seems like too easy a conclusion to reach.
Another Cheap Publicity Stunt
More foolishness from the Reverend James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs.
Following in the footsteps of Jerry Falwell, who said Tinky-Winky of Teletubbies was gay, Dobson has declared that Spongebob Squarepants is gay because he holds hands with a male friend and watches a show called The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.
Excuse me, but how is that different from Batman and Robin flying around in tights? And if holding hands with another boy is wrong, does that mean little boys can't hold their brothers' hands when they cross the street? They should just shoulder on ahead and get hit by cars?
I wish Dobson and his ilk would spend a little less time judging others (you know, "judge not, that ye not be judged") and more time actually focusing on humility and compassion, which are at the heart of the Christian message. I wish they'd try doing some Christian things like helping the poor without letting the right hand (the press) know what the left hand (Dobson, Falwell) is doing. I wish they'd pay attention to the board in their own eyes and not the speck in Spongebob's pants. I wish...
We will now take a break for Bible study. "Lapsed Catholic" has run through her entire repertoire of Bible verses and is experiencing brain fatigue.
***
I've been copyediting part of an encyclopedia on witchcraft. Today I read about Male Witches, the Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches' Hammer), and so on. As I said to my editor, it's a little weird to be reading about demonology for my job.
But when I heard about Dobson's latest comment, I couldn't help but think that gays are the witches of the twenty-first century.
Uncouth till the end
I've got the farts tonight, I think because I ate lots of salad and then went to Krav Maga. Being put in headlocks must have upset my stomach. We were doing front headlocks tonight, and so when I tried to "pluck" my partner's arm from around my neck, I kept grabbing her boob.
My husband once called me the most flatulent woman alive. That may be true, but I'm not sure what I can do about it. I've been this way as long as I can remember, and I can't see an insurance company thinking it is a big medical emergency.
"Excuse me, doctor, but I fart too much."
"Well, ma'am, is there a particular food that bothers you?"
"Yes, potatoes, cheese, guacamole, and beans. Sometimes, if I haven't eaten for a few hours, any old food will do."
"Stop eating those foods."
It would be downright un-American, wouldn't it, for a doctor to make me give up cheese fries? Not that I eat them more than once a year, but still...
***
I had a moment today when I felt incredibly stupid in front of two older men, my general contractor and the electrician who was working on the kitchen. I bought the appliances months ago, when Great Indoors was having a sale, and the range has been sitting in my garage for a month. But not until today did it occur to me that it might be too tall for the wall it's supposed to sit against. We cut a big hole in the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Now there's only 3 feet of wall. But the stove is 4 feet tall in back.
Good job.
So I had to drag my contractor to the store so he could help me buy something more
suitable (meaning $800 more expensive). The entire reason I got a slide-in range was to save money over a cooktop and wall oven. Now I think I've spent almost as much as those two items would have cost. Great.
Don't go to Buena Vista for the Night Life
Buena Vista (pronounced Byoona Vista by the locals) means "good view." And in winter, when there's no rafting, that's about all there is to do there. Look. Oh, and sleep. And eat.
Todd and I went down that South Park way (for all you fans of the movie; I've never seen it) to check out locations for a family reunion this summer. We knew the B&B we were staying at was right next to a Mexican restaurant, so visions of tequila were filling our head. But as soon as we walked in the back door, a waitress came up to us and said, "We're closed." It was only 9 o'clock!
We figured there had be a bar open somewhere in town. So...the next place we drive up to turns off the "open" sign just as we arrive. We saw one other bar--with one guy in it--and decided to call it a night. It's says something about a town when the place that stays open latest is the video store.
We stayed in bed late the next morning, and after some scouting of cabins and campgrounds, went to Cottonwood Hot Springs for the afternoon. It's one of those places that Boulder hippies like to visit--I even talked to one, who had beautiful blue eyes and was bemoaning the prices of housing in Boulder. Hey, people have been doing that since I arrived, and that was in 1987! By Boulder standards, that makes me almost a native.
A woman at the hot springs was saying that she'd just had a flashback to ancient Egypt. I guess she was talking that way because she was in the hottest pool and it was cooking her brain. Todd and I went to another pool to cool off from her new age vibes. There were lots of guys with belly-button-long beards at this place, and as we left, we smelled some ancient hipsters smoking pot. We were tempted to beg for some, but instead went to the Mexican restaurant and got two margaritas instead. They stuffed us with food, so the liquor had hardly any effect. One of the things they gave us was beef broth with one small meatball. It was like Mexican pho. Weird.
We went back to the room and got in bed. Early to rise and late to rise--with lots of food and some soaking in between--that about describes our day.
We had two breakfasts on Sunday, and then after some feeble attempts to bird in South Park (at least I saw a rough-legged hawk, which I haven't seen in a while), we went to Kingsland in Denver for dim sum. Todd says it's the best dim sum in Denver, even if the shopping mall looks like it would fall down if you blew on it. First we got languidly waved to an empty table by the Chinese boy-girl host(ess), and then the ladies came around with their carts: shrimp in noodle, shumai, steamed rice with goodies inside, and all of it delightfully squishy and sticky.
If you don't know what dim sum is, here's a picture for you: imagine someone taking pork and veggies and grinding them up in the garbage disposal. Then they grab a handful of that stuff and steam it in a noodle, or rice, or some kind of bread. That's dim sum: garbage disposal dumplings that make you feel fat.
Krav Maga
Wednesday night I had to get out of the house after being cooped up for two days with a "cool" and no construction workers to amuse me. Plus I was supposed to be copyediting a book on witchcraft, and I just wasn't in the mood. So I headed out first to Krav Maga.
Krav Maga is a self-defense program based on the Israeli army's self-defense program. It teaches you how to fight for your life. I've been taking classes since October, in which I've learned how to get out of headlocks and chokes and how to fend off a punch or a knife. I'm also learning how to punch properly, though I still get embarrassed watching myself shadowbox in the mirror.
James, the owner and main instructor, is a really cool guy. He teaches kids and adults and knows exactly how to motivate people to improve. He uses members of the class to demostrate what drill he wants us to do, and the one time he did an elbow strike on my chest, I thought my nipple might fall off (and that was when he hit the pad I was holding against my chest!). I doubt I'll ever hit anyone that hard, but I can dream, can't I?
I've wanted to learn how to fight for years, ever since I started watching
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was never all that interested in traditional martial arts, although it's great to watch Jackie Chan or Michelle Yeoh in the movies. I wanted to fight like a street fighter.
Teenagers have their gansta rap lyrics, and I have Krav Maga, I guess. We're all looking for a way to be powerful. I used to get that urge out by reading adventure stories or watching James Bond movies--but I wanted to be Bond. The only Bond girl I ever really liked was the one in
For Your Eyes Only. She was tough and sad all at once.
Most of the time, the women in Krav Maga train with other women. I'd prefer to train with men, since I'm most likely to be attacked by a man, but that's not going to be as useful to the men in most cases. I go to this class to learn to fight, but I also want to be a good trainer for my partner. One time I trained with an instructor named Bar-el (I have no idea how it's spelled). I have to confess he scared me a little. Maybe it was the look in his eyes or the way he held himself, but I figured that having him put me in a headlock would be painful. And I was right. It's important for the trainer to make you feel that you're actually being choked--the adrenaline rush helps produce feelings you would have during an attack. So he cut off my air supply with his forearm around my neck, and he didn't let go when I tried to get out of the headlock--he made me work for it. That was a really good class, but my neck and shoulders were sore for days afterward. During the training, he said to me once, "You're strong," which is, of course, the one thing every woman in a self-defense class wants to hear. I think he knew that, and I appreciated his saying that. I wasn't so afraid of him afterward.
***
After class, I went home and showered. Then I headed out to the mall for some Rubio's fish tacos and shopping. I eat Rubio's once in a while. I like the breaded fish and the sauce, but I don't like all the cabbage. Sometimes it upsets my stomach. Then I went to Galyan's and bought wrap gloves for boxing, so I won't keep splitting my knuckles and popping a blood vessel by the last knuckle when we do punching drills in Krav Maga. I talked to a saleswoman at Ann Taylor Loft for a while about my construction woes, and then I felt guilty about not asking her about the problems she had with remodeling. So I finally headed to Borders and bought 3 Lindor balls (milk, dark, and mint chocolate) to make myself feel better. There's not much chocolate can't cure.
***
Thursday night Todd and I went out for Indian food. It's my favorite food because it tastes warm and spicy--the way love should be. Then we went to Sweet Buddy's Roo's for ice cream. One of Todd's former coworkers started that store and named it after his kids. It's an old-fashioned ice cream parlor--they make the ice cream there, and it's goooooood.
Mi cama es su cama
Todd was so exhausted by making dinner and I by eating it that we took a nap afterward. Rufus had beaten me into bed with Todd, so when I climbed in next to them, I said, "There's a pussy between us." But he didn't stay long. I put my hand on the spot he'd just vacated and felt all the dirt he'd left there after rolling around in the yard.
"Heeeeeeeere, dirty pussy. Come back here and clean up this mess."
He never listens. When I went into the bathroom later, I saw a perfect set of muddy catprints.
Rufus's revenge.
***
I found a fabulous lingerie store online. It's called
www.herroom.com, and it seems to have everything a girl could want (and I'm not talking about the endorsement by Oprah). It's even got a Naughty but Nice section. Yum.
***
Our bathroom fan has officially died. It used to rattle loud enough to wake the dead, but now it can only whine sadly and grind to a halt. Great. One more thing to fix after we get done paying off the frigging kitchen, which is no more near done than it was last Friday. I hear from the contractor (up to his knees in cold water at another jobsite when I called him) that something may happen tomorrow.
Inching closer to being able to cook in something besides the microwave or the grill.
Eyes Averted
I found bad poetry on the Internet!
I could probably improve things by posting some of my own on this blog.
BTW, J, it's "Voila," not "waalaa."
Musings on Marriage
Right now I'm listening to "The Weakness in Me" by Joan Armatrading. It's one of my favorite songs, and it's about adultery. She asks, "Are you so strong, or is all the weakness in me?"
I've never cheated on anyone. In that respect, I'm still a good Catholic girl. Not cheating is important to me, but sometimes I wonder, "What's cheating?" I don't believe a passing moment of lust is important, but what about a feeling of tenderness? One of those feelings that seem to step over the line between friendship and love, if only for a moment.
I lived with my husband for 10 years before we were married. So for the first year after we were married, when people asked if anything had changed, I said no. Then one day sometime in the second year, I suddenly thought, "I'll never fall in love again!" I don't know why that should have come as a surprise to me, but it did. Funny how my mind works.
I think because I'm such a reserved person, I crave that kind of strong emotion. As a friend of mine said, falling in love can become an addiction. But what if you fall in love over and over with your spouse? Is that possible? Or do we fall once--and that's it?
If you do fall in love with the same person more than once, how does it happen? Does it follow a long separation (say, more than a month)? A period of stress?
Big Fat Justice
Charles Graner just got sentenced to 10 years in military prison for all the abuse he dished out to Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. So I'm wondering, shouldn't Rumsfeld get twice as many years? And how about Alberto Gonzales, our soon-to-be Attorney General? He's one of the architects of the policy that it's not torture unless it produces pain amounting to organ failure or broken limbs.
I guess the lesson is this: if you're going to do something wrong, do it on a grand scale. Be one of the people who comes up with the ideas--that way you might get away with it.
Am I Sick or What?
I have a cool.
Not a cold. All the vitamin C I ate in the past week made sure of that. I'm not congested. I don't have aches and pains. I have a scratchy throat, and now and then I cough a little. I feel less than 100%, but not bad enough to get my honey to lavish me with TLC.
But what's the right word? Mini-cold? Pseudo-cold? Chilly?
Rufus was on my lap, making sure I paid him enough attention by sticking his nose in my face now and then. Even when he's hairing up my favorite shirt, I still find him disgustingly cute. Now's he gone to drink water from the plant saucers. This cat has two water bowls, but he'd still rather drink from the toilet or the shower--anyplace where the water is full of nasty bacteria and shit.
Pet Sounds
I'm sitting here innocently blogging, and my husband is riding the exercise bike. He's doing sound for a production of
Orpheus Descending in Boulder, so he's been listening to various effects on his laptop. Amid gunshots, calliope music, and whatnot, he keeps returning to the clip of dogs barking. And every time, no matter how many times he plays it, I think, "Why are all those dogs barking outside?"
I will never be a technophile.
My Obsession
This morning began as a comedy of errors. Todd wanted to go to Buena Vista this weekend to scout locations for a family reunion, but I said, "No, there's a Valmont reservoir birding trip this weekend," so we stayed home.
Now, because Valmont reservoir is part of the Boulder power plant, you can't just waltz in there to bird. You have to go as part of a group and schedule it in advance. So I slept late, of course, and then when I went to buy breakfast at McDonald's on the way, the driver's side window refused to go up because it was only about 5 degrees! So I drove home, got the truck, and made it to the reservoir half an hour late. The parking lot was half full of cars, none of which appeared to belong to a birder.
I briefly considered trying to walk through the turnstile, but decided that breaking into a power plant after 9/11 was not a good idea. Not to mention that I'd be beaten to a pulp by all the old white ladies and gentlemen of the Boulder Bird Club for ruining their annual trip to the reservoir. So instead I called the power plant on the handy phone attached to the turnstile, and the very nice man who answered knew nothing about a birding trip. I was sure they had already gone inside, but I couldn't see any sign of a group of birders in the fog. I left.
I did my recycling and bought some bird food. I went to Walden Ponds to check out the birds there, and was so cold after 5 minutes that I left. Not getting into the reservoir was beginning to seem like a good thing because I don't think I would have been able to leave early if I'd gotten hypothermia. When I called information at 10 o'clock, it had warmed up to 12 degrees.
To cap off the morning, I went to Stearns Lake in Broomfield. As I was sitting all toasty warm in my truck, looking at the lake with its frozen white edges and a dark circle of open water in the center, several hundred Canada geese flew in. Now, Canada geese are not exactly a rare sight in the Denver area (they
were rare at one point, so people started programs to increase their numbers, and the programs succeeded beyond anyone's dreams).
The sight of all those birds screeching their way into that circle of water was magical. And then, I spotted a harrier (a marsh hawk) doing its harrier thing. For you non-birders out there, that means it was flying just over the top of the cattails, tipping one wing and then another toward the ground, and every so often folding up its wings to pounce on some unfortunate rodent in the grass. I watched it for a long time. The sun was out, silhouetting the frost on the trees. By that point, I didn't mind missing the reservoir trip.
Some birders talk about "trash birds" (starlings house sparrows), but I try not to do that. Even the most common bird can remind us of the astonishment of creation.
My Big Yellow Tooth
Three front teeth. That's all I have on top. My parents made a feeble attempt to straighten my teeth when I was in sixth grade, but the gap between my front teeth and the incisors is pretty noticeable. I've never tried to spit through it, but it's probably big enough.
The main thing is that the canine tooth on the left side is
yellow. At least twice as dark as the front teeth. It really pops out. Even with whitening toothpaste, it's still beige. It makes me want to smile with my lips closed.
Has anybody out there had their teeth professionally whitened? How painful is it?
Feed me
I just realized I have a link to the Hunger Site followed by one to Chocolate Galore. That's not politically correct, is it?
The Best Chocolate in the World
Would you like a motorcycle with your chocolate?
Go to this site
http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/and search for Harley. It's so cool.
The Boulder Bookstore sells Vosges chocolate bars. I recommend them, especially the Naga Bar.
71/2 Weeks
My new kitchen has had a gestation period of 7 weeks, so far. That's 7 weeks of cardboard covering the entire first floor, washing dishes in the bathtub, bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, and having men coming in and out of the house at all hours.
Well, the last part might not be so bad...
The remodel started over Thanksgiving. Todd and I went to Mexico with his family, while Boulder Drywall came to our house and scraped off the popcorn texture ceiling. I hate that stuff. I was so happy when I came back from Mexico and that stuff was gone. I wasn't so happy about the snowstorm after a week in the tropics, but that's another story.
At one point, my contractor declared in stentorian tones: "Christmas is the worst time of year to remodel!" Well, no shit, Sherlock. For the past 3 weeks people have been working on the house 3 days a week, max, while we're living off frozen dinners. I have actually gotten sick of going out for dinner. I never thought I would say that.
I went to lunch with a friend yesterday and was bemoaning the fact that the new "almond" door my contractor bought doesn't match the existing "almond" windows. She asked me, very gently, "Do you think you might be a little anal about this?" Hey, the door is brown! I said brown! Not almond! But have I mentioned this fact to my contractor? No (hanging my head in passive-aggressive shame).
There's nothing to be done but think about another vacation, since my house isn't fit to live in. Todd and I got our open water dive certification in Mexico, so now we're hoping to do 2 dive trips this year. Airfare to Cancun is really cheap right now, about $100 on Frontier. I'm there!
I Pledge
I just took NARAL Pro-Choice America's pledge to do everything I can during Bush's second term to protect Roe v. Wade. BTW, the 32nd anniversary of Roe is Saturday, January 22.
I had an abortion when I was 18, so it's my responsibility to protect that right for younger women.
What the Bleep Do We Know?
Every time I try to type, my cat Rufus butts his head against my fingers so that I'll pet him. Then he turns around and meows in this pitiful way, as if he can never get enough love. All this from a cat with no nads!
My husband Todd abd U(Rufus, I'm trying tot ype!)
My husband Todd and I just got back from seeing What the Bleep Do We Know?! It's supposed to be thought-provoking, but mostly it's just provoking. I wanted to shoot the woman who was channelling Ramtha, whoever that is supposed to be. She kept flaring her eyes at the camera and making pseudoprofound statements in this weird accent. I went to her website and was driven away by the music.
http://www.ramtha.com/The movie worked best when scientists were talking about their science, whether quantum physics or biochemistry. One woman said that emotion was all a matter of proteins hooking up with receptors on our cells. Physicists were talking about our unity at the molecular level, how we're forever exchanging electrons with the streetlamp or the person next to us or that insect. (OK, maybe that wasn't exactly what they were saying, but I'm an English major.)
Less New Age bullshit and more science would have improved the movie immensely.
On the way home, we drove into a bank of fog. When we stopped at a red light, the lights of the car dealership across the highway looked like a bank of spaceships coming in toward town. I feel a poem coming on.
Slow is good?
I'm a slow writer (hell, I'm slow at anything except driving and eating chocolate). For four years now, I've been working on a collection of stories, which I just finished. Now I've got to sell it--what fun! The last time I was drowning in a writing project, I took up poetry. Now it's blogging.
Slow is good for some things (white sauces, afternoon sex), but if you're a writer who wants a little recognition, it's torture. After all these years at it, though, I've accepted it--I'll never be fast.
I named this post after a book of poetry,
Inland, Thinking of Waves, by Sarah Provost. It describes my life in Colorado exactly. Someday I'll live on the beach, but for now I'm stuck in Colorado with mountains blocking the view. (That's the Kansas City girl talking--she wants fields of grass out to the horizon.)
