The Kitchen Saga Continues
I finally got rid of the contractor who was supposed to build the archway in my kitchen, after getting a new (later) completion date every time I talked to him. Now I've got to find someone else, but at least I don't have to tear my hair out over him anymore.
He actually told me he was doing me a favor by agreeing to do this job back in early February, even though he didn't really want to. I replied, "That's not doing me a favor; that's being unable to say no."
How long do you suppose it'll take him to send back my money?
In for the long haul
This week I passed a couple of milestones.
First, I finished my first-ever newspaper article and sent it off to the Rocky Mountain News. In a way it was like revisiting my past. Long, long ago, in the dark ages of the 1980s, I was briefly a reporter for a newsletter called Space Business News, which sold for about $400 per year. I worked there for about 8 months. They even sent me to Sweden to an aerospace conference, and I saw the king of Sweden from afar. And then I quit about a week before the space shuttle exploded. From a reporter's perspective it was a bad time to quit, I guess--right before a story like that. From my perspective, it was the perfect time to quit, since I had decided I didn't want to be a journalist, or at least not the kind of journalist that works for an aerospace newsletter.
I'd planned to be a writer at least since high school, but it didn't really occur to me that I could plan to be a fiction writer. I didn't know you could actually go to school for that when I was in my teens. So I figured I'd go and get a degree in something like government and report on it, maybe even be a foreign correspondent. I'd learn the craft of writing, and someday I would be ready to write fiction.
At the time it all seemed so practical. And then after a few months of journalism, I wanted out. Badly. I even had a heart-to-heart talk about my doubts with the VP at the newsletter, and he said to me, "If you really want to do this, you'll find a way to." That was excellent advice. I concluded I didn't want to report on ramjet engines and manufacturing in microgravity anymore, so I left.
But at least I got a novel out of it, and I published it in 1998.
After I quit, I worked as a secretary for a while. I moved back to Kansas City and lived with my parents--take my advice: once you leave, don't go back--and worked in a communications office at a dental school. And then I went to graduate school and studied fiction writing. It's been a much more circuitous road than the one I imagined in high school and college, but when I see Christiane Amanpour on TV, I'm fine with the fact that I'm not living that life, that instead I've been writing what I want to write for the past twenty years.
So back to the article for the Rocky Mountain News. It's on rock gardens, but I did have to do some reporting for it. I interviewed two different men who were, in their own ways, passionate about plants, though one was far more articulate than the other. One talked about the romance of mountains and how you could bring that into your yard with a rock garden, and the other one referred to plants as "things." After I met the inarticulate one, I thought it wouldn't be bad to have a job at a nursery spending your time growing plants. And the other person I interviews gets to travel the world trekking up and down mountains looking for plants that grow well in Colorado. That's not a bad job either.
It seems that the older I get, the more jobs seem appealing to me. When I was younger, I had such tunnel vision. And, of course, now, I have much less time to try out new careers.
The other milestone I reached this week was the Krav Maga level 1 test. I took it Friday night with 9 other people, and all of us passed except one guy who twisted his ankle.
It was the longest workout of my life. We reviewed skills for 2 1/2 hours, and then we tested for 1 1/2 hours. It was pretty constant work: punching, kicking, escaping chokes. I felt proud of the way I got out of the headlocks. That was the skill I worked on in my very first class, and six months ago it was so hard to put my hand on someone's face--thumb underneath the chin, index finger below the nose--and push them over backward. I was afraid I was going to hurt the woman I was training with, who was quite a bit smaller than I am.
The only problem I had occurred on the very last skill, when I was kneeling, holding the pad for Kim and she was kicking it from the ground. My quads could not take it anymore, and I almost fell over on top of her. I hope it didn't hurt her score, but I really couldn't help it.
Eyes to the sky and other cutesy shit
I feel the need to talk more about my crew leader training last weekend. I do eco-restoration projects on summer weekends for a local nonprofit. They asked me to be a crew leader, so I took the training.
I have to talk about one exercise we did, which I liked because we got candy. It was an exercise to help us assess the "motivational characteristics" of our crew members and basically, figure out how to motivate them to work their asses off and come back another weekend and do it again. Isn't that sweet?
So there are 3 motivational types: achiever, power, and affiliator. To test which of us was which, the trainers put a bag of Hershey's kisses on one side of the room, a bag of Jolly Ranchers on another, and a bag of caramels on a third. Then they read sets of 3 statements to us. If we agreed with A, we got a Hershey's kiss, B, a Jolly Rancher, and C, a caramel.
Of course everyone wanted the kisses. Who wouldn't?
Here's an example of the statements:
A. After starting a task, I am not comfortable until it is complete.
B. I enjoy a good argument.
C. I go out of my way to make friends with new people.
It reminds me of those quizzes in Glamour magazine that I used to read with rapt attention when I was a teenager.
A. What if I'm in a screw-this kind of mood? Then I might just let somebody else complete my task.
B. What if I'm too tired to think? Then I might not want to argue, But usually, I do.
C. What if I've just gotten out of Krav Maga class and I'm covered in sweat? Then if I go to the video store to quickly drop off some videos, I may not want to chat with the interesting people near the entrance, especially when they all start sniffing when I walk by.
You see? I'm just too literal. Tests like these drive me crazy. I could analyze the answers all day, so I just picked the Hershey's kisses enough times to get a handful.
Let's face it, nobody is ever one type. I'd say I was mostly an achiever, which means, among other things, that I'm restless and innovative on the positive side and that I may sacrifice people to achieve goals on the negative side.
"Hey John, I've got to throw you over this cliff now because you're making people laugh with your jokes and they're not getting enough done!"
That's me, Miss Sacrifice.
And on the Power side, I do need lots of personal freedom and respect. But on the Affiliator side, I most definitely do not usually enjoy long chats. We've all met people who take twice as long to say something as any normal person needs to. Get to the point already and then shut up!
I feel better now. We quiet people have to stand up for ourselves sometimes, especially since people have been commenting on how quiet we are since about 6th grade.
Oh, and "eyes to the sky" means point your butt at the ground when you lift something heavy.
I'll get a blogroll someday
Check out this blog:
Glamazon Shoe Diaries
Where's my stick?
I so didn't want to copyedit today.
Despite how fascinating "Germany and the Americas" might be, I just wanted to curl up in a chair on this rainy day and drink something hot and sweet and read a trashy fantasy novel. But I tried to be a good girl. I called the contractor who can't be bothered to hurry his artistic ass along and finish my kitchen. I seem to be in the remodel from hell, and I can't get out. Even my mother-in-law is calling me "too nice," when I'm way more confrontational than most of the Bradleys (my husband's family). Mostly I'm looking for a way to turn loose electrical wires into a designer statement. Martha, please help!
I rewrote my story on rock gardens that I'm supposed to send to the Rocky Mountain News in early April. I tried to copyedit but kept wanting to fall asleep. I like working with words. But something about reading on a computer is so DAMN sleep-inducing. It's gonna be a long time before we regularly read books on hand-held computers, believe me.
Maybe my mood was less than, shall we say, enhanced, by my spending all weekend at a crew leader training. There I was sitting in class all weekend, at a state park that is only a vision of itself at this point. (In other words, it's overused farmland that needs major restoration, and part of our job this weekend was to help a little.)
They tried to scare us to death. I've been doing restoration projects for 5 years now, and I've never been on a crew where someone had a meltdown or a major problem with the leader or another crew member. But their training was all about that. The problem was, I never got to role-play being a crew leader with a problem person. Shouldn't that be the point of leadership training? Doing it, not reading and listening about it? I got to play the ineffectual sub-leader who thwarts the crew leader's best intentions. Great! If I ever get someone like that on a crew, I'll know how that person feels--bored stiff! And the people who did get to role-play leaders were teachers and other types who already had years of experience dealing with slackers and troublemakers. Why couldn't they resist the urge to jump in already and let us newbies timidly raise our hands after nobody else had volunteered?
Anyway, I'm not too worried. People who volunteer for restoration projects generally know they're going to be doubled over all day picking weeds or wielding a pick-mattock. They're not the type to complain about too much work. In fact,
Wildlands Restoration Volunteers has a picture of a guy with a t-shirt, "Work doesn't scare me!" (Though now that I checked, I can't find it under the project I thought he wore it for.) I can think of only one person on a crew who couldn't handle the work, and she was old, and the elevation was 11,000 feet. I didn't feel that she was a wimp; in fact, I felt bad that none of the people on the crew had even noticed she was having a hard time.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to whipping motley groups of people into restoration machines. As long as they don't throw me off the edge of a cliff. I've never been that comfortable in groups; I'm more comfortable one on one. So the only reason I can think of for volunteering to lead a group is that alternate reality episode of Star Trek: Next Generation, in which Jean-Luc Picard never fought the Klingons when he was a student at the academy (I think it was Klingons) and thus turned into a wannabe leader instead of a captain. It's a great episode, though typically male in its equation of violence with leadership.
Hmm, maybe that's not such a great example after all; I'm not supposed to beat the volunteers into submission but motivate them.
Oh hell. Where's my stick?
What's an old woman like you doing at a kegger?
St. Patty's Day update: Went to Fado's to hearing the Indulgers with
Sex and friends and Todd, who was fighting a cold and probably should have just stayed at home. I asked him to go, though, so he went. Is he sweet or what?
We had envisioned an Irish pub with comfy pub chairs to sit in while we downed Guinness and tapped our feet to the music. But as we came closer we realized there was a large tent attached to Fado's, absolutely packed with people. We went through the crowd looking for our friends, but Todd kept getting distracted by the Amazon in a lime green off-the-shoulder top, who walked back and forth, back and forth, as if she were on a runway. And I was having flashbacks to college, but something seemed different. Then I remembered: I'm 42!
Maybe I can rematriculate as a nontraditional student and have the party year that I never had. I'd be more popular cause I could afford to buy the good booze. Ketel One, anyone? All I could get last night was sucky Smirnoff in a plastic shot glass. I drank it, but I had to crush the piece-of-shit glass under my foot. Hard liquor should not be drunk from plastic.
Anyway, we stood around for 3 or 4 hours, listening to the Indulgers play. We wormed our way close to the front, where I could hear nothing except the word banshee, but the lead singer was a spaz. He kept flaring his eyes at the audience and flinging out his arms. Between his arms and the red-haired violin player, they were vastly entertaining. I'll have to go to another show where I can actually hear the words.
I have to say there were a lot of fairly homely women and really LARGE men at this event. But they were all friendly, clicking glasses and such, and I eventually found some smaller attractive men and a couple of beautiful women to watch. There was one guy with bedroom eyes AND hair (I'll bet he gets it easy) and a woman in a tweed cap who had that rosy-skin-black-hair-black-eyebrows thing going that I just love. Think Jennifer Connelly.
No, I don't want to sleep with her. I just like to look at her.
It's much more comfortable to watch a kegger in progress with your friends than actually be a 20-something and try to pick someone up at one. Though I'm not sure it would have been so hard to pick someone up--it's just that you'd have the long walk through the tent, past the nasty port-a-potties, and through downtown to think "Why why WHY?"
Todd left about 10, but I stayed and enjoyed another hour or so. The band never took a break the whole time we were there. I could hardly hear anyone talk during and after the concert. There should be some kind of small message board for bars, like the ones you use when you go scuba diving. You could flash messages at people. It would be so much easier than trying to converse at a bar.
Good tunes
A couple of things to check out
Radio ParadiseA station with real sets, instead of Clear Channel crap. After the Telecommunications Bill of 1996 passed and Clear Channel bought all the radio stations, Denver radio went waaaaaaay downhill. And it hasn't improved much since then.
Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from IraqApparently it's a book now from
Feminist Press. But if you don't want to pay, just check out her blog, listed in my links.
The end of darkness
Usually I wake up about 2 or 3 o'clock to go to the bathroom, and sometimes I wander around the house a bit to look at the moon shining into the kitchen or to get a glass of milk. Sometimes I'll wake up Rufus, and he'll start crying in the basement, but I don't let him out. I can't sleep all day the way he does, and if he were out at night, I wouldn't sleep at night either.
Lately I've been noticing how many lights stay on in our house, even though we turn all the overhead lights off when we go to bed. I've taken to turning off the computer monitors at night (we have three, not counting the laptop) because they cast such an eerie glow. And generally I turn off my computer because the CPU flashes, as does Todd's razor in the bathroom. I hate walking into the bathroom and getting blinded by an electronic razor.
But that's not even the half of it. The honeycomb shades in the living room let in the street lights from the end of the cul-de-sac. The sound bridge in our bedroom has a blue light. The Tivo and cable box have their own lights. There are two LCD clocks in the kitchen.
There are nights when I'm driving home up Highway 287 and I enjoy the utter blackness that is Rock Creek Farm open space. It's an oasis of darkness surrouded by the Flatirons Crossing Mall, U.S. 36, and other businesses. It's a wonderful rest for my eyes.
I just wish sometimes that I could find the same inky blackness in my own house.
Hey baby, wanna date?
My eyes have been twitching for a good week now. First it was just the left one, but now both have kicked in. It always makes me feel like a freak. I have to look in the mirror, but usually I can't see anything. It just feels like my entire face is vibrating to some demonic rhythm.
I can hear the music beckoning from our bedroom as I write. We used to have a TV in there but replaced it with one of those things that can play tunes from the computer (I can't think of the name now, so sue me. Todd's the techno geek in the family).
Poor Todd. He wants desperately to get to sleep, but he can't without me, and I've decided to try to devote a little more time to blogging. If I don't blog at least every other day, then I feel uninspired. Either I do it all the time or I don't do it at all! (By the way, this is not a good concept to apply to sex. I wouldn't say "take what you can get, either"--that's depressing--but ultimatums tend to brings things down, ya know?)
I tried to persuade Todd earlier to help me train for my Krav Maga test a week from Friday by putting me in a headlock. It's not as bad for me as it sounds, because the defense is to hit him in the nuts and then grab his face and push it back until he buckles at the knees. All in all, a little elbow around the neck is nothing.
Today I was training with a newbie, but she was doing OK. Then John got in on the act, and when I went to smack him in the groin, I must have left my hand there too long, because he pinned it between his legs and shouted, "What, you want a date?"
I have three brothers, but I don't ever remember wrestling with them that way. Maybe we did when I was much younger. Anyway, this kind of messing around with guys always gets to me, makes me feel nostalgic for something I never had.
Domestic dervish
Truly a manic Monday. I did all kinds of housework shit, including ironing 10 yards of curtains so that I could put them up and get all that crap off of our living room floor. I did dishes. I started reading about Germany and the Americas. And all of this, except the copyediting, gave me an incredible sense of purpose and well-being.
I love writing; don't get me wrong. But so often it's just writing for myself or a few people who read it in a journal. And occasionally for the people who listen to me read at an open mike in Denver. But most of the time it's a solitary pursuit that just doesn't seem as
solid as making the living room look pretty. Our living room/dining room is long and narrow and painted white, so when it's looking good it's like living in a cathedral, which I like. All we need are stained glass windows.
Martha, when are you getting out? I want your opinion!
Prom at age 42
On Friday night I went to my first prom ever, for the Grass Roots Ultimate team.
Now, I don't play team sports, as a rule. I tried playing ultimate frisbee once, right after I met Todd and right after I had quit smoking. It nearly killed me, and I've never attempted to play since. This is considered rather strange in ultimate circles: "What, your girlfriend doesn't play?"
But I went to the prom anyway. It had an eighties theme. I wore the black velvet dress with long sleeves that I bought for my rehearsal dinner, when I thought our wedding was going to be a wintertime wedding. Underneath I wore red-and-white striped tights. I don't know if that was an eighties theme, but at least I got to wear the damn dress after paying $200 for it two years ago. There were lots of guys wearing tails and skinny ties and girls in bridesmaids dresses.
Dancing to eighties music always reminds me of college anyway. I felt like I was back at the Pub at Georgetown again, only with less beer getting thrown on everyone.
Must be the fumes getting to me
Funny how the simplest things can become complicated and start messing with your head. I was just painting the railings in the dining room when Rufus wandered upstairs and, since I'm so lovable, wanted to be close to me. Instantly I had visions of black tabby hair permanently attached to the railings. So of course I had to barricade the area I was painting with paint supplies and a J. Jill bag. There I was squeezed between the bookshelf and the railing, surrounded by Rufus-defense devices, trying to actually get some paint onto the railings. Then I began to wonder how many coats were necessary, and Todd was no help--when he is forced to do something like paint the railings, he just does it and doesn't worry about it. Instead he suggested that I paint the cat, which, all things considered, would have been much more fun. I could have had an albino cat until I got sick of it and shaved him. And Rufus would have been an easier target for coyotes when he goes out at night to hang out with Charlie, his cross-eyed Siamese friend.
I love animals, you see.
I do. When I was six I pulled a straw out of a robin's mouth that was choking it. Then I stashed the bird (which was a baby) in a box in the garage, where our cat ate it.
All in all, I have mixed feelings about cats, but my feelings about birds are completely pure.
Monkey not dead yet*
And am I ever glad because now I get to answer
his questions.
Hey, Inland Dreaming!Here's some questions fer you:You must choose one super power: Flight, Super Strength, or Invisibility. You are the only person in the world that has a superpower. Which would you choose, why, and what would you do with this power?No question, invisibility. Here's a partial reason from one of my poems:
"Avoiding mines at the border—hard as I find it—may teach me, but then a mine does expose. Assuming I can carry art home belies this longing to enter another life, not speaking, hidden, all ears. A place where nobody is changed by me. Anywhere I needn’t speak will do."
What can I say? It's so much easier to listen or to write than to speak. And as a writer, I'm a watcher, so invisibility makes perfect sense.
Another reason I like invisibility is because you'd learn exactly what people think of you--and that would really test one's nerve, wouldn't it?
What would you do with this power?I would totally fuck the Pentagon by exposing every one of their secrets I could get my hands on (but only if the power extends to things I'm holding, which is absolutely essential. Just think of the possibilities: I find a truly hot guy, touch him, and he's invisible as long as I'm touching him. HMMM.). I'd probably do that to a few chemical corporations too. I'd sneak into the homes of people with really good art collections and look at their art and steal their chocolate. I think I could hardly refrain from becoming a thief--in a Robin Hood sort of way at first--and that would be my ultimate downfall.
I'd probably have to try on their clothes too. Then I'd end up showing up at their parties in their clothes. Some people just have no self-control.
You send a message into outer space that YOU KNOW FOR CERTAIN will be received by alien life. BUT, you can only use 7 words. What is your message?Get me today; bring me back tomorrow.
What's the craziest place you've ever had sex? On top of a gable roof on the Fourth of July.
Where's the craziest place you want to have sex?Depends on my mood. Somewhere public, but I don't necessarily want to to be seen, just have the possibility. Maybe in a swank restaurant. Then again, out in the woods (no mosquitoes, please) on a warm, moonlit night would be nice too.
Along the same lines, when have you been most inappropriately turned on? For example, a funeral, PTA meeting, etc.Not sure. Probably at work. That is, when I used to work in a office.
Describe your perfect sidekick. Not really a question, is it? Okay. What or who would be your perfect sidekick?More open and emotional than I am. Someone who could teach me to sing and dance really well. I'm not sure whether my sidekick should have better hair or not, but if she did, then it would have to be genetically compatible so that I could have hair transplants. Someone I could egg on, and vice versa. Someone who is fearless where I am fearful, and vice versa. Someone who likes vodka, tequila, wine and talking about sex and religion and fiction. Someone who appreciates the beauty of being unable to stop eating chocolate.
Or if my sidekick were male, he would have to be totally hot. Then again, I'm not so sure I'd really want a male sidekick. Maybe if we were both polygamous.
You can either spend one hot, passionate night with your ideal lover, the person that completes you totally OR you spend a lifetime with a really good friend/spouse, but someone who you will never love with the total abandon that you feel for that one particular lover. Which do you choose?One night. I love questions like this one. It's so poignant to think of having total satisfaction--but only for a limited time. Is it the Catholic in me, or that my parents grew up during the Depression?
What's the one piece of advice you'd give yourself as a child?Considering how I'm always looking back and seeing the possibilities in life that I ignored at the time (because I'm so fucking focused), I guess I'd say, "Hey, kid, [as she's running full tilt at disaster] lighten up. You can do that 5 different ways, so look around."
Would you ever want a clone of yourself?No. How horrifying. I'm insecure enough without watching how a clone of myself would do things. A twin, however, that might be nice. A twin is a separate person; a clone is not. It's not a robot, either, though. It's just a horrifying possibility.
What's the one sentence you'd say to God if you had the chance?Well, God knows everything, so why should I have to say anything?
This is just an excuse for having no idea what I would say. Or maybe I'd say, "I'd like to switch invisibility for flight now, please." Or maybe I'd say, "I think reincarnation is a cool idea. If it doesn't really happen, could you make it happen and give me my dream life, please?"
Tomorrow, a respectable news outlet will proclaim you a genius. They will say you excel and revolutionize in whatever field you desire. This proclamation is heard and believed by most people, especially people in the know. What does this to for your future? Does such a proclamation make you insecure about not filling the hype? Do you strive to prove them right? Do you do whatever you want and dismiss any problems by saying "I'm a genius"? Or do you go about your business and not let it affect you at all?It would make me nervous, but I could probably think of ways to use it to my advantage. Maybe I'd go into politics. Then again, who votes for geniuses?
enjoy!*See
Todd's blog for the reference.
Group Dynamics
I feel stirred up. I just got back from another NARAL Colorado meeting in Denver, and it was fun! We had about 25 women packed together in the upstairs room at the Oh My Goddess coffeehouse, and at one point we broke into 4 groups and started discussing upcoming plans. My job was to get women to talk about their reproductive choices, and in the first two groups I started things off by telling them about my abortion in 1981. The first group was full of energy. Finally I just had to move on to the other group and leave them talking. The second group was a little more hesitant, and when the women were talking about their experiences, the only man at the meeting was silent. Then he asked them if any of them had children and what they wanted to do to ensure their kids had the same or better choices.
The next two groups I went to were more analytical. They talked alot about how hesitant some people were about discussing such personal experiences in public. They did come up with the good idea of holding an open mike--instead of poetry, people would talk about abortion and contraception and such--but people could write down their stories and have somebody else read them if they felt shy.
I decided that if you let people be hesitant, they'll take the opportunity. Better to just dive in and hope they follow.
Sex questions
Sex and I and some other bloggers are playing Question Tag. So she asked me these questions:
1. Which blogger do you most think you could be friends with?
Well, you, of course. And my
husband...my best friend...but beyond that?
This
guy is pretty interesting. And I've always liked reading
Baghdad Burning, though for all I know she (he? them?) lives in Brooklyn. But I'm still searching for a blogger who loves chocolate and birding in equal measure. Now that would be a great, fattening friendship... We'd have to take up power birding to burn off the calories. Stop, look at a bird, identify it, do 20 pushups, and REPEAT.
2. What do you like most about other writers? What do you like least?
There are days when I secretly rejoice in their failures. Sometimes I read something by a famous person and think, "I could write like that. There's some hope." But most of all I like it when they do something and I think, "Damn, how did they do that? That is so COOL." And I just want to buy them the most expensive bottle of tequila or vodka I can find and pick their brain.
I can always dig a good sex scene, though I get more turned on by writing them than by reading them. There was this one sex scene, though, that stands out as the most ridiculous and still sexy one I've ever read. It was in a series by Elizabeth Hayden, and the sex was between a woman (who was a namer, by the way) who'd walked through the fire at the center of the earth and a man who was part dragon. First she gave him back part of his soul that someone had stolen, and then they did it in a bathtub. Oh, for god's sake, but I just couldn't stop reading it. When do I get to meet a dragon? Huh? When?
If I ever meet a writer with fabulous curly red hair, I'll have to kill her.
3. What's the most difficult part of not having kids?
Wondering why.
4. Ever communicated telepathically/dream-state with someone?
The only possibility is a dream I had 8 years after my mother's death, in which we were talking by a fountain, and she seemed to be addressing issues I was thinking about at the time. In general, I don't remember dreams, and what I do remember always seems to be a search dream.
I'd love to communicate telepathically. I once tried to bring on the Holy Spirit when I was in high school, and another time I tried to open the Third Eye. That's why I'm so wise now, of course.
5. Define success.
It always has to do with communication. Of some sort. When I was working for a small press in Boulder, I helped this guy get published. He was the only writer I ever plucked out of the slush pile. He even told me that I'd changed his life. But when I told my boss that I was happy about helping someone get published, he had to tell me how bad he thought this writer was. Obviously he thought I needed to be taken down a peg.
Another success I go back to is the comment I got on a submission to the Colorado Council on the Arts: "tremendous, exploratory technique and style." That is the best comment I've ever gotten, and there have been months I've lived off it.
I know I've written some good stuff and that I'll write more. But what I really want is to get noticed, preferably at a national or international level. That would be way better than being a millionaire (but I'll settle, really, I will).
Those are my answers. If you me to ask you questions, let me know.
Is One Thing Ever True?
I've been having novel cravings lately, mostly because I've been catching up on reading short stories. So I treated myself to One True Thing by Anna Quindlen, which I read this past weekend. I read pretty fast, so almost 400 pages didn't take that long, but I'll bet in six months I'll hardly remember what it's about. That's the downside of being a fast reader.
Anyway, it was about a career-girl kind of daughter who goes to care for her mother who is dying of liver cancer. In a way it was a great story: the characters were well drawn, and they stayed true to themselves but changed just enough to be believable. What I had a problem with were all the speeches about marriage at the end, when the mother is telling her daughter that she knew about her husband's infidelities and his other faults.
Is this a cliché or what? The marriage-is-hard-but-your-whole-life-gets-tied-up-in-your-family gig? So you can't ever leave. If that's the case, then what causes our 50% divorce rate? I didn't notice the husband in this story giving up any dreams...just the wife. I guess I'm sick of that argument because it seems to be applied to female characters a lot more than male ones.
My ducts are in a row*
Here's a cooking blog that I like:
Fanatic CookSome health info too, and a very soothing tone.
* Pronounced "rouw," as in they're having a fight.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Choco-blog
I've been wanting to do a blog about other lovers of chocolate in the blogosphere. But it seems that although many people (like myself) love chocolate, only a few actually write about it (again, like myself).
A new Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers opened in Lafayette, so now I can get Bug Bites anytime I want. Bug Bites are individually wrapped pieces of chocolate with a little card inside that tells you about a bug. Not sure of the logic here--learn about beetles with your chocolate? At least I haven't opened one to find a cockroach card yet.
I find that two Bug Bites is enough for the day. And I have absolutely no self-control where chocolate is concerned. I can ignore a cherry pie for weeks (they're so HIGH in calories, and they have to chocolate, so what's the point?), but if I have an entire bar, I will eat that entire bar in one sitting. Two bars might last a couple of days--or not.
Mildly interesting blog from Australia, 20-year-old obsessing about her friend in juvie lockdown.
I'm beginning to think only women list chocolate as an interest: Miss Shelly, Princess Rubina, Spanky (she's 14, as if you couldn't tell).
OK, this is classic. Rozandee says she likes chocolate and anything sweet but hates b*****es and s***s. She has three different blogs, one of which says, "I hate so many people now." And I can only access one post per blog. Dammit!
Hey, I've found a couple of men with an interest in chocolate. Oh, it's in Spanish. Never mind.
Why do all these people put their profiles on Blogger and then not post? You're all teases.
OK, I gave up and started hitting next blog. Found a guy who is becoming more and more like Jesus everyday and writes in Rasta dialect. The music is really sappy too ("crucify...rejected and alone"). Wow, Christian muzak. I didn't think they could do anything worse than Barry Manilow, but they have.
Here you go for some fun:
Miss Adventures. Any post titled "Wardrobe Malfunctions" is OK with me.
That's enough for now. I can hardly concentrate because Sears is here, sucking dirts out of my air ducts. This afternoon it's carpet cleaning. Then at least we'll have a functioning living room, even if the kitchen isn't completely finished.
