always looking forward to family vacation. :)
Friday, August 15, 2003
Friday Group Therapy:
Is there one piece of criticism that you have recieved or given out that sticks in your mind?while i'm sure i've heard worse, the one that sticks is the comment in pencil on a short paper i wrote nearly 15 years ago. 'why did you write this?' being competitive, and academically inclined, that one hurt.
What is your most unpleasant characteristic?impatience. doesn't sound like it should be that bad, right? eh. if you don't grasp a concept the first time i explain it to you, i get impatient with you, because i don't see that i should be explaining it more clearly. that's bad.
What is your greatest fear? failure. always.What ambitions do you still have and plan to fulfill? having a really nice garden, one that would make my grandfather proud. there are a lot of others, to be sure, but that's the one that popped into mind.
What do you never leave home without?keys and a wallet, altho even that's not a given.
Who would you most like to meet (dead or living)? Why?hm. Shakespeare, i guess. plenty of other interesting people around, but i'd love to sit down for a pint or two with him and talk about pretty much anything.
What music would you like to have played at your funeral?while i can't name a specific piece, i can say i'd like it to be something upbeat and calming. no dirges here, just some nice, peaceful, happy music.
:: scribbled at
3:43 PM ...
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here around Beantown, we were lucky to miss most of the excitement from yesterday's enormous blackout.
this gentleman in Newark, however, was not so lucky. ;)
:: scribbled at
12:20 PM ...
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Thursday, August 14, 2003
best. cupcakes. ever.
i spent tonight making cupcakes for tomorrow's party (yes, Little Monkey Boy has finagled an entire week of parties - not bad for a young 'un, eh?), and they are the Best Cupcakes Ever.
browsing thru the baking aisle the other night, i found Funfetti cake mix, which looked like it would appeal to kids. of course, there was a matching frosting and sprinkly bits. ;) and then looking at the directions, i found that you can use flat bottomed cones in place of cup cake liners. presto - self serve, and no cleanup!
they rock. cupcakes, frosting, and jimmies, in edible containers.
i think the real appeal is in the frosting. there was a little bit left over, and i realized, as i scooped it up by the fingerful and rubbed my finger along the gumline so as to not miss anything, that frosting in a can is fairly addictive.
mmmmmmm. frosting. :)
:: scribbled at
11:48 PM ...
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so. the birthday party.
yeah. all told, it went as well as could be expected. relatively painless. The Dane and i had spent a fair bit of time sussing out what we thought would happen, could happen, should happen, and how we would deal with it. much of my energy went into thinking about how to be politely unobtrusive, avoiding problems, and still help Little Monkey Boy have a good time - which he did. (i can't remember the last time i saw that much concentrated Boy Power in one room. he had a lovely time, stuffing his face with pizza and cake (the icing gave them all blue tongues), and playing with his buddies.)
and with all of that thinking, things still threw me. much of it did not, as i'd thought through how to react and what to say in various scenarios, so i had the ready, pleasant answer to most questions. that afforded me the space to sit back and observe, rather than react, which is what i tend to do (most of us do, i think) when panicked. but a few things...
i was just not ready for the beady eyed woman who marched up to me, eyed me up and down, and spat out 'what,
exactly, is your purpose?'. i swear, that seemed so out of the blue to me. i stuttered out a response, that i was there with The Dane, and wanted nothing so much as to crawl under the table. i'd focused so much on how to negotiate with the ex wife that it hadn't crossed my mind that other, unknown third parties would be angry at me. and she wasn't much kinder to The Dane.
how, exactly, does one come up with a Miss Manners-approved response to 'why the hell are
you here'?
the other thing that completely threw me was the ex wife giving me a big ol' 'we're bestest buddies and aren't you so sweet for being here' full body hug on the way out. that just squicked me right the hell out. and then i felt guilty for feeling squicked out, because wasn't she making an effort to be nice, and shouldn't i like her for that?
having processed it a bit, i think the answer is no. yes, it was a nice gesture. on the heels of all the nastiness she's served up (and continues to serve up - took her less than a day to fire off another salvo), it was nothing more than a gesture. i'm still allowed to feel mad about the other actions, and will take this in as a mitigating factor, and wait and see. that's all. wait and see.
all of that being said - there was something about all of that mess that made me incredibly happy. The Dane and i really worked thru this as a team. we talked about what might happen, what we both thought was acceptable, how we would both approach things if unacceptable things happened, and hoped that things would work out painlessly. we checked in with each other during the event, watched out for each other, and made sure the other person was doing okay. and we made sure that we had something fun and 'just for us' to do afterwards. it was all about the 'we', baby, all about the love. and that felt really, really good.
:: scribbled at
10:05 PM ...
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driving into work this morning ... well, let's just say it didn't get off to an auspicious start.
there i was, rushing out of the house, pulling out to go to work, and i get to the end of my driveway - and wait. i should never be a comedian. my timing is atrocious, apparently. i ended up sitting in my driveway for a while, waiting for the garbage truck to finish its run on my street. and since i live on a one way street, no option but to contemplate the sidewalk.
which, as it turns out, was not the worst thing going. i spent some time looking at the wild straw grass growing on the corner; i don't know the proper name for it, but the little straw stalks at the top are all splayed out, and look like very skinny boys with manic dreds, or the inversion of the mechanical hands you use to fish toys out of the game at the midway. i was trying to think of a band name for the dred boys when i realized someone was trying to wave me out. funny how a little courtesy can turn things right around, isn't it?
oh, other funny thing from the commute: driving thru some construction the other morning, i saw a sign that said 'Caution: Steel Plates in Use'. i swear, my first thought was, 'huh. that would make a nice t shirt for a few people.'
:: scribbled at
9:39 PM ...
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Wednesday, August 13, 2003
i'd really rather be writing something silly, or at least coherent. could i have my brain back, please?
instead, i've been tinking around with the sidebar, refining things a bit, or (really) just being generally anal about organization. happens around this time of month. i get a little freaky about pointless things that Must Be Corrected. to wit: couldn't go to sleep last night until i dusted the night stand. never mind that there's a good coating of dust on other surfaces, *that* bit had to be fixed.
not as if i slept well, in any case. while the specific situation has been gotten thru, there's still plenty to process. a whole new batch of things, in fact. so last night's nightmares were about birth defects and my apartment being robbed. ~sigh~ the robbery is a recurrent theme, altho this time it happened in a new place that i couldn't identify (brick building, odd shape, huge old windows), and all the impersonal stuff was left alone. only personal, family type items were stolen, and i had to explain the missing family silver to my grandmother.
so, PMS *and* cramps, full moon, nightmares, and a never ending thicket of interpersonal negotiation.
i want my mommy.
:: scribbled at
2:43 PM ...
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rumor has it that the humidity is about to break.
and wouldn't that be nice? i'll take a few days of hot, dry heat over this ridiculous Baste-O-Matic that seems to have been our local weather system, thankyouverymuch. also, perhaps my postage stamp of crabgrass that passes for a lawn can recover.
one of the side effects of the "weather system" (and i use the term loosely, as there's not much system to it) has been Crazy Monster Grass. when the equation is (Grass + Vast Quantities of Water) - Opportunity to Mow, the result seems to be rampant, rain forest lush jungle grass. at one point, i was wading thru nearly knee deep grass just to get to my front door.
when we finally gor a brief respite a week or so ago, and things dried out enough that mowing was possible, my landlord did swing by. my first thought when i got home was, 'huzzah! he's mowed!', quickly followed by 'um... did he mow, or did he scalp?', because there were huge bald patches all over the place. either the mower went a bit haywire and ripped things out wholesale, to make up for all the nonmowing time, or some of the grass suffocated from lack of access to sunshine. either way, it's a sad and pathetic little front patch of mud at my apartment these days. a few days of nice, dry heat may help to repair things some.
odd summer all around, isn't it?
:: scribbled at
2:31 PM ...
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Tuesday, August 12, 2003
huh.
not atrocious. (see previous post.) weird, awkward, and mildly inappropriate, but not atrocious.
small blessings; film at eleven. and the music was good, too, as was the parking spot right in front of the club. ;)
:: scribbled at
11:49 PM ...
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mmph. frazzled.
so frazzled that i haven't really slept properly for a few nights. last nights dreams were less scary, but still disturbing - dead grandmothers and deviated septums, which i had to repair. and i think The Dane may have taken a shot to the head. i'm not sure. he claims i have a mean left hook, tho.
~deep breath~
the majority of the frazzle source will be over and done soonish, tho. birthday party for Little Monkey Boy, hosted by his mother, who has never been anything but atrocious to me. my mantra is still 'smile and say nothing'. and then cocktails and live music, applied liberally, for resuscitative purposes.
:: scribbled at
4:47 PM ...
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Monday, August 11, 2003
yes, indeed, someone very definitely *does* have a
case of the Mondays.
to wit: not only did i start the day with the deck stacked against me, not only had i had enough nightmares to ruin my sleep, not only were the nightmares bad enough that my fears actually coagulated and took shape *in my room* (nothing like waking up to a black cloud to freak you out), not only am i ragingly PMSy (PMSey?), not only is my inner ear still fucking around with me and giving me vertigo in retaliation for a particularly challenging sail yesterday, but.
i very carefully packed up a lovely lunch of pasta, and papaya slices for dessert, and a Red Bull for morning fortification - and then left them all just inside my door at home, with the Red Bull sweating a little ring mark on my nice wooden table. see, i had to put some things into my bag (like keys, and wallet, which are sort of necessary), and needed my hands free. down goes the lunch bag, down goes the can of rocket fuel, into the bag goes the wallet and keys, and out the door goes me. sans lunch.
and then i got to eat my hat, in Boss Man's office.
is it Friday yet?
:: scribbled at
4:16 PM ...
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unconscious mutterings:
Miss America:: fake
Cherubs:: seraphim
Shark Week:: gory
Sunflowers:: seeds
Sorority:: catty
Grilled chicken:: mesquite
100:: proof
Tickle monster:: ouch
Veronica:: hammil
Slurpee:: orange
:: scribbled at
11:49 AM ...
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