Denesting

I'm finding more and more areas of my life that, when viewed from the perspective of someone normal (i.e. not me), resemble more the neatly boxed ravings of a faded and hysterical housewife/crazy cat lady than items belonging to a 27 year old occasionally hip newlywed. I believe I have mentioned my whole plastic shoebox of Sculpey.

In rebellion of my future fluffy-bathrobed self, I chucked at least three boxes of "things" that I have rarely/never used, and stared longingly/loathefully at others that I know I prolly won't use but CANNOT get rid of because I like them so much. I did, however, chuck the Sculpey and the 1 gallon bag of brightly dyed maribou feathers that have been gathering dust. When I say "chucked," I mean "donated to a friend with a 3-year-old daughter", which is about the age appropriateness of some of my belongings. Feather boa, anyone? No? How about a package of Barbie accessories that I once thought would make cool earrings? Still no? Hm.

I found the BOX of photos and crap that I brought home with me from my sojourn in Paraguay that have been slowly disintegrating from lack of love and album. So I went to the trusty big-box store down the street to get one of those photo-albums like my mom always had where everything is held in place by STATIC. Did you know they don't make those anymore!?! Did you also know that M.F.ing scrapbooking has taken over the females of America like a Borg hive-mind?!? You can't even buy REGULAR photo albums for less than a scrapbook album with NO HELP in attaching your pictures. This, my friends, is a scam. A very crafty scam.

Now I have to GLUE DOWN the photos of me with various dark-skinned men drinking tea out of cow horns, and the heavy coins, and the brainwash books they taught the children there. I have to invest in sticky bits to position my 4x6 photos of children flipping off the camera in a grid, instead of sliding them in. THIS IS CRAP. If I'd have wanted to start scrapbooking, I would have started selling plasma years ago and I wouldn't be married. I would already be wearing the fluffy pink bathrobe, gluing together paper to form memories of events that I would never have participated in. A whole page for my cat Dingo. Another for the cat Taco. You see the trend. THIS IS SCRAP.

Boots!

I purchased a pair of boots this week. I love them. They make my calves look good. They do not, however, fit a pair of calves AND a pair of normal jeans. They only fit either of the previous separately (but who wants to have jeans in boots without wearing either?), or they fit calves and EIGHTIES JEANS. Eighties Jeans that cost $200 but fit in boots without stuffing, folding, or cursing.


I have always wondered why the girlies at work who wear fashionable boots always have pancake-butt and muffin-tops. Now I know. It's because of these:

7 for All Mankind Gwenevere jeans

Not even good on a model. Sad, sad. If an item of clothing does not look good on a woman with legs like a gazelle, it will definitely not look good on a woman with legs like ham hocks (i.e. myself). **They are not loose about my ankles** Instead of looking sleekly fashionable as the outfit would on knock-knees above, it looks as if I were preparing to ride my show horse over a 3-bar jump. All I need is a helmet, I think. Jesse told me I look like an upside-down triangle in these jeans. *sigh* Just what I always wanted.

**It seems like I've started a trend that involves starting a blog about a particular subject, then completely forgetting what I was originally writing about and doing something else that is less entertaining than my original thought. This blog was not originally going to be about pancake-butt.

I was going to segue into how my boot-wearing makes me not only a victim of a fashion movement, but make others victims to my boot-wearing danger-to-society self. I almost ran over a small person this morning because boots, while stylish, do not really allow one to "flex" one's ankles, such as one does when say... pushing on the brake pedal. Instead of gently pressing with a slight extension of my foot downward, moving my gas pedal gently downward and the clutch gently upward, I have to move my WHOLE LEG up and down so I look I'm doing a seated marching band impression. Not only does it make me look ridiculous to passersby and God alike, it also does not do much for my driving prowess at 8am on the Los Angeles freeways and surface streets. There was much revving and jerking this morning. It harkened back to my first days of learning to drive a stick-shift a TRUCK all alone because my boyfriend was too hung-over to make it down the stairs, much less take me to work. I had never wanted to relive those moments. OH BOOTS.

Website Obsession

As I've posted on my facebook page, I just recently found out about evernote.com. OH how exciting! If ever there was a way to occupy my time unnecessarily and excite me at the same time, this is IT!

History: I am a things clipper. If I see a picture of something I want/want to make/like/think is pretty/think is funny/want to show someone/could potentially use/want to decorate my future babies in, I rip it out and keep it. I have a whole drawer (separated perfunctorily by subject matter) dedicated to ripped things. I love keeping utter crap to inspire future crap.

Premise: Evernote takes these things you want to save for future reference (including text messages, e-mails, scans, voice recordings (which it translates into text!), EVERYTHING BUT THE PAPER and clips them ON THE INTERNET. And you can tag them, label them, sort them, find things again after the original clipping. Which is something my Amazing Drawer of Uncharted Treasures (AD-OUT, for short. Kind of ironic, actually - it is solely composed of pictures torn from magazine advertisements.) sorely lacks - I know I have amazing things in there, but after clipping something, it is generally never seen again until we move and I "go through" all my crap and toss the things I don't use, which is everything - so I don't toss anything at all. Especially from my ADOUT.

Use: I'm sending all those saved texts that will disappear with a phone upgrade or fail. I'm clipping all those webpages I bookmarked with recipes on them so that I won't lose them like I did when I acquired the death on my new laptop. I'm filing organization and home decorating clips that I will prolly never use but will remember fondly and resentfully when my house continues to look like a bachelor pad with a craft table until the day I (or Jesse) dies. Instead of compiling a long long list of bookmarks ("favorites", for those still forced to use Internet Explorer), I'm clipping and sorting them. There will be comics. There will be books I want but am in danger of forgetting I want until I remember I want a book but can't remember which. There will be receipts from online payments. There will be gift ideas. OH THE POSSIBILITIES. Now I don't have to exist in the real world at all - I can be just like a computer nerd, only with hopes and dreams that I will dutifully file onto my evernote page. Now I need a scanner!

How Does One get NERDIER While Attending Grad School AND Working?

I don't know how, but Jesse has achieved more nerdiness than I had thought possible at the time I agreed to marry him. I thought I had married a mid-nerd. Now, he has attained new levels. He plays World of Warcraft ALL weekend, regardless of responsibilities. AND, he got himself a voice-to-text program so that he can just SAY his comments into the WoW chat box and they'll come out. This was ostensibly for note-taking whilst reading about various pathologies for school, but I think he was lying to me about that.

Now he has this:


And my soul hurts a little.

** Note that he is wearing scrubs NOT because he just returned from a hard day of work, but because "they're comfortable". My future has become fashionably bleak.

CHEEZ

I've been attempting to lower my daily caloric intake this week - just because I need to get back on track with the eating less and often.

I did well.

I came today after my longest-week-ever of straight-data-entry-yo, and my body decided, without consulting my brain, that VELVEETA MACARONI AND CHEEZ was the way to go.

I just thought I'd get that out there.

**Note: Velveeta brand shells and cheez has so little actual cheese in that Jesse can eat it. This, from the man who can't eat my mashed potatoes because they dream of butter at night in the refrigerator.

**Other Note: There is a fabric manufacturer out there named "Velveta". Talk about no. There is no correct pronunciation.

Zen Decor is Exclusionary of Wearing Clothes

I sat down two days ago and wrote myself a to-do list. Now, my ordinary to-do lists are full of things like "do your laundry", "put away all the dishes Jesse left about", or " file indiscriminately." THIS list, however. Oh. This list had dates. I scheduled myself to do two things per day, with additional mandatory jewelry-making time for at least a half an hour. P.S. Sometimes writing this blog was one of my two items ... like, every other day.

This came about because Jesse and I are already discussing our next move, which won't come until the end of May when our lease is up and the roomies depart for places north. But I'm ready to move out NOW. Not that I don't love the Margaret, but.... I'm ready to move out NOW. And in thinking about moving out, NOW or otherwise, I came to the always-known-but-never-remembered-until-boxes-are-involved fact that I own too much crap. I have had so many hobbies over the years, so many senses of style that I loved and reminisce over, that the accumulation of love and craft has become an ugly mess. It's not really a "mess," per se, as it is all duly organized into little plastic boxes, but really. Those boxes are filled with things that I would covet only if I were under age 17. 14 for a normal girl. A whole BOX of Sculpey? Really?

I found this book at the used bookstore in Chico, and aside from the fact that there is too much overstuffed furniture, I love Christopher Lowell's You Can Do It! Small Spaces. I mean I looooove it. He decorated pre-fab homes with built-ins and CREATED A BOOKSHELF WINDOW SEAT. *burst of joy* Too bad I'll be renting for the foreseeable future. No window seats for me.

But in all the pictures of all the well-decorated houses and apartments, no one has any STUFF. These people live in beautiful, well-scaped houses and seemingly always design their own loveseat covers from yarn they spun off the sheep they herd in their backyards, but not a damned one of them has an actual sewing machine in their houses, much less a spinning wheel. Where do they keep their collections of tatty books collected and read through the years? Where do they keep the knick-knacks their loving grandmothers bequeathed to them that are ugly, yet emotionally and potentially financially valuable? Where do they put their dirty laundry in the beautiful ZEN bedrooms? Apparently Zen masters never had to contend with American husbands. Tell me - where does the laundry go?


P.S. What I was originally going to write about was my to-do list, and how I did half of what I was supposed to do on other days, and NOT was I was going to do today. And no jewelry.

I Hope Mimi's is Around when I'M 84

We took our little Doodle-Heck old lady out for dinner on this, her 84th birthday. Basically, she didn't want to hear anything about her birthday, except for it allowed her to eat dessert (not that she ever deprives herself of it days that aren't her birthday, but appearances must be kept. She never eats sweets when out with us. Merely tucks the boxes and bags and tubs of things with the first ingredient "sugar" under the rolled oats in her shopping carts and pretends nobody ever saw anything.

I finally convinced her to have an 84th birthday brownie, which she took a bite of and declared that she simply could not go on, IT'S TOO MUCH and made Jesse take it so as to maintain the appearance of delicacy. But he didn't eat it, so she had him put it in her to-go box. Because sweets are only legally consumed when not in the presence of a handsome man. Or even un-handsome, who knows?

She freaked out a little bit when we STOLE the chrysanthemums RIGHT OFF THE TABLE until, 2 hours after I gave them two her, she finally realized that they were her birthday present from us. Then she said "well, I guess I'll just pop these right in the ground" only she never will. I don't think she will ever get that close to dirt again. I sure as hell won't be planting my birthday chrysanthemums in my back yard at that age. That's why I'll hire a cabana boy/gardener/male model. DUH. Because people totally have cabanas just hanging out at their house, waiting for boys to do whatever in the world a cabana boy is supposed to do besides look good for aged widows.

Here she is: Note: Jesse is not really that tall, and I am not normally that close-to-death looking, but I think I've already said more than enough about my recent brush with death by phlegm.

Also Note: Jesse's chest hair

New Band Love

I spoke of K.C., my fab hairdresser - he's also a musician, a bassist in a band called the Low Countries. That is not my new band love. It's the band he subbed for as the bassist once - I didn't see it then, but I clicked on the link provided on the myspace.

After following said link, I listened, I loved, I learned that there was a show on Thursday night in Culver City, which is, coincidentally, where the roomie Margaret works. So we planned an outing. WHAT!? That's right. I got out of the house.

The roomie Jon decided to come with at the last moment, so we met up with the Marg and went to dinner in downtown Culver City, which is a rather nice little area. And then we got lost (as usual) on our way to the bar, the Irish Times. And then we met up with K.C. and some random female from his work whose name I never quite got (as usual).

Then we got our socks blown off by the pleasantness of the band, The Whiskey Saints. At least I did. I loved them. I bought their CD. I am burning onto a new disk AS I TYPE so as I can keep the original here and have a theftable version in my car, just in case I have to go to San Francisco at any point. Better that the copies are stolen than irreplaceable originals.

But BOY. I love the band. Just a short blog to state that I love the band, and going to Irish pubs to watch bands, and getting out on occasion, even. You should check them out on the iTunes, or the myspace. **Especially the song "I Need Some Luck." It's going on my "Happytimes Tunes" playlist immediately.

Love = Care-Taking the Royal B****

As stated in the previous blog, I dropped my one class like I drop... everything I touch. Meaning, quickly and ungracefully, staring at it as it goes with the expression "really?" on my face.

I celebrated by promptly succumbing to the cold that has been hovering over me like a fly since we got home from Northern California. I guess it was all that sitting in a drafty ceramics room wearing my work clothes (i.e. fashionably non-functional). So I've been home sick for three days now.

Yesterday, the pinnacle of my how-on-earth-do-EARS-get-plugged-up? woe, I was internally rejoicing that I would get more than 20 minutes alone for the first time since I started working. So since March. No noise but the ambient squawk of Long Beach. No one to worry about hurting his feelings with my one-two punch of sick cranky and PMS cranky. No background I am forSAKen coming from the World of Warcraft, followed by the sounds of pigs and dogs being slaughtered for seemingly endless hours. It was my dream come true.

Then Jesse decided to be nice and caring and stay home from school to be with me. I have discovered that he is genetically incapable of going to school/work when I am home. Maybe that's love, but really. You're going to school for a reason. I moved here JUST so you could go to school - you should do it. My snuffly nose is unattractive anyway, and I promise that I'm not going to be doing anything untoward like, you-know, walking for over 5 minutes. I know, deep-down in all my dulled senses, that this is cute and caring, and all, but I had SO been counting on one day of silence and not having to answer the question "watcha doing?" that I transformed into the MIGHTIEST BITCH IN THE WORLD. I only feel a little bit bad, though. And then only because I ought to feel bad.

So instead of silence and solitude, I got: squished into the wall with love as soon as the sun rose (standard Smith procedure), laundry and dishes clanking in the background (he did the laundry and the dishes and it made me mad - I'm SO obviously ill), I am forSAKen and shrill puppy-dog death noises, and the inability to read the book I was working on because he also is working on it. Also no sprawling all over the bed spread-eagle naps, because he wanted to nap with me and that precludes taking up any room on our king-sized mattress but the upper left 4 square feet, hemmed in on all sides by love and snuggles, which was obviously not working for me yesterday.

I stayed home again for the last day today, hoping that one more day of doing nothing but stare at crap will make me breathe through my nose again. He left for school at 7:30 (I even got up to make him a sandwich!), and returned again at 10:30. I KNEW IT. It's the genes. He can't do it.

However, he and and Jon are on a MAN-DATE, as usual, so I'm sitting in the living room of blissful silence while they go get their hairs did and wander through electronics stores and frolic through fields of daisies together. Maybe they'll go watch a movie together too, saving me not only from having to ignore my own husband, but also from watching a movie. w00t!!!

Crafty School Dropout

I enrolled myself in ART 34A, "Applied Design/Crafts". Sounds so up my alley, don't you think. Crafting? That is my craft. I attended the first day of class last night. I dropped it today.

When one thinks of "crafts," one thinks of things handmade, generally smallish, serving a decorative or functional purpose. I make jewelry, I sadly attempt (and fail) at crochet, I paint, I play with clay, I craft sporadically, tinily, and creatively (and well). What I DO NOT DO, and WILL NOT DO, is create a four foot long functional bridge out of 4" pieces of foam-core board and NOTHING ELSE, including and especially prominently NO GLUE. Or string. Or anything else that is not foam-core board. While the boys in my life are all saying "DO IT DO IT DO IT," because it's a cool feat of engineering and critical thinking... I am not a boy. I do not care about foam-core engineering. I don't want to get off 8 hours of work to cut 4" bits of foam with an Xacto knife for another 3 hours. I don't even want foam-core board to be a part of my life.

The next project would have been "Build a chair out of non-standard materials". Which could have been cool, but I don't want to build the chair, I want to craft the seat-cushion. The next project was "Make a 'Chindogu'", which is Japanese for "Useless Object." I do not want to make useless things. I want to make us-ed things. So this class is not for me.

Also, I was too self-consciously well-put-together for that class. I'm not scruffy, overweight, wearing glasses purposefully reminiscent of a bygone era, old, or generally remarkable in any way. I stuck out like a dachsund in a pack of shih-tzus. And I was the only one who had never taken a class with one of the other people, and so felt like quite the object of scrutiny, like the shih-tzu's were thinking "WTF weiner dog?"

Oh, VAIN

I went and saw my dear friend K.C. Ellis yesterday, for the first time since... April? Who knows. K.C. has been my hair-man for 6 YEARS. That's more commitment to any one thing that I've managed in my whole life, as of yet. I can't even stay with one brand of soap for that long. I guess that means I'm not old yet (Jesse has never NOT used the same brand of toothpaste. OLD!!!)

Firstly, before I admit to my never-ending vanity, let me say that my dear K.C. has never looked so well, nor I think has ever been doing so well. Who, on this earth, has ever moved TO Los Angeles and stopped doing drugs? Methinks no one, before this man. When I last saw K, he was pasty and pale, round of face, lank hair with too much gel trying futilely for the appearance of not-lank, quite poochy in the belly, and smoking like a very nervous chimney with shifty eyes. As I walked in this weekend, I barely recognized him for he was cloaked in a calm demeanor. This, I had never seen.

Turns out, he stopped smoking (everything that could be smoked, if you know what I mean), he'd stopped being skeezy, he'd stopped all the various other illegal substances, and has started hiking 4 times a week because he is actually a Northern Californian at heart, and too much cement feels like jail. I'm so proud of him - Margaret remarks that I sound like a mother when I speak of this. He was just so pink-cheeked and glowing and skinnier, looking like the picture of tattooed health and vitality. And he can complete a full sentence now. w00t!

One thing he can NOT do, however, is cut my hair long. K loves short haired girls, and I have always been one, and one I am again. Not that I didn't ask for it, but it's such a shock going from my boring-yet-occasionally-elegant long(er) locks to my above-the-chin bob that makes me look like I am from the 40's. Which is not the "edgy" that I asked for, but I wouldn't keep going to K.C. if he didn't improve on everything I asked for to make it not AT ALL what I asked for, but still better. Something I might have asked for if I'd been able to imagine it in the first place.

It's a shock waking up in the morning looking like a dandelion puff in fall, when I used to wake up looking like a hobo. It was also a shock that the amount of shampoo and conditioner I put in my hand this morning could have washed a toy poodle and ran down my neck. And that when I look in the mirror, my first reaction is "Wah?", and my second reaction is "What have I done!" and my third reaction is "Hm... maybe if I actually put some 'product' in this, I wouldn't look like a Q-tip that's been sitting in a makeup bag for a year..."

Anyway, if you're in the LA area, stop by his walk-in super-cool barbershop. It's the least pretentious salon I've been to, with the exception of the last barbershop he worked at where there was a dead iguana, a sign that said "I killed a 6-pack just to watch it die," and they passed out Jack Daniel's and beers to their regulars. Rudy's Barbershop, in Silverlake, is like a big'ol high-ceilinged warehouse of joy. I loved it. I love K.C. I will love my hair. Just let the shock wear off.

Home-Making is Just a Euphemism

For "taking care of other people's crap because you love them." In some cases, luckily not mine, that sentence would end at "crap." Not a good way to end a sentence.

I was completely side-tracked from my fair attempt at home-made mashed potatoes (not from a box!) by my devious roommate iterating her craving for salty chips-and-salsa-heaven from Chili's, which I believe has been stated multiple times is like an injection of heroin into my veins (that Jesse will never touch with a needle).

I think I didn't clarify enough that no, he did not drop out of the one school that teaches you to be a the person OSHA cracks down on to enter the school that teaches you to be the person OSHA is there to protect. (Jesse's point of view). Indeed, he is going to Chiropractor U from 8am-5pm, then Pokester U from 6pm to "10pm", which is in real-life 7:30 or 8:00. Not a schedule I envy, though I'm going twice a week from 9am to ACTUAL 10pm starting Monday.

This schedule is the reason that I finished the mashed potatoes last night, in a huge batch so there would be leftovers, only to realize that he doesn't have school again until Monday, so why the hell did I bother? Because I CAN'T WASTE POTATOES. Apparently, they are a precious commodity to my sensibilities. They were already chopped before Margaret waylaid me with her bribery and her batting tortilla-chip-dreams-filled eyes, and I couldn't just leave them, all alone, with no one to fulfill their destiny. P.S. My mashed potatoes are so damned good. I even put spinach in them for beauty. Handmade, love-filled chicken piccata with lemon-caper butter sauce over sauteed mushrooms, spinachy mashed potatoes, steamed brocolli, WHO SAYS I CAN'T COOK.

I usually do. I just hate cooking. My evening in the kitchen didn't end until 9:30, whereupon, being too sick to go on, I stared melancholily at the ever-running dishwasher and the PILE of still-dirty dishes and said "damn damn damn". So I left the roomies a note promising clean-kitchen fulfilment on the morrow, and zonked out sans cold medicine, hoping that maybe tomorrow my sexy (phlegmy) voice will have scooted and be replaced with my normal, piercing tone. P.S. No luck. I still sound like a black-and-white era film ingenue with a cigarette in a holder and a veiled hat.

The End of the Reign of Silence

At least, I'll try to end the Reign of Silence. Being ensconced in a sofa surrounded by cat and cookies and caramel (and in-laws) is not conducive to ponderous, nor humorous blog writing. It is, however, conducive to getting fat. But everyone knows these things will happen.

Jesse gained 17 pounds in three weeks. Apparently, I did not marry a human being, but I just now found out. Dang it! He was almost believable up until this.

Maintaining my record of witty-yet-approachable blogging could prove difficult for this upcoming month, as I have promised to actually make a good try at this being "domestic" for the sake of my future not-having-to-work ;). Jesse enrolled on Monday in ANOTHER school, this time a one-month, 80-hour course in phlebotomy. Soon, he will be poking people with needles in the veins. He came home from his second day with a fatty hole in his arm, and I just about hurled the home-made from scratch spaghetti-and-meatballs I had concocted on my first night of trying to support him through the "tough" times. The spaghetti was good. The Jesse taking his plate from me and immediately sitting down next to our roommate Jon so he could catch up the World of Warcraft - that was not so good. I maintained a cool and aloof exterior, but inside I was thinking "do you actually EVER want to have sex? do you want to eat? do you want ANYTHING good in this world? apparently NOT, (descriptive expletives)" So I ate my delicious spaghetti in stony silence. Take that.

Tonight I'm going to try bran muffins (for lunches) and possibly chicken w/ capers and mashed potatoes. Mind you, this kick is only going to last one month until he starts getting home earlier than I again, and then he can fend for his own self. Take double that.