Sure smells sweet

Seriously

… I am so moving to Byzantium / Constantinople / Istanbul …

Note

I did trip and fall on Tuesday … on a decline, in chunky yet inflexible heel sandals …
Left ankle became parallel with the asphalt earth,
Right knee and ankle-bone bear red witness to the occasion.

I was speeding up based on someone I had just passed (whom I did not fear, but I always have to make my point).

He did not see me fall.

What is nice to report is that my left foot (isn't that a movie?)
Can almost do everything it's asked to do today, only 30+ hours later.

So, it wasn't the worst thing ever.

But it still hurts like … well, if I were a mere Homo erectus, I wouldn't have made it,
Unless those theories about caring (among that genetic strain) are true.

No photos of my brick-red scrapes are available.

Half of the 154 remaining messages

ARE FROM TODAY

Inbox down to 198

to-do items downloaded from inbox so far, greater than 40.
inbox task not complete. expect action-item highs in the mid-70s.

Choosing Between Lividity and Levity

All my silk slips have severe snags.
Quel tragedie.
Kerosene?
No.

"To Prevent Becoming What You're Busy Not Doing"

Four large tasks on the plate, and there are no eggs or bacon on the side.

That chicken farmer owns too many farms and doesn't seem to care much for hygiene. I'm surprised there were not sickened egg-eaters sooner.

Back from that aside, I am letting the rain make me feel the opposite of the heart palpitatious nervousness that made me un-sleep at 7 instead of 8.

"I Don't Like"

Do you think the majority of people have an easier time coming up with things they dislike than with those that they enjoy, appreciate, or look forward to?

Do you think that, even if that number were in balance, that the people who claim to like such-and-such, especially the kind of people one used to call a Pollyanna but who have become complicated and often religious, actually feel, on the whole, that their likes are weightier than their hatreds, dreads, and sorrows?

You know that my answers are yes and no, respectively.

I wanted to say that the egg video is mainly an audio track with (here) low resolution and poorly lit (fluorescent) ambiance. It was not meant to say anything in particular except that I think everyone should roll hard-boiled eggs around and see what they come up with. Maybe I'm just interested in eggs, either from a snake's point of view (I do eat chickens, after all, out of habit) or that of a caretaker of egg-making animals.

It's late, and I have encountered a great many things today (yesterday/Friday) that I did not like. Large, small, inconsequential inconveniences, and time-consuming trying encounters. I have to be at a museum in about eight hours … for school … my group of four has been directed along with the others to go and choose four artworks about which we're taking up two short essays. It might be only two, actually, and we then choose one. So I guess this teacher cares for comparing what people come up with. There's another blechier project due near the end. Something about a problem, a PowerPoint, dear grouchiness, and a final paper. I haven't made anything but a haphazard bibliography in a long time. Actually, probably never, as I tend to be a fishing researcher, and this class seems to be about teaching us to be discerning, but in a particular way.

The wall of Academia is visible again, and I still do not like it, though some of its decorations have improved; by that poor metaphor, I mean that technology has made it quicker and more comprehensive to find "quality sources." I guess journalists aren't experts enough (even with an informed opinion — and it occurs to me that the teacher, who was an early advisor of mine, referred to my being a critic, in public, when I was merely in a prelude to the "introduce yourself" part of the class; I knew what I meant to say — I had taken notes; you know I can't do anything without writing something down, but she may have meant no harm, being a somewhat sketchy and quick talker, starting sentences she diverts from midway, somewhat like someone else I know). But no matter; I don't really have anything I do care about in art history; and it was odd — so many of the women in the class (they were all women) expressed interest in 18th century France or ancient Western art, which is boring to me. There was one person with tri-colored hair who had taken an incomplete the previous semester and just had to sit in and do the work now, though and then could graduate. She flatly stated, "I am not going on in art history; I'm not interested in anything." I am glad I'm not in her group; I didn't see who she teamed up with.

I got two people who were geographically next to me, as well as the girl across the arc who made eye contact with me and who was the only other person I recall as being interested in architecture, albeit construction and fabrication methods. Still, she was smart and had a well-spoken introduction. I think I might have sounded stupid; I will not quote myself, though I do remember what I said. I have notes, after all and it was only the other night.

And I am cooperative and cheerful and will come up with something to write about eventually; the thesis is years away, unless I can mentally, financially, and temporally fit more than two courses into a year's worth of time.

Anyway, I'll let you know what boring pictures we pick. I don't like being limited to committee choices.

Do you?

I like eggs

Low Skyline of DC

Laid Back

Lots of people are waiting for for 65 so they can sit back and not ever work again.

I guess I'm glad I've been working that time into my life as I go.

I am not saving anything.

So far.

It's kind of a silly joke. I don't appreciate enough what they above me have done for me.

I have never worked for a company that had a pension — except when I was in Japan. Once I worked for a religious organization, and they had something, too. I suppose I was silly to blow those few thousand dollars. But it was the 90s, and my parents were not involved in the decisions, and there had not been the kind of subliminal training that drove me to put "it" "somewhere."

Of course now it's more like 70.

Lemurs got frozen fruit; random dialogue is fun

Well, I never

I miss expressions that don't use the word "fuck" — or that require a bit more thought than simply sneering:

Gone to pieces.

Give a hang.

All broke up on you.

I shouldn't wonder.

A: "We never go out any more."

B: "You're just a head in a rusty metal box."

A: "If you had been more careful, I wouldn't be just a head in a rusty metal box."*

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!

— except that I gave up dancing about five years ago.

It was a wide but brief window.

We're all wondering whether the blogging window also is on the list to be shuttered.

Unlike an old building, it won't deteriorate upon abandonment; however, like Miss Doxie, Diary of a Mad Brown Woman, BiblioBoy, etc., untended blogs may be retained as archives, but they won't be consulted.

I rarely even read anything old that I've written, much less all your words of wisdom or the hundreds of articles I've bookmarked or cut-and-pasted into text files … or downloaded as a student from JStor and other databases …

Reading old paper-based diaries proves consistently to be depressing and repulsive. I know now why my mother burned hers, why it upset me, and why I both wish to burn and probably will not … so much now is electronic; it will survive "all" but easy cyberwarfare.

Does the world really need more information from me? Granted, unlike manufacturing anything but recorded verbal ideas, writing doesn't tax the world much; it does not add to much pollution — one can use recycled paper and pencils, after all, instead of relying on available electricity (non-solar — you can read a Kindle in the sun, but you still need power; books use power to be produced … all the tree-moving and processing and inking and re-distribution, so many trucks; I so would like to know the environmental impact of our books … book-carbon-footprint). The weight of words in our information age is diminished by dilution. Even our static thoughts, thoughts recorded, are mere blowing puffs.

My point is that I don't have much to say.

To clarify, I have lots of experiences that I could indulge myself in recording, but I doubt their narrative value to others as well as their usefulness to me. And my greater desire is to be humorous, which is funny in itself — I can not translate life into funny stories. (I haven't given much time to trying that : )

Additionally, the things I want most to talk about are exceedingly private the more public my professional persona becomes. Already there are plenty of things I can't say on Facebook. Today I want to complain about being undercut. That's about as much detail I can provide. Tossing in this idiom may help elucidate: If you snooze, you lose.

Please note that it is only the appearance of sleep, and there is certainly no rest involved. I maintain that there is nothing wrong with refusing to be forced to volunteer. I am not one of those good people. I recall a few semi-voluntary giving-of-time sessions, and also one willing and rewarding one, and a number of repeated-event forced ones that seem to have turned me off from unrenumerative uses of my time that involve having to please others instead of just solely myself.

Asking more and providing less. Great recipe; would rather be at the zoo — it's Wild, Wacky and Wet Wednesday, and they are giving the animals ice and other frozen treats all day long! $2 admission, $2 hotdogs, $2 train rides!

*Saturday Night Live c. 1990.

It's like a cake made of rock

Ribbit

From earlier drafts / context lost #1

quite weary of not saying nor being able to say what she really means.*

most manners are meaningful diversions, formulaic conventions of politeness, of (yes, i am sure you did not mean to hurt anyone's feelings, and this is my abtruse and polite way of mentioning that you probably did hurt them regardless) honestly felt sentiments.

despite the way "they" eat dying-almost-all-gone whales all the time, the japanese have a cultural way of dispelling 91% of the BS i seem to encounter daily.

anthropology has the way to go.

*like: you're a f*ing slut (vocationally speaking; your artwork is crap; i hate your tedious lies; etc.)

**look for lost-drafts #2 around april 29.

It helps

To look at lapines:

http://www.disapprovingrabbits.com/2010/06/meatball.html

http://www.disapprovingrabbits.com/2010/06/cassidy.html

Cut grass today. Pulled things out. Ate all the ripe black raspberries off the bush (diminished yield this year … did a cull last fall … new canes will fruit in 2011), did not get any insect bites nor see the yard-snake.

Found 100 rolly-pollies (pill bugs) under the smoking wood soaking in speckleware on the table (wooden magazine rack). Moved it, removed rolly polly fodder.

Need to plant lilies of the valley. One lily, destined and hoped to spread. Not unlike the stupid virulent vines (some are morning glories; some are "wild;" and some are rouges of larger flower from the seeds I used two summers ago; don't worry, I'm winning against them and the walnut stump-tree).

Did a modicum of editing; spent 2 hours running grant supplements to destinations; spent $3 at FedExKinko's to make them look nice.

Have to pack. Am leaving in the morning for Salina, Kansas. Need to check weather.

Found new leak source. Will deal later.

Bacteria-town

I believe that there are at least 3 infections in her body right now.

That thing that seemed like "the usual carpal pain" is really that oven-rack burn from Friday that blistered 20 hours later and then peeled off a few hours later … the back of the hand is quite sensitive. Red circle. Sore. Hoping it fades.

Am not going to go further.

Has laundry drying on 4 floors. You can cross-reference that.

Ate pork two days in a row, 3 meals, all on these fun new-to-me flattish bread multi-grain things that my cousin and I both thought were cookies. My godmother let me take a bag of them home. I swear they are not in my city's stores yet. East-coast / West-coast. (Are far apart; my cousin once rode Harley-back with her hubby to Vegas. "Never again," though they are going that route to Chicago in 2 weeks for my brother's wedding. They are quite a-typical in the Harley set, in my non-described opinion.)

They're going to NYC this Thursday, and we're heading to Salina. We are taking the train to Chicago — driving to Salina, of course. We drove to a wedding in Salem in November … probably never again (at least not in 48 hours : )

You can take that to the bank.

has become an infrequent poster

let's blame facebook, purveyors of anti-privacy;

let's blame a hard drive failure, destiny of anyone on such a machine;

let's blame her fifth grey hair, which is really quite silver and blends almost not-so-poorly with the semi-golden ones and enjoys the privilege of being the first not to be yanked;

let's blame politics, where her energy has fled; she's quite upset by the oil-leak;

and the rest of the time she's watching japanimé.

and then there is work.

this yellow rose

smells exactly like a candy necklace.

the pink one smells better (to me).

the red one smelled best (when it was cut) —

roses, like people, don't always smell the same as time goes by.

Got Married

7 years ago.

Pretty good so far.

: )

4 facts about which I am disturbed

1. My attractiveness seems strongest with men over 60.

2. Two of my first cousins (with kids) have lost their homes recently.

3. I saved 2 or 3 flies today.*

4. Flies understand English: "Go to that window, and you can be saved," said the lady with the Crate & Barrel catalog.

*(One might have re-entered, one of those fat, live-in-wood-all-winter kind).

**I talked to mom today; that part was good : )

****This is not my photo, but it is my hometown.

Had this other thing to say

Today, I shall recycle decades of ire so as to purge it.

May-day, May-day, this ship is sinking …

There are those who wish to parade tanks (that I didn't consent to pay for … neither did they … you go ahead and tell me capitalism/democracy is better ; )

And, there are those who wish to parade flowers,

as I do.

My last, semi-free, proto(yes, that's a true-choice word)sexual wish is for

Tanks

Thanks

Flowers.

And/or

This is what I'm confessing today to the Great Google Infomanager, oh keeper of all secrets, facts, Wiki-facts, possessor of most of the world's porn collection and lots and lots of very wrong information and bad website design — to you, willingly I share my boring revelations that are none too flattering to myself:

I'm not the one having a birthday Saturday, but I am having a wedding anniversary Monday and an association of guilt with both occasions, as well as a third tier of even older memories associated with the same date-frame.*

Besides, it is the season of storms in this region; the day after we got married a number of tornadoes spurred my eastern guests back home. Perhaps our first in-house spring — it is now only our third — was when we lost roof parts and learned our inspector (and our savvy) were corrupted, and so I have reason to fear the merry, merry month of May. Is it not also Mary's month, in the Church? Flowers, insects, the coming of heat.

My mom is the one, for better or worse, who instilled in me a sense of overwrought awe at the power of nature. It is a good trait and has kept me from skydiving, mountain-climbing (not much, anyway, and counting fire-escape-climbing, not since I was under 23), deep-sea diving, driving recklessly, swimming in the ocean overall (though not dangerous rivers under irrational yet not quite illegal intoxication levels … again, not for a while now) — you get the point.

The one time I was actually only several blocks from a tornado that struck east campus in … you can do your own approximate math, yes? — I was living in a flimsy, foundation-less stick-made shingleville with thin metal door frames I could practically kick in. Yet, all was well. You can't count on much, at least in terms of predicting outcomes.

That brings me to my titled point. It is a starting place, actually; "Oh, great," you're thinking, "I just endured a half-dozen paragraphs and she's not even making a point yet." I always was more interested in introductions than completions, in 6-hour relationships than most that end up having to suffer the effects of distance, while time itself is not proportionately altered so as to keep old memories relevant, to keep memories from interfering with what is actually before one, with the events of merely and only the now.

Ah, she's been spending too much time reading choice-meat spinnings as Jean Baudrillard's no-it's-not-about-baby-formula simulations, representations, misrepresentations and simulacra.

It's windy out, and that troubles me. I'm sure you find it windy in here, too. No, but I mean that it is all relevant; Chang Rae Lee spoke about it, or at least was led to speak of it nearby the host at the library, of the faith in seeing written things, which are not always planned out to the letter by every writer, but which do come to their proper and full end. He mentioned that he thought everything one read or wrote became actually a memory itself, and it is impossible to unplant a seed (anyone's words).

So, earlier life seemed like a series of unlimited options.

The "or" of not being married is no longer my choice. The or of becoming some sort of scientist is also not within my realm; I have tested it. As for the former, it is a done-deal, neutral, for better or worse, and it's suiting me just fine. I mentioned to my friend recently that I despised being in love; I hated the illness, the gleeful anxiety that blocks all worries but of the other, blocks hunger and often, interferes with sleep. I used to get sick.

*the rest of you, perhaps are all innocent bystanders. remember when Jackie Childs, the Kosmo Kramer's lawyer, kept repeating that phrase at the New York-friends' trial … one of our topics about 24 hours ago during our last Art Now class was how 7-year-olds can't tell the difference between video games and reality … I swear, at least half of my classmates had children, and during the course, our teacher learned she was pregnant (second child); children-ness makes for an interesting slant during class discussions … so does racial mix — a fun classmate who reminds me of Diane K. in some ways declared, "So am I (Jewish), but we have to have our bacon," in response to another, one of the tallest men in the class, also-married and father of a 4-year-old, who was digging on the fried-pork sprinkles on the cream-cheese icing on the red velvet mini-cupcakes she had brought to class to share on last-class-not-really-learning-day and who felt compelled to announce "I'm Jewish."

April 10

Spring flower shot repeat.

You may know how I feel about this.

Summertime in the City: Preview (home for sale).

Trash container abuse.

Counting for parking challenged.

Back o'cherry contrast shake. (when housing market collapses).

Construction Dove, on the job.

Suspicious Chain.

Example of a reasonably-sized restaurant exhaust fan. ALL my desired needs!

Alley Violets.

Complementary Transit Stop.

Destination in Sight.

Apex / Vulcan "superburner." I'm too negligent to know what order to put their names.

Petition Man Rocks the Neon-Red Sweater.

Scalping is legal, apparently; you can even harass the disabled, who, we believe, would have planned ahead with tickets, don't you?

My camera seems racist. Fellow is homeless-like and wearing slippers outdoors. I saw some white, well-employed fellows doing that at You Say Tomato that Sunday. I called them on it. Holy gross America. "I am on Medicare, and I didn't vote for Obama." Conservative radio man would not concede (talked past me) that that entitlement was equally wasteful and/or effective and should be disparaged as much as the newer health care initiative.

She was with sign-man. See below.

Lost points with the hippie dentist b/c of profanity.

Bush lied: people died.

Did not know they made Velcro shoes any more. They do still kill abortion providers, though.

Call it! It's a sequential radio play!

Most comfortable bar stools ever. Plus, free food on Saturdays.

What happens when a girl misses the friends she meant to meet and ends up meeting an over-pseudoephedrined dentist and a younger and straight-edge journalist/ painter with a rescued chow-lab pup (that they let us bring in the bar! : ) PS, I pissed some people off, I know; and men who knew damned well they were not getting anything in return paid for drinks and a cab ride. I don't get it; honesty is a policy — does it work? Oh, and the "I'm retiring in 15 working days" bartender, she gave me a free drink herself. Is she not used to dollar tips?

She said she did it because I was nice. She's in the education business. "Italian by injection." I can only remember one of her son's professions right now.

Dialogue we met on (I began, after I saw the "cash only" sign taped up under the top shelf, which is really only the second one, the top's being occupied with a faded badger and cobra-mongoose motif):

"How much is the Bushmill's?"

"What's a Bushmill's?"

"It's a whiskey you have over there."

: )

It was $4 then and $5.50 later after the Jello-shot-pusher girl came on shift. Someone bought a number of the customers a shot made of something called 53 (or so, from Spain); one adds half-and-half to it and it looks like a tiny beer and tastes like vanilla ice cream. Good lord.

I am not the sharpest crayon in the box. But duller crayons are the ones that are used more (and by both those who do and don't have the biggest box alike, the one with the sharpener. Still, I had some of the most satisfying conversations that day that I've had in ages. You might know the value of that. There is more, but it waxes negative, reflecting poorly on the "art community," and it is of little entertainment value). Me and they are fairly severed. In that way, it was like being on vacation; you may collect addresses (and even use them once or twice, but that will be the end of it).

Above: Two out of three; dentist not found.

In the alley

It's where the nails can be found. It's where the college students' drunken babble echoes on Thursday nights.
Perpendicular to it in a driveway, clean neighbor is vacuuming out her car.

A little while ago, she was pulling the arm of a man, helping him up, from the alley.
He: Shirtless, tattooed, sunburnt, with bowed and poorly functioning legs.

Thank you, ma'am.
You bet.

He stooped over unsteadily five times to gather the pieces of something he dropped when he fell.
A case like a little space heater, but with wire pans with handles of some kind.

You know my eyes are bad.

To fall there, when there was someone around to help him … I suppose he might fall frequently.
Yesterday driving home down Troost from a gallery, we saw a person crossing the street whose legs were similar.
And last week while walking to work, I dialogued with a fellow with nearly the same limp.

I'm glad my legs work, even if they are inelegant and usually shod against all fashion.

The rest of my Friday

He was shorter than I

But on the upside (to those who follow race- /geo-politics) is a non-practicing Jew from New Jersey with a broadcast history and a future in print or education. Has the same first name as the artist whose show I came to visit as part of my job; he and he are friends and in the same graduate program in my faux profession. I did address the artist (my goal and whole point to being painfully out in the world and not acting like a snail) as often as possible. We did o.k., but he had fans/patrons who had questions, and it's up to another writer to get that copy in anyway.

You know, of course, that I do not have that J-degree, but I call them colleagues just the same. It may be why I stuck around for those 20 minutes at all.

Perhaps he was merely charmed by how I stage-whispered "I went to MU" to his Jayhawk-transplant ear (from a distance of 2.5 feet). I had already done the same with a woman, the one running the gallery space, who was flattering in saying to me, "I thought you were older." Oh, for the candid lovely things people say, especially when you've had a 2+-year e-relationship and find them amazingly younger in years than you expected them to be, based on their e-content, too. Yay for the smart and young and the smart who merely look young!

My telling her, "I'm almost 36," was not at all painful. I balance all that with frank admissions of having social anxiety, of being hand-flighty, of slipping in and out of serious "this is my business question" mode.

I tried to stay on task with this fellow … who, come to think of it, was all very forward in his method. It could have just as well been merely the only way he knew to talk to women at all. I was pretty much going on that assumption, until the e-mail came tonight.

It was charming, and I told him so, to receive a veiled and diplomatic invitation to see one another again — he'd even drive the hour out to my "neck of the woods" to grab a bite, or, "perhaps a drink." See? — how diplomatic!

Ah, while he could not fail to notice my giant label-free repurposed Gatorade bottle of tap water, he did, admittedly, fail to judge which hand (he said he looked for it) my ring was on. Another sign of youth and/or my (ha!) powers of distraction / failure to have learned to act my age and position.

I replied within e-minutes, with text you won't see until I am dead and have a biography out (another ha! is in order), indicating in the first paragraph a religious joke (5th day of Passover … as much enthusiasm as I and my husband spent Easter with his parents, etc.) — and he replied back with a decent and lighthearted apology … to which I sent a "seriously, keep us in mind re: student writers who have an art-bent" … to which I seriously never expect to see/hear another reply.

Since most of the males who express interest in me fall into the "weird man driving down the street looking out of the non-windshield and risking hitting potholes or dogs or whores," or "penniless immigrant who culturally misinterpreted her eye-contact or smile," or — since I'm white I can say this — equally penniless white trash-esques … this is a small triumph.

It's my first confirmed and actuated, "A younger man liked me!" that I've ever had. Cougar-T (who has three known hairs that happen to be white and are destroyed often) is TMI-ing it your way.

I shall not be satisfied until someone I care about (care, in the 1870s sense) looks back at me, male or female., but that's all pretend, not necessary and not going to happen — because I'm decreasingly paying attention.

I still maintain a terribly non-Buddhist (disappointed) vanity, but I have a devoted spouse who worships the ground I complain on; and while marriage, as I have told some of you personally, is no better or worse than being alone, I would not trade this or change it or end it for the world.

And not just because I think the world is stupid.

It's the most marvelous thing to have someone who has your back no matter what and vice-versa. Young is passing. New is nothing. Love is something. Commitment is everything.

I like it.

Fool's day

Heard the vroom, heard the siren, heard the cops turn off the siren, heard the helicopter, heard the vroom, hear the helicopter, heard the vroom, hear the helicopter.

Choose a winner.

Saw a robin couple when I went to the yard today at 3:40 p.m., when it was nearly 80 degrees and there was no shade. The sun blared right into the west-facing windshield at 7 p.m. Spring, fall, they have their downfalls, but at least in spring there are robins, wide-mouthed and singing.

Hear the helicopter.

(really, she's just crazy)

: )

Our cat died a month ago.

she hates you all, you know.

you never comment nor

sympathize,

even when commenting elsewhere or

anonymously,

when she'd ____ ___ _ ____ ___

!

This is my answer

to all your wishes for spring to come. Winter, it wasn't that bad. Spring, doesn't happen for a week. Ides, coming soon to a March near you. Daylight "savings," rammed down the throats of the American people while they were sleeping. Doves, getting by.

Don't spend too much time reading billboards either

Some

They will not be happy until they have their mating instinct (regardless of offspring-generation-wishes) satisfied. They have very high standards. They (I'm thinking of three-five in particular) have been loved by me, but I did not qualify as their type : )

Others will stay single for what seems like indefinitely, and they will remain jocular in bachelorhood, showing signs of strain but with such different colors.

I am looking to spend time with the kind of friend who, for at least 40% of the time, is entertaining and pertaining to me. A few qualify a percentage, even high percentage, of the time, but even 40%-attainers have deterrents to intimacy that stem from other sources. Relationshipping is a mucky half-shore, half-sea business. Mud everywhere, obscuring.

New template

It wants me to change HTML b/c it is so silly with its lack of spacing between posts.

I do not have time to learn CSS/HTML more right now.

Sorry about the appearance issue.

Text messaging

Recently I told the Facebook world, which shares little overlap with this one, that I had two consecutive +~$35 phone bills due to the addition of 5¢-charges stemming, one at a time, from sending or receiving texts after the 300/month limit has been reached. I think it's 300. I do know that the two lines can't "share" their quotas, that one phone (mine) uses far too many while his uses very few. Obviously we have the wrong product.

As an aside, another example for an approximation of service would be the dental insurance offered at my husband's job. He gets fairly good coverage for $10.06 a month. How much do you think it would cost to add me, one other person? [answer forthcoming, though you can guess which way this story is headed, I'm sure]

After I lamented my stupidity and put a ban on texting, I proceeded to "text just a little," since I wasn't near that month's limit (though, admittedly, it is very hard to tell without logging onto the company's site … the "press # something #" to see minutes remaining and messages unused has never worked / always generates a network error), and it must have broken the psychic barrier of protection around my edict, because all kinds of people have been texting me for all kinds of stupid things. Short responses in 20-text "dialogs." Addenda, in same. Double answers. Texts at 6:14 and 8 a.m., asking things that have already or should be handled in free e-mail, the kind of thing one checks upon waking but does not wish to be woken up for.

I guess people don't understand the meaning of meaningful. Probably, they are oblivious due to their unlimited-type plans. Sprint tempts with their art-building ads (filmed locally in Block) and $70 offers for all-minutes-all-texts-all-Internet (to other mobile phone number users) service. Their revenue, however, is predicted to drop by $250 million soon, due to loss of a contract with the main cable provider, which gives this household its Internet and raised rates $3 after 5 years of our paying them $49.95 for consistent coverage and speed.

In this online version of me, has the job situation been announced? Seems we left you all hanging with, "The cat died, and I'm dying." Never fear, for though I remain consistently overcommitted, I have erased the 46-hour routine from the week's 168.

It is confusing to me why I was unable to eat, shop, bathe, clean, travel to and from jobs and shops, do Facebook, pay bills, and "enjoy my family" in 36 hours a week. That is the figure I arrive when subtracting work-hours and 56 (8/night) sleep-hours. I do know that there was a problem in finding a repeating 8-hour block that came at the same time every day and also was able to offer an undisturbed environment for the production of sleep. If I lived alone, it might have happened.

So, after about a fortnight of manic behavior and life-on-coffee-and-hope, I succumbed to what most of you will peg as inevitable, and I quit. It started as a mere calling in for a sick day, paid or unpaid, it did not matter, for I was in an odd situation of mental anguish, an exhaustion that, while entertaining — especially given the boost of super-self-esteem one feels when accomplishing so much — was just too taxing. Puns are good, yes? Anyway, I was also unable to stay hydrated and was feeling the precursors of cold-like things all the time. And I know it took a toll on my teeth, which is "all that I need."

Wait! I forgot school. That's 4 more hours (class and travel for attendance) and about 3 for reading. During paper weeks, an additional 13-20 is required.

Anyway, it was "worth" $910 (net). Don't remind me that it could have been multiplied six or seven times.

Sorry about Cat in the Box

I'm sure it's distasteful.

I have not been able to get myself to take out camera at funerals (of relatives) …

But I have hyper-documentarian instincts.

Ashes Coming

The Problem With Sick Days

… is that no matter how much you wish for them to be "get well days," it's usually too late, and you end up with all kinds of pains that were either inevitable or simply manifest by suggestion — body, hey, body! Don't listen when I call in sick.

Remember when

I said that it would be impossible to take a class this semester AND work at the magazine AND do the full-time nighttime gig …

And that when my hormones did their typical shift-dance, I'd crumble into a heap …

*********

I don't remember the weekend or where the squandered time really ended up. It's hard to have to view sleeping as a crime against superproductivity. It's hard to admit that I can't have all this cake around and eat it, too. It's more than lamentable that I am missing $10,000 of worked-for money from 2008 and 2009. It's awful to be "self-employed" by proxy instead of choice — and to be dumped into paying ones own taxes for no other reason than others' horrid mismanagement.

If you're going to do something, you should do it well. I haven't written a single word (except in the virtual reality of my head) for a paper due in 24 hours. Sounds like a long time, but it's not at all, not that I am going to my shift that starts in 10 minutes.

There are only so many hours in a day (surprise!).

I am at a crossroadian impasse roadblock decisionfarm pridehiatus stopping point.

Why can't the nightgig just let us be part-timers? Why …

I'm Fine; Leave Me Alone

♡

Google "Cure PMS"

as she did, just checking, since G. has all answers most of the time …

***********

and you will find one of the largest collections of unproven BS and "we don't know what it is but we recommend x, y, z"-nesses on the interweb's planet.

what a joke.

"might be caused by hormones." that's funny. i suppose, then, it might equally be caused by killer whale's killing anything morsel-y and available or, perhaps, caused by seismic waves and moon-cycles and fairies and how clean one's sheets are …

"reduce alcohol, caffeine, sodium, etc." — WHATEVER*

whatever happened to: "it's normal and o.k. to drop the heck out of life / you are not broken, you are a woman / go and be creative and alone / you have superpowers of emotion and insight / you are preparing to create an egg that can quite potentially become ANOTHER HUMAN BEING?"

… dear matriarchy, where are you hiding?

these are my so-called issues with "it."

[[the fact that there are not more female mass-murderers / artists is a testament to how well we sisters keep it under control / you testicaled beings should (again, always, more so — poor persecuted ones, we're sorry) feel (even more) ashamed of yourselves (for all that war and gun and business business, etc.)]].

*(havenotnoticedanydifferencesorcausetonotobeybody's

desiresonnutrition-front —

since when does any one's body lie about what it needs?)

** you're lucky / unlucky that i'm not posting the "i love my ice-cream-cone breasts of 'really, 35.5?'" pics along with this. shall have to be reserved for print / those who pay our mortgage : )