iowa

so. d and jr came over to dye easter eggs tonight. they're going to be going to iowa this weekend, and then d and i are going to missouri next weekend, so it was our only chance before easter to do it. after d fell asleep, she dropped a pretty big bombshell. she's been having a hard time with money, and with no support as a single parent, and so she's thinking about moving back to iowa for a year. now this really surprised me, but it makes sense, and i told her that. she won't have to pay rent to her parents, and there will be lots of people to look after jr when she needs a break. but then she said something about not seeing me as much, and i'm like, woah. i can't continue to date someone living in IOWA!

this, as you can imagine, was not the right answer.

the wierdest thing to me, i think, is how i assumed that her moving out of state meant we would break up, and how she assumed that i would say, well, that will be something we will really have to work at. so yeah, i'm kind of a mess, but not as bad of a mess as she is. i think i feel worse for disapointing her than i do about the situation.

she said, "you're putting me in an impossible place here- you don't want to be the only reason i'm in chicago, but if i go some place else, you won't stay with me." and i HAVE said both of these things, and they DO seem mutually exclusive, and i DON'T know what the answer is. i do know this is the sort of situation i've been hoarding my perscription painkillers for.

i guess i would like a comment of assurance that i am not a bad person, and it is not unreasonable to be unwilling to date someone who is living in iowa.

worms and filming

first, worm pics are here:




second, i signed on to do the movie. 5 weeks of my life this summer = gone. poof, just like that. poor ch. i wish i could make a movie and work at the flowershop at the same time. but it can't happen.

grüncait

don't know why i'm feeling so green lately. on monday ch and i were watching the news cause we've beat all his fun video games, and they were talking about ethanol and it was the most depressing stuff ever. what can one do? we are destroying the planet and all our efforts amount to nothing and corporations are evil and i can't believe i let my girlfriend drive me everywhere. no more, i tell you! then i got a catolog for the green festival chicago and i think i might go. a good way to celebrate earth day, it's cheap, esp. via cta, and looks really interesting. and then, yesterday my vermicomposting bin came!
we shall see how it goes. i had to rip up 5 lbs of newspaper for their bedding. you can't believe how much newspaper 5lbs is. it takes a long time to rip into strips. i'm still a bit short, but i'm sure it's not an exact science. i'm all ready to mix it up now- i have to do it tonight because my worms came today (shipped separately to give you a day or two to set up the box) and i don't want to leave them in their priority mail packaging any longer than necessary!

just so you know....

even though i haven't been blogging, i have a good excuse. i've been organizing instead. see here.

and here

and here

and there are more closets to go, unfortunately.
if you want to see the shelf-by-shelf breakdown, including closeups of my new

cornhusk

baskets, head on over to flickr

stories soon, i promise.

weather warning

anyone who is inside blogging on a weekend when it's 80 degrees out, and bright and sunny, well, there's just something wrong with them.

plans for august

went up to the bank today. opened a new savings account. it's called a goal-saver- it's like a christmas account, but instead of getting your money at christmas, you get it when you reach a goal. so i set my goal at the ticket price for the michigan womyn's music festival. they just posted the scedule, and it makes me really excited for summer.

and because i'm too lazy to email right now- liz: thank you SO MUCH for the comments! someone so kind and caring to me MUST be addressed as a friend, regardless of if we've ever spent any time together outside of party setting. coffee= yes, sewing lessons = yes, and i would even love some ex advice, although i'd be glad to wait a week or two if you want to be fully obnoxious. cause sometimes i really like obnoxious.

icky

feeling emotionally icky. just kind of sludgy. bad auras around, or something. not sure what's up. it's been warm and rainy in chicago, which has been delightful- but also as brought on the springtime insomnia. i keep thinking it's friday, when it's really not. i still like my pink hair, but i'm sort of tired of it as a fashion statement- you know, like wearing the same pair of jeans everyday. my hair's just so bold, i'm used to being able to change more. it doesn't match everything, you know. things are wierd with the gf. i can't even think about anything to do with her right now, though, because she's dealing with her ex, and mention of her ex makes me start screaming and sweating and throwing things. and that woudn't do any good and it would scare the cat.

it does, however, make me apologetic about all the things i've ever said about g's bf. he's got some good qualities- same can't be said for d's ex.

see? i'm doing it again. how'd i get stuck on this topic? anyway, it doesn't matter much because everyone's annoying me these days. ch invited joe out after work today, then when he couldn't come invited me. then he invited jim, who i'm not all that fond of, but when he showed up so drunk he couldn't walk straight, i thought it was my time to go home and cook dinner.

cauliflower paprikash. standard. yummy.

this week's fiddle tune is impossible. there are no breaks or breaths anywhere. i don't think i could have learned it in class, but it seems all the more futile having missed the lesson. all i really want is the sheet music for it. i may just write it out myself in an attempt to get all the notes right. this learning by ear thing, i just can't pull it off.

the day just got infinately better

just knowing that exists.

turning point

so the day was going just fine. not getting as much done as i had hoped, but then that's pretty normal for a tuesday. felt confident enough to make a dinner date with d. after i went to devon market, i dropped off my groceries and headed to dominiks where d would probably end up picking me up. i was on broadway when i realized i didn't have my library books to return! i had STEPPED OVER them in my hurry to get to the grocery store, i guess. so after d picked me up we had a knitting consultation, then i had her stop by the library so i could return my books. while i'm in the library she gets a call- the babysitter never picked jr up from school. so she takes me back home and i defrost something from the freezer to eat really quickly before i have to go to fiddle lessons. (i have no idea what it is- sweet potatoes, parsnips, black eyed peas and asparagus. i kinda remember making it, but i have no idea what cookbook it's from, etc.) s

till, running late. as usual. i do my typical rush to the train, the minute by minute countdown. swearing i'm going to leave on time next week. i get off the red line at belmont, and transfer to the other platform. while i'm on the bridge, i see a purple line below, and a brownline waiting at the next station. good, i won't have to wait long. the second train pulls up, passengers get off, and no one on the crowded platform gets on! what is wrong with these people. i am SURE i hear an announcement, this is belmont. this is a brownline train to kimball. i use my violin to dive through the closing doors. as i sit down, i see the window sign. purple. oh yes. "this is a purple line express. the next stop is howard."

the worst part was how it is parallell to the redline tracks. so i could wave as i passed addison, the stop i would have switched at if i'd gotten on red accidentally. granville, the stop by my home. look, i keep heading farther and farther in the wrong direction, and the train won't ever stop to let me off. finally when we got to evanston, we stopped. i switched platforms, and was planning on just going home, but then the train that pulled up was the last purple line express, so i went back to belmont to try again. i got to my lesson 45 min late... so i guess i only missed half of it. at least we do the recording at the end of the class, so i have my homework and can learn the song on my own by next week.

really wanted a brownie on the train ride home. a corner bakery one, with chocolate chips and powdered sugar on top. so i stopped at cvs and bought a little debbie brownie- with the nuts on top- just like elementary school lunches. and another $24.75 worth of cash therapy. came home, put my little barettes in my hair, and am eating chex mix (the brownie's for desert, doncha know.) i feel better.

movie musings

am going to talk to my friend cory about the movie he's making today. it shoots for 4 weeks in june. should i do it? i am so torn. i wish shooting a movie wasn't such an enormous, enourmous committment. i don't know why i feel so two ways about this. i know it's an amazing opertunity, a project i really believe in, magical collaboration, and good art.

every waking moment

i'm sorry i haven't blogged in ages. i feel like it's not my falt, though. it's not like i've been sitting around surfing the internet. it's just this is the first time (with the exception of a few hours yesterday) that i've had any significant non-d time. not that i'm complaining about any of the time i spend with her! i just need lots of me time too.

so i last blogged wednesday night. (did you get it? my wednesday without d?) then thursday was work all day, and i had to take a stupid delivery afterwards. ( customer calls at 4.30, can you still make a delivery today? i'm like, to a home or buisness? and he says buisness. and i say, no, unfortunately- i would be willing to take it after work, but i won't leave here until after 5. and he says, oh, well she works from 6-9! so then i HAD to take it.) d picked me up and she and i and d went to christopher and david's house for dinner. i love their giant pilsen loft. i'm so jealous of their work space. it doesn't seem fair- christopher's never at home. i'm always sewing in my tiny little closet and he has all that space! it was nice to do a fun adult thing with jr along. i don't seem to get many chances for that. pictures from the night are up on flickr. it was so late, and we were groaning about taking me all the way up north, and i said, i'd come to your place but there are no clothes for me to wear. so david and christopher dug through their closets to find an appropriate costume for a girl working in a flower shop! so it was off to d's for me. after work on friday we had made plans to spend the evening together, so when i came home she had already made minestrone and i whipped up some biscuts. yum! it was really delightful to have her cooking in my house when i got home from work. i promised the bag lady bags, so we got half of those done. when she went home i had a bit of time to finish my book... and blog about it.

saturday morning she and jr picked me up and i ran my errands- we went to recycle, and my violin needed a repair. we took jr to icosium kafe and tried the sweet crepes this time- still oh so good. jr's was strawberries and kiwis with nutella, debs was pinaple and walnuts with honey, and mine was raspberries and belgian chocolate. oh yeah. d dropped me off and home and jr at the babysitter before going to her square dancing class. while she was there i finished the bags, practiced my fiddle, and balanced my checkbook/ paid my bills. i felt very productive. we went to jen's birthday party after that. we all met at pete's pizza, which was yummy. then everyone was going bowling across the street. i was having so much fun with d i said she should go pick up jr, and instead of going home, bring him with to bowl! so she called the babysitter, and he said, jr was asleep, why doesn't he just spend the night? so d was free to bowl, and then come over to my place.

this morning she made me breakfast in bed. a spinach zuchinni scallion garlic omlet, and left-over biscuts with little dollops of orange marmelade and nutella. it was super charming. after that we re-dyed my hair a deeper hue, and then i did some cleaning while we waited for the baby sitter to call and say everyone was up. d dropped me off at the laundrymat when she went, and then i brought my laundry home, and hung it up. and now i'm writing to you! need to fiddle again, and some more cleaning, but it will all get done, 15 min. at a time, just like the fly lady says. are you at all interested in before and after pictures of my shelves?

things that annoy me

reading an excellent, excellent engaging book on the train home. and having less than 5 pages left when it's your stop. it's SO anticlimactic. but i can never convince myself to ride to howard to finish it.

wenesday

stiched and stitched and stitched and stiched and stitched today for spectacle. wednesdays are so long. i'm very tired, and my back hurts from being hunched over athena (our industrial) all day. at least i got to press a little, mark a little, sew a lot. all christopher did, all day, was serge. and he's still not done. who designed these 7 tiered costumes, anyway?

i got a plesant surprise though, when the driver from the flowershop showed up. d had charles make me up a funky vase of my fave flower (aggapanthus) for our half year anniversary tomorrow. it's always awesome to recieve flowers, but i don't get the opertunity much, because i work at a flowershop.

it was a beautiful morning here in chicago, the past few days have been UNSEASONABLY warm. but it started to cool down afternoon. and then drizzle. and then pour freezing rain while i was walking home from the train. in my little leather socks and jean jacket. brrrrrr.

when i got home, the coziness i was hoping for wasn't instantly felt, because i'd left my window open. and then the cat had knocked a plant off. and the pot broke. and dirt is everywhere, and i'm too tired to deal with it tonight, i'll clean it up tomorrow. and my kitchen lightswitch doesn't work, so i moved the lamp into the kitchen. the plug part works, but not the lightswitch.

yesterday when cleaning out the bathroom closet i remembered my tablecloth fetish, and decided i needed to start using them again. so i put my sarong on the kitchen table, and it goes really nicely with the aggapanthus. the warm lighting from the lamp made the kitchen very cozy, and i was starting to get the feeling i was looking for. but d called while i was eating dinner. she was full of pissed off stories of her kid and her ex. so often these are things we talk about in terms of me "handling it." like i'm "handling it" now, but maybe won't be able to in the future. i'm so curious- will i know when i "can't handle it anymore"? what happens if i don't notice it? or is that what makes the point of "can't handle it anymore", the point when i notice it? then what do i do? what does "can't handle it anymore" look like? and what if i pretend to handle what i can't handle anymore, because what i REALLY can't handle is dealing with not being able to handle the things i can't handle anymore? i dont' even know where to put quotes around that one.

moonday morning dance

exhausted after square dancing. only 3 more plus level calls left. came home and did my house blessing. i don' think my house can get DIRTIER after cleaning it weekly, so it must just be that i'm seeing more, or cleaning deeper. but i have a few serious filth issues.

which are much eaiser to tackle than the clutter issues, of course.

will blog more tomorrow (today?) i have 13 items on my list, i'm sure i'll need to procrastinate between them.

lovely weekend

i FINALLY, FINALLY made my borscht this weekend. it was magically delicious, i was so surprised. and the same color as my hair. after dropping off jr, d came over, and we went to cuneen's pub around the corner and sat in the windows and played cribbage and drank. it was totally charming- like a bar in a movie. a place that deserves it's "old style" sign.

sat morning we lay in bed and read our books- as y'all know, my favorite activity. d made us fancy omlettes for breakfast, and i got some sewing done. we went to her square dance class on saturday, and then to dinner at the new icosium kafe on the corner. it was stupendously delicious! it's an algerian creperie, and i had the crepe marrakech- toasted almonds, golden raisins, baby spinach, carmelized onions, fresh mint, cream cheese, and sun dried tomatoes tapanade. oh yeah. i should have taken a picture of it when it arrived, as beautiful as it was delicious. d really enjoyed hers, too. after that we went to dyke delicious at chicago filmmakers... and were appalled to find out that it was their first non-lesbian film! they were showing it should happen to you, with judy holiday. it was a fun little fifties movie, d doesn't like black and white movies so i was glad she enjoyed it, and it did have that great snappy diologue i love som much in old movies. still, we couldn't help but be dissapointed.

from there, we rushed to devon market to buy cactus juice before it closed, then we parked d's car and took the train to ch's, where ch, hugo d and i proceeded to get quite drunk and play a LOT of video games. the most fun i've had in awhile, and certainly the latest i've stayed out in a LONG time. even if you don't count the time change, we didn't get in until 4.30. so we REALLY slept in this morning. and more books in bed. so cozy. definately my favorite!

but, as always, more sewing to do! there are 50 pictures on my camera from last night, as soon as i prune them down i will post them!

best. salad. ever.

i bribed myself to go grocery shopping by letting me buy whatever i want for dinner. i bought a box of organic alfredo mac and cheeze. and this produce:

including snap peas, radishes, sprouts, raspberries and parmesan. bizzare, maybe. but also fantastic!

day 34- hairstyles of the damned

day 34- hairstyles of the damned
Originally uploaded by unglaubliche caitlin.

a preview, for hugo- brighter, closer up coming soon!

what i do with my day off

i could kill myself. why do i get sucked into these?

The Everything Test

There are many different types of tests on the internet today. Personality tests, purity tests, stereotype tests, political tests. But now, there is one test to rule them all.

Traditionally, online tests would ask certain questions about your musical tastes or clothing for a stereotype, your experiences for a purity test, or deep questions for a personality test.We're turning that upside down - all the questions affect all the results, and we've got some innovative results too! Enjoy :-)

Personality You are more emotional than logical, more concerned about self than concerned about others, more religious than atheist, more dependent than loner, more lazy than workaholic, more traditional than rebel, more artistic mind than engineering mind, more idealist than cynical, more leader than follower, and more extroverted than introverted. As for specific personality traits, you are adventurious (100%), intellectual (80%), adventurous (80%), artistic (76%).

Stereotypes Hippie 87% Young Professional 82% Emo Kid 78%

Life Experience Sex 33% Substances 27% Travel 47%

Politics Your political views would best be described as Socialist, whom you agree with around 100% of the time.

Socioeconomic Your attitude toward life best associates you with Upper Middle Class. You make more than 0% of those who have taken this test, and 70% less than the U.S. average.

If your life was a movie, it would be rated PG-13. By the way, your hottness rank is 60%, hotter than 85% of other test takers.

TAKE THE TEST
brought to you by thatsurveysite

i don't even know why i post it. a good quarter i don't even agree with.

and just for jamie

i love the book of the week club. my list of young adult books to read grows by leaps and bounds. they don't have really fun catagories (like, i want to read a book on GENDER or FEMINISM every week) but YA keeps me pretty darn happy. i think all readers should check em out and sign up.

house blessing

laundry bags yesterday. ate dinner. talked to g. d picked me up. went to her place to watch l word. cried.

went to work this morning. went to ch's after work. we made breakfast for dinner and played video games. went to square dancing. wished we'd just kept playing video games. came home. talked to d. did houseblessing.

am so glad to have the day off tomorrow. am even gladder that my house is clean and my sewing is done!

SUPERLISTS!

ok, i've spent hours updating the last year or so of my booklist and movielist

it's been a lot of typing, so i would be quite cheered if y'all left comments.

saturday errands

yesterday d picked me up early and we:

-dropped my recycling off at the new drop off bin
-took my serger in and ordered new new needles for it
-rented my violin
-ate lunch at su van's
-bought pysanky supplies in ukranian village
-went to square dancing lessons
-dyed my hair hot pink

is it any wonder there was no time to blog?

lots of walking

typed up todays entry. was adding tags when the rainbow started spinning. safari not responding.

not that my stories were any more clever the first time.

my alarm clock tends not to snooze occassionally, so i overslept. walked the whole way to the the train station before i realized my wallet was at home. walked back home. got the wallet. walked back to the train station.

bag lady called. i promised her bags by saturday. have no gumption. hope i can make myself finish them. ch and i were both snippy. he left early. i gave my cta card to our delivery person. he gave it back and i didn't put it back in my wallet, much to my dismay after walking all the way to the red line.

walked back to the sears tower. got my card. took the bus.

still have that rotting cabbage and beets to make that fucking borsht. i should just throw it all away and start again. there were enough tupperwares in my fridge i just at out of those for dinner tonight. but now i better work on bags.

fuck it all. i'm going to bed.

past my bedtime

went to the gf's house last night. watched the l word. am interested to see what happens between bette and the deaf girl, i think i will use it for signs of my relationship. made patterns today. for 10 hours. came home, googled my erands for friday. i have a plan. i am going to bed now.

the resolutions

so i had all these new years resolutions, and i continued to make them throughout january. and now that i'm working on some of them (i did a house blessing tonight) i really wanted a comprehensive list to chart my progress. and so i can add to it. maybe 27 goals for 2007? or is that too krista-esque?

media:
1. spend less than 1 hr online daily
2. watch 4 movies a month
3. go to figure drawing once a month
4. do a patternless crossword every week
5. write a letter every week
6. take a photo every day
7. do a sketch every day
8. drink the flylady kool-aid (eg shine my sink everyday)
9. complete plus level square dance class
10. take violin lessons
11. paint more
12. read more
13. knit more
14. travel more
15. write more
16. go to bed on time, get enough sleep
17. celebrate seasonally (eg. ice skating in the winter, sending out valentines, decorating easter eggs, etc)
18. floss.
19. make my arms strong

add at will!

gay prom

d and i went to the lccp's coming out against cancer ball last night. fun was had by all. especially fun for me was the theme flappers and fedoras. it's always a blast to dress up, esp. historically, esp. when you have ideal body type for said decade, and then also to see all the other dykes in their ball gowns, too. and there were chocolate fountains. and a beautiful ice storm. a plus, i say.









also, i'd like to mention- last weekend i went to d's square dance class, then we took her sis out to big chicks dancing, then i had my class monday. this weekend, we went to d's class sat, danced at the ball that night, i had a square dance today, and class tomorrow. pretty good for someone who can't dance.

since last posting i have:

tasted- apple ravioli with raisin walnut alfredo sauce
smelled- those huge stargazers at work
called- my girlfriend my ex's name on her voicemail
felt- my cat's claws in my arms- why is she always fighting?
heard- patty griffin on morning becomes eclectic. i love that trapeeze song.
saw- a perfect flapper dress for the gay prom at the costume shop
sewed- yeah right. i did do some measuring and cutting, though.
puzzled- mon's patternless crossword. got the boxes filled in, but only 1/2 the letters.
read- another gish jen book. really need to update my booklist.
shopped- for 20s shoes. unsuccessfully.
contemplated- my 365 portrait. no wisdom yet.

public service announcement

and another thing- anyone who (like me) runs out of checks every 3 years ago and so never things of reordering them until there is only one left (and the only reason why one lets one's checkbook get to this state is because one never uses those deposit slips in the back of the book and concequently the book feels much thicker, like there is still a month's worth of bills that can be paid from said book, when such is actually not the case) and therefore tries to order online due to not needing to actually USE last check....

well, my advice is, don't. use the little cut-out form from the sunday newspaper coupon suplement. really. you can check out the different designs online, but don't buy them there, cause they cost twice as much. AND the sunday suplement method can now automatically debit your account, so you don't need to have TWO checks left, one to void and one to pay for it.

isn't that amazing?

compassionate and full of pity

i KNOW one should pick the healthiest, most beautiful produce at the grocery store. but i can't possibly be the only person in the world who feels sorry for the twisted roots and limp greens and buys them out of pity. everyone should find someone to love them, and vegetables are revered and worshiped here in my home.

overwhelming

liz's last comment was so right on about the suburbs. it was said so nicely in such an understanding way, and i'm glad someone could present it sensibly, because i can't, i am so violently opposed to the suburbs. it's all about the sameness to me. i guess i should look at it as merely underwhelming. but i want to live my life in a state of overwhelm, i guess. no, it's not overwhelm as much as hyperexposure. i want to experience it all, do everything, make all the choices, in color. i want to see the details in the shadows when the sunlight glows so bright it bleeds into the dark areas of the photograph.

i really think all the choices i have are a blessing, not something to be taken for granted. as a rich american, i have so many options, and one of the things i hate most about walmart is how they take options away from people. why do so many people feel they have to go to walmart? why is there no where else in all of small town america to shop? why are we so focused on shopping, anyway?

but when i shop, i want to be able to buy my produce at devon market, buy my clothes at ragstock, buy my camera parts at central camera. the idea of texting my sister in north carolina about what to eat at ruby tuesdays in illinois because she worked at one in new york... it's novel for me, but it's less fun when i realize people live their whole lives like this. i need to remember that simple is comfortable for most of the country, that fewer choices is calming, healthy, that neutral colored wall treatments feel cozy.

actually, another insult that sticks with me was from a member of my old church who came into my wonderful homey apartment and very politely said, "you LIVE here? i couldn't do it, it's too much, i'd be overstimulated." i guess if i expect her to understand how my barrage of color makes me soothed, happy and content, i should understand how her blandness does the same to her.

i'm not changing, though. and you still shouldn't shop at walmart.

family filled weekend

not my family, d's. they almost came into town for the weekend. (they stayed at a hotel out in the suburbs. why, i don't understand. it makes sense to them. friday after work she picked me up and took me out there and we all went to ruby tuesdays for dinner, and i met her parents and another sister. jr stayed out there with them, so d brought me home and spent the night. the next day we had to pick up the cake and 4 kids and drive back out to the suburbs to go to chuck e cheeses for jr's birthday. it was kind of a nightmare- it took us 2 hours. but once we got there i had lots of fun crawling around in the tubes and playing skee-ball. i turned in my tickets for all kinds of fun. then we went to d's square dancing class, and d sister had dinner while i made the bag that was due. d helped me glue in that bag, and then i took a nap while they went BACK out to the suburbs to get ready to go out. they came back and woke me up and i put on my skanky clothes and we went out to big chicks. it was so hard to decide where to go, and i knew that d's sister is such a pessamist she'd have complaints no matter where i chose, but i knew we wanted to dance and not pay a cover, and big chicks is a garanteed good time. and it was true again! we had a great time on the dance floor. and they played such good music. the best was kirsty mccoll's in these shoes. it rocked. i spent the night at d's, and then she brought me home this morning.

where i discovered all your kind pterodactyl comments! thank you, thank you all! on flickr you can find a picture of my pterodactlyl impersonation, btw.

so while it was nice, i feel drained, and STILL in need of a weekend. i have so much to do today- cook, clean my house, work on bags etc. but i think i may not do any of it. i may just take a few hours to be uberlazy. doesn't that sound nice?

ps. i hate the suburbs. with a vengeance. just being there makes me uncomfortable. a stranger in a strange land.

how can it be past my bedtime already?

damn you, internet! damn you!

ch has to go get his wound inspected tomorrow morning. i'm opening the shop. ugh. today was hard. tired. as ch said, we came in to prop each other up.

i do need to tell you the pterodactyl story, though.

so on valentine's day i was mostly in the back, tagging deliveries, routing deliveries for the walkers, and making will-call arrangements. but michael had gone to lunch or the bathroom or something, and i was keeping an eye on the front. i hear this group of 3 stupid straight men come in and mary's on the phone with a customer and i hear her say to the new guys, "um, all that's already been sold!" i let mary stick to her customer on the phone while i take on the guys by the cooler, who have opened it up and are fondling all my will calls, poking at the plastic of delivery orders. i dive between them and the cooler, and am like this stuff's already been sold, let me show you what you can buy, you have options. and the guys are all offended, like dude, i was just looking at it! calm down!

it's valentines day. in a flower shop. you want to see calm, go to the health club or something.

so as i'm walking to the available tulips and boxed dozens, one of them says to the other, dude, she came flying in here, shreeking like one of those, what is it, like a pterodactyl or something. at which point i said, you know, i don't think i'm going to be able to help you. you're going to have to wait to have someone else help you. and i walked to the back.

now granted, it's a great insult. much better than something uncreative, like screaming harpy or something. but it still made me feel bad. (BADLY, it's an adverb.)

with any job, you're going to have bad customer service moments. another winner of yesterday was when a customer was giving michael a hard time, she brought in balloons for him to blow up. and i said, no, you can't, the rule is 3 hr. turn around. she was NOT happy to hear that and stormed out. less than an hour later, she stormed back in, with inflated balloons and a paper wrap of flowers. can we help you? we asked. no, i want to speak to HIM! she said, pointing her boquet at michael, who was on the phone. "THIS IS THREE HOUR TURN-AROUND!" she proudly announced, shaking her balloons at him. then she stomped out again.

so today, a woman comes in, and says to ch and i, you have an employee who works here who helped my boyfriend yesterday- she has short jet-black hair, she's short, not really skinny or large.... ch and i look at each other. mary and i are the only women, we both have brown hair, and she's large and i'm definately skinny. dennis, perhaps? i ask. she's like, well, maybe it was a guy, but i want you to know that that employee lost you three customers. at this point i knew. i said to the woman, who was continuing with how rude the employee was, and how she's gonna tell everyone she can not to shop here, "oh yes. that was me helping them. they were trying to buy my deliveries." i turned to ch and said, "they were the ones who called me a pterodactyl." and i again retreated to the back of the shop, leaving ch to defend me. he did an excellent job, saying, "ma'am, it's valentines day." which she found to be no excuse. then her BOYFRIEND came in, and ch ended it with i'm sorry if my employees behavior offended you, but it's a very stressful time, and i know she thought about their comments for the rest of the day. it's not very classy to call people pterodactyls. i don't think i want those sort of people as customers anyway.

so i felt loved, yet guilty. cause you know, i love my job. i believe it is my job to bring joy to peoples lives, to create a physical embodyment of their emotions. i believe in my company ( i told someone the other night at square dancing, when we were talking about working for the man, that your life's pretty good if ch is the man) and i want everyone to love us as a buisness as well as me personally. i was shaking i was so upset by the whole incident. then we watched them through the glass wall go over to the hair salon where the girlfriend was getting a manicure and pedicure. and then. the boyfriend. comes back into the flower shop. he wants to apologize. he says to me, he wants me to know he never called me a pterodactyl. it was the guys behind him. i apologized for being rude and screeching. he then asks ch sheepishly, what we have for sale. ch negotiates a short rose vase, bargaining calls it a peace offering. so within 15 minutes of girlfriend saying she was going to make sure no one she knows ever buys anything from us again, who's buying flowers from us but her boyfriend. oh, sweet, sweet justice. we watched him go back over, i saw him with the flowers standing over her, with her feet in the basin. we couldn't imagine she'd do anything but use the vase to knock his front teeth in. but we saw no more drama. it was 2 and we had to eat lunch.

really, i have nothing more to say. i just want to set a record of some sort with the huge number of occourances of the word pterodactyl in this entry.

quick post vday wrapup

when was the last time i posted? ch cut off the tip of his thumb monday and had to go to urgent care. there was a huge snowstorm all day tuesday. one of our drivers didn't show up. wah wah. we took and delivered over 100 orders. d came through at the end, she and i delivered 9 after she was done with work. now it's over. i'm exhausted. i'm going to eat dinner and go to bed.

loving me is very complicated

how can i feel like no one understands v-day enough to send me love or greetings, yet there are others in my life who won't give me enough space to just be alone when i'm not working? it's this terrible oxymoron- i want to be with people and feel their love and sympathy... but i don't want to spend any time doing it.

i prepared emotionally very poorly for this v-day. but i'm learning things, and next year will be better.

i am also ready for my weekend. still another week before i get to sleep in though. why i'm not whining: ch was doing payroll today and i'm already getting overtime. i guess it sounds like i am whining, though. oh well. a's advice was to suck it up and stop answering the phone unless i'm emotionally prepared to deal with whatever's on the other end. maybe i should take it.

wear and tear

i'm going out to the valentines day square dance tonight. what am i, crazy? why yes, i am.

our 2300 roses came in today. we proccessed them all in record time, but my hands have started the skummy/poked/cut up/hives thing that just comes with a v-day. d joked that no one would want to dance with her tonight.

why is it so hard to sleep more and eat more? i wish i had more control sometimes.

v-day activities

last night i went to ch's after work for dinner, haircuts and petshopboys videos. tonight after work d picked me up and we went to dinner at encore liquid lounge and to the art institute. she just left, and i was asleep in bed, but i was suddenly all awake once the door clicked shut behind her.

or i'm just an addict, and couldn't bear the thought of not checkign my email for such a long time. cause right after work tomorrow i'm going to her place for her party. poor mitzi. she must miss me. i wish she would at least cuddle at night.

hunkering

ch mentioned monday that he's in vday mode, deleting all but the essentials from his life. he wasn't going to go to square dancing,e ven, this week. but i persuaded him. i ended up going to his house after work. this had the mutually benificial strategy of a. me getting him moving so he wouldn't just go to bed, but instead go dance, and b. him feeding me a particularly delicious dinner (toast cubes, cheese, broccoli and zucchini, and eggs)

was so tired after dancing. it'd been a crazy day after work. but did the right thing, and called my friends back. or was it the right thing? a's terribly depressed, scarily depressed. what do you all do about me? i don't know what to do about her. i said something that made her just furious and hang up on me. so i called her back and aplogized and listened for awhile. also talked to d, before and after that. it's been tough. i don't know what will happen with us. her side of the story is that she'd had a horrible day, her mom's in the hospital, her son's sick, her boss wouldn't let her leave to get him from school, etc. all she wanted to do was tell her girlfriend all about it at the end of a long day. and she felt her girlfriend was totally blowing her off. my side is: it's v-day. we're at v minus 9. i've spent all day racing around at the flowershop then square dancing. all i want to do is go to bed. i thought i did the RIGHT thing by calling her. but apparently i didn't listen enough. i was too tired to fight, so i called her back and sucked it up and listened. and i DO care about her and i DO want to know. but i'm in holiday mode. i too am deletign essentials from my life. the care and feeding of a relationship is NOT essential. sleep is. i'll let you know how it goes.

but now, i'm going to bed. another long day today. they're all long days, i know. came home and cooked my rainbow chard, which is delcious but unfortunately WAY too salty. i saved it, though. i'll probably be desprate enough to eat it again. instead, i'm having half a grapefruit for desert. it is making me very happy. goodnight.

post square dancing

so as usual, posting after square dancing. however, a short post. because i should be in bed NOW. because i have to WORK tomorrow. what a surprise. my body's not used to it. first, however, i'm going to take a hot bath. it's very very cold in chicago. i was waiting on the train platform in my warmest-es last night on my way to d's, and i realized how unvegan i am from head to toe- vintage fur hat, wool scarf, wool felt coat, sheepskin mittens, silk long johns, wool socks, leather shoes. whatever, i love animal fibers. eating vegan= makes sense. dressing veagan doesn't seem in line with trying to live closer to the earth for me. after all, what are sheep FOR?

but it was only 0F last night. and it should be 20F by thursday. and NEXT friday we'll get above freezing, 34F. so see, the cold spell isn't so bad.

wish i never saw the sunshine

just finished my valentines. want to take pictures before i mail them, but i'm worried about glitter and the flash. so i thought i'd wait until i have daylight again... but then i realized- i won't be seeing daylight again until the 17th. woe is me.

wah, wah. looking at my calendar to get the exact date, i realised that i'll be home early enough next saturday. i need to stop my whining.

in the blogosphere

did i mention d started blogging? if you'd like to read her version of events, you can find them here.

no more from me today- i have to Get Stuff Done before going to d's house. today is my last day off for the next 2 weeks and i need to make the best of it!

crazy hippie

i don't find this derogatory. it's true. and i'm proud of it. christopher was asking if i believe in paper products last night when he was frying the perogies, then ch asked for a napkin and i put a stack of cloth ones on the table and christopher said, "crazy hippie" but it wasn't to put me down, it was just teasing. square dancing was tough today, it seemed like we were doing the same 5 calls over and over again. but there were still people who weren't getting it. i guess my class was that confused too, once. but the story tie-in is we were trying to decide where to go eat dinner afterwards. i didn't wanna go to indie cafe cause it's so cold here i didn't want sushi. and i didn't know if alice & friends was north or south or what their hours were... so i said lets' just go north on clark and see what we find... and there was a parking spot right in front of the kopi cafe! and the window was empty. so we sat at the little tables on the floor in the window of kopi, but we couldn't watch the people go by because the windows were fogged up and frosted over. we did cuddle, though. i had a lentil-vegetable soup and hot cherry cider and it was so warm and hearty and made me feel like such a crazy hippie. it was such good homey food! it reminded me of snacks at le leche league from when i was a kid. no sneaky carob chip cookies, though.

365 days

i feel like my online presence has been stronger recently, but not here, unfortunately- i've become obsessed with flickr's 365days project in the past week. so i guess if you want new info from me, you can find it at my flickr page.

so if you'll excuse me, i'm going to upload more pics of myself now. also, going to the electronics recycling center with my girlfriend, to her square dancing class, and hopefully getting some serious crafting time in. still trying to decide if i want to go to the UofC folk fest tomorow, or stay in where it's warm. recomendations?

successful party

..but now i'm all tired. but the dishes are done! my room is kinda cute set up in its movie watching phase. i may keep it similar to this, or something... def. time for a change of furnature, that's for sure!

but now it's so late, and d and i are going recycling tomorrow. but i did wanna post and thank y'all for the comments. i do apprieciate them. it's good to be read, and i hope you aren't mad at me for bullying you into it. really, you do have good excuses!

getting bitter

um, hello? anyone out there? could i have a comment, please? am i really so boring? do i have no readers left? i've written about daily activities, i've made lists, i've had musings. i've been happy, i've been sad, i've ignored you and i've asked direct questions. soon i may move off line, to a little diary with a pink sparkly cover and a little gold lock i can keep under my mattress.

PTSD redeux

yep, the time's right on the bottom. 7am. why would i be up blogging then? but then you may notice the date- feb. 1st. which always invokes a "huh? so? oh, yeah, right, that's right" sort of response in me.

for those who don't know, it's the anniversary of the fire.

this year, as usual, i'd given absolutely no thought to it at all. then, very early this morning, i had a dream about ch and hugo being over. i was talking about my computer and flickr (since i just started 365 days) and plugging grounders into the outlets and there was a spark. and so i started to pull them out and there was a little flame. and i got them all out, and was staring at it, and hugo was like dude what's up, and i told him. and he tried to assure me it was all fine. and then a little curl of smoke came up from the outlet, and i knew it was in the walls, and there was nothing we could do. we were done for.

i woke up terrified. i tried to go back in, and imagined me going out into the hallway, getting the fire extinguisher. unplugging and everything being fine. but i couldn't make it work. i tried ignoring it and thinking nice thoughts, and so i imagined my girlfriend, and going out for indian food, and her driving me down devon, and that whole block of burn-out buildings from the 5 alarm fire that ruined at least three businesses and i can just imagine the blaze and STOP! not. really. working. very. well.

ended up calling the girlfriend, waking her up and making her listen to my stories, cause that's the whole POINT of girlfriends, isn't it? so when she got up i wasn't going to fall back asleep, so i decided to just get up too. and i decided to post instead of just read my novel. aren't you lucky?

i HATE this about myself. first, it seems all contrived and made up. i work myself into a frenzy every january 31st. but i swear it's subconsious. it's never something i think about. it's just something that happens. sometimes it takes me a few minutes, or looking at a calandar, to realize why it's happening. second, i like to think of myself as fearless and impermiable. trauma makes me stronger, not fearful. but it's not true. third, i don't like the unendingness of it. i want to greive and freak and MOVE ON. it was scary enough when i happened big time a month after the fire. but years later (how many? i don't even rememember. three years? four?) you would think i'd be over it. am i going to wake up terrified at the end of january every year for the rest of my life?

typisch chicago

it's so cold here today. i'm currently wearing:

handknit socks
silk long underwear
thermal long underwear
bluejeans
undershirt
long sleeved t shirt
sweatshirt
bulky aran wool sweater

and i'm still cold. maybe it's cause i HAVEN"T MOVED today. stayed in bed finishing my book, then signed online, and didn't really move. started collaging some valentines. want one? you have to leave a comment....

uploaded pictures and wasted lots of time on flickr. will post them here soon. first i need to feel like i've acomplished something today....

HALOSCAN!!!

oh, i've missed you and your lovely blue pop up self! after fooling around with all that fucking code they finally posted a wizard, and it's so easy, and so now- i present to you....

HALOSCAN COMMENTING AGAIN!

since i know at least two of you have said you will never again comment in blogger format, i am so glad to give you the option you all so richly deserve. now, btw, would be a lovely time to comment in the lovely new pop up about how much you love my new comments, or conversely (or addionally!) how much you love me.

guest list update

so while there are NO philadelphians who are coming, i do have an odd assortment of guests who have committed to movies and potluckyness. broken down by gross generalizations, i have coming:

my boss and his boyfriend,
a girl i met on the dance floor,
a girl i met on yahoo personals 4 years ago, and her girlfriend,
a boi i met on craigslist,
an ex-roomate whom i've talked to once in 5 years,
and someone whom i'm friends with mostly because i feel like i don't have enough friends in chicago and so should keep all the ones i've got even if i don't like them very much.

a pretty odd assortment, right? strangely enough, i've only slept with one of the eight. i'm just not that kind of girl. still, it should be fun. ya'all may want to reconsider coming.

also- could we all chime in on whether we think i should go to denver over memorial day weekend for the international gay and lesbian square dancing convention?

par-tay!

come to my house next friday! i'm having a groundhog's day party! i have four guests already! i can't believe how many people rsvped. i am nervous about all of us crowded around the whopping 17" flat-screen... but i think that rather than move the couch i'm going to move the computer to a stool and flip some chairs around. i think that will provide comfortable viewing for all guests.

will you come? comment (or email, since you all hate commenting so much) and i can give you more details.

patty

went to hear patty griffin tonight. at schubas. yes, schubas. ch heard about the tickets, and joe's work friend bought them, and i felt a little guilty spending that much money but i have a patty complex. there are few things i regret in life, i know i've blogged this before. the red skirt- and that turned out ok, it eventually made itself to me. and patty- in 2002 or so i turned down the chance to see her and eliza gilkison at fitzgeralds. it was the suburbs, i had a paper due- and instantly and continuously regretted it. i made a resolution then, that when given the choice in the future i would choose going out, i would live my life in a responsible enough way that when given the chance i wouldn't pass up a once in a lifetime chance to do something like see patty.

and i did get other chances. i saw her at the vic, and again at park west. but tonigh, oh tonight was SCHUBA's. d and i had the discussion the other day about would you rather be deaf or blind, and when i told ch about it the next day he said blind, because concerts were a religous experience for him. and i was really feeling that tonight, the atmosphere was just all about that, with big fat flakes of snow falling outside, and the plaster walls and wooden beams and flickering candles.

i couldn't believe i was so close to her, schubas is such an intamate venue. i've never really seen her before, it was always far away like on a tv. but there she was, this woman who's voice is so familiar to me- a voice from my past, from my present, that i've heard a thousand times. i thought of marty from the rainchildren being amazed at mad mission, of skipping over moses and then falling in love with it, playing it on my guitar in my bedroom along with the cd in my boom box.

i love her as a rocker, and she blew me away at park west, but you know acoustic is always closest to my heart, and ah, the cockles were warmed. it made me so excited for the new stuff- this was her prequel tour for the new album coming out early february. a song about public transporation, a song about aerial circus arts... the love is tangable.

playing the what will she open with game, ch brought up every little bit. and she didn't play anything old- just from the clandestine silver bell and two newer albums. but ch and i are part of the secret silver bell club and it was something like magic. she played be careful (all the girls) and i wept. she played making pies and the whole audience collectively sighed.

she ended with icicles, and it was cold and beautiful and final and perfect. for an encore she played new stuff and last played truth #2, like a little rocking secret. and all left the concert dancing along to the bass (upright bass, mind you) line in their head. bum bum bum. it was perfect.

year in review 2006

ok, i know it's past my bedtime, but it's almost february and i haven't done my fave meme yet. so i'm going to do it right now. you go into your archives and post the first line of the first post each month. here is the brief summary of my 2006:

januar: i was so good at blogging in philly, then, well, too many parties started happening!

februar: darlings i love you, but...
i just can't blog tonight. ch took me out for a margarita after work and now i'm tired and hungry.

märz: still hate colaborative seminar. calculated my trim in costume construction today.

april: goddess, it feels like it's been so long since i've had anything to say. thursday i had a another nightmare, again on the farm- this time the world was ending.

mai:so ch has been saving all these music videos for me to see, songs for me to hear, all sorts of streaming media! because i of course can do nothing with my dial up connection.

juni: oh my goddess, now that you've read all about bermuda i need to catch you up on what's happening this week! it's been crazy, poor mitzi's like, what's up, bitch, i thought you were HOME from vacation?

juli: i feel when i'm sad i will just feel sorrier for myself if i lay in bed all day, reading books and watching movies, occasionally getting up just to waste time online. and i feel proud of myself when i get stuff done when i don't feel like doing anything.

august: was not in a good place when i left for the beach.

september: SO, i was only supposed to work half a day today, but we ended up being so busy i stayed all day, and after ch & i closed up, we went upstairs for a margarita... i was feeling, i don't know, like shopping i guess, so i said i was going to sears to buy a vacuum cleaner.

oktober: the bag lady was designing this music spectacular thing at old town this weekend, and when i saw it was kid friendly i invited deb as my date, and she could bring her son along.... so i finally met the 5 year old.

november: work today, blah blah blah. stayed up too late last night listening to all that linford and so was tired today. i've just been feeling grumpy and blue lately.

dezember: i think you all should take your whining and STUFF IT! because it's snowing here in chicago, and it's BEAUTIFUL! it is cold and crisp and the light is bright and diffused. i got out the christmas music today, and my fur hat, and my advent calendar.


thereby ending my summary of a year. it worked amazingly well this year, and i think the first sentence provides lovely little tantalizing bits, and now i am inspired to be a good little blogger this year. i'll be greatful for it in january 2008.

invigorated

why is it that whenever i come home from work i'm too dead to do anything, but then when it's 15 minutes past my bedtime i am all compelled to blog? i have so much i want to blog about.
1. the year in review.
2. post recipies.
3. post photos from second photography lesson and above mentioned recipies.
4. write about books.
5. write about my girlfriend.
6. write about the mundane activities of my day to day life.

and then i also want to write fiction, and write letters to the hundred or so emails filling up my starred box.

so what do i do? come home and plug in the rice cooker and watch the goofy french film the closet. i did put away my christmas boxes, and write a postcard, and pour drano down the drains and washed my dishes. PLEASE can i have a gold star?

same old same old

continue to waste time on tuesdays. took me till THREE today to get out of bed, fold the laundry and put it away, shower, eat breakfast, and fool around online. once i was done doing all that i was able to get a little acomplished- got the squares cut out for the quilt i'm making jr for his birthday, patched a few pairs of his pants, and walked to the hardware store to get housekeys made for d and ch. and there's a new light on glenlake!!! how long has that been there? it's very new and exciting to me. d swears we've stopped at it before, but i don't remember it being there on friday when i did my shopping. it's perfect, because between granville and thorndale there are so many stores and it was so annoying to have to walk all the way to one or the other to cross. since the cvs and the healthfood store and the hardware store and the library are all on one side of the street, and the dominicks, fabric store, and walgreens are all on the other, i was always tempted to jaywalk. but now it is unneccesary, because there is a new light at glenlake! huzzah! it reminds me of when they put the stopsign right in front of my building in hyde park, and it took me a few days to figure out why the cars were all waving me across the street.

anyway, part of my wasted time today was reorganizing my podcasts. i'm really upset that there are no new ebert and ropers. what's up with that? grrr. i deleted morning becomes eclectic videos- i never watch them. don't have the heart to cancel chubb creek yet, even though i never listen to it. but krista likes it so much i feel i should. i signed up for KPBS's a way with words on her recomendation. then i tried to get statler and waldorf's podcast (from the muppets) to replace ebert and roper, but there seemes to be an error. THEN, while listening to windy city queercast i foudn that senator obama has a podcast, which as a voting citizen of illinois i am very happy about, and it's little 5-10 min soundbites of what he believes and what he's doing in washington every week, which i am so glad to hear, beacause all i ever seem to read about in the paper is the hype and the presidency, and not anything meaningful. so it's one of those catch22s- the more podcasts i listen to, the more i subscribe to. still have 20 to go from since christmas. it's worse on netflix. i keep saying i have a moritorium on adding to my queue, but the number keeps getting higher- more sneek in than i watch. watched 2 this weekend... but my queue's still at 125. i really wanna keep it under 100. i'm going to become a better movie watcher this year though. more movies more books (the easy part) and less online wasting (the harder part). also, i am going to buy a suntimes every monday and do the patternless crossword, until i am confident enough to buy it on tuesday. i think i'm kind of making the resolutions up as i go along. i think that's ok. especially in january. will turn them into an actual list, at some point, if i need to make myself feel better.

d and jr came over for dinner, and it was very successful. we made a new recipie from crecent dragonwagon's passionate vegetarian, the curried eggplant sweet potato stew. it was good. had sweet potatoes and nothing too scary for jr, vegan for deb, yummy for me. i mixed up a good curry powder (equal parts tumeric, corriander, garam masala [the real stuff from swad] and cumin) and there were lots of things for jr to peel (the eggplant, the sweet potato, and an apple. d with her contacts chopped the onion, and eveyone seemed happy. i thought it was delicious, and i think it is the first thing jr ever ate in my house.

affterwards, we played some cards, then i had jr read to me. which you know i love. a board book by rosemary wells (who doesn't love ruby and max?) and we started one fish two fish red fish blue fish. he's a good little sounder-outer, but he started wildly guessing when he got tired. so they went home, d with good news from her parents, but sad that she won't see me again for a bunch of days.

another new years resolution- make and send out valentines. can it all happen? stay tuned!

two posts in as many days

lucky you! who would have thought it. just like old times. kind of. mondays are hard when i end up posting on sundays. i guess i did a few things last night. watched igby goes down. packed for d's and realized i needed to fix and print this year's vday price list. printer was spitting out blank sheets of paper so had to trouble shoot that. also, had to load ch's 3 new cds on the computer. they are supremely fabulous:

1. dixie chicks, long way around
2. birdy busch, the ways we try
3. the cardigans, super extra gravity

they are great individually, and as a group. aosl i would like to voice my extreme disapointment in wxpn's top 50. i know i didn't vote, but i don't even live in philadelphia. come on, you people! maybe despite our differences doesn't deserve a place in the top 50, but how can you NOT vote for that AMAZING new shawn colvin album, these four walls? it's rather exquisite. thank goodness taking the long way around was on there, or heads would roll.

anyway, after that i did make it to d's house in time for the L word. well, not really, but she tivo'ed it. no, don't ask me why she still has tivo and cable and a cable modem when she can't make rent. it's not my household, none of my buisness. anyway, we had to stop at home depot first, because you know she has a car and i wanted to go specifically to a superstore so that i could get more wackeys. well, they were out of the size keys i need for my front door, so the whole venture was pretty useless. i just go to my local hardware store down the street- they can always hook me up.

also got some hippie stuff at the home depot- there was an article in the newspaper about greening your home and i'm making some changes. i know that the only way to acomplish anything is through small changes. but caitlin, you say, i thought you were already a crazy hippie doing everything you could to be eco-friendly in your little apartment! and it's true, i've already made a whole collection of small life changes, but there is always SOMETHING else you can do. so i'm going to

1. find out more about more reliable recycling (cause i don't trust the blue bag program) i need to ask about the health food store- i heard they recycle cardboard... and then there's the whole girlfriend-with-a-car thing, who can drive me to a different drop off spot. horray! AND coming up is the famous first saturday of the month, when the electronics and household chemicals disposal site is open and i can finally get rid of that FUCKING printer.

2. turn off my powerbars at bedtime. i don't think i can be bothered to unplug my phone charger because i keep it under my bed, but every other little black box i'm going to start turning off when not in use. i'll occasionaly leave my computer on overnight so it can do it's stupid update thing, but my modem will actually last LONGER if i turn it off every night, the newspaper said. i tried this before and gave up after a week of pushing down my bagel and having it never get hot and pop up, so we'll try again, slightly more awake.

3. at the home depot, i also bought 4 compact florecent lightbulbs. i have always been torn about them, cause they use so little energy and last so long... but the light they give off is so UGLY. i find it to have a grocery store quality, and their attempts to make it more "incandecent like" just make it yellowy grocery store. it's just not a warm, comfortable glow like incandescent lightbulbs. but i decided change starts small and so i bought a 4 pack dirt cheap, and i replaced them in my overhead light, which i rarely use. just for cutting out patterns or displaying work or other activities where direct bright light is needed. and i had a pleasant suprise when i put them in tonight- not only are the combined 56 watts from the four flurecents twice as bright as my two old 60s, but the light is actually quite nice. i got the "soft white" in the yellow spectrum of their little scale, and i'm very pleased with the light quality. so perhaps someday i'll actually replace bulbs i use on a regular basis.

ANYWAY, all that to say, after the depot we watched the L word, and i'm starting to be able to keep the characters straight and form opinions about them. went to bed, went to work, went to square dancing. ate the last of my chillean squash cassarole for lunch and my delicious mujahdrah for dinner. must post recipies, photos sometime. soon, baby, soon.

weekendy

sunday morning, d's in the shower, i'm just taking a few minutes to blog for you all. we went to the chixmix party again on friday, and then had a lovely day yesterday shopping. i got up and drug all my cookbooks in bed with us, and we curled up together under the duvet and read recipies and made the shopping list. it was so nice. then we tried to find the sewing machine shop- no go. we drove around and around the block, and i cursed myself for not getting the address when i called for the hours. so it was off to the grocery store, devon market for veggies and dominicks for bagels and cheese.

we then drove to the empty bottle, the first craft show i've ever been carded in. i'm trying to remember the last time i went to a bar in the daylight= i'm pretty sure it was pride. it's always surreal. there were some fun crafts, but i went mostly to see pam and mike and trade christmas gifts with them. d bought some of her bottle caps. they really are f-ing cool.

but we couldn't linger and talk yarn with the crazy knitting lady, because we had to get to square dance lessons. which are still really boring for me. i keep thinking next class they'll get fun, but we'll see. i don't think i'll go next week, and i'll see how much the new students learn if i skip a week.

we were starving after that, so instead of making dinner, we went to the indie cafe, "our" place in my neighborhood. i went wild and had thai instead of japanese, and was richly rewarded with a sweet-peanutty-coconutty-spicy sauce. d enjoyed hers too. it was very companionable. then home again, where we watched fire.

which was pretty amazing, i mean, indian and lesbian, what a combination. i don't know if it was the filmmaker's style or if it was watching it on the flatscreen, but everything seemed so overexposed- there were all these interior shots with glowing white windows- or even saris that are colored in the shadows and glow white in the sunlight. but i guess when you're shooting some place with as high a light contrast as india, it's better than just capturing what the sun shines on and everythign else is black. it made the world outside seem so sunfilled and the inside full of shadows. it made me think about filters, which i think is a pretty stuck up view, but i don't notice the craft of filmmaking that often. anyway, it was wonderful.

d's out of the shower now. we're gonna go eat breakfast. see ya.

bed... and historical dreaming

am supposed to be sewing today. there is a huge list of fabric oriented things that need to be done- but i feel i've worked too hard already to not blog. last night made some spectacular dinner- will post pics of that, as well as photography lesson 2, soon. my house has been cold- the radiator in my main room is only heating on one coil. which makes some things hard- i can't sit in front of my computer and just veg- i need to keep moving or my fingers freeze. but there are other simply delightful things about it. i pulled out my second duvet and am sleeping like the swedish. honestly, how cold to people keep their houses in sweden? ikea calls my duvet a 4 season duvet- you use the thin one in the summer, the thick one in the fall and spring, and both in the winter. but in chicago, that's always way too hot. i use the thick one in the winter, the thin one in the fall and spring, and just the tiniest corner of it over my belly in the summertime. summertime is never a fun time to sleep. my feet are always cold, but it's too hot to heat up a water bottle- that is uncomfortable and rediculous. but when your radiator is broken, oh.... crawling naked under my double duvet and sticking my feet on the cuddly tigerente waterbottle cover is heavenly. it's just so thick and fluffy, the 9" of down or whatever. natural fibers are amazing. i don't care what the vegans say. but boy is it cold to crawl out from under there in the morning!

luke came by last night to bleed my radiator and try and make it work. and it is better- bout 1/3 of the coils work now. while we were waiting for it to heat up we were looking at my other ones, and i showed him the beautiful wraught stuff on the one in the kitchen- i will take photographs, soon. and he was all, wow, that must be one of the original radiators! this building was built in 1906, it just had it's hundreth birthday. he told me hannah greg's apt upstairs is one of the 2 left that still have the original woodwork. mine is sadly all painted, a gagillion times. i was jealous and wanted to move upstairs, but luke told me to just keep my month to month lease, because he's currently asking $100 more a month than what i'm paying now. that's ALOT of money! but really, the place is worth that. but i couldn't afford that.

and now, having this talk, curled up under my duvet, i keep having these grand historical musings, imagining me living here in 1910, when the building was 4 years old instead of 100. how at the end of the day at work at the flower shop i'd climb the stairs to the elevated train stop at quincy, and browse the advertisements for fancy hats or new bungalows until the train comes. and i'd get off in my cozy tree-lined suburb, and when i got home the gas lamp above the door would be lit. i'd open my shiny brass mailbox with it's tiny key and maybe there'd be a check from my mother or a postcard from my grandma, appalled i'd want to live in the city, esp. with all the news of fires she keeps hearing. i'd be all, grandma, the big one was 25 years ago. i'd put my wet mittens on the radiator in the hallway, perhaps, or if it wasn't wet just inside the hall closet, with it's giant mirror- such an extravagance. i'd take off my bustle and put on a day dress. i'd put a teapot on my big potbellied stove and make myself a cup of tea. maybe i'd have the day off in 1910, just like 2007. maybe i'd take a trolley downtown, cause the trains are running so slow. maybe instead of going to a branch i'd go to the main library, right on michigan and randolph, and shiver a little at the grandness of the mosaic-ed writers up in the dome. or maybe i'd do like today, and walk down to the fabric store on broadway, then come back and sew while there's still so much light coming in through the window above my sewing machine in the closet. such hard work hidden behind doors i can barely imagine, those french doors all heavy dark wood, the mirrored panes clear and new.

can you see how i've gotten a little carried away with this? i keep trying to figure out who lucille was. i think she was the owners wife, and she died of cholera during construction. he loved her very much, but she was a wild independent thing like me, and that's why her husband did something as crazy as giving a lease to a single woman. it's interesting- i know historically there's so much less middle class, people are either extravagantly rich or barely surviving. i tend to imagine myself historically as, like, a factory worker chained to my machine. but maybe i could make good enough money for a roof as extravagant as this one sewing back then- it reminds me of a facinating set of pie graphs i saw in the newspaper a while back- comparing family expenses at the turn of each century. now, a third of one's income goes to housing. then, housing was barely a sixth, but like 50 percent went to clothing, and a huge other portion went to food.

so that's what i'm musing on as i'm sewing today. maybe i'll put on my hoop skirt and play pretend around the house. what are you contemplating today?

did i tell you about this?

in other random news...

can you tell i'm cleaning up the scraps of paper from my desk? but there are so many little things that i've collected to share with you. r emailed me from germany a few months ago to say she'd been reading here and of course that filled me with joy. cause i love all blog readers, but i especially love emails from accross the pond! and it was such a good email, with a story that she started with, "forget all your moral values when reading this..."

isn't that a great start to any story?

she was fooling around with a boy this summer, and there was a point of this story that is just so fabulous, and so much like r. she writes, "however, he was being a total asshole, continouosly telling me on our way to his appartment that actually, i am not his favorite kind of woman - in fact, not at all - but that he wants to fuck me. i´m not really picky but if a man wants to fuck me i expect him to be nice. just be nice, you don´t have to tell me that you love me but DO NOT tell me that in fact you would like to fuck someone who has blond hair and a bra size twice as much as i wear. that´s just not cool.

so, instead of continouing our flirting at work, we started to fight and then shortly before we arrived at his appartment i had enough and decided to go home. ten minutes later i got this txt mess which says something like "just come back, don´t think about what's going to happen, tomorrow we´ll see".

isn't that the best quote ever? "i'm not really picky but if a man wants to fuck me i expect him to be nice."

so here is the honorary contender in my top 15 best text messages:
"komm einfach zurueck und morgen sehen wir weiter..."

i need to update my list, anyway, so that one should be added to it.

w-w-w-weekend!

sorry, y'all. i can't believe how bad i've gotten at this blogging thing, recently. i guess it's cause i check my email and blog before i go to bed, and i've been spending so much time not sleeping in my own bed recently. i spent a lot of time with d this weekend. saturday was her first square dance class. it was fun to be an angel- a dancer coming to help, not learn- and to chat with all the people i knew, and see all the new students. and it was fun to see how much we actually have learned, with all the extra stuff they've been craming down our throats, keeping one step ahead of us, it was fun to see that it actually works! d had a really good time too, which i was glad about. she kept giggling and saying "i like being a boy!" which i found totally humorous. we went back to her place and made enchiladas for dinner- just as good as z's- and i read to her.

i really wanted to go to the all day sing sunday morning, and she wanted to go to church, but instead we decided to get frisky. so instead on saturday we just went to help carrie and ashley- ashley is moving in with carrie. we didn't get there in time to help the actual moving, but we painted over the lovely blue of ashley's apt with primer and polar bear white. it was so cold though! brrr. since i had spent the night at d's, i was wearing my fave pair of new jeans, perfect for moving, but not so good for painting. esp. when one is short, stuck doing the bottoms of things, and hence kneeling on the drop cloth. i got all sorts of splotches on my fave new jeans. ;-( but when i got home i scrubbed them with a toothbrush and laundry detergent, and now they aren't as noticeable. i typed in the inventory for work, and then d was BACK, to pick me up again, cause i was going to her place to watch the L word since she still has cable. you know how dubious i am about tv shows, but so many people have told me how i need to watch it, i am going to try it for a few episodes and see how it goes.

jr and i have been playing all sorts of games for learning, which i find lots of fun- i find kids easier to deal with during structured, rather than unstructured activities. and after reading with me sunday, d told the cutest story on monday. carrie and ashley were selling their old couch and d needed a couch, so she borrowed a van and picked it up yesterday since everyone but me had the day off. jr was having the best time sitting in the front seat being able to see everything, and he kept sounding out signs, and d could hear him thinking really hard, going ka-ka-ka-tit-tit-tit-a-a, kit-a, cr-ta. and finally h asked, "mommy, what does c-t-a spell?"

the list

i did such a good job working on the list yesterday i'm hoping i can drill myself to similar standards today. we'll see. it's long and boring. but i have to do it. that's why i stayed home. i can't believe i'd ever stay home by choice on a friday night. everyone wanted to go out with me, but i turned them all down! d wanted to drive me out to temptations to drink and play air hockey. christopher wanted to take me out bowing with his friends. and ch wanted me to go to a concert with him and hugo up on morse. but my list is too long, and i've already planned a lot of girlfriend time this weekend, so now i have to get my work done so i can do it all as unguitlily as possible!

first, though, i'm gonna try and hook up my turntable so i can listen through the computer speakers. wish me luck!

calendars and the dali lama

don't worry, nothing really interesting happened for a whole 24 hrs, so it's ok that i missed a day of blogging. lets see. tuesday after i last wrote i went downtown to meet with ch to go to the art exhibit inspired by the dali lama. we decided to meet at borders, and i saw their calendars were $4. unfortunately i didn't have my gift card with me, but i really did need one, so i bought one anyway. but HOW does one choose? last year i waited until closer to february and got an ok tolkien one- but for my planner i got the amazing happiness planner. i loved that thing. happiness means so much to so many different people! but anyway, this year i jumped the gun, and bought a wemoon when i was buying xmas gifts at women and children first. but the selection was so goo this year- reading women in 19th century art? good huh? but better yet is WILLIAM BLAKE! and if you can believe it, i turned down that one, too. i chose... the flower fairies. i thoguht it would make the best envelopes next year. but i am actually really attached to my calendars, so i can't imagine it. thinking back on my calendars i've had some good ones. now i want to chalenge myself and see if i can name them all- 2006- tolkien, 2005- syracuse cultural workers, 2004- andy wharhol, 2003-maurice sendak, 2002-????, 2001- american art from the art institute of chicago. now i'm going to have to go dig in my envelope drawer to see if i'm right. really close- sendak was 2002, we'moon on the wall was 2003. and i also have animalia from 2000, so i have a calendar from every year since i left home. don't know why this is so imporant for me. how many people could blog so long about wall calendars?

so anyway, about the art exhibit, which we went to after i bought my flower fairies calendar. the very first wall ch is all, woah, too much text! and speeds ahead. it was wierd behavior, and i didn't know what happened. maybe my bag was too crinkly. i would have prefered to walk with him. maybe he thought i would talk to much. in general, the whole exhibit made me feel discombobulated. one of their taglines was 88 works from 25 countries, but there were no countries on the artist information tags. there were so many works that i wasn't sure how they fit into the whole. and the whole exhibition was broken down in to the 10 essences of the dali lama (ie tibet, peace, compassion, etc) which were numbered- but they didn't go in order! there was 1 and 2 in the first room, then 6-9, then more of 6 in the back, and so on all over the place. i didn't understand the flow of it at all. also, i'm wondering what other people feel about multimedia art. i rarely have the patience to watch video in a museum. i like 3-D and 2-D work just fine, but when it comes to the 4th dimention of time, i just have no patience unless i'm at home or in a theater with popcorn. anyway, with all the downfalls, there was some beautiful beautiful work. there was an enormous piece that was a long red rectangle, and on the left hand side there was a little tibetian girl with a red shirt and red hair and blue eyes, and there were light red characters behind her head, and the artist said she was the next reincarnation of the dali lama... and i thought that was just fucking awesome. another amazing peice was buddha carved out of a stack of manhattan phonebooks. i wish there were photos. the best photo for the exhibit i can find is this:

afterwards. ch and i go to gentry for a drink, which turns into three. i go home and there's a message from the new job, the laundry bag guy. he wants to come over tonight. luke wants to change my locks tonight. so there are all these people in my apartment! it was kind of crazy. but i have deadbolts on the back and front now. and a hamper face i need to drape a laundry bag on.

worked yesterday, then went to the spectacle space to work there- and no christopher! guess he's not working late over jterm. so i went to the library instead, then to d's. my feelings are as always so bi-polar about her. i guess i'm always feeling i need to pledge my undying love forever and sign a lease together or break up. i need to remember there is middle ground, and to have patience. maybe i'll change, maybe she'll change, and make one become more likely than the other. i just need to wait and see.

work again today, then home finally to cook- i haven't cooked since i got back. and i FINALLY did my dishes, so i feel ready to fly with the flylady. and it seems i've already posted about my shiny sink.... i make my potato wirsing soup (it's apparently called savoy cabbage in the usa, but that's terribly awkward i think, and it LOOKS more like wirsing, don't you think, with all it's little wrinkles?) while listening to records- i successfully have my turntable hooked up! or at least, the turntable on the reciever next to my desk, and the turntable can play through the reciever to the speakers in the kitchen. next, we're going to see if it can go the other way- from the turntable through the usb to the comptuer speakers. stay tuned!

resolutions with photos

first, my new inspiration with the flylady- she doesn't demand a kitchen sink, now, does she? my bathroom sink gets really shiny. i can shine that every night before i go to bed. i am also going to try and buy a new dishwashing tool to maybe make me do my dishes slightly more often. there may be hope for me yet.

photography-wise, it seems all i've done so far since getting home from squaredancing is take photos of my cat. she's so nosey. so i decided to teach her a lesson with the flash. this was such a horrible picture it inspired me to start taking the let's-prove-i'm-learning photos. so my next entry will be from my autodidactic photography school!

photography lesson #1

in this week's photography class, we will be exploring the P setting. P stands for program. the camera will automatically chose the shutter speed and fstop, but turning the wheel with change the program up or down the scale for the same exposure. in this way, the camera will choose the ideal exposure, but the photographer can choose the shutter speed or fstop within the limits given by the amount of light available.

for my first homework assignment, i took photos with extremely long exposure times. this gives the subject time to move within the frame. as you know, cats are excellent for this because they hold very still, but also walk out of the frame before the shutter closes.


now, i thought a ghost cat should have a ghost owner.


taking these self portraits made me want to explore moving in the frame during the exposure time, instead of just moving into the frame, so i set the timer and did this self portrait as shiva:


for my second assignment, i took photos with as large an apeture as possible, to give the shortest depth of field. i also used the zoom to make the shortness as obvious as possible.



i also used sunbeams as another way of separating my field of focus:


finally, i did a study on a library book. the page shot most clearly indicates the blurry backround, the focused middle ground, and the blurry foreground.

these two contrast focus on the spine vs. focus on the text


and as for this photo.. well, i had to include it in my presentation because i just like it. it's my favourite from this week's shoot.


here ends today's lesson. tune in next week when we explore the "Tv" setting.

resolution recap

successes:
-taking photos
-reading flylady's email
-read a rediculous number of books
-uploaded my pics from the new digital camera

failures:
-haven't sketched yet
-haven't shined my sink
-missed figure drawing class
-still spending too much time online

too soon to tell:
-haven't signed up for violin lessons yet
-haven't started anything else

so we will see how it goes. jamie and i seem to have a digital camera learning contest going, so i'll have to work extra hard since she's making such beautiful food these days. my goal is to pretend i'm in photography class again, and to spend one week on each feature-"today, class, we're going to learn about depth of field." there are five non-automatic settings on the knob, so hopefully six weeks from now i'll know how they all work.

christmas spirit

ok, so i guess i really need to get down to the trip. i should do that while my photos are loading. i got good gifts- a usb turntable, so i can convert all my LPs tp mp3s. a rice cooker. and a SLR digital camera. wow! where did that come from? i feel like i'm not a good enough photographer to deserve one. i really need to finish reading the guide, i've just been using the automatic functions, but there was a sunset shot that i wanted to use the lightmeter for and couldn't figure out how to adjust it. i've just been using the manual focus and manual zoom. zoom! right now it's connected to my computer and i'm using stinky old iphoto to save the images. because i don't think i can figure out how to use the file viewer utility right. i just HATE how you can't rename the files. grrr. anyway, it's a cannon EOS digital rebel, for those of you who have done research about digital cameras and care about such things.

so that's part of my one picture- one sketch daily. am a week behind on the sketches- but am a week behind on shining my sink, too. i tell ya, i just can't bring myself to do it. i don't know what's wrong with me. got a great egg timer widget, though, and that helps me control my internet usage. a little. ah, who am i kidding.

so the trip was good. d and i travel well together, i dj, she drives, it works out well. the whole straight thing at the farm worked out well, although oh was my bed cold and lonely there. the funniest thing was gma calling d "debbie" i don't know why or where she automatically converted deb to debbie, but it cracked me up, esp. as d hates it. j had to work late, so we barely saw her, but it was nice to have someone there who "knows."

pa was pretty to travel across, the mountains are so much nicer that flat in and oh. everyone in east pa was kind to us. dad's family, mom's family- there really wasn't much trouble. christmas was nice, and we had fun playing games with the party in a box.

we went to philly for a day, d and i. we drove downtown and found parking (amazing!) and walked around old city, went to betsy ross's house and elfreth's alley. met krista and sarah at a charming cafe, then headed to the west side for the dinner party at leah and rachels. their new apartment is fabulous, so much more personality, more bohemian, than their old place. i of course took no pictures. oh well. i was so pleased to find that the other michiganite with laura was julien! so that was fun and exciting. we thought we'd get there a little early to help with preparation and catch up, but it wasn't the best idea. i think d was really awkward and i find l can suck all the energy in a room to the point where i don't exist. but more guests came, and we drank more, and had a great time. leah and rachel have the most fun friends ever. i want to be a philly dyke. we played surrealist games, and the dreidl game for slips of paper. i'll type mine in once i find where they are. but we had to get back downtown at a reasonable hour, so we took the trolley to krista and sarah's house, where they provided conversation and couch cushions, then took us out for lunch the next day. thanks you guys! it's funny that we'd just met sarah and i'd only met krista once before, because they felt like the safe old friends, whereas leah and rachel always feel like the dangerous new friends. i'll always think of them as the coolest girls in school, the ones whose lunch table you don't sit down a t with out an express invitation.

a did make it home, after all. she flew in on the 25th and out on the 1st. it was a really healthy trip for her, and she was really happy, so that was fun to be around. she and d really got along, so that made me really happy. i'm glad they like each other. we all went shopping at the outlets, and bought me a red bra and a new bag for my camera. we had so much fun d and i went back later and bought her a whole new wardrobe- we closed down the lane bryant outlet on new years eve.

we'd been to so many parties on new years i was sick and just wanted to stay home. so a came over, we all played cranium, and z and i won. we all watched the ball drop on the projection screen tv, and d and i soaked in the hottub before bed. the first we went to the party in a box's house for our requisite pork and sauerkraut, and then marty and mom took d and i to a place in deleware for a contra dance, which was lots o fun.

coming home was less fun than going out- though we did take the turnpike and it was even more beautiful. it was even harder to be at the farm, though. i was playing footsie with d under the 500 table. and i knew it would be days and days until we could sleep together again. the next day was even worse- driving the whole way across ohio caticorner because we needed to pick up jr. there was some fun at a rest stop in indiana, where we got frisky in the dark parking lot in the back... but i screwed up the directions, and it ended up taking us 3 hrs longer than origianlly expected. once we go to champaign, the agony was exsquisite- d had to call her ex's sister for directions to the school, where said ex and jr were. then we got there, and we had to find them, then we had to go up and get some of jr's stuff, but the rest of it was at ex's house, so we had to give ex ride home, and then get all the stuff, and i thought we would NEVER head back to chicago.

but we did, and now i'm home, and i can't blog anymore. go to flickr if you want to see pictures- i can't be bothered to add links into the body. it's here.
and if that's not enough, here's my mom's photostream with even more and some better photos.

housecleaning!

the tree is DOWN! pine needles tidyed up. ufta. what a mess. going over to d's now. type more later.

accosted on the train

spent a lot of time in my book today- the commute downtown was ages as the red line lost power at belmont. grrr. what is with all the power outages? christopher and i again spent most of the day gossipping. after work i went to a new job- a custom closetmaker is looking for someone to sew laundry bags for him. that'd be me. apparently bags are my specialty. and, i don't know, i guess pennsylvania was making me feel like i don't have enough work, so i thought i should start on my fourth job.

on the way home from that, i was minding my own buisness, reading my book, when a very old woman in a very purple poncho and a zillion shopping bags sat down next to me. she had a great big black straw hat and soft skin with an unbelievable number of wrinkles. she let me go about one stop before she started- she liked my hair. hers is all short. she first did it twenty years ago, she walked into a barber shop and they said, we won't cut your hair you'll look too masculine, and she said, what? i'm an old woman. so she went to the drugstore and bought electric clippers and did it her self, and just think of the money she saved! that was the best story, i think. she told so many, but when you're that old, you have so many stories to tell, and i don't think she picked the best ones. i wasn't really interested in her angelic theories and what her rabbi thought of them, or how people these days are so immoral. she has 7 kids, and numerous great-grandchildren. she was a translator, and she traveled all over. she's loopy now, but in a kind, chatty way. it was very surreal, i wanted to read my book, but also pretty nice, in a my-life-is-really-a-movie sort of way.

first post of 2007

oh, i just feel so behind! i want to tell you all about my christmas, but i just can't. am trying to get my life reorganized. i've unpacked except for my clothes. i still have to take down the xmas tree. that's the only big hairy scary thing to do.

i know i should go in chronological order, but first i want to tell you todays news. guess who i got a text message from? s. and she (he?)'s inviting me to her birthday party tomorrow. of course i'm going. i felt like she was a loose end in my life, and now i'm excited to reconnect. ch thinks i'm crazy.

also went to the library and got 14 books. my new years resolutions:

1. spend less time online, more time reading books, watching movies, and drinking tea.
2. drink the flylady kool aid, and get my house clean.
3. Learn. d and z got me a gift certificate for the old town school of folk music for xmas, so i can learn to fiddle. i also want to figure out how to get my butt to that figure drawing class. and i want to take arial arts at the circus school. square dance graduation is in may.

so i'm going to go unpack now. undecorating the tree can wait till tomorrow. babysteps- one day at a time!