Tuesday, July 25, 2006

happiness, in various forms

I gave my notice this morning. And it feels goooood, regardless of the fact that the two people who need to read it haven't come into the office yet.
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mInor miracles:

I've been feeling lonely in the last week. And lo! Emails from Angeline and Stinkie, a phone call AND a sourdough recipe from Megan, a note from Mama C., a letter from Danielle, and a dinner date with my highschool friend Lex. So many lovebombs dropped in my direction that I've managed to be supportive of K's illness, rather than horribly angry because my constant playmate is out of commission. Which, in turn, means that K. himself feels loved and cosseted during his time of mucus and hacking. A fabulous cycle.
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Tonight:

homemade asparagus, bacon, and mushroom quiche for the bookclub girls who are coming to invade my house. K. threatens to wander downstairs in his ginormous red onesie (complete with bumflap) and say "where's my wife?" in plantive sick tones.

Considering that we're leaving DC, I think he should :)

Toodles chickies.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

ramble, complain, ramble ramble

Gah! How did it get to be Wednesday without me posting? Gah!

Probably because it's been one of those tired, cranky, stressed out for no REAL reason weeks.

Or maybe because of the seasons 1 and 3 of Scrubs that came in the mail.

GAH! My boss just walked in (10.40 am, about average), and I said good morning and he said NOTHING! Gah! And my coworker has been out for 3 days and already has Friday off and all because he hurt his KNEES! And I could use his help! GAH!

so, I really intended to disguise my mental illness and write y'all a fun happy, cheery post, where exclamation points were more like balloons and less like anxiety-filled daggers, but this is what you get. it's like yesterday, when the aerobics instructor told me to grab the ball between my ankles by using my abs to lift myself up, as opposed to bringing my ankles down until I could just grab the ball, and honestly, I tried, but I COULDN'T. (Because she's an ab exhauster, that one. People moan in this class. Many leave early.)

Happy Wednesday.

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Update:

I left for lunch and had a piece of lemon pound cake with my yogurt and nectarine out in the sun. Finished the novel I've been reading, "Sufficient Grace," which I needed. You know how sometimes you get to thirsting for a good, deep book? The kind that fills you up so that you read it in small, rich chunks?

So everything's fine.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Berries

It began to thunder as soon as I took the dogs out for a walk last night, but I still made it to the farmer down the street in time to get a pint of freshly picked blackberries.

Charlie, the farmer, inspires me. He has a double or triple lot in our suburban neighborhood, and after he retired, he expanded his garden to become the only farmer on downtown Silver Spring. He's out there every day, for hours and hours and hours, and he has a sign that lets you know what's available. I keep trying to get some of his blueberries, but the housewives clean him out by early evening.

Point being, though, that it's his garden that inspires me. He grows his blackberries and raspberries on fencewire strung above the ground between posts... K. tells me that this is very common, but it's so NEAT! and space saving! And everything he grows is in clean tidy rows or trimmed bushes or trained vines and I just LOVE it. Must be the German in me :)

A neighbor told K. that last year, a lady came and bought all of his strawberries-- which are apparently amazing-- and loaded pints and pints of them into her SUV. She then said to her companion, "lets get these home so we can freeze them." Charlie got righteously angry, pointed his old finger at her, and said "If I'd known you were going to freeze those, I wouldn't have sold them to you. Those are for EATING."

Damn straight, silly greedy woman.

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I get tomorrow off! So have a pleasant weekend, chickies. We're going to the daylily and wine festival in Fisherville, Virginia with my mom. Good clean family fun.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Blogging for Books: On Being Between

*a brief explanation for my regular readers—cough—heck, mom, just ask me about it tonight.*

**but if you’re really curious, Joshilyn Jackson (http://www.joshilynjackson.com/mt/) tells me that if my blog entry on “between” wins various places, I get various copies of her books. And I kind of have a she’s-published-and-funny crush on her.**



When I was six, I had a fight with my mother. I ran outside to my favorite invisible spot to sulk and fume. I wanted to run away, but I didn't.

You can leave when you're eighteen, I told myself. After you finish school, so you can get a job and eat and pay for things. Practical, yes, but even at six I knew I wouldn't enjoy starving. At six, eighteen seemed very far away. I can't really be sure that I counted the thirteen years between me and the adequate number correctly, but I knew it was far, and I knew I had to wait, for the gulf comprising Between to become smaller and smaller until I could step onto my own land. (Mom, I love you. Don't get mad at me. I was six.)

When I met K., I was eighteen. When I fell in love with him, I was twenty. We waited for me to graduate college to marry, so that we could tell our children to do it right, and it took bloody forever. Eighteen months between me and him becoming an us. Then nine, and then four, and then, very scarily, fewer than two.

We're married now, thank Heaven. Almost immediately after our return from our honeymoon, I started writing a novel. The first attempt, 10k of words in, got chucked out, and then followed a time of intense outlining. I've been drafting for nearly seven months now, going through four outlines. Fifty thousand words down. Fifty thousand left. So far, I don't enjoy drafting. It's what I have to do to get to the revising stage, the stage which might sound like tweaking, but what-- for me-- will be more like art and less like me scraping the inside of my head clean and throwing it at the page.

There are light years between me now and me becoming an established writer. Our land in Vermont does not yet have the stone terracing and enchanted cabin we've planned. I need to learn how to sew before I can re-slipcover my sofa.

I really would like to get to the cabin and the slipcovers and the career, but I know that I can't begrudge every log, every sewing lesson, every page that lies between me and my dreams. Go easy, I tell myself. Savor the way.

But keep going.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Monday

I got a 3% cost of living raise, along with all the other staff at this organization. I'm really not sure how I became employable. Last year, I wasn't; this year, I am-- and all that's changed is that my desire to work in a corporate world went from slightly above zero to way, way, way below. Anyone want to make a fair wage for doing mindlessly little? Email me-- there might be a job opening here soon :)

I added some links on the right. Farmgirl Fare's awesome, mainly for the daily pictures that remind me there is a world beyond overpriced 1/10 acre lots, and I shall get there. Country...mmm, country. I yearn to be a rural resident the way a thirteen year-old Midwesterner adolescent dreams of living in New York City-- passionately and grandly.

I just got interrupted by one silly email, my husband asking me to come home, and my boss handing me the papers I've been waiting for him to return.

Gotta go. But happy Monday nonetheless.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

swiss smackdown

K. and I heard the following on NPR yesterday morning, and right after the commentator said that the news would irritate Israel and the U.S., it got cut off. A few seconds later, the commentator began speaking about something else.

This piqued my curiousity.

I couldn't find it on CNN, so I googled "switzerland israel" and the only major US news source that came up was FOX news. The excerpt below is from their site, published July 3rd.

GENEVA — Switzerland said Monday that Israel has been violating international law in its Gaza offensive by heavy destruction and endangering civilians in acts of collective punishment banned under the Geneva conventions on the conduct of warfare.

"A number of actions by the Israeli defense forces in their offensive against the Gaza Strip have violated the principle of proportionality and are to be seen as forms of collective punishment, which is forbidden," the Swiss Foreign Ministry said in a statement.



Since the Swiss rarely say anything about anyone, this seems... momentous. And strangely, no one knows.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

jealousy

Even though NO ONE COMMENTS anymore, I have decided to write you a I’m back blog anyway.

P-heads.

So, 4th of July, rah, rah—no seriously, rah. I have never at all been happy to be an American until I went to India. Alright, so our president sounds EXACTLY like my majorly alcoholic and very much in denial father every time he opens his mouth (really—it’s spooky), and we underpay our teachers and fund the drug and oil companies and all the other things that we liberals (me included) weep in our lattes over. But people, believe me, be happy to be an American. There’s a reason people cling to rafts and roast in trucks and walk through deserts to get here.

In other news:

I don’t know if I’m more honest or just meaner than everyone else out there. Is no one else scarily competitive about cooking or incredibly mean about other people’s success? Is it really just me? I scared K. yesterday when I raised my head from a biography of Colette (thank you, I’m a genius) to listen to a book review on NPR. The book review itself didn’t make much of an impression. Instead, it was the speaker’s voice—nasal and drawling on the last word of each statement, reminding me of a precocious yet arrogant know-it-all. I said, “that’s one annoying voice,” and K. agreed with me.

Then I found out it was Curtis Sittenfield! This made me so happy, I crowed out loud.

You see, Curtis Sittenfield is on my I hate her because she’s too successful list, which generally includes all commercially successful female writers under the age of 28. After 28 it’s ok. Don’t ask me why.

I have never read a book of hers. I just know she wrote a boarding school novel and struck it big, and for that and nothing more, I dislike her. After I’m famous, I’m sure we’ll be friends.

But anyway. Anyone? Jealousy? Anyone?

A very important meeting at my very important job looms. So someone say something already.