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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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SO MANY CRAZY PEOPLE FOR ME TO LOVE Recent encounters with strangers: 1. A smelly unfortunate was loudly moaning and gibbering to himself on the Red Line---per usual every other rider was plugged into an iPod or else just mentally reminding themselves how much they love living in the city because it is a wonderful celebration of the diversity of human life. And then there was me, and I usually also employ one of those strategies but on that day I was PMS-ing HARD and the dude was VERY ANNOYING. So I thought here goes, this could either be an entertaining failure or I could be fatally stabbed, leaned forward, and said, "Can you please turn it down a notch?" To my surprise the guy said, "Okay." And he did! I got many looks of amazement from other passengers. 2. I was waiting for the train at the Jackson stop and a man was sitting on the waiting bench. He too was twitching and muttering and holding a Bible and a mysterious foil-wrapped object, slightly larger than a large burrito. After a while I realized his repetitive refrain went like so: "Miley Cyrus leave me ALONE. Miley Cyrus leave me ALONE." Okay, I must be hearing that wrong, I thought. But what an amusing mistake! Then he got a little louder with this chant: "DAMN YOU Hannah Montana! DAMN YOU Hannah Montana!" Okay, I wasn't hearing that wrong! Rock and roll! Me: Sorry, I don't have any cash. EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES I have been wanting to update this diary thing for a long time now, but I literally have not had a free thirty minutes to get down-and-dirty with Microsoft Word. Every time I think I have a free thirty minutes it seems to be time for bed. Not that going to bed more or less "on time" did me a damn bit of good last night, what with Nora waking me up about a stuffy nose at 2:30 in the morning. Kid, it's called pollen. It sucks. Breathe through your mouth all night and wake up with terrible breath, that's what the rest of us do. Although I guess you are too young to keep bourbon at your bedside and burn off the morning stink with a quick shot. After I got her settled I dozed for a while and then the birds started. BIRDS. At three o'clock in the morning. Right outside my bedroom window. I hate birdsong, it is so terrible. How can anybody like listening to a bunch of random tweeting? (You can make the Twitter joke yourself, I'm too tired.) I would seriously have more chance of sleeping through a car alarm, at least it has a regular pattern, unlike bird noises which make NO SENSE to anyone except birds. After a while I dragged my pillow out to the living-room couch where it was quieter, and I only had to put up with Rocko the cat trying to give me every last bit of his love. He could not believe his dumb cat luck, blessed with a booty call (literally---he likes to sleep pressed up against my ass) in the middle of the night. I worked from home one day recently and was all like YES I WILL GET TO TYPE SHIT ON THE INTERNET but I actually had a ton of work to do. How is that fair? Also somehow I got involved in cleaning out a closet and throwing a lot of stuff away, or rather putting a lot of stuff in the alley for the Trash People. I feel kind of bad putting stuff out there, because I know that whatever the junkwallahs don't want will probably get scooped up by the garbage truck and put into a landfill. However, clutter fucks my head up, and if I had to live with that crap for another week until I could drop it at the thrift store I would have gone insane. Likewise if I had to deal with flaky flakes from Freecycle. Into the alley it went! Another thing I feel guilty about is buying eggs at Target. I usually only buy cage-free, humanely farmed, local-ish eggs (one of the few things I'm a hippie about), but the Target eggs were astoundingly cheap and my wallet ate my conscience, I guess. Seriously, eggs at Target are so cheap I think the chickens were probably anything but cage-free, they were probably in extra cages. (But wouldn't that actually be MORE expensive?) (Oh, I don't know.) Anyway, Nora can eat up these Conflict Eggs and we can go back to the slightly-happier-chicken ones next time. A LITTLE BIT OF NORA 1. Nora is reading like crazy, thanks for all your book suggestions. She has recently discovered this ridiculous kids' fantasy series called Beast Quest and is totally enthralled. A different beast in every book! I'm serious, that is the tagline on the inside back cover. If you check out that link you'll see that toward the end "Adam Blade" (or rather Working Partners Ltd) (could there be a more boring name for a writing group?) is kind of reaching for new beasts---the slug monster? The walking mountain? The "death bringer"? Although I cringe and writhe a little at the thought that I am raising a fantasy nerd, I am mostly down with the Beast Quest and have so far bought her the first three volumes. Sometimes we do a chapter together for read-aloud and I have many editorial suggestions for "Adam Blade," the first of which is to lose all the pounding and racing and thumping hearts. I get that the Beast Quest-er is excited and scared and that the Quest is dangerous and thrilling, but there are other ways to express those states than a character having constant cardiac problems. Just like there are other ways to depict melancholy and heartbreak than a soaking wet John Cusack, I am tired of him running around in the rain in all his movies. OH WOE I AM TOO SAD FOR AN UMBRELLA. 2. The kid also lost a front tooth and there was much rejoicing, on her part for the rite-of-passage thing and on mine because the way she was wobbling it around all the time was really grossing me out. She looks like a Halloween pumpkin. 3. If you know my child, you know that she runs everywhere, touches everything, and says "WOW" and "AWESOME" about fifty times a day. The other day we were walking to the bus stop and there was an orange section on the sidewalk. Nora ran over to it and very deliberately used her tiny Converse All-Star to step on the orange. (Squish.) Then she said in her skateboarder voice, "OH MAN! I just stepped on an orange!" Dude! You totally did!!!!!! I suspect that might be funny only to me, but oh well. ---mimi smartypants just stepped on an orange! |
