...and it was still warm...

So, when one names ex-boyfriends after favorite book characters, it can backfire...


...but I think we'll survive.

Banners from /Film, where you can find out more info about this "Coming SOON!" movie.

I ching?

So, when I was working for Fox books, my friend Tim told me about the I Ching. It's the same book, but when you look at it every day, the message changes. I used to feel that way about Eat Cake. Now, Sex and the City re-runs are my I Ching. (I suppose as a Christian, the Bible should be, but I'd rather not say the Bible is my Buddhist answer book.)

I used to have Eat Cake sitting on top of the CD player in the loo, so I read bits every day. And it always spoke to me. Then I dated a struggling musician and had intimacy issues and money problems and Eat Cake was no longer removed enough from my life. I haven't touched it in a long time. (Soon, I think, I'll be ready to re-read.)

But now, when I have a vile day, I know exactly which episode to turn to: when I can't cry because something horrible happened, I go to the one where Miranda's mother dies and Sam can't get a release until the funeral. Or yesterday, I went for the one where Carrie rebounds with the new Yankee and then cries in his mouth after seeing Big in a bar. She dials the pay phone and you don't know who she's talking to, and you don't know who she's meeting "at our place" until the camera pans to Miranda.

I gotta go. It's this thing called work. They pay me to correct catalog records and help pubescent boys find the next great sci fi series, preferably one he has never heard of. (He's tired of vampires, when I recommend a Westerfeld.) (Me too.)

Writing vs. Blogging Part Deux

So, ironically, here I am, again, less than an hour later.

I'm trying to build an arsenal of writing prompts. There are a lot of websites, and it's super easy to open my google documents and open a window with writing prompts.

This is the one I found today: Creative Writing Prompts.

I find that I'm a lot better with the prompts that are like "write about an empty glass" (which I did) than write "I remember..."

Okay, I did today's writing, back to Season Six Part One. Miranda has figured out she loves Steve, Berger's book option got dropped, Samantha is helping Smith with his acting career, and Charlotte is sad because she lost Harry, after she converted to Judaism so they could get married.

Blogging vs. Writing...

This is an interesting development.

I never knew Jose Saramago was blogging, but hey, he's stopped to finish his novel.

I have been trying to post to this, while trying to work on writing.

Not saying that I'm stopping, but I'm wondering.

Even though I went walking this morning, and was thinking of blogging. But I came home, and nothing.

Except some pictures (which I will try to remember to post) and this great quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”

Lint Gate continues...

Except now, it's not about the lint.

So...I waited all week to do laundry, knowing that I didn't want to have to deal with it on a night that I worked til 9pm. So last night, I put a load in around 6:30 p.m. I moved around some books for an hour, went back downstairs at 7:30. Well, it was still going, but at least it was in the "Final Spin."

I did a bunch of other stuff, including getting a Popsicle, calling my parents (line busy), calling Michigan Sally, and gabbing away. While we were talking, I thought, let me just see where the load is, maybe I can transfer stuff to dryer. Um. Still in "Final Spin," a half hour later.

My clothes were almost dry! Who needs a dryer? So I unplugged the washer (there may be a shut off switch, but this is a laundromat style coin-op and so there aren't really dials to work with.) Upstairs again, I wrote an email to the landlord.

Luckily, I washed towels and underwear last night, so I'm set for a week. I have enough shirts to last me a while, since my mom and I did 4 loads of laundry when she came to visit a few weeks ago.

On the depression front--my body is doing bizarre things that feel like "not depression":

• I couldn't sleep last night (which feels like hypomania).
  
• I am eating everything in sight (including opening a can of tuna with a church key b/c my can opener is broken) (And yes, I know hunger is a depression symptom, but when I lick the plate clean, that seems hypomanic to me.)
• Today in the morning, I was Ms. Motormouth, and at lunch, too.
  

But this afternoon, at work on the Children's reference desk, I retreated inward and in between helping patrons, I transferred my Twitter favorites into Delicious. I grunted at patrons, and told them we didn't have books, (but then I found myself wrong, and delighted them.) So, I can still do my job, and well, but I am like dead wood inside. Argh.

Insomnia, thy name is...

So I'm getting ready to take some time off work. So of course, all things go wrong, and by all things, I mean, my washing machine, which had issues a few weeks ago and I alerted my landlord, who cleaned out a ton of lint. Max, Mr. First Floor, did a load after "lint-gate" and had no problem. My mom was in town last weekend, so we went to a laundromat since I had more laundry than one load. But in preparation for stuff n'at, I wanted to do a load tonight.

I checked on it at 9pm, before I left for Whole Foods. I checked on it at 10, after I returned from Whole Foods. (After I put a phone call into my car friend to say, why would there be water dripping from my passenger side foot area? Oh, condensation from my a/c? Oh, okay.) My mom assured me that we could do laundry tomorrow. I assured her, oh, I'm sure it will spin out soon, and promptly forgot about it, went upstairs to watch Numb3rs and finish packing my meds. At a quarter to midnight, after I had done enough of my own spinning, I figured my laundry should be too.

And I was sorely disappointed.

So I unplugged the stupid vile machine (I think it must be a faulty pump) and took my laundry out, put it in the sink to drain overnight. In the morning, I'll take my trash bag out of my kitchen trash can and use the trash can to transport the drained out laundry.

I discovered this unhappy laundry debacle after I had put my laptop to bed but since I'm so wired I brought it back up, wrote an email to my landlord, and started this post.

ARGH.

North Hills Sally, now Michigan Sally, has discovered her local library and has finally taken out Gilead, one of my favorite books. I told her, it's a love letter from a father to a son, do not expect a plot and know that it meanders.

I am so exhausted. Maybe I'll find an online game to play.

mtc (more to come)

xo,
SL

"No more sadness, I kiss it good-bye/The sun is bursting right out of the sky..."

In 1986, M-tv still showed music videos, Madonna's album True Blue had been released, and I was in 8th and 9th grades.

What do I remember? That True Blue was one of the first cassettes I bought (as opposed to vinyl records) and that there was a contest on M-tv for best video for the title track when it was released as a single. I remember spending afternoon(s) watching the entries, some of which used blue casting as part of the visual effects.

So when the song came on the radio the other day, the memories flooded back. I had just arrived at work, but I stayed in the car until the song was over. Funny how memories flood back: I remember the record shop where I bought the tape, in Wheaton Plaza. It was sort of but not really near the Gap store. I remember strolling my siblings along, in their double stroller, and people asking me if they were my kids and me being offended. (They are ten and eleven years younger than me.)

In our split level house in suburban Silver Spring, Maryland, we had bean bag chairs on the floor, that's what we sat on to watch TV. Much more comfortable than my current set-up at home, a bed on top of a box spring, no headboard. I miss my sofa!! Not that there is really room for another piece of furniture, but even sitting against a husband pillow** doesn't quite replicate the comfort of watching TV from a couch.

****************

So you may have noticed that I've been blogging less--that's about to stop, because (drum roll please) my laptop HAS arrived, all shiny and pink. She came on Friday, I opened her on Sunday morning, and we're still getting acquainted. I have yet to install AVG (the computer came with McAffee, yuk, but we'll deal.) Today I installed Firefox, Adobe Flash, and other sundry things. I have a router, but haven't hooked it up, and I still need to get a wireless mouse. And I need to name her.

In the time that I've not been blogging, I've been tweeting more, especially since I can tweet from my non-internet enabled cell phone. And I've been trying to think what I want to do with this blog--what is it for, who is it for, and what should I write here? And I still don't know. So I'll keep writing bits here and there. I hope you'll come back to see what I've written.

In other writing news, I'm now in a women's writing group with some women from church, which is thrilling. We meet every three weeks and have met twice so far. Now, if only I could get started on something to submit...my goal is to work really hard for the next two years so that I can be in an MFA Creative Writing program by August 2011. (Eek!) My boss in Children's let out a celebratory whoop when I told her my plans--previous to this, my plans had been plain vanilla: to go back for a doctorate in Library Science. This goal is far more audacious but closer to what I really really want: to write more.

It is super scary, since the dual goals of spending less to reduce debt and writing more so I have a portfolio to submit are both things I have not been successful at since my college years. But then again, I haven't had a goal like this since those years.

STAY TUNED!!

_____________________
*True Blue, Madonna, 1986.
**in 1986, I was a Redskins fan.

"Shopping is my cardio."

Carrie Bradshaw, on why she doesn't think she'll get into online shopping now that she has Internet. (Baby, Talk is Cheap, Episode 54, Season 4)

I spent 50 minutes in a grocery store today. That is 50 minutes too many, but at least when my therapist asks me tomorrow did I walk this week, I can answer truthfully. I walked from my car to the movie theatre to find out movie times. I walked from the movie theatre to Panera, where I had corn chowder with my sandwich, yum. I walked from Panera to Bed Bath and Beyond. I walked around the kitchen area of Bed Bath and Beyond long enough to find some food storage containers that will come in handy now that I'm determined to cook more and eat out less, which includes taking food to work that isn't in a cardboard box that has plastic wrap around frozen food.

I then walked to Bath and Bodyworks, where I discovered they don't have bath bombs either. NO ONE DOES. They suggested I look online. Shopping online never occurs to me. (I hate paying for shipping.) (And I like stores better.) But I really want some bath bombs.

['Scuse me while I look for them, and the first ones I find are $9 a piece! WHAT? The last one I bought was $1 at Giant Eagle and I didn't have to pay shipping!!!!!!!]

[The next two places are $4 and $5, but look, you can MAKE THEM HERE.] Now I'll be looking to procure a "dome shaped mold." Yes, I think that means more shopping. Unless I could use Styrofoam egg cartons...I digress.

So back to my afternoon exercise routine. (Are you tired yet?) I walk from Bath and Bodyworks (where I bought a compact that has one side regular mirror and one side magnified, for $4, and it's PINK) back to the movie theatre. During the previews I try to finish the Red Dress Ink book that I've been working on for the past day or so, because I've invested too much time to not finish it, and I know she gets the guy because I cheated, but I just want it to be DONE, and at this point, it seems really confusing why she would want the guy or why, for that matter, he would want her. Be forewarned: Loves me, Loves me not, is not a lovable book. Though the graphic design for the chapter headings is clever--a Gerber daisy that loses more petals as you work through the book. (You know, like pulling the petals out, "he loves me, he loves me not." Cute. But you don't need to read the book to enjoy that detail.)

Since I've already seen Harry Potter and the HBP once, I'm so bored the first 15 minutes (and I want to finish the blasted stupid RDI book) I almost walk out. But I don't, and I finally settle in and enjoy myself, catch a lot of the little things I missed the first time I watched it, but generally wish I was with someone. Chick flicks, I can see alone. But for me, Harry Potter movies are about my sister and where the heck was she?? In DC, as usual. (Well, she lives there, so that's no big surprise.)

After the movie ends, I walk back to the car, deposit my book and walk to the grocery store. And I proceed to walk around the store for the next 50 minutes, without a list, and though I used to shop at this Giant Eagle back in the day, I'm somewhat unfamiliar and did I mention no list? I don't get out under $50, which I'm sure my mom readers are saying what, that's a bargain, but remember, I'm feeding one person, not three to five. If I spent $50 for what should turn out to be 30 meals (including breakfast cereal), how much is that per meal? About $1.66, so not so bad. I need to keep shopping. Eat out less.

The thing is awareness. I'm actually spending less than I was a year ago. But I'm more aware of my financial situation and I actually REALLY THIS TIME DO want to get out AND STAY OUT of debt and I've given up the dream of getting a higher paying job and I'm looking at grad school in two years, so...the awareness makes my anxiety level higher and by the time I get $60 fast cash out of the ATM and see my balance, which has gone significantly down since payday, (was that only four days ago?) I am on High Anxiety.

So from the grocery store, I walk back to the car (thankfully I didn't buy any heavy things like, say, a whole turkey or a case of canned beets) and drive home. At which point, I walk downstairs one flight to the basement, put my laundry in the dryer (walk up one flight to the foyer) and walk the three flights to my garret apartment with my groceries. I put away my food, immediately open a 100 calorie Pringles container, and make myself a rum and Coke. Anxiety levels drop as I chow on a second 100 calorie Pringles container, fix a Lean Cuisine (I can't cook every day!) and finish the RDI book. And immediately turn the TV on as I work my way through Season Three of SATC.

Today would have been a great day to have worn my pedometer. I may not have walked to church (it's a goal) but please observe that I didn't move my car from 1:30 pm to 7pm while I did all that walking around the Waterworks Shopping Center.

When I finally am at a low enough anxiety level that I can actually call my mother, she confesses that although she doesn't like getting her hair cut on Sundays, she did today. It makes sense, they're leaving tomorrow for a road trip that culminates next weekend in a wedding. And it hits me WHY my grocery/money/ shopping anxiety was so high! I don't actually hit my hand on my forehead, but it's that kind of a moment. We're "no shopping on Sunday" people! We do movies, we do restaurants, but we do not do laundry or shopping unless absolutely necessary. As I have developed from a wee Louise to an almost 40 year old Louise, Sunday has become my day to zone out, my day to FORGET that I even have a checking account. The money anxiety? Was only part of the fact that I hate grocery shopping and a lot of the part that I feel it is my God-given gift to NOT GROCERY SHOP on Sunday. That's what Monday is for. (Monday is also wash day...) Sunday is for movies. Sunday is for chillin' in the crib. Sunday is for church. Sunday is NOT for worrying about bank balances.

And finally, this particular Sunday is for Sarah Louise to spend ten minutes turning her computer on and off, hitting F8 till finally she gets the "do you want to try safe mode with networking" screen. It is 11 pm and I have spent the past hour WRITING A BLOG POST. Life, my friends, is good. Dear reader, there is joy in Mudville. And I didn't have to turn on my air conditioning at all.

And so, as I realize I should probably start to get ready for bed so that I can greet tomorrow with at least a half-hearted desire to find laundry detergent,* I bid thee adieu.

________________________________________________
*did Wisk go off the market? And why are there so many different kinds of Tide? And is it really worth it to spend $8 for the kind that is good for the environment and and and... this is why I didn't buy laundry detergent. Which is also why my groceries were light and easy to carry back to the car, parked by the movie theatre.

...he normally would have said no, would normally have said no that it looked too hokey to have a hatchet on your belt.

Gary Paulsen, Hatchet, p. 9

I'd never met him before. Or knew he existed. The boy who started reading Hatchet and got bored near the end. Gary Paulsen's adventure tale is like the holy grail of books you hand towards "reluctant readers." Once they've read that, you can branch out into the sequels, the rest of Gary Paulsen's books, and then My side of the mountain...its sequels, and voila! you have a reader.

True confessions? I've never actually read Hatchet. Like Bunnicula in my bookselling days, it is a book that I know is a winner, so I hand sell it by plot. (It's about a bunny who is a vegetarian vampire.) Or, in the case of Hatchet, it's about a boy who gets stranded and all he has to survive is his hatchet.

So I seriously need to bone up on my books for reluctant sixth grade boys. He wouldn't take Hiassen's Hoot, and I forgot about Lupica. (Heat is an amazing book, fun, so much that you wonder why it's in with all the angsty YA books.)

And about that. Why aren't there more fun books for boys going into 6th grade? Must it all be Crutcher (his Chinese Handcuffs was the most requested to be banned book of its era) or Christopher Pike (king of horror). And honestly, would you hand sell Christopher Pike to a kid whose mom is hovering, saying "We have to find a book so we can tell her what you're reading." Her. I wonder if it's a teacher, or just a nosy aunt. Probably a teacher. There is so much more I could have recommended if I could have gotten the boy to shed his tough guy exterior, which with hovering mama there, wasn't going to happen. So I gave him Crutcher's Athletic Shorts. Saw the red dot (our code for more mature YA books) too late. WHY didn't I remember Lupica???

He wanted a book about hockey. But I couldn't hand him Matt Christopher, not after I found out he was going into sixth grade. Bruce Brooks wrote that series back in the late 90s, but the books are short (91 pages!) and most libraries don't carry paperback series that are ten years old. (We don't.) (Oh, unless it's R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, or the Boxcar Children.) None of which I would have gotten away with recommending to this tough guy almost 6th grader and his hovering mama.

Which is not to say that hovering mamas are evil--if it weren't for her, I doubt he would have stepped foot into the library yesterday.

But it's frustrating. So off I go, to find the Notables list and the Reluctant Readers lists, bone up on my "what you recommend to a tough guy 6th grader who got bored at the end of Hatchet."

Oh, and I have a copy of Hatchet on my desk. I think it's about time I read it.

"My job is to choreograph chaos"

Mira Nair, director of Monsoon Wedding (Spoilers, beware)

Movies move me. If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I will spend money to go see a movie in the theatre, more than once if I really like it.

Often I will watch a movie many times over, to get to the essence of it, or to get again that feeling of aaaaaah! one gets from watching a wonderful Cinderella, told again and again, on the big screen. Last weekend, it was Confessions of a Shopaholic. Fluff, to be sure, but good fluff. It was colorful, it made me laugh, it taught me about shopping. It would be a stretch to say it taught me about personal finance, but it did, a little bit.

Monsoon Wedding, on the other hand, is a movie I've seen once and will probably watch again, but I could only watch it that one time, there was so much chaos that you needed a break. It was not something I could pick up and rewind, watch again right away (although DVDs have taken away the need to rewind...)

Our church has had somewhat of a baby boom. We have had seven babies since January, and one is about to pop, and one is wearing her "bump." That's a lot for any church, but especially one with about 75 adults in attendance each week. (It's a 10% population increase!) I have been for the past two (at least) years wondering why people want babies, or more importantly, why I don't. Yesterday sitting in church, I saw kids running around and I thought, ack! Why would someone want to carry one of those for nine months and then have to discipline it for 18 years? (You see how I have separated love out, as if that part, which is usually the impetus to having children, making a family, doesn't exist.)

In the movie Monsoon Wedding, Ria Verma, the brides's cousin, is jaded. She doesn't want to get married, she wants to go to the U.S. and study Creative Writing. She reminds me of myself, she reminds me of Carrie, who's not sure she's the marrying kind. (I just recently re-watched The Baby Shower, where Carrie is seven days late and wondering if she could be a mother.) I don't see myself as a nun, or a monk, a person that has the "gift" of singleness. And yet, why do I not want children? Why is finding a husband before 40 not at the tip top of my goals?

Some of it, of course, is that the longer you are single, the more comfortable you get in that role. I mean, why bother? Then there is the alternate, what happens after you stop being single: people couple up, family trumps friends. Unless of course you are a couple and/or have kids too. This is a gross overstatement of what happens, of course. Of course your friend has less time, she now has a child to rear. And that is important. But it is hard for the one "left behind." No more long talks, no more coffee every week, instead it is phone conversations peppered with, "Mary, stop that!" or "John, I'm talking to my friend on the phone right now." (What is it about kids, they glom onto you as soon as you turn your attention to the telephone?)

I still have friends that are single and in their late twenties, early thirties, who say things like "well, my husband will be like x" or "when I have kids..." And listening to them, I wonder what has happened to me. That I have lost that dream, that I really only want to get my M.F.A in Creative Writing?

Some of it may stretch from heroine worship--Madeleine L'Engle had her first book published before she got married. But most of it is callouses on my heart. I've been hurt before and I don't believe that there could be a man out there that I could stand to spend longer than six months with. It's easier to go to work, go home, watch re-runs of SATC, and live vicariously through movies like Confessions of a Shopaholic.

But every once in a while, I watch a movie that cracks that callous a little bit, revealing to me a tiny nugget of truth. Monsoon Wedding is one of those movies. Ria Verma, we eventually learn, doesn't want to get married because she had been sexually molested as a child by a relative. And in the movie, she sees this relative, an uncle, begin the cycle again, with one of her younger cousins. In an amazing moment, the father of the bride shuns this uncle, sends him packing, saying, you are no longer welcome here. And by the end of the movie, Ria is making flirtatious eyes with one of the wedding guests. Ah. Of course healing from childhood abuse doesn't happen in the course of 15 minutes of screen time, but we get the point. Ria is on her way to healing, because her uncle stood up for her, because she was seen as valuable and worthy of protection, and because she helped to protect the next generation.

I am also on my way to healing. What a long road it is... When I was seventeen, I dated a man who was dangerous. A man who didn't pack guns or ammunition, but who numbed my heart, took away my innocence and made me distrust men. Twenty years later, I am still numb. My dating life has been a graveyard of spending time with men who weren't good for me, men that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. There was maybe the one who got away, but it seems that in the end he was just in the closet.

So I'm 37, and there has been no great love. And why not? Because when I was 17, I let a boy kiss me, and it started something that I'm still untangling today.

****************

More movies to un-numb your heart:

The quiet ones that make you think:
Broken English with Parker Posey. (Watch all the "making of" bits too, this is the director's first movie.)
Before Sunset (sequel to Before Sunrise, which is NOT a first date movie, nevertheless I did see it on a first date on Valentine's Day. ICK. I imagine my view of it now would be different.)

Fun movies that are a little more than fluff:
Just Sex and nothing else (Hungarian--you have to be willing to do subtitles)
Once (Dublin!) (and the music is amazing)
The Family Stone
Wedding Bell Blues (which I just noticed came out on DVD! Woot!)
Caramel (more subtitles, it takes place in Lebanon)


Total fluff (but we all need that sometimes):
While you were sleeping
You've got mail
Confessions of a shopaholic
How to lose a guy in ten days
Failure to Launch

(if I linked everything I'd be here forever, and you know how to use Google.)

As a movie lover, I always wonder why there are so many book sites, like Goodreads or Shelfari or Library Thing, where one can talk about the books they love, and not so many where you can talk about the movies you love.

(So, Cuileann, I blogged. Without my laptop. We writers just need a little encouragement, non?)

I wanted the poem electric...

(mismatched lines from a poem in Writer's Digest, eons ago.)

Two friends asked this week if their RSS was broken or if I had merely stopped blogging. Neither is the case, I've just taken a long break. Life broke in, my computer is breaking down, and excuses abound.

But driving to work this morning, I was determined that if I arrived before 9 am (I DID) I would spend the first few minutes composing a little something bloggy.

So readers, if you're out there, a big HIIIIIIIIIIIII from Sarah Louise.

So much has happened while we've been apart. And this summer will be full full full.

What has happened:

• I went to Austin and didn't see Badger. (Please forgive me--it was familyfamilyfamily) I did, however, see the Bat Bridge (pictures forthcoming) and eat lots of great food. I was having my lady troubles, so I spent two days in pain and napped every single day but overall it was a great trip and I'm sad that my brother no longer lives there. (He and my dad are driving back to Virginia as we speak.)

• I have jury duty on Monday. Which meant I had to cancel all my Monday dr. appointments. FUN. (not.) This is our busiest time at work as we prep for the kids to get out of school, so I really hope I don't get assigned to a case or however that works.

• I've read lots, of course. For my Austin-cation, I read two of the Dailsy Dalrymple mysteries, which are fun "cosy" mysteries that take place in 1924, in between the wars in Britain. I'm returning the third one today since they really are vacation reads and I'm back at brass tacks. Currently listening to Leif Enger's latest, So brave, young, and handsome. (Going to airport bookstores helped me to see what is in vogue.)

• Twitter takes up a lot of my online time. I like the 140 characters, the fact that at a glance I can see how all my librarian, Presybterian, Pittsburgh, hockey friends are up to.

• What else? Well, this summer, NH Sally moves to Michigan, probably for keeps. Her DH got a job as a professor at Calvin College (the arch rival of the college my parents, grandparents, and brother went to, Hope College.) So a 30 minute from home, 5 minutes from work drive to see her will be a 8 hour drive or a trip on the airplane.

• I might be moving in the fall, into a community house. I feel that right now I need community, since Sally is moving, I'm not finding enough of a community at the OD where all the babies are popping or have popped. (Childless, single woman here.) This will be an adventure in its own right, woman who has lived in a garrett for about ten years on her own, moving into a house with about nine other folks.

Well, my time to blog is up, I gotta go get my tea or coffee and start working.

Oh, and tonight I'm going to an NHL Tweet-up for the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals. Go Pens! (and pencils.)

let it snow...

Well, okay, I'm not saying snow should pile up in April, but it sure gave Pittsburghers something else to talk about today.

Especially after the past coupla days: 3 police officers killed on Saturday, a house invasion in East Liberty on Monday, a wife shoots a ex-husband on Monday, oh, and there was the guy that drove into the Subaru dealership. Literally.

Calling all angels??

So, yes, I'm glad we had something else to talk about today. And I'm glad the Penguins WON! Woo hoo!

I'm in and out and around (it's called vackay) !!

To bed so I can wake at the crack of dawn...later I'll tell you about egg decorating and the day SL thought her vackay was a goner b/c of jury duty.

Keep smiling...

mental health: it's not for wimps

This was one of my tweets this morning: "a mental health tip: if you've been morose for weeks and all of a sudden you are giggly, watch out. (tired of monitoring moods) #moods.diva"

Yep, I flipped. (It's a my non-medical terminology for I was grumpy/depressed and now I'm not.)

I can feel my skin. It's time for a bath. (I thought I wanted a walk, but that would be WAY too stimulating.)

So, movies to see if you've had the WORST day ever: I love you man. It is highly inappropriate from minute 5, so don't go with ANYONE you don't know real well/aren't comfortable with. But it was hysterical, exactly what I needed.

okay, got to go monitor the bath. Be healthy!!

another tweet: Apparently the pea soup fog is so bad that 1 car hit utility pole, another went into a creek. Blech. #glad.i.work.@.10.a.m.

finding things...

You never know what you'll find when you're not looking for it. Today, looking for my favorite poem (I need to get a hard copy) I typed "love pitched tent excrement" into Google and got this manifesto for a theatre in North Carolina. Wow.

Here's the poem, found when I put "crazy jane and the bishop" into my own search of this blog:

Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.’

‘Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart’s pride.

‘A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.



After it, on a former post, I wrote: "I love that bit. Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. Love, not flowers or candy on Valentine's, but Love that holds the bucket while you wretch."

I have to go now, or suffer being late to work.

Spring has sprung! (some random thoughts)

So Friday was the first day of Spring, and it cracked me up that the Today show had an actual "countdown" with Vivaldi's Spring playing in the background AND that it was snowing in NYC, where the show is recorded.

Today I took a walk to the Seminary and there was literally a herd of red breasted robins. At least twenty, just poking around on the main lawn which is really just dirt, no grass.

Earlier in the afternoon today, I went to see Duplicity, with Julia Roberts and Clive somebody. Very good, spy stuff. You have to pay attention, not a chick flick, but very fun.

Elliot (my car) likes to tell me when there is ICE POSSIBLE. So it cracked me up, on the way to the movies, when it was 53 outside (that's Fahrenheit) that Elliot reminded me ICE POSSIBLE and didn't think it was above 35 until I was already in Aspinwall (close to 5 miles from my house.) The temperature thing is the least important working part of my car (in my mind), but if it's not working and it's attached to the whole computerized thing...I fretted. And then it went up to 38, 41, and kept going until it was at 54. (Whew!)

I guess that's it for now. I wanted to just move on from the last two posts which were a little drama queen-ish. I'm adjusting to the fact that Sally NH is moving, and I plan to go visit Sally EE and baby tomorrow. (Plan being the operative word since I still need to call her.)

In the meantime, I'm still humming that Jason Mraz song.

Oh, and here's something that someone you might know is working on--it's a Mother's Day bookbuying holiday here in da Burgh. That Suzi W. is a good friend of mine, if you live in da Burgh, it will be a fun event. Stay tuned.

"It is so nice when you can sit with someone and not have to talk."

Sally NH might be moving two states over. Need I even say more?

Oh, and Sally EE just had a baby girl, YAY. I haven't been over to visit, or even called to congratulate. (Bad friend.) I facebooked her husband, does that count?

_______________________
Harry in "When Harry Met Sally"

it's our godforsaken right to be loved loved loved loved

So if you've been here, you are right with me that life is just AWFUL.

But.

A big ol' Butt.

I have never had the universe open up so wide to want to make me smile. First, I finished watching "How to lose a guy in ten days" which is so chick flicky you never should watch it with anyone that isn't female, but it's great. (See link for the ten chick flick cliches.) (You really should go, I promise it's NOT a Rickroll. It is hysterical.)

Then I realized (tmi) that yep, I have a yeast infection. Ick. THE END.

Then I got two great funny emails from dear friends. One was from a dear college friend and we agreed to quit our day jobs for the day and "meet" at a beach near our alma mater. (If only.)

Then my cousin sent me a new theme she created for iGoogle. This is a talented lady, I'm telling you.

Then, while I'm uploading my new theme, my phone vibrates and it's a text from aintskeered, who I follow on twitter. "There is no fear in love." (Well, check the link, it's from 1John4:18)

This is all in the span of maybe 20 minutes.

So you know that joke, the one about the man who is on the roof waiting for God to save him and a helicopter comes, and a boat, and all these things and he gets to heaven and says, um, why am I here? and God says, um, didn't you see the helicopter and the boat and all those things?

I hear you!!

Oh, and the title is from Dani, who posted this Jason Mraz song to blip.fm. (Yes, she was also a part of the 20 minutes of love.)

It's my blog and I'll sap if I want to. I don't need to be poetic to say, love is all around.

I gotta go eat something. Catch ya later.

(I'm not saying life is perfect, just that it's worth it, n'at.)

Songs to sing

I know, I just posted. But this thought seemed incongruous with the (I can't believe I spelled that long word correctly) post below.

from Annie: "Just thinking about tomorrow....I love ya tomorrow, you're always a day away."

and the Mr. Roger's song: "And you'll have things you'll want to talk about, and I will too."

"You're so far away..."

I've been sick. And I'm sick of being sick, but my body still has a little bit of flu. THE END.

But what happens to "little miss introvert" is that all that time alone (sleeping, watching DVDs, sleeping) backfires. You get used to being alone. You don't call people, people don't call you. And it becomes easier to stay home and do that Google search you've been meaning to do all week.

(Yes, Sarah Jessica Parker had a nudity clause in her contract with HBO, that's why you never see her bra-less.)

So then the re-entry to life is harder, because if your social construct isn't strong, folks forget about you (or you think they have). And you internalize even more. And the longer you stay at home, the harder it is to get out there with people, because as an introvert, you long to spend time with people that really "get" who you are and if you've been gone so long...it's a really bad cycle.

I spent a few hours in tears (well, maybe it was 45 minutes) part of the time chatting online and when I realized I was creating more drama, I said, I gotta go.

This is the year of the bad smell in the hall. This is the year of the bait and switch raise. Yes, I got a raise. And then I had to buy tires. Which basically ate the entire raise. And then, because I make more, the membership to my professional organization went up. AND because we're in a downturn, the library isn't paying for national conferences, in this year where Twitter has connected me to some people professionally that I want to meet face to face in Chicago.

I do my taxes on Thursday. Hoping for a nice refund. Wondering, if I do get a nice refund, if I need to rearrange my withholding. Ay ay ay. Drama.

And yet, I keep a piece of paper in my calendar that puts things in perspective, big time: "If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the world."

This is not the year to purchase a laptop. Oh well. My digital camera is on its last legs.

HOWEVER.

I have dirty clothes, which means I have more clothes than I can wear in a week. I have clean towels. When my mother (maybe!!) comes to visit this weekend, I have a bed where she can sleep.

I feel like this is one of those Psalms of Lament, where David starts out, oh, my bones are broken, everybody hates me, no one likes me, I guess I'll go eat worms, and ends with "Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

What's the bait and switch situation in your life right now? What makes you want to sit on the front step (which is crumbling by the way) and cry? Or are you pretty content with things?

May you find a piece of peace today, tonight, tomorrow.

_________
*Carole King

Seasons change...

Some people mark seasons with the fulfillment of dreams. Some people read all the Narnia books every year. Some people open all their windows at the first sign of spring. And some people (Me!) know that there's a change in the air as she watches the last two episodes of Sex and the City.

I have finally come to "An American Girl in Paris" parts 1 et deux.

I thought I would have a lot to write, but maybe I used it all up in my mind and then the picture positioning, and the collage...enjoy.

As for Daylight Savings--I didn't set an alarm, because it's Sunday. I woke up at 10:30! I am going to have a rude awakening when I have to wake up for an 8:45 chiro appointment tomorrow, and Wednesday I have to BE at work at 9, which means...

But I'm feeling better. I worked 5.5 hours yesterday, had dinner with a friend (where the mahi-mahi made my elbows have hives...isn't learning what your allergies are fun?) and came home.

Spring is in the air. This winter girl hopes it cools down a little, I'm not ready for spring...yet. But I am interested to find out when my crocuses are going to pop.

More later. Carrie Bradshaw awaits...

I will say this: you can tell that the SATC cast, staff, etc. love what they do. That it's not about "churning out another piece." Talking to Bird Friday night she said I should start a SATC fan page. I get so much out of watching it. And the commentaries. Well, first a trip to the WC, then I'll un-mute the TV and watch "An American Girl in Paris, Part Deux." oooh, I can't wait!!