Pantalones Del Fuego

The Big Move, part 2

2010-11-07T14:07:00.003-07:00

Um. So, I kind of decided to move to WordPress. You can see my new blog, designed by my awesome husband, at http://pantalonesdelfuego.wordpress.com. Woo! Plus, all my photos, posts, and comments made the switch as well. Yay! So update your RSS feeds, your blogrolls, and all other assorted stuff, because after 5 full years here at blogger I'm closing up shop.

Extended Massive Organism

2010-11-06T23:23:00.000-06:00

One of the tasks we're tackling, living in this house, is the scourge of the violet.

Wild violets grow in this yard like...well, like weeds. Which is what they are. I think there was a little patch of them in one of the beds when we first moved into this house in 1989, and I think my mom has been fighting the spread of the dread violet ever since. And they're not even the pretty kind of violet; they don't even get nice flowers or anything. As you can see, the violets are a formidable enemy. They propagate by sending runners above the ground or below the ground via a connected root system, and they turn up just about everywhere.

The violets are also a bit creepy because every new plant that comes up puts up the new leaves as weird crumpled pod-like things before they unfurl into leaves. I'd already pulled most of the violets in one of the beds before I took the photos, but you can get an idea of what they look like here. (Also, you can get an idea of the amount of insect life in this yard. Each of these beds is full of earthworms, snails, slugs, and sow bugs, not to mention ants, spiders, and all sorts of other things. It's a good thing I'm not wigged out by multiple-legged, wiggly, or single-footed organisms.)

Violets come up in every nook, cranny, crack, and crevice in just about every part of the yard here. They even split the railing of the bed, as you can see in this photo, and because the root systems come up from inside the wood I can't even get a good enough grasp on them to pull them out. I'm convinced that all of these violets are clones of each other and there's some sort of extended root system that exists all over the yard, the sentient creature putting up babies everywhere to see where they might catch hold next.

It's not enough to pull up a violet by the root, because there are so many runners under the ground in addition to the ones above the soil. I'm practically going to have to completely replace the soil in one of the beds in order to get rid of the violets in it, and I have no idea how I'll get rid of the ones that grow between the stepping stones along the pathways. Maybe it will be a losing battle, and the Borg Violet Collective will win this match.

The violets are not the only things attempting to take over the yard. The blackberry brambles, which have likewise tried to take root on our property for over twenty years now, have been sneaking in underneath the back fence from a neighbor's yard. Blackberries are prickly and painful, so you have to wear thick gloves when trying to remove them, and they send out surface and root runners as well. We pulled some out of the back lawn this afternoon, in addition to catching the latest runner on the move, complete with multiple root clumps every few feet.

We had a few days of rain last week, and afterward, mushrooms popped up all over the place.

You know what else pops up after a rain? Sour grass.

It looks like clover, but it isn't clover. I can pull it out by the roots multiple times, and it just. keeps. growing. I've weeded the same bed six times in the last two weeks, and every day there are more sour grass shoots to be yanked. I think this is a losing battle, but for now I'm going to do my best to at least keep the weeds at a few inches tall rather than a foot or more.

(Not pictured: the morning glory that has been making a valiant effort to grow over everything in one part of the yard, including up every tree, fence, along every railing, and across every flower bed, since it was planted back in 1990. At least the morning glory is easy to pull out and pull up, and some times of the year it puts out pretty flowers. I am starting to think that maybe we should just let the violets, the blackberry, the sour grass and the morning glory duke it out for King of the Yard. When the winner meets the mint plant in the front yard, watch out, world!)

Fantasy vs Reality: The Dinner Party

2010-11-06T00:01:00.004-06:00

At about five o'clock this afternoon, I got out the ingredients to make a pumpkin pie from scratch. I processed the pumpkin last night, and was excited to bake the first pumpkin pie of the season. I mixed up the crust ingredients, rolled them out, filled a pie pan. I mixed fresh pumpkin with egg, evaporated milk, spices, and brown sugar, and popped my pie in the oven to bake.

Meanwhile, Dan prepped the seafood gumbo and got it to cooking while he mixed biscuits, and baked the biscuits as soon as my pie was out of the oven. Our friends arrived around 6 PM, and we had a leisurely evening of drinks, food, and socializing.

* * * * * * *

At about five o'clock this afternoon, about half an hour after Dan had gotten out of a cold shower, I got out the ingredients to make a pumpkin pie from scratch. We'd already determined after looking at the hot water heater that it wasn't an issue with that, so with a sinking feeling I went out to check on the propane tank, only to find that the dial on the top of the tank read zero. Back inside, after doing a load of dishes in cold water, I began to mix the crust ingredients, only to realize that hey, not only were our hot water and our heat tied to the propane, but the stove and oven were as well. There was no way we were going to have pie, or seafood gumbo, and after a minute of trying to think of what we could make using only the microwave or the toaster oven on such short notice, we gave up.

I called my mom to tell her about the issue, and she suggested calling the energy company. They had a dedicated emergency line for after hours issues, and I spoke to someone who told me she'd have a driver call me back shortly. Meanwhile, Dan mixed up some guacamole so we'd have SOMETHING to feed our guests, and Sara and Ron arrived while I was still trying to figure out exactly what was going on with the gas situation. After speaking further with the driver, I had to call my mom back to relay our options ($150 for a weekend delivery, plus the cost of the gas vs. waiting 'til Monday and only paying $50 because of some new law that requires certain testing done any time the gas runs out.) After we got all that figured out and squared away, we went across the street to the diner and we all ate moderately tasty food.

After dinner, we came back to the house and had some chocolate, listened to Simon's band's album, and watched the cats play with toys. But I spent the entire evening mortified that the promised home-cooked meal and pumpkin pie from scratch became roast beef sandwiches and fish&chips at the diner. On the bright side, the guy from the energy company called again to tell me that because of a paperwork error on their part, they'd waive the $100 part of the $150 fee and we will have hot water, heat, a functional dryer, and a functional stove/oven at again at 9 AM tomorrow.

Robin, Miss Robin the Brave

2010-11-04T21:48:00.005-06:00

Princess Robin now lives on the fridge, the kitchen counter, the stereo piece next to Dan's computer, in the hall bathroom (where her litterbox is), and in our bedroom (but only when we are in there, and she won't go in or out by herself, which means every morning at 7:30 AM ON THE DOT she's jumping on our heads, pawing at the blankets, and purring, letting us know it's time for her morning constitutional and her breakfast.) She's spending more and more time exploring and voluntarily walking or running on the floor from one place to another, and has had a slap-bang time exploring the back bedroom, walk-in closet, and bathroom, where she will go if one of us brings her back there.

Yesterday, Loki was napping on the chair in the living room and Dan was at his computer and Robin just up and went on the floor. She spent quite a while there, and by quite a while I mean at least two or three minutes. She sat; she sphinx'd; she kept a close eye on Loki to make sure he wasn't going to eat her, and as soon as she saw him twitch a whisker, she was right back up on the table in a safe spot. That was about twenty seconds after I snapped this photo. But she's getting bolder every day, and maybe by the time we leave she'll be going into rooms on her own and not just leaving them.

Day of the dead

2010-11-03T10:28:00.004-06:00

Oddly, one of my favorite things about this little piece of the county is the Olive Hill Cemetery, just outside of Geyserville. Next to (what else?) a vineyard, it's a pretty neat place to learn a bit more about the history of the area, as the oldest and most prominent monuments are for the long-time Italian-Swiss colony families. I went to preschool or elementary school or ballet class with kids who had some of these same names, and their many-generations-removed ancestors are buried on Olive Hill.

The hill is full of ancient oak trees, and when it rains, the moss and lichen growing all over everything adds to the spooky atmosphere. If I had were filming a low-budget horror movie, I know exactly where I'd choose to set up my camera.

Walking through a cemetery, for me, is mostly a reminder of how nothing ever stays the same. Entropy, if nothing else, breaks everything down into component parts, and even marble and granite can be eaten by lichen and crumbled to dust. The oldest graves we saw dated back to the 1870s, and a few that might have been older were no longer readable, their markers worn by rain and earthquakes and sun and dirt and squirrel poop and time.

It's interesting to walk through a cemetery and see how the fashions and styles of even something like a grave marker can change through the decades. I saw monuments made of stone, flat markers made of metal, family tombs and individualized sites, with benches, wind chimes, and other personal elements. Also, different cultural symbols. And a kitty.

Finally, there's nothing like finding the headstone of someone one's own age to make one feel mortal. This was the saddest marker in the whole graveyard. "Beloved grandson" was 5 weeks old. "Beloved son" was younger than me, and died only a few months after his newborn son.

A one sentence review, after viewing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2010-11-02T23:54:00.000-06:00

Why did we need another Forrest Gump in which Brad Pitt reprised his character from Meet Joe Black?

Should I take this job or not?

2010-11-01T23:57:00.000-06:00

I'm thinking of doing this again, but I'm not sure of a theme or anything. Right now I'm pretty focused on trying to find a job, so maybe my dilemma du jour will entertain.

Here's the thing.

A friend has offered me a short-term, part-time job at his company doing stuff I'm about 10 years and a degree overqualified to do, for $15/hour. He thinks it will be about 20 hours a week but could be more hours. The company is located in Berkeley, which is about 90 miles and at least a 2 hour morning/evening commute each way. They are also expanding, though honestly they don't really do anything I'm interested in professionally.

Here is my pros/cons list. Please read and tell me what you think I should do in this situation.

Pros:
* It's a job. It's money coming in, though granted, not a whole lot of money
* I've been told that I can consolidate it into two weekdays and so I can just stay at a friend's house or my sister's house for the in-between night, saving myself 2 commutes. Or I could drive down on a Monday evening, work Tues/Wed, and drive back up Wed evening.
* There's a possibility of somehow finagling it into a full-time job for the company
* My friend is going out of his way to help me find work

Cons
* It's 90 miles and 2 hours each way. Even with an overnight stay or two during the week, that's still 180 miles or nearly half a tank of gas plus bridge toll and wear/tear on the car a week.
* An overnight stay or two means I'm away from home, Dan, and kitties for one or two nights a week for a job that's probably a dead end
* That's two fewer days a week I can spend looking for a full-time job that I want to be doing
* If I do get offered a full-time job, especially if soon, that means I'd be kind of screwing my friend over

Our ultimate plan is to move down to the Bay Area as soon as one of us gets a full-time job, but there's no way we could swing a move, let alone rent and everything else on $300/week, so the option of us moving for this job is not on the table.

Bread basket

2010-10-28T10:39:00.006-06:00

When I lived in Colorado, and people asked me what part of California I was from, the easiest thing to tell them was "Bay Area" or "San Francisco." If they pushed further, I said I was from "wine country in Northern California" or "Sonoma County." Occasionally, I'd someone who would say, "Oh, Sonoma! It's like Napa!" and I would grit my teeth, nod, and smile. And secretly, I'd seethe.

Wine grapes, just before harvest. These ones were on really old vines next to the Catholic Church in Asti.

Sure, Sonoma County is known as "wine country." It's an area that grows a lot of grapes, has a lot of wineries, produces internationally award-winning wines. But it's SO MUCH MORE than just wine and grapes, and I wish there was a way to get that across in an easy shorthand.

For example, olive trees grow everywhere.

So many years of describing my home turf as "wine country" had me sort of forgetting what all else Sonoma County grows. Wine is such a convenient description, when the reality is far more complex. My years of coming all the way up here only for holiday visits didn't help matters, as I'd not had occasion to be in the area during the fall months in many years. It wasn't until I moved back here and started looking at the northern end of the county with fresh eyes that I remembered the cornucopia available just in my mom's yard.

Innards of ripe green fig, not saarlac pit.

We've had crisp and juicy yellow delicious apples, raked up tiny wrinkled past-their-prime jam plums, and I gave Dan his first-ever fresh-off-the-tree fig. There's also a peach tree, several citrus trees, and a black walnut tree next door, although those walnuts aren't really edible for anyone but the giant teasing gray squirrels that live in the yard. Walking through Healdsburg a few weeks ago while waiting for our alternator to be replaced AGAIN, we saw more apple trees, fig trees, and ancient English walnut trees, which are the kind of walnuts you buy in the baking aisle or the bulk section at the grocery store. The neighbors down the street have a pomegranate tree, as do some friends of mine with whom we visited last week, and, along with a bunch of tomatoes, they gave us one to savor. It was the best pomegranate I'd had in at least a decade.

Pom!

Working on a photo project recently, Dan and I have come across quite a few typical examples of Sonoma County's bounty. Just one winery had pomegranate, persimmon, walnut, and, below, artichokes.

Persimmon, not quite ripe.

An artichoke...

is really just

a great big

THISTLE

I suppose it's a combination of the mild climate, with warm summers and cool, wet winters that don't really get snow, that makes this area ideal for growing food crops. When I was little, much of the land that is now given to grape vines was fruit trees or nut trees, but I guess grapes are more lucrative and so that's what everyone plants instead. I'm just glad that there are still yards and small farms and pockets of non-grape things here and there.

I made this

2010-10-18T18:44:00.003-06:00

A reconnection with an old friend.

A move to a different state.

A bucket of flowers delivered to our house.

4 bouquets, 3 boutonnieres, 3 arrangements.

One happy bride. One happy me.

Memory Lane

2010-10-13T14:26:00.004-06:00

One of the things that we discovered when we arrived here in the 'dale is that my mom left a bunch of my stuff in the house, things she'd been keeping for me since I moved out to go to college. I spent a few hours looking through old yearbooks and old schoolwork and old literary magazines (complete with poem by Sara entitled My Hands!), through the basket of letters I received during the summer after my freshman year in college, and reading through all of the old school newspapers I'd saved for some bizarre reason. I found a VHS tape of my High School Video Yearbook that may be some time before I get to watch, since I don't know if I know anyone with a functional VHS player. And I found this stuff.

"Carlitos" was an exercise I had to do in one of my Spanish classes, though why it has someone else's name on it (on the top of the page, above the photo), I have no idea. In case you can't see what I wrote in each of the bubbles, I'll provide both the Spanish and the English translation.

Panel 2: "¿Por favor, tengo quiero usar el baño?" (Please, I have to want to use the bathroom?) (It should have been, "Por favor, ¿puedo usar el baño?", or Please, can I use the bathroom?)
Panel 3: "¡Pero es muy importante! ¡Necesito ir al baño AHORA!" (But it's very important! I have to go to the bathroom NOW!)
Panel 4: "¡Ay Caramba! Es demasiado tarde." (Oh noes! It's too late.)

Me at a dance with High School Boyfriend at his school. Perhaps Valentine's Day? I'm wearing a dress of my mom's circa 1970, a silver peace sign necklace I got at the Renaissance Faire, and awesome white low-heeled pumps! It's a photo of a photo, so not exactly the most accurate representation, but you get the idea.

From top left: Handmade doll with embroidered face, yarn hair, etc. I named Rose; Snoopy doll I got for having my birthday party at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, the ice rink owned/operated by Charles Schultz and family; stuffed lamb sans one eye; small stuffed raccoon; baby doll that used to have a matching bonnet. I forget her name.

I could write an entire blog post on this alone, but I'll try to make a long story short. When I was first babysitting, I pretty much saved all of the money I made and used it to pay for camp in the summer. Eventually, I had made enough that I had a bit left over, and I decided to buy my very first pair of shoes myself. I was probably 13 or 14 years old, and up until that point, my parents had bought all of my clothes/shoes for me. I'd wanted a pair of Birkenstocks for a long time, and I finally had enough money to buy them for myself. So I did.

As you can see, I wore these shoes all the time. I wore them with socks when it was cold and without when it was warm, and I love love loved them, as they were the most comfortable shoes ever (and to me, paying $80 for a pair of shoes felt totally obscene, so I was determined to get my money's worth out of them). When I bought them, they were a pretty slate blue, but as the years went by they faded to a dull grayish color. I didn't care, though; I still wore them all the time. I wore down the soles and wore out the toe and the heel, and eventually they started looking pretty ratty, but I couldn't imagine giving them up.

The summer after high school graduation, my family went on our very first ever (and, it would turn out, only) family camping vacation. Our first stop was a campground someplace in the Western Sierras, and when we had the tent set up my sisters and I went for a walk down to the river, a tributary that would feed the American. Wearing my Birks, I climbed out onto a big rock to sit only to catch my right shoe on something. It fell off my foot and into the fast-moving snow melt runoff river.

I was so sad. I felt like I'd lost my best friend, something that had been with me for so much of my teenage years, something that had cost me EIGHTY DOLLARS and I just couldn't bring myself to through the unlost shoe away.

Something tells me that it has been long enough now. This is not moving with us to our next domicile.

I DID write an entire blog post about this one. Here's the sole Piers Anthony newsletter I ever received, where I responded to the pen pal request for a certain Kent B Golden of Hamden, CT. Who knew that 16 years later I'd be attending his wedding?

Justifiable Homicide

2010-10-06T18:02:00.006-06:00

*

One of the stipulations for getting to live in this big (mostly) empty house is that Dan and I agreed to help my mom out with some of the major projects that need to be accomplished to make the house sale- or rentable. Since we had no furniture, internet, or television for the first week+ we were here, we spent most of our time working on the first big project, which was to paint my sister's old bedroom. Somehow, back in the early '00s, my mom took leave of her senses and let my sister paint her bedroom red with black trim. The worst part is that the large built-in book case/desk units in the room were also black, which meant a lot of small fiddly painting, and because the room was mostly red and black, we knew that it wasn't a matter of just a simple coat of paint.

Before...

We knew it was a big job, so we decided to consult an expert. A friend of mine worked for an independent paint store for many years, and knows more about paint and the paint business than anyone else I've ever met. I sent her an email describing the situation and asking for recommendations and advice, and she wrote me a novel in response that outlined all of our options and choices, with helpful commentary. The first thing we had to do when we got here was to check how many layers of paint were on the walls, since I knew there were at least three and maybe as many as 7 or 8, depending on how many times it had been painted since the last time it was stripped. (The house is pretty old, with at least 3 owners prior to my mom, so it was possible that we'd have lots and lots of old paint to deal with.) My friend had given me a plethora of options for paint stripping, so we were prepared to have the room closed off for many days while waiting for a stripper to do its job. When we did a bit of chipping away, however, we discovered some faux wood paneling on some of the walls covered with three layers of paint, so we knew stripping wouldn't be necessary.

Giant ball of used tape!

The second thing we did was to go to the Ace Hardware in town, where my mom said was a list of all of the various paint colors she'd used in the house in the past 20-odd years she's been here. We decided to use the same color on the walls in the bedroom as in the hallway and living room ("Powdery mist", aka a light tan color) and all the trim in the same color ("linen") as the trim in the whole rest of the house. My friend had told me that if we didn't need to strip the paint, we would for sure need stain-blocking primer to help cover the black and red, and Ace was kind enough to tint it for us to match the color we'd eventually paint.

So once we'd bought the tape our friend recommended ("The green stuff is cheaper and if your project is going to last a week or less, don't bother buying the blue stuff") and taped everything off and put down plastic, we began by priming all the red walls and all the black trim. And then we started on the first black built-in. Only a few minutes into our project, it was clear that Laurel was going to have to die for her sins. Painting every surface of every cubbyhole in that built-in was absolute torture - we had to do it all by hand, sharing the same bucket of primer, Dan doing the above bits (and only getting a little bit on my head), me doing the below bits (and cursing at the tedium).

2 coats of primer on walls, one coat of primer on built-in

Trim primer'd, walls/built-ins painted

It was toward the end of the first coat of primer on the first built-in that we began to plot our revenge. And then we started on the second built-in, which has a desk and an underside that I had to lay on my back to reach, while primer dripped on my face, and the murderous fantasies began.

Walls painted, trim primer'd

We ended up doing two coats of primer on everything, to ensure we wouldn't have to use a ton of (more expensive) paint, and then we did two coats of paint. So we painted each and every one of those built-ins over and over and over and by the last time, we had all kinds of elaborate torture situations dreamed up, and decided that my mom and the friend who helped her paint deserved horrible, horrible death as well. Finally, after working on it for several hours a day together, we finished the last touch-ups on the trim five days later.

After!

*Dan wrote the above poem using the fridge poetry. It really says everything that needs to be said about the sucketry of the paint project.

Princess Robin goes here

2010-10-02T13:23:00.003-06:00

It took Robin 8 months to be willing to walk on the floor from one room to another in our apartment in Denver, and that stopped pretty soon after we started tearing up the house packing and organizing and getting rid of furniture and such, especially since Loki was likewise stressed out and (of course) took it out on her by chasing her and generally being a butthole. I had some hope that when we moved to a new place, one that didn't already smell strongly of Loki (and Petra) everywhere, they'd each have a chance to carve out some territory and perhaps, if not become friends, they might at least get to the point of ignoring one another.

The house we're in has a little bit of furniture (a bed and a dresser in one bedroom, a table in the kitchen) but it's mostly devoid of such and so Robin has decided that she's again not capable of walking from one room to another. Loki has already chased her a couple of times (and been admonished for it, of course) but it's understandable that he be stressed out in a strange house that probably still smells a little like my mom's cats, and there's no familiar furniture or belongings, so I can't blame him too much. Robin has taken to living on the refrigerator and has figured out how to open some of the empty kitchen cabinets and climb inside to hide from Loki/watch him from her high vantage point. We've been using the cat relax pheromone spray which I think helps some, but it's pretty funny that we essentially have to take Robin to the bathroom several times a day and close the door to allow her to use the cat box, and when she's in the bedroom with us and isn't sleeping on the bed with us, she's on the top of the dresser or exploring in the drawers.

But mostly, Princess Robin (as we call her) lives here.

Runaround

2010-09-30T17:58:00.002-06:00

Two things:

Thing the first: I have discovered one of the drawbacks of not yet legally changing my last name. I put in a change-of-address form for me and for Dan when we left Denver late on Wednesday night, and got an email confirmation for both. Dan got his on Monday and, using that, was able to get a library card here in the 'dale for using internet on library computers, checking out books/movies, etc. But mine never came. And then my mom told me that when she moved out of the house, nearly 2 months ago, she'd put in a change of address for everyone with that last name at her Cloverdale address. So it's not only possible, but likely, that all of my mail is coming to Cloverdale and then getting forwarded to her new house. I've been to the post office here, and they couldn't really tell me anything. So in the meantime, I can't even get a library card because I have no proof of address. Harrumph.

Thing the second: The moving company we used, ABS, promised me that a) it would take our stuff 5 business days to arrive at the terminal in Santa Rosa, and b) someone would call me during the time it was in transit to let me know what day to expect it, so I could rent a local truck and haul it up to Cloverdale. Today is 6 business days, and since nobody had called I called them this morning, only to learn that our stuff is in Sacramento, may be at the terminal tomorrow but probably not until Monday. Somehow, 5 business days and notice = 8 business days and no notice. I'm not very happy about spending another several days with a too-small, sort of uncomfortable bed, 2 uncomfortable chairs, a table that isn't for eating on so the top slides around and gets all wobbly if touched, no TV/computer/router for internet, not much kitchen stuff or clothing, etc., but we'll have to make do. Thank goodness Dan got a library card so we have books to read and DVDs to watch on the laptop!

Full circle

2010-09-27T13:49:00.004-06:00

I never remember how much work it is to move until I do it. Packing, organizing, getting rid of stuff we don't want, shredding/destroying all that junk mail with personally identifying information (like those awful fake check things that credit cards send), and, of course the cleaning - it's all hours and hours and hours of unfun work. We spent weeks trying to get rid of things for money and then a couple of weeks trying to get rid of things for free, and some stuff still ended up in the alleyway or given to my cousin across the street or our upstairs neighbors.

My last day of work was a Monday, and that evening I packed and organized and cleaned while Dan deposited the cats at his parents' house and retrieved his dad's big truck for hauling things. Tuesday, we loaded up the truck with boxes and assorted things four times, and Dan drove it up to the place where our 9 feet of trailer to be hauled by ABF lived, unloaded it, and played a life-sized game of Tetris to figure out how to fit everything into the allotted space in the best way. While Dan was out doing his bit, I stayed in the house doing more packing, organizing, and cleaning, fielding emails from craigslist from people who for sure wanted the stuff we were selling but never showed up to buy, and feeling totally weird because we were LEAVING the place we lived for over four years, and the state I'd lived for nearly 8 years, and the state Dan had lived in since before the age of two.

We worked late into the evening on Tuesday, and got takeout pizza, and saw Julie and Steve for a few minutes, but were otherwise too tired to do anything. Wednesday we were up early and spent nearly an hour trying to figure out how to get the couch through the front door. After removing the feet, we finally got it, but it took some serious doing and both of our brains and brawn to accomplish. We did two or three more truckloads of furniture and random assorted stuff, and then Dan came back to help me with the remainder of the cleaning. And oh, internet, there was so much cleaning to be done - carpet shampooing and wall scrubbing and all manner of other surfaces that needed to be cleaned. (I was ridiculously glad that we'd already done the heavy kitchen cleaning like the oven and the greasy walls/cabinets and the fridge and all the blinds in the house the weekend before.) I scrubbed and wiped and washed and generally kept my hands in graspy claw position or squirt bottle trigger pose all day long, with the exception of when I helped load the truck. We were due for our walk-through with the landlords at 5 PM, and of course it rained that day (OF COURSE) and then the mop broke and we were just terribly behind and so we had to call them and tell them to push it back until 6. (I cleaned the laundry room floor, the kitchen floor, and the hallway floor ON MY HANDS AND KNEES WITH A RAG AND SIMPLE GREEN due to the mop incident.)

They showed up sometime after 6:30. We still had to drive up to the truck center and finish playing life-sized Tetris with our stuff and tie it all down with rope but of course we had to wait for them, and then they wanted to chat about something or other, but finally Jenny wrote me a check for our pro-rated rent, we shoved all the stuff that would be going in the car with us into the truck (much of it going into a pillowcase that seemed to triple in size; the more we put in the more it held) and got goodbye monkey hugs from the 9-year-old next door and got in the truck and drove north.

It took us until after 9:30 to finish loading the truck. I stood on things and lifted things and shoved things and finagled things and silently thanked myself for all the times I'd gone to the gym to lift weights in the last several years, because if I wasn't regularly lifting 40K pounds in a variety of ways using a variety of muscles, I don't think I would have been able to do everything I had to do in that dark truck in the rain late at night after days of lifting and twisting and bending and cleaning all the things. Finally, we managed to get everything into our allotted space, and tied down with rope so as not to have it move around too much, and finished the drive up to Dan's parents house. When we got there, I'd stiffened up and felt 120 years old, but we had one more job to finish - we'd traded beds with one of their guest beds, and so we brought our old mattress and box spring out of the truck and into the guest bedroom. The kitties were noticeably wigged out, and we each took some painkillers, ate some dinner that Dan's mom had kept warm for us, and fell into bed, completely exhausted.

We got up before 7 the next morning in order to get all of our stuff out of the truck so Dan's dad could go to work, and it took us about 2 hours to figure out what all we'd be able to fit in the car, what would need to be mailed to us, and what could wait until spring when Dan's newly-retired parents come to visit us in California in their 5th wheel. After several calls to our vet, we'd finally gotten our hands on some kitty valium and hoped our car ride wouldn't be too miserable (if Loki can emit 3 fluids in a one-hour car ride, what can he do in 10 hours?) So we dosed the cats and shoved 'em in their carriers, made one last stop to Target and Petsmart for some road supplies, and officially began our trip to California around 10 AM.

Somehow, the kitty drugs and the kitty calming spray we'd picked up seemed to do the trick, and Wyoming and Utah passed with only one poop incident, no pee, and no barf. There wasn't even much yowling after the first hour or so, just two really high kitties. I didn't take any photos, since we've done the drive several times, and mostly we just listened to music, checked on the cats, and only had to stop a couple of times for gas/pee/$5 footlong. I'd planned to do some knitting on a baby blanket for an October baby, but my hands and forearms hurt so much from the overuse of the previous days that I couldn't even grasp the needles without yelping in pain, so I did nothing but do my best to entertain Dan, who did all the driving. I tried to get the cats to drink some water and use the box during one of our stops, but neither of them were interested in either option, so we just let them be until we pulled into the Motel 6 in Wendover, UT, checked in, sprayed some kitty spray in the room, and let 'em out. Luckily, the drugs were wearing off right around that time and so they both spent time exploring, eating, drinking, and using the box we set up in the bathroom.

We set out early on Friday for the remainder of our drive, only to realize that the car was making a funny noise and the lights were sort of flickering, which scared us. Serendipitously, Wendover has a plethora of places to get your car looked at, since it's right next to the Bonneville Salt Flats (where people come to drive cars really really really fast). We had to wait until 8 AM for one of them to open, and when it finally did, the guy poked around under the hood and declared us OK to drive. "One of the police cars in town was doing that for years," he told us, and surmised that our alternator (the one we just had replaced), while functional, was responsible for the noise and the flickering. I figure that once one of us is employed that we'll have it swapped out again for a different one.

Friday's drive was quite a bit hotter than Thursday's, and because we didn't get an early a start for the actual drive, the cats were drugged for a good chunk of the morning that wasn't drive time. They protested quite a bit more toward the end of the drive, when our only accessible atlas steered us in a weird direction when we were trying to avoid rush hour traffic on highway 101. We ended up coming up the back way, through Napa Valley, and across to Geyserville on 128, where construction stopped us for 10 minutes at one point (after we'd been in the car for over 10 hours, and the kitty valium had worn off, and the sun was in our eyes and it was still really hot). Finally, just as the sun went down, we made it to Cloverdale.

So here I am again, sitting in the Cloverdale Public Library using the free wireless. It's hot; yesterday it was in the mid-90s here, and I am more than ready for summer to be OVER. I haven't lived here since 1996, and I'm kind of having a difficult time not feeling like a failure. We tried to make this move for over a year but had no luck finding jobs, so we hope that being here will make that part easier, even if we are currently 90 minutes away from where we'd like to be living. We're doing some things to help my mom fix up her house and yard in order to get it in saleable or rentable condition, and the cats seem to be enjoying exploring the new space. My mom left some of my things from high school and earlier times (dolls, stuffed toys, my baby book) in the house, which I guess I'll have to decide what to do with when we leave. We're both going to be job hunting like mad after we finish the painting portion of our time in the house, and our stuff will arrive sometime this week, after which we'll have to rent a truck for a day to clear it out of the trailer and haul it up here. And in a couple of weeks, I'll be doing flowers for a high school friend's wedding, which I'm really excited about. For now, it's kind of like we're camping in a house - we don't have TV or internet, and we have two chairs which are only sort of comfortable to sit on. The table isn't really an eating table, and we're limited in our cookware, but we'll make do with what we have. And so far, we've been playing a lot of gin in the evenings.

Anybody out there who'd like to put out some good thoughts in the universe for us, that we find jobs in the Bay Area soon and get to move into a place of our own, they'd be much appreciated. In the meantime I'll be exploring the county where I grew up, and trying to find the good in our situation. At least we're in California now, right?

Big Change

2010-09-20T15:44:00.004-06:00

Every couple of years, my work does a partial-day staff retreat during which time people take a personality test and find out their colors. People are categorized into blue, gold, green, and orange based on which "color" shows up most in their test. I'm not entirely sure what sort of system the test is based upon, but I do know that over the 6+ years I've worked here, my results have come up the same: equally blue and green, some orange, almost no gold. Blue = people person, empathy Green = science, data, results Gold = neat, organized Orange = change, excitement

Or some shit like that.

Anyhow, last year I took the test for probably the 4th time and orange had jumped up to be just about equal with blue and green in my results. Which meant that the part of me that craves change and challenges was crying out to be heard.

Or some shit like that.

I sat with the miniscule "orange" group that day though 2 other colors were equally represented in my results (it's apparently rare for orange people to stay long in the type of organization I work for) and thought to myself that it had been far, far too long since there had been any sort of change, positive or negative, in my life. "I need to fix that, some time in the next year," I thought to myself.

* * * * *

Today is my last day at a job at which I have worked for more than six years, at a place of employment at which I have worked for 7 years.

I'm equally gleeful, terrified, sad, and hopeful (about the future). There are some people who work at my job whom I will miss, but I'm really looking forward to doing something else now, thanks. Change is good, and because I've worked here so long my vacation and sick time payout means we'll have some money to live on until we both get fabulous jobs in California. Right?

I haven't done anything this seat-of-the-pants crazy since I up and moved to Colorado back in January of 2003, so it's about damn time.

So, to recap:

Last day of work
We move on Thursday. To California. To the house in which I grew up. We have no jobs lined up, though we do have a couple of good leads (plus I've got a wedding I'm doing mid-October).

The last month has brought enormous change to our lives. We went basically a whole year in which nothing of note happened (other than Petra dying and acquiring Robin). Then, we made the decision to move and after that things started happening. Dan's grandma died. I heard from several people from whom I've not heard in years. Plus some other stuff that I'm not ready just yet to write about.

Dear orange part of me, it's your time to shine. Make it count.

The last dance

2010-09-10T14:06:00.004-06:00

I've been going to this class at my gym for the last few months. It's a Zumba class, and a friend who used to take the weights class with Deb recommended it. I took my first class back in May and I was hooked, and this whole summer, on Thursday evening and Friday at 11:30 AM, I've been shimmying and bopping and otherwise moving my body to Latin and Bollywood and African and Egyptian music with a group of other people who like to dance. Zumba has been a great workout, and I really like the instructor.

Today I took my last Zumba class at my gym. And next week, I'll go in for the last time, say hi to Kenny and Sam at the desk, grab my towel, log in to the FitLinxx kiosk, perform some sort of cardiovascular activity while listening to music, go back downstairs to shower and change, and say goodbye to everyone there. Because on September 22, Dan and I are moving to California.

I joined the YMCA in August of 2004. It was right after I'd started at my current job, and I realized that I was just not happy with the amount of regular exercise I was getting. I'd been in the habit of walking stairs with some of my coworkers, but when I took the new job I moved to a different building, in the basement with only a few other people around, and walking the stairs there just wasn't as interesting. My clothes were tight and I was feeling all-around bleah, so I decided to check out the Y which at the time was across the street and half a block down from where I worked.

Over the course of the last several years, the Y has become my third place, the place at which I feel most comfortable and spend the most time other than at home or at work. I've seen trainers come and go; I've seen other gym patrons get pregnant and have babies and get pregnant again and have second babies. I've taken a plethora of classes: yoga, mat pilates, cardio salsa, qi gong, step, cardio/weights, weights, and Zumba. I've made friends and knitted blankets for babies and gotten injured. I've gone there nearly every work day for an hour or more a pop and sometimes twice for over six years. That's a lot of time by anyone's standards. So what have I gained?

Peace of mind. Stress relief. A reason to get up out of my chair at work. Something I do for myself, on nearly a daily basis. Physical and mental health. A place where I could keep track of some sort of life progress, even if it was only a machine telling me how many hours of cardiovascular activity and how much weight I'd lifted in the past day, week, month, year, lifetime. The gym membership has been worth every penny I've paid for it, every month of the last 73. I've lost weight and gained weight and gotten way, way stronger and it's all been such a big part of my everyday existence that I know I'm not even going to know how much I will miss it until we are gone and I'm not in there every day, getting high fives and smiling at Cate's baby bump and sweating while I move my body around.

Charming Billy

2010-09-07T09:45:00.006-06:00

The last couple of weeks of June, I watched as the sour pie cherries on the tree outside a business on my route to/from work went from zero to bright red. I waited and waited and watched and sampled and then, the first week of July, just before we went on our trip, I sprang into action.

It was after work one day, hot and dusty, and I asked Dan to accompany me to the tree. I brought a reusable plastic container and hoped I'd be able to fill it with only the gleanings from the branches that stuck over the fence. (Most of the tree, and therefore most of the cherries, were out of reach of passers-by.) First I picked, and then Dan picked what I couldn't reach, and each cherry plopped a satisfying plop into the container. I nabbed every cherry that seemed ripe, and Dan grabbed every cherry he could reach, and we ended up with several cups of cherries.

We walked home, stolen fruit in hand, and I washed, pitted, and stemmed the cherries, then set them out individually on trays to freeze. My original intention had been to use them right away, but this summer was hot, hot, hot. I think we maybe only turned on the oven two or three times in three months.

Once the cherries were frozen, I dumped 'em into a ziplock and there they sat, mocking me each time I pulled out a handful of walnuts or got ice for my drink. "Use us," they purred. "You know you want us. It is our destiny!" "Quiet, you," I told them. "It's still too hot for the oven."

It was too hot all through the parts of July that we were home, and it was too hot all through August. On September 1 I awoke to what felt a bit like a change in season, a crispness to the air, and decided I'd make a cherry pie on Friday. Except Friday, and then Saturday, and then Sunday, were all far too hot to consider the prospect of the oven. Colorado weather teased me, keeping that sour cherry pie just out of reach, each red beauty icy and tantalizing when I'd open the freezer door.

I decided enough was enough, and yesterday afternoon it wasn't miserably hot, so I pulled the cherries out of the freezer, tossed 'em with some sugar, some corn starch, and a wee bit of salt, and let them sit and defrost for over an hour.

Meanwhile, I made a pie crust and stuck it in the fridge. I decided on this recipe, though I did tweak it a bit. Once the filling was pink and squishy, I squelched it into the crust and used the oat/almond topping from the recipe, and then I shoved it in the oven for about an hour.

Except about 50 minutes in, I started smelling something...burnt-ish. And then I cursed myself for forgetting to stick a cookie sheet under the pie. I hastily shoved one onto the bottom rack, but it was too late for the hapless goo left to burn on the bottom of the oven. Yum.

After dinner, Dan and I each had a piece of purloined cherry pie. It was one of the best pies I'd ever made.

A Burg, A Boone, 2 villes, and Team Chaos

2010-08-17T15:40:00.006-06:00

OK, so it's been a while. I had three crazy weeks (work-related) and then I took Friday off as a mental health day and it's been hard for me to get back in the swing of blogging. It's been nearly a month since we got home from our trip, but I promised I'd finish the recaps, so I will.

We left Philadelphia on a Monday afternoon and drove for several hours until we reached western Virginia, going through Delaware and Maryland without getting out of the car, sitting in rush hour DC traffic, and finally making it to Harrisonburg, VA, where there is noplace easy to camp (we found out the hard way after many false starts). We ended up having to backtrack 10 miles north to camp at an out-of-the-way KOA, with great facilities and (sadly) prices to match. It was rechristened "Suckburg, vol. 2" (a long story) and then I realized that I would have almost no juice in my phone so I called our friend in Boone to give hir a heads up regarding approximately when we might end up on hir doorstep. Thanks to our interest in adding just one more state (West Virginia) under our belts, what should have been 5-6 hours took more like 8 and we barely made it to Boone before B/T had to go to class.

Old fashioned gas pump at a gas station in White Sulpher Springs, WV

It was hot, and we were totally sweaty and disgusting and the hummus went rancid and leaked all over everything in the back seat (including my shorts) so I rinsed 'em in the sink and we hustled downtown and found the Appalachian State campus, then parked our butts in the library for 3 hours and soaked up the air conditioning, comfortable seating, and reading material. Ahhhhh.

I really enjoyed our visit with B/T, and Boone is beautiful, but damn it takes a long time to get there from anywhere. We were up and out relatively early in the morning after a home-cooked breakfast, and on our way to Asheville. After an hour's stop (during which time we bought cold iced caffeinated beverages from a bus/cafe and mostly wandered around), we headed to Nashville. We had a downtown wander there as well, poking around in some of the music stores and watching some people play instruments on the street, and then we drove through the rain to eat barbecue at a pretty swell place.

Coffee bus!

Like the Vegas strip, only with more country music and fewer people with gambling problems.

All this for less than 20 bucks.

We had some additional camping snafus after sitting in some bizarre traffic in the middle of nowhere, but eventually (like, way way past dark) made it to a campground in that tiny piece of western Kentucky near Paducah that's also right next to Illinois and Tennessee, near Land Between the Lakes. It was hot and gross and we were hot and tired and miserable, but the campsite was free and nowhere near any noise other than insects and frogs, so that was something at least.

In the morning, we ate at some low-rent Denny's style chain called Huddle House in Metropolis, IL which is of course where there's a giant Superman statue. So we had to stop there.

Superman is pretty big.

Sadly, his junk leaves something to be desired.

We took a long, hot detour through southcentral Illinois and had some more bad luck with food stuff in St. Louis and then came the long, long, long hot slog across Missouri. We stopped twice along the way to steal internet from Days Inns along the side of the road (B/T had a laptop cord we were able to use to power up the laptop) and try to figure out where we were going to stay. A $40 La Quinta room (yes, next to Denny's) with A/C and a bed and a shower sounded like heaven, so we booked it and drove there, cleaned up, and went to dinner in a different part of Kansas City at a great restaurant recommended by Average Jane. We enjoyed our dinner with AJ and her husband and went back to our hotel room to vegetate.

In the morning, we met up with Cagey and Team Chaos at a Denny's that was (again) next to a (different) La Quinta and had a great breakfast. Team Chaos were fun and funny and Cagey was delightful and it was just what we needed to start our last travel day. Which was long and hot and gross once again, driving all the way across Kansas and through Colorado back home.

Arun Macaroon and Peanut Butter Anjali!

So here's the rundown of the trip, in numbers:
States visited (driven through or stopped in): 20
States set foot, ate, slept, or peed in: 17
Miles: ~5,000
Awesome last-minute Travelocity hotel deals located: 3
License plates seen: 46 states, plus 5 Canadian provinces (only missing North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont, Montana) (yes, we got Alaska and Hawaii!)
Friends visited with: 16 plus 3 kiddos
Friends we missed: Abby, EEK
Animals killed: One that we know of. We think it was a muskelid of some sort that ran right in front of the car, no way to swerve. :(

Trip: awesome.

Love, love, love

2010-07-27T14:19:00.008-06:00

aka Road trip, part IV

Pennsylvania is big, you guys. Big, big, big. New Jersey isn't nearly so big, but in a hot, humid car with no A/C it still felt long. It took us about five hours to get across Pennsylvania and 45 minutes or so to get across New Jersey, and then it took us an hour to go the last mile up to the toll plaza on the George Washington bridge. In 100 degrees and high humidity, and no A/C. It was pretty brutal.

We finally made it across and into Manhattan, but despite our parking fears we managed to find a spot on the street in the West Village that cost $2.50 an hour until 7 PM. Not at all bad. We collapsed in limp puddles in Washington Square Park for a little while, piggybacking on someone's unsecured wireless connection, and tried to do some sightseeing but were stymied by the oppressive heat and humidity. Eventually we escaped into a $tarbuck$ (I KNOW. NYC, and we went to STARBUCKS) to get some air conditioning and some cold drinks. My unsweetened passionfruit tea was delicious, and I only had to wait for 20 minutes in line to use the bathroom.

We fed the meter one last time and hightailed it across the Village over to the East side, where we met a high school friend of Dan's for drinks with her boyfriend. A good time was had by all, up until someone at the next booth over spilled an entire beer down Dan's back. I only had two hard ciders but I was ridiculously tipsy (I guess maybe because of the day of heat/humidity in the car and out in Manhattan?) and we traipsed down to the southern part of the village, or maybe it was far northern Lower East Side, where we met my friend Purple Laura for dinner. I had a dish of cold noodles, salmon, and veggies because I couldn't stand the idea of eating anything hot. We spent the after-dinner portion of the evening in the bar next door, where Laura knew the bartender so our drinks were free. Woohoo!

It took us quite a while to walk back to the car, and it was still probably in the 90s with super high humidity, and then we had to navigate back over to 9A and north to get ourselves to New Haven, but it was a Friday night in the summer and everybody was still trying to get the heck out of dodge so the drive took a really, really long time. I think it was after 1 AM when we finally got to our hotel in New Haven (which was, incidentally, a La Quinta, but next to IKEA not Denny's) and I had to shower in cold water before I could cool down enough to fall asleep, even with the air conditioning on full blast.

The next day, Kent and Christine got married.

We were up early because I'd volunteered to help with some reception set-up, so I had to meet Kent at the church and then we hauled stuff over to the park and Dan and I spent the morning putting out luminarias with LED candles to line the pathways in the park, and setting up the bug lanterns, and other assorted chores. Once we'd finished, we got mashed potato pizza at Bar and headed back to the hotel to shower and get ready for the wedding.

The park had these gorgeous bright blue hydrangeas right by the tent

I learned merely days beforehand that I was also going to be an usher for the wedding, which was perfectly fine but somewhat unexpected. After Dan dropped me off, I set up the ice and the water bottles, and met my co-usher, and watched everyone run around the old church getting ready. I made sure the groom was elsewhere while the bride and her entourage scurried into the lounge and shut the door. I stood in front of one of the few fans that were going, as, you guessed it, the church didn't have air conditioning, either. And I handed out programs and showed people the guestbook and did the general sorts of things that ushers do at a church wedding.

Finally, everyone had arrived and it was time to begin. I closed the doors, and then opened them for the bridesmaids, and then closed them again. I gave the bride a big grin and arranged her train and opened the doors again for her to walk down the aisle with her mom. It was all quite lovely, and I realized that I haven't been to a wedding in a church since 1997. Even that wasn't a church so much as a giant open conference-type room that had the word JESUS in huge script gold letters above the front bit. But this church, oh, this was the lovely New England church you think of when you think of New England churches. At least, it was for me. Kent's family's been getting married in this particular church for multiple generations, so that added something to the whole experience as well.

Pen pals since 1994

After the ceremony, I ran back to open the door and I was the first person (after the groom) to kiss the bride, so that was pretty good. Dan and I waited a while and then went through the receiving line, and Kent's parents nodded and smiled until they realized I was *that* Emily, the one who exchanged letters with their son for years. Then I got much bigger smiles and big hugs. We got in the car and drove to the reception area, and I bustled around making sure that all my last minute set-up duties were attended to. We met some of K&C's friends and attempted to keep cool by drinking large quantities of ice water, beer (in Dan's case) and white wine (mine), and we munched on cheese and crackers and fruit. Eventually the wedding party, including the bride and groom, showed up and they did everything in a completely different order than I was used to (first dance before anything else?). Additional differences noticed in My First East Coast Wedding: Everyone (including the bride and groom) changes into shorts and tank tops or t-shirts or otherwise casual clothing about an hour into the reception. I wish we'd known. Because that was the one true drawback of Kent and Christine's wedding: it was hot, it was humid, and I'd chosen a dress without really considering the consequences. It was a cute dress, but polyester is not a fabric you want to wear when you are sitting in 90+F heat and high humidity. Sweat dripped down my front and my back all afternoon and all evening. It was pretty gross.

Mister and Mrs!

But there was food, and there was drink, and there was dancing and karaoke and a DJ that embodied every stereotype you can possibly imagine a wedding DJ to have. Dan and I both sang karaoke, if you can believe it. Here's a photo of him to prove it.

When the evening wound down, we went out to clean up all the paper bags and sand and LED candles, and help break everything down. It had been a great wedding, and a long day, and I was woe out.

Longarm of me and the bride, snagged right before she changed.

We had talked about what to do on Sunday, and at first we'd planned to head back to Manhattan to spend more time there, but after spending days in the oppressive heat/humidity (I know I keep writing about this bit, but we are just NOT used to humidity AT ALL), but we decided that we'd rather spend time in NYC when we want to actually be outside walking around and not ducking into Starbucks to take advantage of the air conditioning. So instead, on Sunday morning we drove from New Haven to Philadelphia, having booked a hotel room in Philly the night before and having realized Sunday morning that the laptop cord wasn't functioning. I'd recently got back in touch with my friend Sazzy and let her know our estimated timetable for the trip, and when we were in New Jersey at a Dunkin' Donuts we called her to say we were on the way. "Come by the store!" she said, and she gave us directions to the brick-and-mortar version of her amazing store, Sazz Vintage.

Sazzy and I go back to the early days of 2000, when I was first on the message board where I met Dan. At one point, she went to South Africa and when she got back, she mailed me several beaded bracelets from a place called Ndebele. She was unable to attend the Chicago get-together that fall, so I was entrusted with the task of distributing the bracelets to female attendees who were interested in them. I still wear my Sazzy bracelet, all these years later, and I never thought I'd get a chance to actually meet her in person. But thanks to The Wonders Of The Internet, we were back in touch and she's in Philly with her awesome store and we wanted to go there anyhow and now we had someone to visit. Hooray!

So we pulled into Old City and parked, and stopped in at the store first thing. After hugs and some chatting, Dan and I went out to explore Old City and some of Society Hill, and we started our alphabet project for Philadelphia. I managed to find the used bookstore I'd liked when I was in Philly before, but not the bar (sniff), and we decided to head back to Sazzy's store to arrange dinner plans. We drove down to the baseball stadium area, which is where our cheap hotel room was (in a Holiday Inn this time, not a La Quinta), showered, and changed clothes, then headed for the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood to our tasty mediterranean tapas dinner with Sazzy and her husband. Afterward, on their suggestion we had some gelato (that was nearly as good as the place in Berkeley, which is the best gelato I've had outside of Italy) and wandered around a bit, then headed back to the hotel.

Sazz Vintage flag

Monday morning we drove into town, intending to grab timed free tickets to the Independence Hall tour as early as possible. Dan parked while I got the tickets, and we grabbed some food while we waited for our tour to begin. We sat in the park right next to Independence Hall and it began to rain, so we ran under the eaves of the building across the street just in time for a 20 minute torrential downpour. We waited it out, and then went in to get screened and wait in the (slightly less wet) rain for our tour of Independence Hall, something I hadn't done when I was in Philadelphia before. After the tour, we went across the street and saw the Liberty Bell.

We walked through Chinatown and through the Logan Square area and all the way up to the Philadelphia Art Museum because you know we just HAD to run up the steps like Rocky. It was about 95 degrees, and the humidity goes without saying, but we did it in our street clothes, me in sandals, and it was just fine. And Dan got the Rocky statue as the perfect letter Y.

After retrieving the car, we drove to get Dan a gen-yew-ine Philly cheesesteak at the place that doesn't have a racist sign in the window, and then we left Philadelphia. It was a good less-than-24-hour-stop.

The Turkeys (and the 'burgh)

2010-07-26T16:15:00.008-06:00

If I'm gay and Irish in Pittsburgh, I know where to go!

Or, part 3 of our Summer Roadtrip Adventure.

(Sorry for the radio silence - our laptop cord died about halfway into our trip and so I was unable to keep up with blogging. But I will finish all of my recaps, promise!)

So when we started planning the trip, the first thing I thought was that doing a road trip to the east coast would give us a chance to meet up with the Turkey family for the very first time. Jive Turkey has been my internet pal for a while and I made Sadie a blanket and a dragon and I was so, so excited that we would get to meet them. And then they said we could stay with them, which was just ridiculously awesome!

After we left Ann Arbor and had our little misadventure in Youngstown (serious. shithole.), we made it to Pittsburgh mid-afternoon and immediately took advantage of the fantastic email Jive Turkey had sent me full of suggestions of things to see/do in Pittsburgh, complete with links and helpful commentary. We'd already decided what we would do that afternoon, so we drove to the strip district, near the downtown area, and our first stop was at a Primanti Brothers sandwich joint, where every sandwich comes with fries and cole slaw. On the sandwich. Luckily, they had turkey as an option, but it was possibly the most messy sandwich I ever ate. (Equally luckily, it was pretty tasty.)

The lady will have the knockwurst, and I will have the same.

Full of sandwich, we set out to explore the strip district and then walked downtown, across the Fort Pitt bridge, and over to the Duquesne Incline, a cool inclined railcar, which we rode to the top and then took photos of the view. During our time in the downtown area, we began our found alphabet project, the result of which you can see here.

View of the 'burgh

Going up

Fort Pitt bridge detail

By the time we got back to the car, we were both ridiculously thirsty and, between the two of us, downed about three liters of water that we had left in the cooler. We drove through the city, me squealing at the cute neighborhoods, to the Turkey Haus. Which, of course, is totally awesome.

JT had said they probably wouldn't be home until 6 PM, so we sat on the front porch and relaxed for a few minutes until they, who were actually home, realized we were out there. We went inside and we all met and I rinsed the hot car slime off my face and arms, and we had a delicious homemade dinner and some great Sadie time and told them the story of the bourbon. I really enjoyed sitting on the back porch, looking at the stars, shooting the shit, and watching the fireflies do their glowbutt dance. We were treated to a guest room and all the amenities we could ask for and slept in for the first time on the entire trip the next morning.

We planned out our day, deciding to walk to our first stop, walk back to the house, and then drive to the rest of what we had planned for the day. Of the places we went that day, I can say that they were all exceedingly lovely, despite the heat and humidity and my stupidity at wearing a skirt instead of shorts. My favorite place we went was to the Phipps Conservatory, which not only has a phenomenal permanent plant collection, but had a super-cool gargoyle exhibit when we were there, among other art, and we really really enjoyed exploring every bit of it. I have so many good photos from Phipps that it's difficult to choose just a few, so I may put up a set on flickr later. We had tasty pizza in a joint on Squirrel Hill and we went to the zoo and those were pretty good, too.

After a Trader Joe's run (hooray!) we headed back chez Turkey and went out for dinner. Ms. Sadie handled it like a champ, even after she bumped her face on a chair (ow!), and after her bath and other associated bedtime routines, she even gave me a goodnight hug. AWWW.

I love the look on JT's face here.

We got up early to begin our trek across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so we only got to spend a bit of Friday with the Turkeys. I realized that if and when we ever spawn ourselves, I'll have to use the DSLR, because even in the shots where I thought she was still, pretty much every photo I have of Sadie Rose is a blur. Still, I'm so glad we were able to make the stop in Pittsburgh and spend time with the Turkey family, because they totally totally rule. And Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, with so much to see and do and explore. I hope someday we will get to go back.

Blueberries for Sadie

The futile quest for Stranahan's

2010-07-15T06:41:00.005-06:00

Or, Dan and Emily's Excellent Summer Adventure, part the second.

As it turns out, Iowa looks an awful lot like Nebraska: corn, cows, trees. I was still feeling pretty miserable, but decided to try to make the best of it, and the drive across Iowa wasn't too hot because it was overcast for most of the day. We stopped in Iowa City and met up with Cate, who had never met anybody from the internets before (Hope we didn't scare ya too badly!), at a Panera Bread in a mall mid-morning, which was behind this old restored carousel. I kinda wished I'd brought my camera in to snap a photo of it. After she had to return to her evil taskmasters, Dan and I checked on the possibility of some of the museums in Chicago being free, so we could take advantage of that when we arrived there. We finished the journey across Iowa and Illinois and drove all the way into downtown Chicago, where we parked at Soldier Field for $16, even though we knew we'd only be there for approximately 1.5 hours, because we were getting into the museum for free.

And the reason I wanted to see the Field museum?

My name is Sue. How do you do?

When I was in Chicago nearly 10 years ago now, I met up with a large group of people from the message board where I met Dan for a big fest. It was my first time in the Windy City, and I really enjoyed it, but we never got around to seeing the Field Museum, which had just acquired Sue that year. This is the 10-year anniversary of Sue, so I was super excited to see her.

The only real drawback was that the rest of the museum wasn't nearly as interesting or impressive as I wanted it to be, and I was glad that we hadn't paid admission. We did manage to spend the whole hour and a half before closing wandering around the museum, and then we spent over an hour driving out to our $30 hotel in the 'burbs through rush hour traffic, which was LOADS of fun. After we checked into the second room (nonsmoking, didn't smell like smoke like the first one did), we showered and then drove over to a Thai restaurant (also in the 'burbs) to meet up with one of the Chicago residents whom I'd met at that get-together in Chi-town ten years ago. It was great to see him and another friend, and we had tasty food and good conversation. I was hoping the spicy noodles would help to clear my sinuses, but mostly they just got more congested.

Tuesday morning, we followed Steve's advice to wait out the morning traffic and slept in for the first time in several days, which I have to admit felt pretty awesome. Breakfast was Denny's (it was, of course, next to a La Quinta, which is Spanish for "Next to Denny's") and as the first restaurant-consumed breakfast of the trip I was a-OK with it. We'd spent quite some time discussing our options for our remaining hours in Chicago, because we had a 4+-hour drive and a date with friends in Ann Arbor, MI, so we only had a couple of hours with which to play. Our original plan was to go to the Art Institute, which is something I'd like to see again even though I saw it 10 years ago (and Dan saw it 11 years ago when he went through Chicago), but ultimately we decided to save our art museum dollars for the Met in NYC. We drove into the city and found relatively inexpensive street parking near Lincoln Park (I found myself wondering whether Linkin Park ever played there) and strolled, just tolerating the heat and humidity, through the park and back. We saw Baberham Lincoln and Baberham Christian Andersen and Baberham Franklin. It was about all we had time for in the city of big shoulders, and we got back on the road, navigating the morass of highways to get ourselves over to Michigan.

This is a hibiscus in Lincoln Park. It is large.

Even larger than my swollen hand.

The thing that I had neglected to consider in all of this was that when you go from Illinois through Indiana and into Michigan, you change from Central time to Eastern time. We got to Ann Arbor in plenty of time, we thought, only to get a call from my friend asking where we were. "What do you mean? It's 5:30!" I said, only to look at my phone that said 6:30. ARGH.

Luckily, the friends waited for us and we met them in a brewpub in downtown Ann Arbor, Dan dropping me off to look for parking and getting soaked to the skin walking to the restaurant. We had a nice dinner and some beers, and Dan and I exchanged looks about the rain and how much it was going to suck setting up our tent in a downpour at the campground where we planned to stay. After dinner, we meandered a bit in damp Ann Arbor (which is very cute, by the way, and apparently all about Stuff, and Having Stuff, since I saw at least three establishments advertise Stuff. Sadly, I'd left my camera in the car, so I have no proof.), and one of the friends insisted that instead of dealing with the rain and the mud we sleep in her guest room instead. Not ones to turn down such generous offers, we gladly accepted, and we spent the rest of the evening enjoying each others' company.

So why is the title of this post about a futile quest?

We knew that we'd be staying with Jive Turkey, HoST, and Sadie when we got to Pittsburgh, and we wanted to bring them a host gift. Our original plan was to buy some Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey (which is like bourbon, but they can't call it bourbon because it isn't made in Kentucky) before we left and bring it along, but in the hubbub of preparations and both of us being sick, we just completely forgot about it. I didn't even remember until we were nearly to Sterling CO, and it was waaaaay too early in the morning (and a Sunday, to boot) to be able to stop and buy it in a liquor store before we left the state. So we gave it up as a lost cause, me kicking myself.

Then, when we got to Chicago and had wireless internet in our hotel room, we did a search and found that Stranahan's does indeed sell their non-bourbon outside of Colorado, and we got all excited about it. Our plan was to ask Steve for suggestions of a liquor store that sold a lot of stuff, and he suggested a chain place that had a location nearby. Sadly, when we left the restaurant that night, liquor stores were closed because it was the suburbs and a Monday night after 9 PM. Back at the hotel, we searched the chain's site to discover that they did, indeed, carry it, so we resolved to buy some in the morning before leaving Chicago.

At dinner, I was reminded of the exorbitant 12% sales tax!!! in Cook County, and I thought, well, if Illinois has it than maybe Michigan does, too. Dan checked, and the Stranahan's site said they distributed in Michigan, so he googled a bunch of Ann Arbor liquor stores, one of which had a website that said they carried it. So we decided that rather than pay 12% tax we'd wait and pay 6% in Michigan. After our dinner in A2, as the locals call it, they drove us to the part of town that had the aforementioned store. We went inside, and were deeply disappointed to find that they hadn't had any in stock in approximately three months. "Well, we'll just go to one of the good stores near me," said our friend, and drove in front of us to her house.

When we got there, we got on the computer and did some more searching, and got on the phone and called the places nearby, rather than physically going to each store. No dice. At that point, I decided that it just wasn't worth going to any more effort. So the next morning, we just began our drive through Ohio. Stranahan's was just not going to happen, but I had a vague memory about there being weird liquor laws in Pennsylvania, so it seemed like we should stop to get a bottle of SOMETHING before we reached the state line, and so began our misadventure in Youngstown, Ohio. I knew absolutely nothing about it before we pulled off the highway, but somehow we located a public library somewhere in the eerily quiet downtown area near the campus, and stole some free wireless to find a liquor store in order to buy our friends SOMETHING. We ended up with a bottle of Woodford Reserve, which is a perfectly respectable bourbon, and Jive Turkey and HoST even let us have some. But that is another tale for another day.

Fluids

2010-07-12T22:00:00.002-06:00

Or, Dan and Emily's Excellent Adventure, part the first

Last week, Dan got a cold. It was right after we'd done a big hike on Mount Bierstadt and I'd chalked up his difficulty with the altitude to just that, but on Monday he informed me he was getting sick.

"Great," I thought, but luckily it wasn't too bad a cold so we figured he'd feel better by the time we left on our trip. Many times, when Dan gets sick I don't (luck? I've already had it? Who knows?) but unfortunately, this time, I had no such luck. Late on Thursday I started to feel the telltale throat tickle, and I cursed my immune system. Or at the very least, I shook my tiny fist at it in impotent rage.

Friday, it was still mostly just a throat tickle and I felt kind of run down, but had no problems working an entire day or having lunch with my friend and her now 9-month-old (I was careful about breathing on him or swapping secretions). But Saturday morning, the day before we were supposed to leave, I felt like cold fried shit. We spent the day sorting and folding laundry, packing, prepping the house to leave for three weeks, packing the car, and, finally, shoving the kitties in their carriers for a trip up to the Dan'rents abode. Loki's an old hat at this visiting thing, but it was Robin's first trip, and boy did she voice her displeasure.

YOWL YOWL YOWL. YOWL. YOWL YOWL.

We were serenaded for a goodly chunk of the voyage by Robin letting us know in no uncertain terms that she Did Not Approve of riding in a car in a kitty carrier. Loki, on the other hand, made absolutely no noise. I was keeping one eye on him, though, since he has a tendency to be car sick, and he was looking as though he didn't feel well. It was hot, in the high 80s, and our car has no air conditioning, so in between Robins Yowls of Displeasure she panted, so finally I tossed the one thing I had in the main part of the car that could keep the sun off her over her carrier. And then, I smelled it.

"Did you fart?" I asked Dan.

"No..." he responded, with a look of growing horror on his face.

I turned around once more to see Loki moving away from a giant log of poop he'd deposited all over the front part of the carrier. I guess I was somewhat lucky to be congested from the cold, because the smell was not nearly as pungent as it would otherwise have been. Dan rolled down his window and I manipulated things to be open the carrier, shoved Loki out of the way, and used a good supply of car tissues to wrap up and mop up his fecal mess. It was totally disgusting.

Not two minutes later, Loki peeped his "I'm gonna yak" peep and horked up his last meal. The car smelled of cat shit and cat barf, and once again Dan moved his seat forward while I used the towel in the bottom of the carrier and some tissues to clean up the cat barf as best I could while we hurtled up I25 at 75 miles per hour. I'd nearly finished my work when suddenly Loki decided that two emissions weren't enough, and he peed all over the back of the carrier, looking miserable.

That's right. Cat shit, cat puke, and cat piss, all in less than five minutes. And I got to clean it all up, or at least do the best I could, while Robin yowled away in the carrier above Loki's. He's never peed in his carrier before, so I don't know if it was just a coincidence, or if his system decided it needed to purge itself in every possible way.

The pee was really the last straw, as I didn't want to use any more of the tissues and the towel was already covered in poop and puke and I just couldn't get it all, so I asked Dan to pull off the road to a gas station at the next available opportunity. I got out of the car, depositing all of the soiled tissues in a garbage can and going inside to wash my hands while Dan used some of the paper towels they supply for windshield cleaning to finish mopping up the pee out of the back of the carrier. I cleaned as much puke as I could off the towel and wadded it up, soiled bits on the inside. The funny thing was that after we got going again, Robin didn't make a single noise for the entire rest of the trip north. And thankfully, Loki had nothing left in his system after his three-orifice extravaganza, and the rest of the way was peaceful.

* * * * * *

Dan and I left bright and early on Sunday morning, after I'd hardly slept at all Saturday night what with the being sick and the Robin climbing all over me and the anticipation of getting up so much earlier than usual. I felt absolutely miserable for the first several hours of the drive through Colorado and Nebraska. About eight hours into the trip, just inside Iowa, we pulled off into a campground Dan had found online and we staked out a spot for our tent. Tent camping wasn't super-formal, so we paid our fee and set up the tent in a nice area under a tree and near the water. There were fire pits and picnic tables aplenty, plus a volleyball court and a basketball court and a kickass awesome jungle gym/big toy-type thing that got quite a bit of use over the course of the afternoon and evening, but there was absolutely no running water, potable or otherwise, unless one had a hose or some other sort of hookup in the RV area. I'd really hoped to at least rinse off my head after such a long, hot day in the car and all the humidity we'd encountered, but no dice. So I pouted and read a book in the shade and felt like ass, and later Dan and I played on the playground and reminisced about the playgrounds our elementary schools had had (and how much less pinchy swing chains coated in plastic paint are, and how much safer playground equipment is now). Eventually we made some dinner sandwiches, played our customary hands of gin, and watched the fireflies get eaten by bats and evening birds. As we went to bed, grass around us damp, we listened to the horny cows and the bull frogs and the cicadas and all of the other creatures that lived next to the stagnant lake.

I woke up when the sky started dripping on me. We'd opted not to put the rain fly on the tent because of how warm it was, but some time in the middle of the night it started to rain so I threw on the fly in my sleep stupor and hoped it would keep us from getting soaked. The tent was pelted with rain for the rest of the night, and in the morning what had been damp grass was sodden with rain. It was warm and humid, and my feet didn't feel dry for nearly an hour after we got going.

18.6

2010-07-06T22:09:00.000-06:00

While I don't write much about it anymore, my quest for physical fitness, good health, and looking at least OK in my clothes carries on in full force these days. I'm taking Zumba classes at my gym in addition to my weight circuits (40,000+ lbs a pop these days), elliptical hamstering, rowing, recumbent bicycling, and free-weight lifting, and for the last week I've even been swimming (at another gym that we have to drive to, but at least it's a Y and therefore free). I've been eating a salad and vegetables and fruit for lunch every day for several months now, and while my clothes aren't exactly falling off me, I'm feeling more comfortable with the way I look in real life if still not in photographs. (Because I still feel like I look TERRIBLE in photos.)

Last Thursday, I bit the bullet and signed up to have someone pinch my fat in various parts with scientific calipers in order to determine my body fat percentage. It's something I've been curious about for a while, since I haven't had it tested at all in a few years, and haven't had it tested with calipers since I was 22 years old and had just started going to the gym I frequented in San Francisco the year I worked there. The other body fat tests I've had done in the interim were with some sort of hand-held electric gadget that had questionable validity (especially since I always guesstimate my weight, as I don't weigh myself at all ever.) I was really, really not looking forward to the pinching and the judging and the inevitable disappointment at the result that I was sure would happen, but I figured that since it was free and since it had been several years I should probably just get it done. I've got a body that builds muscle like crazy so BMI and weight aren't necessarily good indicators of my health but I knew a body fat test would tell me something that just going by clothing fit wouldn't.

I did my workout and then went into the little room with the scary lady trainer whose classes I will never take because the ropes on her neck freak me out and she pinched me a bunch of times in seven different places - back of my arm, two places on my back, above my knee, next to my belly button, below my ribcage, and someplace else I am forgetting. She had a hard time getting a reading in some of the places, maybe because I had just exercised, I dunno, and it hurt more than I was expecting it to. She plugged each number into a calculator on her computer and then pushed the button.

"18.6", she said.

Internet, that cannot be right. There is no way on this green earth that my body fat is that low. I think that either she didn't measure in the right places, the measurements in those places are not indicative of my overall body fat profile, or the fact that I worked out beforehand skewed the results. There is no way in hell that 9 years and 15ish pounds after my first caliper test that my body fat is the same. While it was a bit thrilling at first, because I was expecting to hear a number in the mid-twenties at the lowest, I've spent the last several days thinking about how there's just no way it can be right. I have come to the conclusion that I just carry my fat in different areas than the 7-point test measures, because the only place she measured where I have obvious chub is next to my belly button. But if she'd done something on my upper thigh, my ass, or my hip/side area, there would have been plenty to pinch.

At this point I'm considering asking someone else to redo the test, or asking if I can be tested with the handheld gadget, to get some additional data. I did the math, and if my body fat really is as low as this test indicates, it means that my overall lean mass (i.e., the part that isn't fat) is more pounds than I weighed for most of college. And if that's the case, I don't think there's anything I'll ever be able to do, short of a wasting disease that makes me lose lean mass, to get any smaller than I am right now.

* * * * * * *

I mentioned the results of my test to a few people over the weekend, with mixed reactions. Most people agreed with me that it's likely the test was inaccurate, but one person suggested that I cut all sugar and carbs for two weeks and I'd be pleased with the results.

You know what?

No.

No, I will not give up an entire food group. I have been reading various bloggers write about their experiences with various eating plans and lifestyle changes and I'm happy that raw food or vegan or raw vegan or gluten-free or casein-free or GFCF or low carb or no carb or sugar free or paleo or caveman or fasting or WHATEVER works for you. But please do not suggest that I partake in it.

It is possible that if I stop eating X thing for Y amount of time that I will lose some weight, or my shape will change, or magical unicorns will fly out of my butt. But it is also possible that it will go from a change in my eating habits to an obsession and spiral into another eating disorder, which is something I'm just not interested in. And you know what? I *like* food. I like to eat. I like vegetables, and fruits, and chocolate, and nuts, and hot food, and cold food, and protein in various forms, and legumes, and grains. I like bread. I like dessert. I like cheese. I like alcohol, including hard cider. I like all sorts of ethnic foods, and I like all-American foods, and I'm not going to spend my life depriving myself of eating things I like in moderation. I've had times when I cut my food intake pretty severely while continuing to exercise excessively and it turned me into a raging harpy. I'd prefer not to be a raging harpy, and it's taken me years to get to the place where I am in regards to food. It's fuel, it's entertainment, it's good. I do restrict things like simple carbs (stuff made with white flour and white sugar) but mostly I do it because I feel the most healthy when I'm not eating that stuff. My heart doesn't race, I don't end up with blood sugar crashes, and I feel healthier. That said, there are times when I do eat junk (though it's rare, and I usually pair it with some sort of protein in order to stave off the blood sugar crash).

So. I may have 18.6% body fat, or I may not. (I'm guessing not.) I may eat junk sometimes. And I refuse to let other people attempt to coerce me into doing something I don't want to do: namely, give up eating things I enjoy for an elusive, likely unattainable, and unrealistic goal of looking like women's magazines say I should. My body is strong and healthy and I can use it to swim or bike or climb a mountain. I've made my peace with it, for the most part, and I don't want to let the experiences of anyone else drag me back toward body dysmorphia.

Conquering my fears

2010-07-01T15:15:00.011-06:00

When I was little, one of my favorite pastimes was to climb the tree in our backyard that grew up through the deck. From there, I could play on the roof or just climb as high as I could in the tree. Being up high felt like freedom; nobody can see you and you can look down on everything. It's definitely a different perspective from where a child typically sees the world on a day-to-day basis.

I continued to scale trees (and houses, and fences, and ladders, and just about anything) throughout my childhood and into my teens. I thought nothing of climbing a ladder to help a friend with his college house painting business, and always enjoyed being up above the world, until one fateful day when I took a road trip with some friends to Yosemite National Park.

Mostly, we went because we thought it would be a fun weekend day excursion. We drove the four or so hours to Yosemite and made our way slowly through the park, stopping every so often to take photos or just play around. At one point, my friends decided that it would be fun to scramble up one of the domes, and I was completely game. Being young, in shape, and relatively stupid, we decided not to use a trail but just to sort of go straight up to the top. I didn't think I would have any sort of a problem with it, as I'd always been fond of both outdoor activities and heights, but as we started to climb the rock I found myself out of breath. At the time, I was running regularly so I knew I was in decent cardiovascular condition, so I chalked it up to being at a higher altitude. Then, my heart started to race. The palms of my hands got sweaty and my breath was more and more shallow, and I started to freak out a little bit because what the hell, man?

I figured if I just kept going, it would all pass, but the more I climbed the worse it got. Tears ran down my face, and my friends (one of whom was my ex boyfriend, and all of whom were male) thought it was hilarious. But it was really, really not funny. In fact, it was pretty damn scary. I was 21 years old, in great shape, and having a panic attack while scrambling up a not-terribly-difficult dome in Yosemite while my friends pointed and laughed.

We made it to the top, and I was so concerned that I might freak out even worse on the descent that I swallowed my pride and asked College Ex to stick by me in case I needed actual physical help. He realized at that point that whatever was going on with me was actually serious and he stopped laughing. Luckily, I made it down far more easily than up had been, though I did kind of ruin the butt of the pants I was wearing. I didn't care; I was down. We continued the drive through the park and end up on the Nevada side at Mono lake, and then drove a different way home. I brushed the entire incident off, thinking it was probably just a freak occurrence.

Me, with college ex, on the way back down the dome

A couple of years later, I happened to be in Santa Cruz with some friends, on the UCSC campus. We were there to celebrate a birthday, and the birthday person proposed that we go climb a redwood tree that had ropes and steps bolted on to simplify the process. (Redwood trees are not made for climbing, especially once they get past a certain height, unless you have spikes on your shoes or someone's kindly provided a ladder for you.) Everybody else merrily made their way up the tree, and I made it about four steps up before I realized that I Just Could Not go any further. Couldn't force myself to do it. I felt like I was going to pass out and throw up at the same time, when my blood pressure spiked and I broke into a cold sweat and I felt like I couldn't breathe. What was wrong with me? I loved climbing trees, had done it since I was little! I was no pansy! I wasn't afraid of heights...right?

It was only after the tree climbing debacle that I wracked my brain to try to figure out why all of a sudden I just couldn't get more than a few feet off the ground without freaking out. And then I remembered that my mom's severe vertigo that has kept her grounded for longer than I've been alive...was adult onset as well. She'd merrily climbed trees in her childhood, she'd told me, but when she grew up she just couldn't do it. I'd spent my whole life thinking she was silly when she wouldn't climb a ladder to go on the roof, or when she got upset driving next to a dropoff...and here I'd gone and inherited the adult-onset vertigo from her. Great.

It's been nearly 10 years since that Lembert Dome scramble, and my first height-induced panic attack. I did manage to climb Half Dome in 2002, though to be fair the only reason I was able to do it was because it was dark so I couldn't see the drop as I climbed the stairs and then the cables. (Yes, it was probably less than legal for us to do the cable climb at night, and it was certainly illegal for us to sleep on the top, but to be fair we only slept until about 4 AM (arrived at the top around 11) when the first of the Half Dome trail runners got there. And we didn't leave any waste.)

At the falls partway up Half Dome trail. Damn, I was skinny.

My friends on top of Half Dome, at sunrise

Since then, I've found myself bothered by sheer drops on one side of the road when we're driving (like the Durango to Silverthorn highway), and I can't seem to get more than four steps up a ladder without starting to panic a little. I even have a hard time watching scenes in movies that show the POV of a steep drop, since that seems to trigger my vertigo more than being next to a drop myself for some reason. It's totally irrational, and totally ridiculous, and totally miserable. I miss being able to climb things.

Living branches on a dead tree - how?

It grew new roots post-chop!

On Sunday of this past weekend, Dan and I went on yet another hike, something we try to do at least once a week. He found one in an area we'd never hiked before, west of Sedalia (which itself is southwest of Denver). The point of the hike is to make it to the fire tower, from which one can see nearly 100 miles in any given direction on a clear day. It took us longer to get to the trailhead than we expected, and we had one false start, but once we got going it was a lovely trail, ascending about 1000 feet over 1.7 miles. The weather looked like it was perhaps not going to cooperate, but by the time we got to the tower it was a little bit overcast, and we heard some thunder, but it didn't seem too bad.

The part that seemed bad to me was the 143 steps on the side of the rock face I was going to have to climb in order to get to the tower.

I looked at the steps, and I looked at the tower, and I looked at the sky, and I said to myself, Self, you can do this. Just go fast. Fast fast fast. I climbed all 143 steps repeating "Look at the steps. Look at the steps. Don't look up, don't look down, just look at the steps" and was at the top and climbing across the rock to the tower before Dan even made it halfway up. I didn't quite run them, but I went superfast, took deep breaths, and didn't allow myself to be scared. Up in the tower we found an older gentleman who has spent the last 26 summers living in the cabin at the base of the rock and sitting in the tower, looking for forest fires, all day long, every day. It was a pretty neat experience.

The fire tower had a huge lightning rod, so I felt pretty safe on the climb up and the climb down in that respect, but I had to take the stairs down nearly as fast as I'd taken them up, which in some ways was even more difficult because I'd already hiked 1.7 miles and climbed 143 stairs, so my legs were tired and noodly. When I made it to the bottom of the steps, I waited for Dan to come down, and when he reached the bottom I mentioned to him how proud I was of myself for making it up and down those steps. Because damn, yo. I totally did it, and I didn't have a panic attack. Go, me!

The Next Grand Adventure

2010-06-29T15:47:00.002-06:00

Our friends Kent and Christine are finally getting around to making it legal, and they've invited us to their wedding in Connecticut on the 17th of July. There's no power in the 'verse that can stop me from being there, but I spent weeks trying to find a reasonably affordable flight that would allow us some time in NYC as well, but to no avail. I wracked my brain trying to think of ways to get around the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of spending nearly a thousand dollars on two plane tickets and hotel for a few nights, not to mention food, transportation, etc once we're there, and I just couldn't figure out how we could make it work.

Until one night, a couple of weeks ago, I hatched a perfect plan. It was so perfect that I stayed awake for hours past my bedtime because I just couldn't fall asleep after hatching such a perfect (and exciting) plan.

We're driving.

We've done long road trips before, but nothing quite this extensive. Dan's parents have graciously agreed to take the kitties for a couple of weeks, and we're going to spend the middle two weeks of July exploring the country, meeting up with old friends (and meeting with new!), having adventures and seeing some friends get hitched eleven years after their first date. I am super duper fantabulously excited about this plan, so let me tell you a bit more about it.

Our intention is to drive the northern route on the way out to the East Coast, leaving sometime during the weekend of July 10/11, and stopping in Chicago, Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, and possibly NYC along the way before we make it out to the wedding on the 17th. Then, we plan to stop in NYC, Philadelphia, Boone (North Carolina), Louisville, and Kansas City on our way back. We'll do a mix of camping, cheap motels, and maybe even couch surfing, and between that and the price of gas we won't even come close to what the cost of the trip would have been had we opted to fly. Plus, this way each of us gets to add a few new states, we get to see people we like, and I'll have a heck of a lot of blog fodder. What's not to like?

So if you live in one of the above cities (or you've visited) and you have ideas, suggestions, or are willing to let a couple of crazy Strykers crash in your living room, I'd love to hear from you in the comments. :)

Sobering

2010-06-28T10:48:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, I flew down to San Antonio to help my mom handle some necessary in-person business that had to be conducted surrounding the care and condition of my great aunt. She's had some recent health issues that necessitated moving her (temporarily, we hope) into the nursing care facility associated with her assisted living place, and nobody in the family had been able to get the answers we wanted from the care givers (the rest of the close family being in China and Canada), so my mom flew from California and I flew from here and we spent four days visiting my aunt and speaking to her caregivers.

The visit wasn't easy. It was difficult for a number of reasons, both logistical and emotional. I did all of the driving between San Antonio and New Braunfels, where we stayed in my aunt's empty house, and navigating strange freeways while dealing with crazy drivers wasn't exactly relaxing (especially when we got lost or when I almost hit a dog that ran across the road). But really, it was the difficulty of seeing my aunt, always so active and healthy, depressed and so unhappy she only wanted to lay in a bed all day.

Over the course of the four days we were there, we brought her to her apartment a couple of times and even got her to take a shower, which perked her up quite a bit. The last day we were there, we sat with her while she ate her lunch in the dining area rather than her bed, and she went to physical therapy, someplace she'd insisted she'd "only been once" (in reality, 5 days a week for a couple of hours a day). (I think she prefers to remember things she enjoys; clearly she remembered we were coming to visit from one day to the next, but in discussing topics she didn't like, she'd forget in just a few minutes.) She gets into mental loops even worse than she did last fall, and it takes a lot more effort than it used to to get her to talk about something other than how she's had a great life, a great childhood, a great adulthood, and now she's ready for the next thing. I think that her caregivers have equated this "I am ready to die" talk she does with "I'm going to intentionally self-harm," which is not the case at all. While she's currently weak because of her recent health issues, I don't think she'd ever do anything to actually try to kill herself.

And that, right there, was the hardest part of the trip. To hear my joyful, full-of-life aunt talk about how she's ready to go anytime was, quite frankly, depressing as hell. But there are so many things she can't do that she always enjoyed (socializing, dancing, swimming, etc.) because she can't see very well. And a recent ear infection has left her completely deaf in one ear. Even reading and writing are difficult for her because of her vision. So I don't blame her for being depressed and miserable. And her short-term memory is completely shot, and I think she knows it, and we're wondering whether there's some dementia going on as well.

While we were at Edy's house, I got stung by a paper wasp on my left arm. I took this photo in the bathroom, and now, over a week later, I've still got the pink circle (though the actual bite site is less itchy). I got about 20 mosquito bites as well, trying to steal wireless from a neighbor in the backyard. It was surreal, staying in Edy's house with my mom, which is still full of her things and her dolls, both of our minds elsewhere, and a wasp bite to add insult to injury.

I woke up each morning to a herd of male deer in the backyard. (The first morning, one of them was uabashedly peeing right by the window). I thought about the years she spent in the house with her husband, and the years she spent in the house alone. I thought about the end of life, whether it happens due to an accident or due to an illness or due to just plain wearing out. Knowing that when people get to a certain point, generally either the mind goes before the body or the body goes before the mind isn't at all comforting, and I found myself wishing, like Edy did aloud, that there was just a button one could push when one was ready to go.

It's hard to know what the right thing is, for someone who is maybe no longer capable of making their own decisions or caring for themselves. My aunt may live a few more months, or a few more years, or a decade. My mom, who lost all of her parents before she was in her mid-20s, has to go through end-of-life care with a person who is, for all intents and purposes, a surrogate mother to her. It's hard to know how to put into words everything I feel about death and dying, about the end of a long and well-lived life, about how I want to live my life and how I'd like the end of it to go. I spent nearly a week working on this post, and it still doesn't say the right things. This sort of thing isn't easy for anyone.

The Tale of the Laser Disc

2010-06-15T15:34:00.005-06:00

So I believe I may have mentioned before that I grew up in two different small towns. The town where I went to high school had a population of approximately 5000 people while I was living there, and when we moved there in 1989 I was going into the sixth grade. Most of my classmates, approximately 100 of them, had been going to school together since kindergarten, or in some cases, preschool. Anybody moving into town was considered Fresh Meat as far as the kids were concerned, it being the sort of town where everybody knew everybody, and everybody's families were intermingled and such.

While my family wasn't related to anyone else in town, and while I occasionally had crushes on various boys in my class, I was never truly interested in dating anyone I went to school with. The idea of it felt a little incestuous, especially since in most cases I remembered them before they'd grown a foot, before they'd started having to shave, before their voices changed from soprano to baritone. Various people dated various other people, and then they broke up and started dating other various people, but because it was the same small pool, rumors got around about who was better at what sex acts, who had a kinky side, who might be mentally ill. I wanted no part of it, had no interest in being the subject of a "drunk at the river" Monday morning story. So I didn't date anybody I went to high school with.* The closest I did, in fact, was to date someone from two towns to the south, and that was only briefly (we worked better as friends). Once, for a few months, I dated a guy who lived in my town, but he attended school elsewhere and had just moved to town (we met at swim team over the summer). Although to be fair, I don't know if you could call what we did dating, per se, since he seemed to be horribly afraid of doing anything other than holding my hand and quoting nerdy movie lyrics at me.

I believe I've also mentioned before that I went to church camp every summer from 1991 to 1995. One of the major appeals of attending the week-long event was the opportunity to meet boys who did NOT live in my town, boys I hadn't spent our formative summers watching them attempt to hide proto-boners in the local pool. Camp was my chance to get to know boys from other places, who of course would be far more mature and more interesting than the ones in my hometown. And meet them I did, each summer, and each week-long camp experience (with a three-day weekend mid February mini camp) brought new crushes to my tender, naive heart. Anyhow, schmaltz aside, one summer I met a boy named Chris and developed a big crush on him, but I was already sort-of-dating the one back home in the 'dale with the lovely swimmer's shoulders. So I quashed my feelings until February, when I dropped the Rush freak like a hot potato and started dating Chris in earnest.

The trouble was that Chris lived in Fremont. And I lived in Cloverdale. This was a distance of approximately 120 miles, which is significant when you are an adult, but for a teenager who isn't yet old enough to drive, it might as well be a light year. The only reason we were even able to maintain a relationship for as long as we did (an entire year!) was due to public transportation.

I was already a seasoned user of public transportation by the time Chris and I got together. Not infrequently, I would take the bus from Cloverdale to Santa Rosa, where one could shop in a mall, or see a movie in a theater that played more than one movie at a time. After we decided to try a long distance relationship, I found out that there was a bus that would take me from Santa Rosa to San Francisco, and then I could take BART from San Francisco to Fremont. Usually, when I made the trip, Chris would meet me at the BART station in the city, and when he came north, I'd meet him in Santa Rosa and we'd ride the bus back to the 'dale together. (Or I'd sweet-talk my mom into driving me there to pick him up.) I think we saw one another around once a month, on average, with the 5+ hour trip each way meaning a weekend together was really more like one day. I saved my babysitting money for bus fare, and he had somehow acquired some youth BART tickets (for kids under 12, maybe, back when BART had a different fare structure), but nobody ever checked the color of the stripe on your ticket when going through the turnstile and so the BART portion of the trip was usually free.

(And I'm not entirely sure why I even dated him for a year, to be honest. Most of our relationship was conducted through letters and phone calls, and back in the dark ages before unlimited minutes and cell phones, phone calls were actually kind of expensive. Plus, it turned out I wasn't really all that attracted to him, physically, and then there was the added factor that he was not the sharpest tool in the shed. Hey, don't make me explain it. I was fifteen.)

One time, when I was sitting at the bus station in Santa Rosa waiting for the bus that would take me down to the city, I was reading my book when suddenly a strange man plopped down beside me on the bench. The first thing I noticed about the man was that he smelled like mange. Have you ever smelled a mangy dog? It...isn't a very pleasant smell. The second thing I noticed was that he was wearing a tattered black leather jacket. He appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s (though to be fair, when I was 15 it was difficult for me to judge the age of anybody over about 21; past that they were just kinda old), with scraggly red hair and a scraggly red goatee. He had at least half of his teeth. He had black half moons at the tips of his fingers, and a few tattoos on his hands, and he was carrying a vacuum cleaner box and a laser disc.

"Hi!" he greeted me, enthusiastically.

"Hi," I responded as succinctly as I could, and pointedly went back to reading my book. Of course, I considered myself to be totally jaded and worldly by this point, because I'd successfully made the trip down to San Francisco a couple of times and was not unused to weird people trying to talk to me.

Sadly, my attempt at brevity and my nose in my book didn't stop him. He spent the entire time we were waiting for the bus telling me the long story about why he was carrying a vacuum cleaner in a box. Obviously, I couldn't care less about this, but I managed a few polite "uh huh"s and "mm hmm"s. When the bus arrived, I paid my fare and sat in a seat about halfway back, ready to enjoy some mange-free air for the first time in half an hour. Of course, as soon as I'd settled in, who should sit beside me but Mangy Toothless Vacuum Man. He proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes or so describing to me the mysterious inner workings of the laser disc machine. After a while, I couldn't ignore him anymore, so I managed to get in a question here or there. "It's the wave of the future!" he exclaimed, punctuating his sentence by waving the laser disc around. "A year from now, nobody will be using VHS. It'll be nothing but laser discs in the video stores!"

"Uh huh," I said.

The laser disc he was using to gesticulate was a copy of The Nightmare Before Christmas, a movie I hadn't seen. When I mentioned this to him, of course, he spent the remainder of the bus ride telling me the plot and everything else there was to know about the movie. (Fortunately, I forgot it completely, because many years later I managed to finally see it in a midnight showing and loved it.)

Finally, Mangy Toothless Vacuum Man got off the bus at one of the side-of-the-highway stops someplace in Marin county. A short Mexican man in restaurant scrubs got on the bus and sat in the vacated seat. I spent the rest of the ride into San Francisco in sweet, sweet silence, and resumed breathing through my nose for the first time in nearly two hours.

*The irony here, of course, is that I spent three years of college in a relationship with someone I'd gone to high school with, and we got together pretty much as soon as we got to Berkeley.

Symbolic ambiguity

2010-06-14T10:42:00.006-06:00

This is a columbine.

A columbine is a wildflower. It is Colorado's state flower, and it grows wild all over the place. You can find columbine in a variety of colors, but it's usually a light or medium purple.

This is the current version of a typical Colorado license plate.

One of the interesting things about Colorado is that there are about eleventy billion different specialty plates. You can get plates that display your alma mater, your military service, your Native American heritage, even your rusty old beater's status as a collector car! You can get a plate with proceeds to go to greyhound rescue, or to help cure breast cancer. You can even get plates to commemorate MTV's The Real World (Denver) or the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Having grown up in California, where all the plates are the same, I still feel a bit of unbridled glee whenever I see a new specialty plate here in Colorado.

A plate we see not infrequently here looks like this:

In the middle, you see a columbine. On the bottom, it says Respect Life.

The thing about this plate is that there are a lot of ways it could be interpreted. The origin of the plate came from someone who wanted to raise funds for the victims of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, and I bet many native Coloradoans, or at least the ones who lived here when that happened, think of the Columbine shooting when they see the plate. The funny thing, though, is that the plate kind of got co-opted by some of the pro-life fundies and to them, it's an anti-abortion sentiment.

And to me, someone who didn't live here when the Columbine shooting happened, someone who grew up with parents who were hippies, the Respect Life plate looks like an environmentalist message. In fact, when I first saw the plates it was all I really thought of until after someone, probably Dan, mentioned the Columbine incident and what a huge deal it is to Coloradoans.

I find it utterly fascinating that such a simple symbol, a specific flower and two words, can evoke 3 entirely different messages. To some, it's "Remember the tragedy of Columbine High School; don't kill people." To many, it's "Abortions are bad, mmmkay." To me, and I'm sure to some other non-natives who didn't live here when Columbine happened, it's a message of wildlife conservation. Although Colorado has a specialty plate for that, too, with an eagle on it.

One of the things that is most interesting to me about humanity in general and culture in particular is that our brains are always looking for symbols. We find patterns in clouds; we are all about face recognition; we want to find meaning in things that have none so badly that we invent conspiracy theories. Colors have always been powerful symbols, depending on the time period and place involved (the color blue in early religious art; the color blue as a symbol for a left-wing state.) Green means go on a traffic light; green means envy; green means environmentally conscious. A circle with a diagonal line through it means No; a swastika can mean a symbol of hatred or any number of other things, depending on context. Yet with enough exposure and publicity, symbols can be subverted to mean just about anything.

Here is a columbine. It is the state flower of Colorado. It is a symbol of great tragedy to some, a political message to others, and to me, it's just a pretty flower.

Friday Faff: Lights Out Edition

2010-06-11T11:12:00.003-06:00

I believe I've mentioned before that we live in an 1895 Victorian house, with original windows and no air conditioning. We had a bit of a heat wave last week and over the weekend, and things were roasting in Chez Stryker by Monday evening. We listlessly discussed what we might have for dinner that would require no use of a heating element that could contribute to the temperature being even higher than the 82F it already was in our house.

And then the power went out. Luckily, it's June so even though it was around 6:30 PM, it was still plenty light outside. At first we figured it was because the power grid was overloaded from too many fans and air conditioners running at once, but then the plume of black smoke to the east and the plethora of sirens convinced us that something else might be going on, but because we had no electricity we had no television, internet, or plug-in radio to inform us of the deets. We sat outdoors with peanuts and cold drinks and read our books, waiting for the power to come back on. It was hot, and only the occasional warm breeze punctuated the stiflingly still air.

After a while, we realized the power wasn't going to come on anytime soon, and it was starting to get dark. We decided to have turkey sandwiches and leftover potato salad and cole slaw for dinner, since Dan was uncomfortable cooking in the dark, and since neither of us wanted to contribute any additional heat to the house, especially considering our fans weren't functioning. We ate our cold meal at our dinnertable in the last light of the evening, reminiscing about power outages we remembered from childhood. Most of the ones I remembered happened during winter thunder-and-rain storms, so a hot summer evening was a totally different experience.

When we finished eating, we retired to the living room. Dan found his head lamp, and lit several of the decorative candles we normally have in our non-functional fireplace. And we sat in the hot, stuffy room, full of food. There wasn't quite enough light to read, so we just sat. I thought about how much we depend on electricity for just about everything.

The kitties, expectedly, were more than a little freaked out by the situation. Humans at home! but no lights on! and no delicious, delicious fan! Why so hot, humans? Why no lights? Something was Just Not Right.

And then, for about 3 minutes, the lights suddenly came on.

A half hour after sitting in the dark, digesting dinner and watching the decorative candles flicker, they came back on for good. We found out that the cause of the blackout had been an explosion at a nearby power station, right near a hospital. Apparently some of the patients had to be medevac'd out when the hospital lost power. I thought some more about how much we depend on electricity for everything, for large, life-saving things, and for small things like an evening's entertainment. It was kind of nice to have no teevee and no internet for an evening, but to not even have enough light to read by was more than a little disturbing. It was a little like camping, except in our own hot, stuffy house in the middle of the city rather than under the stars. I'll take the lights when I'm home, thank you very much.

* * * * * *

Two bad things this week, offset by two good things today:

First, I'm going to have to find a new shampoo. Again. I'm still bitter about the last time, and after over a year of looking I finally found something that wasn't horrible. And effing Pantene had to go and change up all their products again, the bastages. I bought a cheapo clarifying shampoo and I'll know in a week or so whether or not I hate it. Why the hell do hair product companies have to change up their ENTIRE PRODUCT LINES when their customers already like what they have to offer?

Second, I was really looking forward to doing some swimming this summer. I've been trying to change up my workouts a bit, and thought the chance to spend some time in a pool would be lovely. The City of Denver's outdoor pools are only open in the summer, so when I went to the website for Congress Park's pool I was dismayed to learn that they're only open from noon to five. WHEN I AM WORKING. My only other nearby option is to pay $5 a pop to swim in an overpopulated indoor pool. No thanks. (Harrumph.)

Today, two good things happened. First, I found a key that had been missing for at least six months in the pocket of my jeans (a pair I hadn't worn since sometime this winter.) Yay! Also, I won another theoretical cooking contest. This one was more of a Chopped-style challenge than an Iron Chef one. It involved red bell pepper, walnuts, and artichoke bottoms in the appetizer round, pork loin, coconut, and lima beans for the main, and sour cream, candied lychee and pretzels in the dessert round. I think all three of my recipes would be top notch if I were to actually make them. (Especially dessert!)

Dear internet, I have nothing to say

2010-06-10T14:56:00.004-06:00

So here are some photos I took, the first set on a hike we took before we went to California, and the second set on a hike this past Sunday.

May 22 or 23, near Evergreen

My first pussy willows

Dunno why I like this shot so much, but I do.

Spanish moss

This was a funky hike, because the first half was downhill and the second half was back uphill. Here's a photo of us at the highest point.

The creek was still iced over in some places.

June 6, just above Boulder

Sun on the pine needles

Flatirons

This photo demonstrates the inspiration for our wedding colors.

And then we did this

2010-06-04T10:37:00.004-06:00

Sometimes when we go on one of these whirlwind trips to California, I return feeling torn between writing up everything we did (to help me remember, for posterity's sake) and writing up only the interesting parts (for the benefit of the six people who will read this). No one really wants to read about someone else's blow-by-blow vacation exploits. So instead of "And then we did this," I'll try to highlight the moments, the things that stick in my memory whether I have a photo or not. (In most cases, not.)

* Reading approximately eleventy billion books to Wombat, hastily snarfed burritos, and a long and sleepy drive north

*Driving out through Sebastopol to Bodega Bay, then driving north along the coast all the way to Point Arena, something I hadn't done in 15 years and something Dan had never done. We ate cherries as the car lurched around the windy, twisty roads, and I identified as many of the wildflowers as I could see from the moving car: wild radish, coastal lupine, monkey flowers.

* Lazy seals

* Eating lunch in the warm sunshine, watching the water, smelling the brine of the Northern California ocean

* Driving the car from Point Arena through Booneville and back to the 'dale, feeling like I was playing a video game, with only two other cars in the first 26 miles

* Two different incidents of restaurant bad luck (bacon on my dinner sandwich when I asked for none, runny-yolked fried eggs instead of scrambled in my huevos rancheros)

* Breakfast with Heather

* Snarfing a salad at Laurel's house before our first 3 hour traffic ordeal of the weekend

* The growing dread of being late to the wedding in Auburn, having to do my makeup in the car, and quick-changing in the parking lot while the golf cart kid watched.

* Someone liked it so they put a ring on it.

* The realization that I was going to be the sober driver, hoping I could stay awake and drive safely to the hotel when I could only remember which exit to take. (Luckily, we could see it from the freeway.)

* Seeing Dan have such a good time getting his drink and his dance on

* Going from one party to another (one: all Dan's family and various relations, the other a birthday party where my sisters were) and seeing my friend's parents, who I hadn't seen in about 20 years, and realizing I can only socialize with so many people in one day (we'd had breakfast with some other friends) before my brain stops functioning.

* Getting an entire house to ourselves, complete with friendly kitties, a spider web, and a forbidden kitchenaid stand mixer.

* My first crepe-a-go-go in at least 10 years, plus an hour to myself reading a delightful book on the UC Berkeley campus while Dan had breakfast with his brother, and dozing in my favorite spot of dappled sun/shade

* An entire afternoon and early evening of relaxing and enjoying the company of friends, discussing subjects both mundane and profound, and making fresh lemonade with purloined meyer lemons.

* Dan and his brother sharing one last "hope you find your bike, PeeWee" handshake for in all likelihood a year. Keep safe in Afghanistan, Matt.

All in all, it was a great trip, but thoroughly exhausting from the socializing, the hours of traffic, and travel in general. We got home Monday afternoon and were completely useless for the rest of the day. The saying "I need a vacation from my vacation," while trite, is often how I feel after a trip like this.

The ongoing love story of Pappy Waldorf and the wood nymph

2010-06-02T16:16:00.004-06:00

Why is Pappy Waldorf grinning?

If you got to stare at her all day, wouldn't you?

ROWR.

Replacement

2010-06-02T12:05:00.006-06:00

My favorite part about Sather Gate is the bas-reliefs of nekkid men on one side, opposite which it says "Erected by Jane K Sather"

Last year, I lost my camera after we took a trip to California for Memorial Day weekend, and I bemoaned its loss not only because it was a good camera and a pain in the ass to have to replace a camera yet again, but because on the trip I'd taken some photos that I really liked, ones I was pretty sad to lose. Some were photos I'd taken of Wombat at 5 months old, others were from a wander around the UC Berkeley campus. I thought for an entire year about whether or not I could remember and recreate some of the shots I'd lost when that camera fell out of my backpack, so when Dan and I flew into Oakland last Wednesday, the first place we went (after a tasty Naan N Curry lunch on Telegraph) was campus.

Buckeye flower on my favorite tree

My favorite tree. It appears dead and completely hollow, yet it manages to flower and leaf every year!

Dedicated to my diplomat brother-in-law

Baberham Lincoln

Underneath the entrance to the clock tower. Maybe there was once a reflecting pool below it to explain why it's a mirror image?

This time, we went up the Campanile, the UC Berkeley clock tower. I'd not gone up since I was an undergraduate (when it was FREE, FREE!), and I didn't have an Alumni card, so we had to pay two bucks each for the view. It was worth it, though.

San Francicso and Golden Gate Bridge as seen from Campanile. Click to embiggen.

Go Bears!

I liked the brickwork pattern.

Ever wondered what the inside of a magnolia looked like? Here you go.

Dan took this one.

I remembered some of the photos I took a year ago, and found some other interesting spots to shoot. It was a good way to spend a couple of hours, decompressing after an early plane ride and gearing up for the several days of socializing ahead.

Recipe

2010-05-25T11:12:00.004-06:00

Ingredients: butter, white sugar, brown sugar, eggs, flaxseed meal, water, vanilla, flour, salt, baking soda, brewer's yeast, oats, chocolate chips

She thought she had everything she needed at home, but realized that they were out of most of the baking supplies normally kept around. A trip to the store was necessary anyhow, but she ended up going to both of the neighborhood stores (one that catered to a wealthy, healthy crowd and the other just a normal store). She forgot the oats on the first stop into the hippie store so had to go back a second time.

I wonder, she mused, as she walked around the neighborhood in the breezy spring afternoon. The yards were full of flowers and new plants and piles of mulch everywhere, signs that people would be spending the long weekend sprucing up their residences after a long, hard, cold winter. I wonder if anyone will ever do this for me.

Dissolve flaxseed meal in water for five minutes. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, vanilla, and flaxseed meal, combine well.

The backpack was heavy, at least fifteen pounds worth of baking supplies weighing her down as she forced her way home through the cold gusty winds. I should have worn something other than a tank top and shorts, she thought. At least the pack helps keep me from blowing away. People were out on the sidewalks with their dogs, evening constitutionals resulting in perfectly preserved poop, something future generations of archaeologists would be scratching their heads to explain. Why did 21st century Americans worship the feces of companion animals and babies? The thought made her giggle a little, and then the reminder of babies sobered her again. Her project would be in support of a brand new little one, who needed as much help as he could get.

Sift flour, brewer's yeast, baking soda, and salt. Add wet ingredients and mix until well-combined.

She passed the house where the first summer they'd lived in their new place, they'd noticed the young family out playing in the yard. A blond father, a red-haired mother, and two babies, one Asian and one resembling Winston Churchill, both around the same age. She remembered the comment she'd made to him, four years earlier, about how maybe that family had had a hard time concieving, and so they adopted a little boy from another country only to find themselves pregnant halfway through the process. I bet those boys are in kindergarten now, she thought. Wonder if any more siblings ever arrived.

Stir in oats and chocolate chips.

Nearly home, she welcomed the sight of one of the neighborhood roamers, a buff-colored orange tabby who came when she called him. She hadn't seen him in a while; he liked to come around in the yard and tease their male cat, who was indoor only, but he must have spent the winter inside. Orange Kitty, as they nicknamed him, was very friendly. She was sure he had at least a couple of places on the block who would put out food for him. It's hard not to care for a cute, friendly animal, she thought, much like how we're programmed to take care of screaming babies who don't let us sleep.

Drop by teaspoonfuls on parchment-lined baking sheets.

She thought back to all of the blankets and hats and booties she'd made over the years. So many of those babies were children now, and it would be years before they could ask questions about where the blankets had come from. Maybe it's because I had one on my bed when I was little, she thought, made by someone I never met, but it was green and pink and purple and it kept me warm. Maybe that's why I do it. You knit things out of love, hoping that the person for whom you made the thing finds it useful, even if they don't know who you are and maybe never will. And sometimes the families of those babies need extra help.

Bake at 375F for 8-12 minutes.

This baby, for example, this baby who was only 10 days old and back in the hospital with serious pneumonia. As an outsider, there is only so much you can do to help the people who are hurting. The baby had a charmed existence from the beginning, conceived in love after a beautiful lavish wedding and an adventurous honeymoon to relatively wealthy parents, causing no morning sickness, coming out only 6 days later than scheduled, of average size. He wasn't named something-that-rhymes-with-Aiden or after a medieval profession. But even the best foundations don't necessarily translate to an easy time of it later. The baby's mama wants to breastfeed him after he comes home, and could use some help. So she volunteered.

Makes several dozen cookies. Nursing mothers should eat at least four cookies per day to assist with milk supply.

You feel helpless, sometimes, when a friend is in trouble. Sometimes you just wish there was something, anything, you could do to help. And sometimes there is. Maybe someday, she thought, someone will help me. It will be my turn, and someone will make a blanket. Someone will layer a lasagna. Someone will bake cookies to help me make food for my baby. But today, I'm the one with free hands, and I can bake, and pay it forward, so that if it's ever my turn to need help, someone might be willing to do it for me.

Goings-on

2010-05-21T14:30:00.003-06:00

* My brother-in-law came to visit over the weekend. He prefers to go incognito. (The weather in our part of Colorado was not especially warm on Saturday, hence the hooded sweatshirt.

* I got a haircut.

* Robin spent a not inconsiderable amount of time walking on the floor this week. Yes, this is progress.

Yep, that's about it. What's new with you, internet?

When they get it right

2010-05-17T11:57:00.003-06:00

Internet, remember back to when you were a kid. Was there ever a book that you just loved beyond all reason, that you read over and over again, that had so many good parts to balance out any of the bad parts that when you finished reading it you'd sigh?

I had lots and lots of those books. (I still do, and I'm not even remotely a kid anymore.) I love kids' books so much to this day that I have two whole shelves of 'em, books that maybe will belong to my someday children but then again, maybe not. Maybe I just have them because I love them too much not to have them around for when I want to pick one back up and re-read it again.

A few of those books stand out more than the rest. Some of them I loved so much that I was able to include them in my undergraduate thesis. One of them in particular I love so much that I still cry each and every time I re-read it, even though I know exactly what is coming because I've read it so many times and because it's such a quick read. That book? Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Patterson.

I can't really put my finger on why I love this book so much. Maybe it's the language, or maybe it's the characters, or maybe it's that it was the first book I remember reading that really didn't pussyfoot around the idea that sometimes young people die, too. A lot of books were written in the late 60s through the early 80s centered around the very idea that kids shouldn't be sheltered by life's problems - death, divorce, drugs, etc. (I could go into further detail about this, but then I'd have to just refer you to my thesis which I still intend to scan because I think it's pretty good, even 10 years later.) But the point of the books isn't usually to ruin childhoods or to drive home LIFE'S NOT FAIR, but to show how the main character deals with whatever the problem is. In Bridge to Terabithia, there's a poor kid who makes friends with a new kid and together they create an imaginary life for themselves outside of the mundane world. There's no shying away from the fact that Jess, the main character, is poor, or that a lot of the kids at school have family problems. The dialogue and characterization is totally believable. And after Jess's friend dies (offscreen, as it were), the rest of the book shows him coming to terms with it, with what it means for his life, and what happens next.

A few years ago, when we were in the movie theater, we saw a trailer for Bridge to Terabithia. The trailer looked so incredibly disappointing, as though they'd taken one of my favorite childhood books and transformed it into something totally Disneyfied and not at all the point. In fact, seeing the trailer made me actively angry and I decided that not only would I not go to see the movie when it came out but I'd avoid seeing it in any other fashion as well. It would serve them right, it would, ruining one of my favorite childhood books for the purposes of greed.

I didn't give it any additional thought, really, until last night when I was flipping through channels and realized Bridge to Terabithia (the movie with the awful, awful trailer that so enraged me) was on the teevee. More out of morbid curiosity than anything else, I decided to see just how bad it was and started watching it while Dan was still making dinner. I was all prepared for righteous indignation and a bit of PALATR, but from the opening credits I realized I had been All Wrong about the movie. Seriously.

The kid who played Jess was perfect. The kid who played Leslie was just fine. There were so many places that they could have changed the story, but didn't. And even the parts that had been in the trailer, with CGI used to show what Jess and Leslie were imagining, totally fit in the context of the rest of the movie. They even got the casting perfectly for two of the best characters in the book, Janice Avery and May Belle. They showed and didn't tell, about Jess's family's poverty and what an amazing treat it was for Jess, a budding artist, to be allowed to go to a museum in a big city. The characters I'd read and re-read and loved for at least 25 years came alive on my screen and were everything I could have hoped for in a Hollywood movie. But I knew, I just knew, that even though they'd gotten everything right that they'd find a way to screw up.

I waited and I waited, but it didn't happen. The movie was about as faithful an adaptation of a book as I'd ever seen. There was no hiding of or shying away from the bad things in the story. And the part of the movie that I was convinced they would completely ruin made tears run down my face. I cried and cried, watching that part, and I think it wasn't because the movie had done it well (though it had) but because they had done such an amazing job bringing the story to life that all my memories of crying over the sad parts of the book came back. 31 years old and I cried at a kids' movie. On the teevee. With commercials for horrifying toys and breakfast cereals. I dried my tears just in time to see the best part at the very end, the part where Jess shares his secret magical world with his little sister, and it was everything it needed to be.

So there you have it. Every once in a great while, Hollywood gets it right, and I guess I can't always say that I'll never see a movie based on its trailer because I may be wrong about it. I was wrong about Bridge to Terabithia and I encourage anyone else out there who loved the book and was afraid of how bad the movie would be that no, really, it's worth watching. They get it right.

Consensus: Not defective

2010-05-12T15:00:00.002-06:00

I wanted to thank those of you who took the time to comment on my post about stuff. I had been thinking about it for quite some time before I wrote it, and I talked to Dan about it after I wrote it, and he helped me to clarify some things in my head.

It's not that I don't like stuff. It's that I'm just not into stuff that doesn't have a personal meaning FOR ME. As Dan pointed out in his post (along with photographic evidence), pretty much everything we have by way of decor has a personal significance to one or both of us. So maybe when I see the photos on the design and style blogs, I generally feel "meh" because the stuff they show doesn't have any personal meaning or significance for me. I have a hard time imagining how most "stuff" will enrich or enhance my living experience unless I have some sort of personal tie to it, I suppose.

Our living quarters are not the only way in which this personal style, for lack of a better term, seems to manifest itself. Virtually every detail of our wedding, for example, was something that was personally significant to at least one of us. I started to make a list in my head and realized if I wrote it all down, anyone reading this would fall asleep - the venue, the decor, the apparel, the officiant, and just about everything else other than the date (March 29 was pretty much the only date we could do it taking into account the schedules of everyone involved plus our venue) meant something. On the site where I did a bunch of venting about wedding planning, there was a thread called "Repository of meaningful details", and I never did get around to posting about ours there because it would read like a laundry list.

The funny thing about weddings, or home decor, or what have you, is that nobody really knows or cares about the stories behind the choices you make. Or at least, nobody will ever care as much as you will. I kind of like that I can look at the shelf in our living room and tell you what everything is, why we have it, and where we got it/who gave it to us. Maybe it runs in my family, because my Aunt Edy has a story about just about everything in her home as well. I even now have a few things that were hers, including a lithograph on silk depicting an Irish wedding from the turn of the previous century. I like the idea of everything having a story, and hope someday that I'll have a kid (or two) who want to know the stories behind the things that we have.

* * * * * *

We spent a good chunk of Saturday going through and culling stuff, including 3 boxes of books and some kitchen things we don't need/want anymore. It felt really good, and freeing, to know that just because we have something, just because someone gave something to us, or because we bought it, doesn't mean we have to keep it. And just about everything we're giving away or getting rid of is something that can be replaced later if we decide, down the line, that we can't live without it.

* * * * * *

One of the projects I have in the queue is a t-shirt quilt for Dan, kind of like the one I made Oldest Friend for her 30th birthday. It's a perfect project for my current mindset: a way to preserve old memories for posterity, in a way that is productive and useful, and rids us of a whole lotta stuff we don't need. Maybe I'll start on that this weekend.

Hair for a good cause

2010-05-10T16:04:00.002-06:00

I saw this today on a friend's facebook wall, and since I was planning to cut my hair soon anyway, I think I'll ask the hair cuttery to save it for me so I can send it out to San Francisco. Sadly, even though it's shedding season I don't think I can collect enough kitty fur for it to be worth bothering with.

So, how short should I go?

Despite appearances, I do occasionally think about things outside my immediate sphere of awareness

2010-05-07T15:10:00.006-06:00

I may have mentioned my friend Jonathan here a time or two. Jonathan is the sort of person who works for several months, saves up a lot of money, and then travels for several months (or years). He has done this over and over again in the time I have known him, and I always try to keep up with his latest exploits, because I find them fascinating.

Jonathan is currently living in Hong Kong, finishing up a master's degree and working on his next steps with what he wants to be when he grows up. I've been following him on twitter and get Facebook status updates, many of which link to articles that interest him, and yesterday he linked to one that I just couldn't help but read. See, a few years back, Jonathan spent several months traveling through and living in parts of Africa. And by Africa, I mean really, really Africa. He spent at least a month living in a town of 3000 people in Mali, for example. So when he linked to the article, saying it was representative of his Mali experience, I had to check it out.

Internet, after reading the article I was totally ashamed of myself. I'd rarely given more than a passing thought to most countries in Africa, other than a vague desire to see Egypt one day, and of course when various friends travel to various countries (Morocco, Ethiopia, and the aforementioned Mali are all places friends have gone). I thought some about South Africa when I watched District 9. But Niger? What is there in Niger? I know absolutely nothing about it, know nothing about its culture or its history or its geography or what it's like to live there. Now, thanks to this article, I do.

Of course, the article is about how there's little to no media attention for Niger, despite its serious problems. The problems Niger has are exacerbated by climate change, by its patriarchal culture, by things as small as cutural taboos of feeding eggs to children or not allowing newborns to drink colostrum. The statistics in the article about Niger just completely blew my mind: 1 in 7 babies dies before age 1. Women have, on average, 7 children. SEVEN. When there's not enough food for anyone, let alone that many babies. It's a sort of life I can't even imagine living, and a sort of situation I can't even imagine how it can possibly be changed for the better. There are so many factors in play, so many reasons why people do the things they do and why Niger, in general, is so poor. They don't have anything to export, really, and no way to bring in tourism dollars. The way of life people lived for thousands of years isn't really sustainable in a world where countries have borders and you can't just pack up and move to where there's less desert and more food and more opportunities.

Every so often, I catch myself having a pity party. Things are not going the way I would like them to, and I feel sorry for myself. It really takes something mindblowing like this for me to realize just how good I have it. My kids, should I ever be lucky enough to have some, will never, ever be this poor, or this hungry, or have to wait for dad and older brothers and mom and older sisters to eat before they get to eat. We live in a society where that doesn't happen. We have clean water and a huge infrastructure set up to ensure we have plenty of food, and a myriad of choices both miniscule and profound. I'll never have to watch a child starve to death, and never starve myself.

Now, I'm not saying that people who live in Niger have shitty lives (though I suppose by some standards, they do). It just never ceases to amaze me how the luck of the draw entitled me to live in the United States, be born into privilege, and ensure that I had enough food while my brain was developing that I was able to learn and realize my full intellectual potential. For millions, even billions of people, they never get that opportunity. Next time I'm feeling sorry for myself, I'll remember how much better I have it than most of the population of Niger, and while I'll feel like an asshole at least it will remind me to get out of my own head once in a while.

Defective

2010-05-05T11:51:00.005-06:00

Last week, when Dan and I were sitting in Pete's Kitchen consuming greasy breakfast foods and processed meats, I mentioned to him how I think I might be a defective female-type person. When he asked me to clarify, I told him about something that's been on my mind for a while - something spurred from the interwebosphere. Here's my dirty confession, internet: I'm just not into stuff. Like, at all. It's as though the part of me that is supposed to want to coo over fashion or squee over cute stuff or swoon over some sort of well-designed dealy bopper just...doesn't exist. Nearly always, when I go into a store or shop a bit online, all I can see is stuff. Stuff that costs money, and sure, it might be cute or fashionable or design-y, but it's still just...stuff.

I see bloggers that I read (and friends) asked to contribute to design blogs or style blogs, and I read them sometimes. I'm especially intrigued by the gift guides on blogs like that. The idea of pouring through websites to find a bunch of items, put them together into some sort of cohesive whole, and make people want to buy them is about as appealing to me as hanging up my laundry. And, as Dan can tell you, that's my least favorite chore. Even more alarming, most of the time I look at those sorts of gift guides and don't see a single thing I might want - or, at least, not a single thing I'd consider buying for myself. The idea of spending money on stuff I don't need, just because it's a thing I like, is something that rarely crosses my mind. I'm even (and I know this is going to be shocking, because how could it not be) not a huge fan of Etsy. I mean, I love that there is a place where people can sell cool stuff they make directly to people who want to buy it. But I've only ever found a few things on there that I might actually want, so I just don't find it especially useful for *me*.

For the last several years, my mom always asks me to put together a list of things I'd like for gift-giving occasions. I have a very, very difficult time with this task, because it's so hard for me to think of things that I want. Sometimes I wonder whether I'm the only girl on the planet who doesn't have a wish list stashed away someplace, itemized and categorized by gift giver, occasion, and how much each item is desired. When it's time for me to come up with ideas for what I want, usually I resort to asking Dan for ideas, because there's just never really anything that I *want* that much. In my day-to-day life, I am so much more likely to enjoy spending money on an experience than on an item, a thing, or a stuff. I save up for trips and would nearly always prefer tickets to an event or a well-planned outing over just about anything.

It's not that I don't like looking at stuff, because sometimes I do, and sometimes I even fantasize about how it might look in my living space or what outfit I might wear it with or how cute it would be on the counter in the kitchen that's already containing about as much stuff as it can while sill remaining functional. Maybe I'll be singing a different tune when, someday, we have our own place that we can transform into anything we like. But maybe I just lack the stuff-wanting thing that seems to be so common to just about every other female person I know. In the last year or so, I've had an urge to purge, to get rid of stuff that I don't use or don't need or don't want or just don't have the space for anymore. While we wait for a job opportunity or the heavens to open up or something in California, I daydream about downsizing the amount of crap we will have to move.

I used to love stuff. But all the moves I did in college (and if you count moving from one room to another in the same building, I moved 9 times before graduation) taught me that it's just not worth it to haul so much STUFF around on the off chance that someday one might be able to use it. Granted, some of the things I've held on to over the years came in handy down the line - the recycled calendar origami crane mobiles I made for our wedding, for example, would not have existed had I not saved so many old calendars. And I can throw together a costume with the snap of my fingers. But so many of the "maybe someday" things take up so much space. As I get older, I find that clutter bothers me more and more, and I find myself wanting to de-clutter my living space which in turn helps me to de-clutter my brain.

Very soon here, I think I'm going to have to put on a different set of glasses in which to view all of my stuff. I'm going to look at everything with a critical eye - will keeping it enhance my life? How much enjoyment do I get out of each thing? Is my sole enjoyment just HAVING it, and if so, is that enough to outweigh NOT having it? Does it have some sort of sentimental value, or have I just been hanging onto it out of habit? I'd like to break out of the bad habit of just acquiring stuff, and figure out how to just keep the things that really enhance my life.

So how broken a girl am I, really? Am I missing out? Should I attempt to style-ify and stuff-ify my life, or am I just better off not caring all that much about what's in Anthropologie or Crate and Barrel or the boutique down the street? WHAT AM I MISSING BY NOT BEING A VERY STYLISH GIRL?

And only a few peanut shells fell on us from above

2010-04-29T16:25:00.007-06:00

My toes matched the field

Dan needed to have a good birthday, so I did what I could to plan one. A few weeks ago I bought him a new razor, something he's been wanting for a while. I looked into and procured tickets to a Rockies game. I took yesterday off and we went out for breakfast, got Quizno's sandwiches and peanuts, and headed off to the ballpark to watch a really high scoring game that went into the 10th inning. While I was unable to completely hide my boredom and displeasure with the hard, uncomfortable seats, I managed to watch most of (and even get into a bit) the game.

Straw Hat is back out for the season!

Nice mountains.

Rockpile = $4 tickets, no shade

After the game, we walked home and I cleaned the kitchen and made chicken parmagiana for dinner. I also baked a chocolate cake.

It seems like he had a pretty good birthday.

Doing my part

2010-04-26T11:26:00.004-06:00

For further information, see here.

Or, as my friend Su put it:
"Recently Iranian religious leaders reported that some stunningly clever women worked out how to harness and control the power of the earth's crust. By banding together to dress immodestly they managed to cause a volcanic eruption in Iceland. This is awesome stuff! Further research is needed. Today, women all over the world will join together in a noble attempt to cause a large earthquake thus proving that tits cause tremors. Ladies! Join in the boobquake!"

Friday Faff: Spring edition

2010-04-23T15:26:00.004-06:00

The weather has been nasty for the last couple of days, ranging from cloud to fog to rain to snow, with just a bit of sun here and there, and I walked to work under my giant rainbow-colored umbrella this morning. To counteract the blah day, here are some of the photos I took while we were walking around last Sunday for Doors Open Denver.

Can you find Dan in one of the photos?

My run-in with the law

2010-04-20T12:14:00.004-06:00

On April 20, 2002, a friend and I had a picnic in Tilden Park, which is in the Berkeley hills. It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for a picnic, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

On the way out of the park, we were pulled over by a police officer. I can only assume he did so because it was 4/20 in the late afternoon, we were young-looking, and he probably thought that we'd been smoking pot in the park and he was hoping to bust some kids for posession. Well, we hadn't been smoking pot. But because he pulled us over, he ran the plates on my friend's car.

My friend had done something stupid. He hadn't renewed his registration, so he'd put the (registered) plates from his mom's broken-down car on his car. He'd neglected to tell me about this. So when the police officer came over to the car all agitated and screamy it kind of scared the crap out of me. He ordered us into the back of his car while he searched my friend's car, assuming it had been stolen. My friend tried to explain the plate situation to him, apologizing, saying that it had been a stupid thing to do but that the plate was from his mom's car and blah blah blah. I was cowering in the back seat of the police car (incidentally, the seats weren't seats but more of a molded bench of hard plastic and incredibly uncomfortable) and my friend was really upset and all I could think about was that I was going to get arrested because it was April 20 and this cop really wanted to bust some kids for pot. Even though I'd never smoked pot and we hadn't been smoking pot and there was none in the car.

Finally, after a good half hour of explanation and plate-running and calling my friend's mom and a variety of other things, he let us go. He told my friend to change the plates back immediately when he got home, which I assume he did after he dropped me off.

If just being made to sit in the back of a police car made me feel as shitty as it did (shame, fear, etc.), I can't imagine what it would feel like to get arrested. I don't intend to find out.

In which I feel old and also learn the secrets of the illuminati

2010-04-19T11:26:00.006-06:00

This weekend was the annual Doors Open Denver event that Dan and I look forward to every year, because it is an excuse to poke our noses into places we wouldn't normally be able to see, and also because it is a good excuse to walk around outside for several hours. We reviewed the list of places that were going to be participating a week or so ago, and decided on just five stops because there weren't all that many places we hadn't been that we still wanted to see.

Saturday was rainy, gray, and cold, so instead of doing DOD we ran errands instead. I found a frabjous pair of sandals that I think may last me several summers, so I justified paying twice as much as I normally would because a) it's been a few years since I found a really good pair of sandals, so b) I've been buying a new pair every year or so that are just OK but I turn out not to like them for one reason or another, so c) end up giving them away when they are barely used and still wishing I had a pair of good sandals. Unfortunately, the store only had them in brown and so I was unable to get a black pair as well. Then I spent about an hour looking for them on the internets, but they were nowhere to be found, not even on the DSW website (which is where I'd bought the brown ones, only at the brick and mortar store). I love the brown ones but would have liked the versatility of having them in two colors.

Anyhow, Saturday was spent doing errands and chores and such, and then thankfully Sunday dawned with a warm, sunny spring day, which was just what we wanted for a Doors Open Denver adventure. After breakfast we met Scarlett and walked down to the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, at the corner of 14th and Grant. This was the first time it was a part of DOD and I think maybe the first time it was actually open to the public, so I was quite excited about getting to see the inside after walking by it for more than seven years on pretty much a daily basis.

When we walked in, we were greeted by a bunch of portly old men in funny hats, who proceeded to hand us pamphlets and then take us on a tour of the consistory (as they call it). They told us a bit about the history of the place, and then we went down into the function area (where there were tables and chairs and such) where a big prop and costume display was set up, and a Very Tall old man dressed in full Prince Charlie regalia gave us a lecture about all their props (PROPERTIES, as they all kept saying) and costumes. "We'll answer any questions!" they kept telling us, as though the prospect of being asked questions by the general public was the most exciting thing that had happened in ten years. Who knows, maybe it was. Sadly, I neglected to pull my camera out of my bag to snap any photos of the prop(ERTIES) display before we were herded to a couple of poster boards showing the charity work they are involved with (focusing on speech language therapy for kids) and then up the stairs, past a really cool grandfather clock, and into the main auditorium area.

Internet, I have to say that this was really a neat experience. The auditorium had been built with seating for over 500 people, included a stage (with TWENTY-TWO DIFFERENT HAND PAINTED DROPS FOR THE DIFFERENT PLAYS THEY PUT ON, something they mentioned about six times), a full professional lighting booth, and an organ. But not just any organ, an orchestral organ. We were treated to a mini concert by the organist, who spoke in a normal tone of voice from his location halfway up the auditorium and we sitting across and below were able to hear him clearly. This is what really blew me away about the space; it had been designed before sound amplification in order to allow all 500 people to be able to hear a performance. It was the most amazing acoustics I'd ever experienced. In addition to the organ, I was interested in how similar to and how different from a church it seemed; no pews but seats around a center area, and a huge dome above with beautiful stained glass. Symbology was everywhere: the all-seeing eye, the double-headed eagle, the rose cross, the templar cross. And a whole bunch of old guys in funny hats desperately eager and excited to answer any questions we might have.

So, internet, here is the secret of the freemasons: They are not unlike drag queens. They're a bunch of guys who like to dress up in funny hats and costumes and put on plays for one another.

After the Masonic temple, we walked over to 12th and Pennsylvania, our old stomping grounds, to tour one of the many castle-y mansions of Capitol Hill. This particular one is now a bed and breakfast, and has been lovingly restored on the inside (they're still working on the outside). The woodwork was really amazing, and some of the tchotchkes were a little weird (Santa faces on gourds), and the best room was the penthouse suite complete with an oven that was at least 50 years old. Possibly more.

We made our way up 12th street and through Cheeseman Park, and ended up at another castle-y mansion (likewise a bed and breakfast, though a much larger one). This house was very similar to the Molly Brown House we'd toured during last year's DOD event. It was full of stuff everywhere, so probably very similar to the Victoriana of the original house, and featured one of my coworkers who is also an amateur historian sitting in the turret corner on the first floor signing books she'd just published about Capitol Hill. What I liked best about this particular house was the amazing stained glass window, utterly unique for the time period at which the house was built.

Only a few blocks further to the north was the Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls, and Toys. I didn't know this place even existed, but it looked interesting when I saw it on the list of participating places for DOD. The only thing that irked me was that we weren't allowed to take photos inside. But the collection, while not huge, was definitely interesting, with a pretty good mix of miniatures and toys (not as many dolls as I was hoping to see; there were mostly barbies and a few others). The really humbling bit came when I walked into a room to see the Fisher Price dollhouse I'd had and played with as a child. The furniture inside was obviously much newer and not the original furniture that came with the set, but the dollhouse itself was the exact one I'd once had. I even remembered pushing down the plastic bit to ring the doorbell - something I hadn't thought about in at least 20 years. The doorbell in this particular one didn't work, but that didn't stop my brain from traipsing down memory lane.

And then, in the next room, there were a bunch of original Lego sets and a Nintendo. The original one. I think there is nothing in my life thus far that has made me feel as old as seeing my childhood toys presented in a museum's collection. MY TOYS ARE NOW RELICS. I might as well just up and expire now.

We'd planned to go to the Denver Society of Model Railroaders' display in the basement of Union station, but we'd already been walking for over four miles and I was wearing my new sandals, and it was really warm outside and we'd gotten a lot of sun and I was tired. So we didn't end up going. We bought some beer (both of the real- and girl- variety) and went home and were lazy for the rest of the afternoon.

A green costume

2010-04-16T10:46:00.004-06:00

OK, internets, I need your assistance.

Dan and I have been invited to a Springoween party - that is, a costume party in the middle of the spring. And the theme? Green. As in, reduce, reuse, recycle. The evite says:

"This is, of course, an interpretive theme so crack open those brains and scramble that sucker 'til it fits. Reduce a sheet to strips and come as a mummy. Reuse a costume or costumes pieced together from Halloweens passed. Recycle someone else's costume from Halloweens passed. (Cross-dressing is welcome, as always.) Recycle a costume idea not yet suited to another themed party. (Um yeah, that's a convenient loophole to let in new costumes.) Hell, come as an aluminum can or a compost heap, just Reduce, Reuse and/or Recycle. Just be prepared to explain which. "

So, I had a few ideas for costumes. We've got lots of leftover costume pieces from Halloweens (and other costume events) past. And I like the idea of going with something both green (recycled/reused) and green (the color). Here were my thoughts:

Option A: Green Fairy (see: absinthe, Moulin Rouge) I have bits and pieces that could make this work, since I tried to do something similar for Halloween back in...2002? I could make wings out of coat hangers and old holey green tights, and I could carry a flask with absinthe in it. Or make a wand. I'm picturing tattered, fractured. Pros: I've got everything I need for it. Con: I'd still need to do some work (making wings, figuring out top part of costume, etc.) to make it happen.

Option B: What better way to recycle a costume than to wear my wedding dress again? It's got green on it, and I can't imagine when I'd ever be able to wear it again for anything. I've still got my shoes and my necklace. And hell, I could still make those wings. Pros: I get to wear my wedding dress again! Cons: It's kind of heavy and less open to interpretation, costume wise.

Option C: I do something entirely different that doesn't involve the color green at all.

So, internet, what should I wear to Springoween? Any ideas I haven't thought of?

It's about damn time

2010-04-15T11:21:00.004-06:00

So.

First, April brought my first real cold in like a year, which sucked. It was actually the weirdest cold I've ever had; it started with fever/body aches/throat tightness, then a productive cough, and then upper respiratory stuff (sneezing, etc.) I've never ever had a cold move UP before. Thankfully, it's mostly gone now.

Second, I had to spend all day Monday and Tuesday in meetings. Like, 8.5 hours each day. And the best part was that on Tuesday I had to leave one and drive to the other one and by the time I got out, even though I was only a block away from the gym, I decided that I couldn't be indoors another second or my head would asplode, so I just walked home in the sunny spring weather.

Because third, spring FINALLY came. Finally. It's been months of gloom and drear and snow and cold and yuck, and spring decided to take its sweet-ass time showing up this year. The trees are JUST starting to leaf out and bloom.

Which was lucky, because fourth, we got to see EEK last week when she came to town for a conference, woohoo! On Friday night we went to see her read from her new book, which was awesome not only because she is a good reader and a good poet but because we got to see a bunch of other people read their published work as well. It was in a really cool art gallery in a part of town we don't normally haunt so just getting to do something new was good. I was still kind of sick and had to duck out of the last reading so as to be able to cough up my left lung, but all in all it was an enjoyable experience. Then on Saturday, we kidnapped her from her hotel and forced her to eat brunch with us. We twisted her arm into getting some ice cream from our favorite place and eating it in the park nearby. Sadly, the weather didn't cooperate quite as much as we would have liked and it was a bit chilly and windy for our stroll in the park.

Fifth, I've recently found my ex boyfriend from high school on Facebook. I sent him a friend request, mostly for shits and giggles, but also because I'd like to get back in touch with his best friend who I really liked and stayed friends with for a while after we broke up. The friend has a very, very common name so I can't find him on FB because there are over 1000 of him on there. I'll keep the internets posted as to any developments, as I'm sure you are all waiting on bated breath.

Sixth, I am devastated to report that as I was walking home yesterday, one of the straps on my favoritest pair of shoes broke. I've sworn revenge at the universe and hope to find a cobbler or shoe repair place that can fix it, because my life would truly suck without these shoes.

Just right

2010-04-05T11:20:00.009-06:00

I could write a laundry list of all the things we did and all the people we saw/met/spent time with on our trip to California, but I won't. It was a trip with exactly the right amount of walking, socializing, eating, exploring, and relaxing, with almost everyone I'd been hoping to see. We were hosted on Thursday night by an internet friend we've "known" for 9 years but never met, who not only went out of her way to welcome us to San Francisco and offered us a futon to sleep on but somehow magically knew that the thing I wanted most in the world when we finally arrived at her apartment in North Beach was an egg tart all ready to go.

On Friday, Dan and I walked from North Beach all the way down to the Mission in order to meet up with another internet friend, the person through whom we met/booked our wedding photographer. She and her husband got married just a couple of months after we did, and they were in town celebrating his birthday. The walk itself was just what I wanted: through some great parts of the city, and some not-so-great parts, and I kept feeling like we were in some other city that we'd explored together - New York, say, or Rome, or Seattle. But I knew where I was going and enjoyed "discovering" San Francisco all over again. Apparently, San Francisco was expecting me.

We arrived early, did some wandering through hipsterville, but the pirate store wasn't open. We scouted out some of the stores along Mission for possible pinata procurement, and saw some creepy kid models in Zoot suits. We bought treats at a kindergarten bake sale (one leftover egg tart was not enough for me for breakfast), and relaxed on the grass in Dolores Park, watching the tennis players, listening to the tiny dog barking excitedly for his owner to throw the frisbee again! again! again! Upon arriving at the restaurant, we discovered that our internet wedding friends were just as delightful in person, and we spent a couple of hours chatting and commiserating. They left to have their own San Francisco adventure and we went back up to Mission street and bought the multicolored horse pinata. Because we'd split a piece of bread with vegetables and cheese, we were still hungry and so we then split a Mission burrito, with Mexicoke and too-sweet horchata, and then walked along, the three of us, back downtown.

All-told, between our trek across SF and back, and various on-foot trips in Emeryville (both secret-agent-style and mundane), we walked 10 miles on Friday. Thankfully, though Saturday was errands in the morning and preparation in the afternoon, far less of it was spent on our feet. Of course, no party is complete without the multiple trips to BevMo, the trek around the entire East Bay to procure supplies, or the princess tiara. Oh, did I not mention that? Leah and Simon came to hang out pre-party and gave me an awesome birthday present. And I got to spend a good long while exploring Brian's backyard with Wombat.

The party. Oh, the party was amazing. We had the right amount of food, and a booze-, candy-, and toy-stuffed pinata, and balloons, and flowers, and waaaaay too much beer. Everyone from my mom to my oldest friend to my old coworker who now lives two blocks from my sister came, from near and far, to help me celebrate my birthday (belatedly) and also celebrate 2 years of Dan and I being married. There were games and hijinks and shenanigans, and the poor pinata did not survive the night, though it took some severe beating with a billy club and Dan's bare hands to make him finally spill his guts. We wore him as a victory hat, when we weren't passing around my tiara. I just wish I'd remembered to pull down the viking hat so people could have worn that as well. It was a three Dan party.

I got to celebrate with most of my favorite people in the world, people who I see entirely not enough, and that alone made it a success. That everyone there seemed to have a good time was just icing on the proverbial cake. (There wasn't cake, but there were Mexican wedding cookies and PW's lemon crumb bars courtesy my sister. Delicious.)

We spent Sunday recovering and cleaning, returning and relaxing. We saw one sister's progress on the backyard, and the other sister's brand new place, and enjoyed a sit on Leah and Simon's patio furniture, all while being carted around in Brian's Prius. We spent Monday eating sushi and gelato with the Irish German, and then shopping and relaxing in our hotel room in San Francisco. We found Dan's new favorite burger joint after hemming and hawing over where and what to eat for our anniversary dinner, and split the champagne Leah and Simon gave us over a shared slice of tiramisu in our hotel bed.

I was sad to be leaving on Tuesday, so we hightailed it over to Ocean Beach and the ocean made me feel very small (and what the hell was up with all the foam?), and then there was a rainbow. By the time we were through with lunch and shlepping to the airport, I felt a little better. We don't live there yet, but we're working on it. Everyone will be there, everything will be there, everyone is waiting, and I hope will welcome us with open arms when it's finally time to leave Denver and go home.

(Click on any photo to embiggen)

Eating my way through California

2010-03-31T15:06:00.002-06:00

Yesterday evening we returned from five nights and five days in the Bay Area, and it was one of the best trips we've ever taken out there. I've got plenty of photographic evidence, but what I'm thinking about today is the sheer diversity and deliciousness of the food we consumed during our trip.

In order:

Egg tarts (a Chinese baked good), Thai food, egg tarts, a brownie, half a veggies/cheese Croque Monsieur from Tartine Bakery, half a Mission burrito (with pollo asado and the works), a caesar salad (self-made), chocolate-covered pretzel chips (my new favorite Trader Joe's product), oatmeal, Berkeley Bowl sushi, homemade guac, homemade burrito bar, Mexican wedding cookies and sister-made lemon squares, oatmeal, 1/2 masala dosa and 1 veggie-filled samosa with cholla from Vik's, pizza and fresh greens at Jupiter, yogurt and whole-wheat sourdough toast, sushi from Manpuku in Berkeley, gelato, a teriyaki chicken sandwich with sauteed mushrooms and some sweet potato fries and onion rings from Pearl's, champagne via Leah and Simon and a few bites of tiramisu, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a hardboiled egg, half of a turkey sub from Subway, and a Specialty's semisweet chocolate chip cookie.

In that five days/nights, I ate out 10 times if you count the gelato and the Berkeley Bowl sushi. In comparison, we usually eat out on average around once every six to eight weeks. It's hard not to go hog-wild when we go to California, where we have so many restaurants we love and access to so much amazing food. I love that nearly all of our food is homemade, and that we eat so healthily most of the time, but that, every once in a while, we splurge for a few days on spectacular food that we only eat a few times a year. It's too bad it all must be crammed in to such a short period of time.

This morning's commute

2010-03-24T11:09:00.005-06:00

Click on any photo to embiggen.

Joining the 21st century

2010-03-23T15:31:00.002-06:00

I'm not one for what you might call technological innovation. I resisted getting a cell phone until I moved to Denver in 2003 and discovered that a basic cell phone plan (including free long distance) was the same price as a land line. I've never done much with any cell phone other than make phone calls; I send and receive so few texts that we don't even have texting on our phone plan and pay for them piecemeal.I know my current phone has a camera, and I've used it twice (once to take a background photo of Loki and once to snap something in a store) and have no idea how to get the photo off my phone and onto someplace more useful. I didn't get a digital camera until Dan gave me one for Christmas in 2004 (?) For someone on the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y, I'm startlingly old-school when it comes to gadgets and gizmos and The Latest Thing. We'd probably still have the same old non-HD, non-flatscreen TV had we not gotten a fancy TV as a wedding gift.

As with technological devices, so too am I often behind the curve when it comes to web-related stuff. I never programmed my own website or learned HTML. I have Friendster, Tribe, and MySpace accounts primarily because for some time or another they were the only way to communicate with certain of my friends. I joined Facebook, finally, about a month after we got married, since it seemed everyone I knew had migrated there from previous social networking sites. And for the past couple of years I've been reading people's individual twitter feeds from their blogs or on twitter directly.

It occurred to me, the other day, that there was a lot I was missing out on by not having everything in one place. And so, internet, you can now find me and my inane drivel at Twitter, username pantalonesfuego. I have finally submitted to the dark side of the force internets.

Food on Friday: Macaroni and Cheese, fancified

2010-03-19T15:26:00.003-06:00

I was given a challenge.

My challenge was to create my own version of a comfort food. I was assigned Macaroni and Cheese, which, yum!

The only problem was that I'd never before made macaroni and cheese other than out of a box. I know, I know. But it's the kind of food that's so BAD for you, the kind of thing we almost never eat, that even when we do make it from a box we put all kinds of veggies and stuff in it. I was tasked with making REAL macaroni and cheese. It was an interesting challenge.

I thought about my options for a while. I considered trying to make it into a dessert dish, kind of like a noodle kugel. I knew I'd be up against people making all sorts of fancy gourmet versions of their given foods, and people doing very traditional versions. I wanted to come up with something that would both stand out and be satisfying to those for whom macaroni and cheese, the real kind, is the ultimate in comfort food. Plus, I had to consider our tastes, knowing that we'd be eating the dish I made.

I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I came up with an idea in my head. Like many of the things I've cooked over the years, I didn't really have the final plan until I was already in the middle of it. So you'll see a few ingredients in the first photo that I didn't ultimately end up using. And, because it was something I'd never made before, it took a heck of a lot longer than I expected it to. But the result was so, so worth it.

Cast of characters: Macaroni, chevre (goat cheese), scallions, shallots, nonfat milk, onion, flour, turkey bacon, pepper, salt, chipotle powder, parmesan, nonfat greek yogurt, butter, olive oil, extra sharp cheddar cheese, panko (Japanese breadcrumbs), bottle of yummy red wine

Step 0: Pour yourself a glass of tasty red wine. Pour one for your photographer as well.

Step one: Finely chop one small onion. Put it in a skillet with a tablespoon of butter over medium-low heat, stirring infrequently. You want the onion to get good and brown, without getting crispy. If it's taking forever, like it did for me, add a splash of olive oil. When the onions have carmelized nicely, turn off the heat and set the pan aside.

Step 1.5: Turn on oven to 375F.

Step two: In a medium-sized heavy saucepan, melt 3 tablespoons butter until bubbly. Turn down heat. Add about 2-3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour, stirring constantly. It will get thick and pasty. Slowly add milk, continuing to stir, until mixture thins out and gets saucy.

Step 2.5: Put on a pot of water to boil. Add a bit of salt if you like. Don't forget to drink some of your wine!

Step three: Grate 8 oz of extra sharp cheddar cheese, which will turn out to be about 2 cups grated. Slowly stir 1/2 the cheese (that's one cup grated) into the milk/butter/flour sauce. Add about 1/4 cup of nonfat greek yogurt, salt and pepper to taste, and about 1/2 teaspoon chipotle powder.

Step 4: Mince 1 shallot and add it to the sauce. Continue to stir the sauce frequently so it doesn't develop a skin on the top. When water boils, add about 1.5 dry cups of elbow macaroni to the water.

Step 5: Grate about 1/2 cup parmesan cheese and mix it with about 1/2 cup panko crumbs. Set aside.

Step 6: Open package of chevre. Tear about 1/2 cup of it into dime-sized pieces with your fingers and put on a plate. Set aside. Wash your hands.

Step 6.5: Cook 3 pieces of turkey bacon, drain. When cooled, chop into bits.

Step 7. When pasta is still firmly al dente, drain it and then add it to the cheese sauce, which you have not forgotten, right? Add the carmelized onions.

Step 8. Pour about 1/3 of the pasta/sauce into an 8x8 baking dish. Dot with 1/2 the goat cheese and 1/3 cup of the remaining grated cheddar. Top with pasta/sauce, repeat the goat cheese and cheddar. Add the bacon bits. Add the last of the pasta, top with the last 1/3 cup cheddar, and then over all add the panko/parmesan.

Step 9. Put it in the oven and bake until the top looks a bit browned and crispy, 20-30 minutes. While mac and cheese is baking, prepare anything else you plan to make. I sauteed some fresh asparagus in the carmelized onion pan with some seasonings and rice wine vinegar. Optional: Chop 2 scallions and sprinkle individual servings with the scallions.

Makes about 4-6 servings, depending on how much you like macaroni and cheese. Don't forget to drink the rest of the wine!

And then we brought it home in a cardboard box

2010-03-18T15:08:00.005-06:00

I think I may have mentioned, once or twice, that I'm prone to dreaming. And I don't mean dreaming like normal people dream. I mean that I have crazy, off-the-wall, way more memorable than most people dreams. There have been periods in my life when I dreaded going to bed because I knew that I would have so many dreams that the quality of my sleep would be affected; meaning, I think during those times I do not get enough non-REM sleep.

The types of dreams I have also go through phases. Sometimes I have more normal-type dreams, like I have to pee and can't find a useable toilet. Sometimes I have emotion dreams, in which I'm extremely angry or extremely sad. And sometimes I have prophetic-type dreams that seem to come true, hours or years later (it's where my sense of deja-vu comes from; sometimes I'm someplace or doing something and I get deja vu and then I remember, oh yeah, I had a dream about this x time ago).

My dreams have been even more off-the-wall than usual lately, though I don't feel as though my sleep is being affected currently (thank goodness). And many of my dreams lately are running along a similar theme: babies. Also, cats. I'm given birth to or breastfed a cat about six times in the last couple of months. But last night, oh, last night. Last night I had a dream that I swear must have lasted hours. I dreamed that I was full-term pregnant and going into labor; that nobody in my family knew about it, and that I was in a weird hippie commune-type place. Several other women in labor were there as well. A birth guru guy had the power to tell us which of us would have our babies first, and decreed the order in which it would happen. Labor didn't hurt as much as I expected it to, though it lasted for more than a day, and one of the women who had her baby on the first day gave birth to one that was stillborn, so she took it to some sort of sacrificial area. My labor continued while a party with lots of tasty food and drink was going on all around me. Finally, it was time for me to climb into the birthing pod to be alone while I focused, hard, on pushing out the baby. My water broke in a splash, and I felt every last second of the process as I called Dan to open the pod so he could catch the baby.

The baby looked just like I did as a baby, though it was significantly smaller. I didn't even know for sure whether it was a boy or a girl as I delivered the placenta into the pod, which looked like an alien. Finally, my work was finished, and I climbed out to be informed that it was a boy. He was about six inches long; a perfect newborn in miniature. About two hours later, we left the hippie commune and headed home, with the baby in a cardboard box on the back seat.

Dear brain: I know you want babies. Please, please do me a favor and dial back on the reality bit while I'm sleeping, would you? Thanks ever so.

In which I quit with the whining, already

2010-03-15T15:47:00.003-06:00

So here's why my birthday weekend was awesome.

On Friday afternoon, I came home to find that a friend in the UK had sent me a surprise birthday package, complete with chocolate and tea. Dan made some bbq chicken pizza with a black bean sauce while I napped a raging headache away. His pizza crust recipe makes two crusts, so for breakfast on Saturday we had this breakfast pizza, which was totally amazing. It was a gorgeous sunny day, azure sky, and it felt like spring. We went shoe shopping (though didn't buy any shoes) and to Target and to Sunflower and to King Soopers, and then we went home and had guacamole and chips for lunch. In the afternoon, we went for ice cream at Lik's for the first time since September, I think, and met up with Kate, who recently outed herself as a blog reader who lives in my neighborhood, and her daughter. We had a lovely time and were going to have beers as well but realized all the nearby pubs were full of drunken green-clad revelers, so we called a rain check.

Saturday evening, I made up a recipe out of my head for macaroni and cheese, something I've never made before. It turned out so amazingly good. I will post a full recipe and tutorial later this week once I get all the photos off the fancy camera. This took hours longer than it usually takes me to cook a dinner, which I guess is because I'd never made this before and I was making it up as I went along? Anyhow, there was sauteed asparagus to go with, and we fell asleep completely satiated.

Sunday I got chocolate chip pancakes and turkey bacon for breakfast, big ploofy snow, a trip to the gym, walk in the snain (by the time we left the snow had turned into snain), and a hot shower. Lunch was whole grain bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon, and half a pomelo. I got calls from my mom and a few of my friends, two of whom even sung to me (thanks, Simon and Oldest Friend!), and I looked through old photos to find images of past birthdays. Dan went out of his way to be nice to me, knowing I was feeling raw, and he made me birthday pie (chocolate mousse pie!), and the exact dinner I wanted: oven-fried chicken, oven fries, and a salad with homemade dressing.

Today I'm feeling better. I'm going to own 31. 31 is my bitch. Watch out, world. I'm 31 years old and I'm not afraid of it.

Twenty eleven

2010-03-14T18:20:00.005-06:00

My third birthday, of which I remember some vague images and feelings, was at a local Chuck E Cheese. My mom made a cake in the shape of a butterfly, and a few friends (and their parents) were in attendance. Here you can see me with my mom (pregnant with my sister, born 4 months later) and dad.

My mom made me a new pink skirt with suspenders and two matching hair barrettes. I loved them. It was my fifth birthday, and we went roller skating. 3 out of the 5 people in this photo are still in my life - Scarlett, Oldest Friend, and Brian Foster, all of whom (like me) still look like they did in this photo. Brian's hair is a little darker. Also pictured are Kristina and Megan, preschool friends of mine.

I had a big party for my 16th birthday, and, in going through the photos I have, I found quite a few of all my friends and hardly any of me. Which was just as well, because my face looked like a pizza. I had a great time, though. The shorts in this photo were a size 2, and I sewed the blouse myself. Also pictured are my friend Julia with a mouthful of cake and Laurel, who was about 8. I think I'd just opened a gift, which was a necklace from one of my friends that tragically broke after only a few wearings, but I liked it so much I saved the beads.

Here's Joey with me on my 21st birthday. I had a big party for the first time since my 16th, and I had an amazing time. I think it was potluck; people brought or made all kinds of food and drinks, and my college ex made my chocolate-raspberry birthday cake. I only have a few photos from the evening, and this one was the best of them. So many of the people I was closest to came to help me celebrate, and I couldn't have asked for a better 21st. (Also: Holy shit was I skinny.)

Today is my 31st birthday. It was both good and bad: good, because I went to the gym and had a tasty breakfast and a tasty lunch and expect to have a tasty dinner. I've found a new drink I enjoy (whiskey sour!) and I have 2 kitties. And Dan's making me a birthday pie. Bad, because I'm so far away from most of my friends and family, and I'm so far from where I want to be in life. I think I'm hardest on myself during times when I reflect on how much potential I once had. I was 3, and 5, and 16, and 21. Now it's 10 years later than the last photo, and the only difference between then and now is where I live and who I live with. Sometimes I feel like my relationship with Dan is the only thing I have going for me. I don't own a house, or a graduate degree; I've not gone on nearly as many trips as I expected and I want to be something completely different in my career and I'm still practicing my parenting skills on small felines.

Here's hoping that, sometime during this next year, the things I want to help move my life forward happen. And that I somehow contract the serenity I need to look back at 3-year-old me and 5-year-old me and 16-year-old me and 21-year-old me and realize that where I am at age 31 really isn't so bad.

Pity, party

2010-03-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

I think I've documented before on this site how this time of the year always gets me down. It's still winter and kinda gross outside; I am going to have yet another birthday soon.

It's been a rough winter. We lost Petra, and have lived through a gloomy and depressing January and February. We'd intended to go on a trip someplace warm but all that money got eaten up by Petra's vet bills. We're not where we want to be and both of us are having a hard time with that. And I'm getting old.

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to have a birthday party here in Denver, something I haven't attempted since 2003. We have a decent-sized group of friends for the first time in forever, and so I thought, hey, why not invite everyone over for a party? I sent out an invite, and within the first few days got a ton of "No"s and no "Yes"es other than Dan and myself.

Well, after I waited a few more days and my closest friends in Denver told me (in other words, but I understood the underlying meaning) that they'd rather go skiing YET AGAIN than come to a party to celebrate my birthday, even though I do lots of nice things for them on their birthdays (like make cakes from scratch), I decided to cancel the party.

It was a rough week for a variety of reasons. Finally, on Wednesday, I decided to do something about my terrible mood and self-pity. I looked at plane tickets to California and decided to cash in the $200 voucher* I got from being booted off a Frontier flight last year. I thought we could perhaps go out the last weekend of March, in honor of our 2-year anniversary, and as a belated birthday present to myself, and maybe we'd figure out how to have some sort of a party.

That very evening, my friend Brian offered the use of his house and yard for StrykerFest 2010 without any provocation, and my day was made. I may not be having a birthday party this year, but I am going to get to see friends and family, spend time in my favorite place, and not even think about people who would rather go skiing for the umpteenth weekend in a row than celebrate something fun.

We'll be in the Bay Area March 25-30 and I couldn't be more excited. Even if only 5 people show up to the shindig, we still plan to have a good time.

*story forthcoming

Sartorialism

2010-03-02T10:15:00.003-07:00

Dear people of the world:

Tights are not pants. Leggings are not pants. Leggings that you bought 25 years ago the LAST time they were in fashion, so they're all threadbare and see-through, and you're wearing over white granny panties are DEFINITELY not pants. They make you look like you are wearing a diaper.

Shirts are not dresses. Even if you wear them with leggings or tights (see above). Dresses must be long enough to cover your buttcheeks. If I can see the cheek fold when you are walking in front of me, it is NOT a dress. The only acceptable time people can wear shirts that short as dresses is when they are babies in diapers.

Pick one animal print to wear at a time. Zebra, leopard, and snake may look great in a Noah's Ark painting or at the zoo, but they do NOT look good all being worn at the same time on your person.

5-inch stiletto red beadazzled plastic stripper shoes are perhaps not the best choice of footwear when it's less than 20 degrees F outside and you're walking through an icy parking lot.

Sagged, skintight emo pants make you look like you have a load in your pants. There are no exceptions to this rule for men or women. A correlary: Skinny jeans should not be worn by men. They look good on SOME girls/women, but not many, and they do not look good on men, period.

And what the hell is up with that hairstyle that's bleached blond on the top and black or very dark brown underneath?

Start to finish

2010-03-01T15:26:00.006-07:00

On October 9, 2009, my friend Deborah gave birth (on her birthday!) to her first kid.

This was the first baby I'd seen from start to finish. And I'd really SEEN it, since Deb taught the classes I took ever Monday and Wednesday evening at the gym. I started taking her classes in the fall of 2007, and continued to take them through 2008. It was the Wednesday class where I tore my right calf muscle, and I had to skip class for a couple of months in order for my leg to heal. But as soon as it was better, I went right back.

I got to know quite a few people over the years in Deb's classes. There was a core group of regulars, and we each knew each other by name. There were engagements, weddings, grandbabies, and IVF attempts. It felt a little bit like Cheers, except instead of drinking beer we flailed around on steps and lifted dumbbells.

I noticed that Deb, typically lithe and wee, started changing shape sometime around late February last year. I didn't think much of it, because I knew she and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for quite some time, and considering she taught an average of 3 exercise classes a day, 7 days a week, I knew it wasn't a plethora of cheeseburgers. When she finally couldn't hold in her belly anymore, she told us all that she was pregnant and due October 15.

Over the months, I watched her body grow and change. By September she had the typical basketball-under-the-shirt, only-pregnant-from-the-front/side look of a thin, athletic woman, and she still managed to teach all of her regular classes for the duration of the pregnancy, even in the hottest parts of the summer. Looking at her was my motivation for continuing to push myself, even when I didn't feel like it, because if Deb could do it at x months' pregnant, knowing she'd already taught 2 classes that day, I could do it. It wasn't until a week or two before she stopped teaching that Deb started looking run-down and tired, and she stopped doing everything full out in her classes. She was totally superwoman.

I knitted a blanket and a jester-style hat for the baby, and Dan and I went to the shower, a few days after Deb taught her last class. Baby P was born a week early, the best birthday present she could have gotten.

The person who teaches Deb's classes now teaches in a style that I don't really like, so I have stopped going to them. I miss the cameraderie of the group, but the new teacher annoys me so much that I just can't bring myself to go very frequently. I've kept in touch with Deb via facebook, and on Friday she brought 4.5 month-old P on his first trip downtown. She parked outside my building, and together we walked down the mall to have lunch together. I spent my time wisely, holding P, nomming on his face and neck, watching him smile, all the while picking Deb's brain about her experience as a new first-time mom and hearing her birth story. Everything is going well - he's a natural eater, and her boobs work so well he's currently 18 pounds of deliciousness. He looks just like his daddy, aside from Deb's red hair. She made a person, and I got to see the process twice a week for the entire 9 months.

After lunch, we walked around outside for a while, P snoozing in the stroller, and I marveled at how much she'd changed, and at the same time how much she was still very much herself. I felt honored to be able to spend that time with her and with her new little one, very much his own person outside of her body, and Deb mostly feeling like herself again. I'm sure becoming a parent changes people in deep and fundamental ways, but it's nice to see friends who go through that change come out pretty much the same on the other side.

Pincushion

2010-02-25T15:05:00.004-07:00

It's been so long since we had a kitten that I had kind of forgotten about some of the downsides. Things like kittens who get very excited about playing in the bed when it's 3 AM. Things like kittens who like to climb, all the way up to your shoulder, even when they're getting really big and heavy and they use your various parts as assists to get to where they're going, regardless of how squishy they are or how painful it is for you. Things like how freaking sharp kitten claws can be. I currently have a series of scratches in various states of healing on my hands, arms, shoulders, upper back, and chest (and by chest I mean BOOBS). My right nipple is still a little sore from when Robin used me as a way to get from the couch to the chair; my boob just happened to be in her way and it provided a stepping stone, I presume, though for me it felt like a very unwanted free piercing.

Robin is still freaked out by Loki. It's understandable, considering he'll go a week ignoring her or, when noticing her, jumping up just to sniff her or look menacing, but then (like last night) he'll get some sort of bad idea in his head and attack her. The squirt bottle is getting a workout for the first time in years, and sometimes he's so vicious I have to physically pull him off her. I don't understand why he does this. We think it's better and he's gotten over having a Strange New Kitty In His House. They'll even sleep within inches of one another, Robin on Dan's lap and Loki on mine. They'll play with the same toy at the same time. But whenever Robin's stationary and Loki comes near, she'll hiss and growl at him, ears back, and I'm sure he finds it terribly rude because he'll go from minding his own business to fight mode in 3 seconds. 90-95% of the time, all he does is bluster and show how big he is, but that 5-10% I can't blame her for the hissing and the growling.

Anyhow, because Loki is Big Scary Kitteh, Robin uses us as conveyances from one room to another, from chair to bathroom counter to bed. She still goes in her room every night with the baby gates up, and most nights she comes into our bed at some point. She stays at the head of the bed while Loki sleeps, as always, between Dan's knees. I'm sure part of Loki's problem is that he never ever had to share any high up spaces (backs of chairs, counters) or the bed before, because Petra couldn't jump and was scared of our room and especially our bed. So not only is there Strange Kitteh, there's Strange Kitteh who Hangs Out In His Spots. I'm sure she keeps to high places in order to keep an eye out for him, but he finds it pretty offensive I think. As Robin gets bigger (and oh, how bigger she is getting!) we have taken to putting her down on the dreaded floor from time to time and it takes her at least 2 or 3 seconds to get up on the nearest safe high surface.

Loki, meanwhile, has claimed my lap as his own. Any time I'm sitting on the couch he is on my lap, regardless of whether the laptop's there too, or whether I'm knitting, or whether I'm even in a configuration that promotes lap-sitting on his part. It doesn't matter how many times I get up and sit back down; he is ever vigilant and must be On Me. Of course, because it's winter and it's cold I'm usually wearing comfy yoga pants. And Loki, being a Very Large Heavy Strong Kitty, has sharp, strong claws, because we can't clip them. Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but when he decides to give me a kneading in the soft part of my upper inner thigh, it HURTS. And when he's sitting in my lap and I'm cross legged and the claws on his back feet poke into me, it HURTS. And sometimes his claws get stuck in the material of my pants and I have HOLES in them now.

So here I am, battered and covered in cat scratches, with my holey pants, and 2 cats who must be supervised together at all times, but it'll get better eventually, right?

You can't go home again

2010-02-23T15:28:00.003-07:00

When we were planning our trip to California for Christmas, Dan told me that he wanted to do something he had never done before. I'd been thinking about trying to go up to the place we lived until I was 10, something I hadn't done since 1991, but this settled it for me. Dan assured me that seeing the place where I lived as a child would certainly count toward the "something new" quota, and so it was settled.

On Christmas Eve day, we got in the car and drove through the town where I went to elementary school, across the bridge, turned left, and meandered through the barren vineyards, passing farms and homes and trees. The mustard had started coming up but wasn't blooming yet, and the century plant was where it had always been. "That's where Geno crashed his car," I thought, and may have pointed out to Dan. "That's the back way to go. We'll come back out that way." Instead of continuing up the road until it ended, as we would do to get to the place where we got married, we turned right just before that and hairpinned back and forth, Dan intent on his driving and me boggling in anticipation and memory. Same, different, same, different. Around another bend. The big tree was still there; the fancy house looking shabbier and smaller after all of these years. The first potential locked gate wasn't even in existence anymore. Down, past the house where there was a robbery while my mom was housesitting. Around the bend, over the creek, up and down another hill to the sign tree, with directional signs to ranches owned by new families and old neighbors still living in their houses, up yet another hill, pass the trees, pass the next gate (both unlocked and open). I have so many memories of stopping here on this hill, with the drop on one side and the hillside on the other, helping my mom to open the gate, fiddling with the metal combination lock, remembering the story my mom used to tell me in the car when we'd drive to ballet lessons or to go grocery shopping. I remember that when I was first learning to read I thought the sign here said "No trees passing" and thought that was funny because how could we not pass the trees and still get to where we needed to go?

Up through the open clearing, and then the next batch of trees, mostly manzanita and madrone until the next set of hairpins, and then everything opened up to be scrub and big pines. I wracked my brain trying to remember the names of everyone who lived there, whose driveway or side road that was, which one belonged to which person. The next hairpin took us through what I always thought of as the open field, with a big new fancy house on the opposite side. Another curve, another set of trees and driveways (that's where the Greenbergs were! wow, the people there still have horses!), the spot where my dad had to clear the tree off the road that one time of the Valentine's Day flood, and then the final ascent past the wild plum trees and the open grassy fields to the spot where the people who own the property now have built their fence. We parked the car there, under the oak trees that still have oak galls on them, next to the drainage/creek, and managed to squeeze through the fence and hike the last 1/4 mile or so, me pointing things out to Dan and seeing my past through a haze. "That's the hill that I used to climb," I showed him. "There's the funny gnarled bay tree where I used to sit."

I pulled out my camera to take a photo of a dead thistle head, but the batteries in my camera were dead. "You'll take pictures for me, right?" I asked Dan, and he said he would.And we came around the bend.

I knew, intellectually, that the house our neighbor (the one who used to mow his orchard nekkid) lived in was gone and replaced by an Italian villa. I knew it, but I didn't really KNOW it until I saw it with my own eyes. But so many of his trees, olive and orange and apple (and FIG OMG the FIG TREE) were still there, still obviously bearing fruit.

And then I turned to look, and I saw where the A-frame and the tool shed and the barn weren't. In the field where I learned to ride my bike and had an easter parade with my stuffed animals dressed to the nines and where the cows would hang out, at the far end, was a huge barn-like thing that I'm convinced, judging from the sounds and signs surrounding it, was actually being used as living space for someone (a caretaker?). The house that I'd lived in for ten years, where I'd had birthday parties and jumped off the roof and hadn't dreamed about since sometime in the 90s, was still there. They kept it.

Our house was still there.

Granted, it was barely recognizable as our house. They'd removed the living room and all of the internal walls and redone it completely from the inside out, but the basic structure was there. Our apricot tree, our walnut tree, the huge rose bush, the huge oak growing out of the deck my dad had built, all there. I showed Dan everything, where the rope swing had been, and where the fountain had been, where we'd had our sand box and the chicken coop, where there was once a jungle gym, where I'd spent hours once looking for a four-leaf clover, all the spots that were MINE. They were all still there, even if they didn't look the same, even though they didn't look the same. The huge old tree under which we'd buried all of our pets was there, though it was obviously a victim of some parasite or sudden oak death or something because it certainly wasn't healthy, but the place where Daisy Deer and all of our dogs and cats rested their bones still existed.

Dan pulled out his camera, and his battery died after the second photo he tried to take.

The wind went out of my sails. Now I could see everything that was different, all the changes they'd made in 20 years. The house was a guest house, with brand new fixtures and perfect white linens and a spread of tasteful magazines on the coffee table in front of the flat screen television. The area had been landscaped to match the Italian villa down the field. It was cute and kitchy and not my house. It really looked nothing like it did in my memory, and the apricot tree was so much smaller than I remembered, and the oak trees were dying.

A little while later, when I got tired of seeing everything that was no longer there, we wandered back over to the orchard and I saw that the fig tree had lived through the ordeal of the earthquake, or at least some of it had, because coming up from the split were many obviously newer branches. I desperately wanted to take pictures of it, kracken-like in its wild tangle. I picked an orange from one of Geno's orange trees, and we headed back down the road. I showed Dan where the water pump had been, and where I'd first seen cows having sex. We got to the car. I peeled the orange and tried to separate it, but it had very little structure, and mostly turned into a big juicy mess in my hands, so I shoved half the thing in my mouth at once, not realizing until I started to chew just how many seeds were in the thing.

We drove away with no photos, no drawings, nothing to show what was there now or what had been there once, and I felt curiously hollow inside. I only hoped that it had been worth it, that Dan had seen something of what it had meant to me to grow up in that place, even if it was a place my mom had hated, even if my sisters barely remembered it, even if my childhood friends' parents had needed 4-wheel drive to get up our road in the winter. It was a significant place in that it helped make me who I am. It was the last place I was truly free, and there's something to be said for visiting that place again, no matter how different it is from what it once was.

Musings on the Olympics

2010-02-18T12:26:00.003-07:00

* Damn, the conditions have been bad for a lot of events. Ice for the speedskaters, snow for the downhill skiiers. Even the snowboard halfpipe looked pretty treacherous. I understand wanting American athletes to do well, but I hate seeing anyone spend years or decades of their lives training for one chance to compete and it's all lost on a fall that happened because the conditions were bad.

* Interesting sartorial choices, from Ireland's neon Opening Ceremonies pants to the Team USA snowboarding uniform of an ugly plaid shirt and faux jeans to the Norwegian Curling team's pants. Fancy!

* And speaking of the Opening Ceremonies, how awesome was that! I was totally blown away by most of it, not only the spectacle of it (which was amazing) but also little things. For example, the flag bearer for the Iran team was a WOMAN.

* I'm not at all pleased with the coverage on NBC and am very frustrated by the tape delay, frustrated by the cuts between events, and uber-frustrated that there is still Bob Costas. Seriously, who likes that guy? So much of the coverage is skating-based and American athlete-centric, even when the front-runners for other events are not Americans. I don't care about the American guy who placed 12th or his heartwarming story. Show me the good stuff!

* I am officially old. TWO of the olympics-themed/related commercials have made me teary over the past week, this one (discussed here by my pal Jive Turkey) and this one. WAH.

Something to celebrate

2010-02-16T14:45:00.004-07:00

Despite my annoyance at Yet Another unpaid (furlough) day, the four-day weekend turned out to be, on balance, pretty good. The weekend included, but was not limited to:

* Both of us experiencing a comedy show (at a comedy club) for the first time. I liked one of the warm-up acts better than the main guy; Dan though the main guy was the best; but we both had a good time.

* a trip to the yarn store to acquire yarn for a new challenging project

* Not one, not two, but three awesome, celebratory meals (more on that in a bit)

* Homemade donut experiment

* A walk around a snowy, sunny park and a great conversation

* Lazy lounging

* Attending a fawncy dress party (and baking a cake!)

* no photos taken, sorry.

First, the cake. The birthday girl wanted a cake that incorporated dark chocolate, wine, and raspberries, and so after doing some brainstorming I modified a chocolate stout cake recipe, using wine instead of beer. Here's my version.

1 cup fruity red wine (I used Yellowtail Shiraz Cab)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup plain yogurt

6 ounces good semisweet chocolate chips
6 tablespoons light whipping cream

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9x13 pan; I use parchment paper in the bottom because my 9x13 pans are glass and this makes my life infinitely easier. Bring 1 cup wine and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add wine-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and fold batter until completely combined. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes. Transfer cake to rack; cool completely in the pan, then turn cake out onto serving thingy for drizzling ganache.

Ganache:
For the ganache, melt the chocolate and cream in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally. Drizzle over the top of cooled cake.

For my cake, I macerated a container of raspberries with a fork and mixed in a few more splashes of wine, then sliced the cake down the middle lengthwise (using a thread) and smushed the raspberry-wine goo all around, then put the top back on the cake and poured the ganache over. It was delicious.

I really enjoyed attending the party, which was fancy-dress optional (I opted yes), especially because I did my makeup and a special hairdo (wish I'd taken photos of this; it looked great!). The people who were dressed up fancy at the party were mostly people who had attended the awesome Halloween party we went to in October. The ones who didn't were just as fun to talk to.

And now the meals. On Saturday, before getting ready for the party, we trekked out to the big Asian market and stocked up on supplies for our Sunday dinner and also got some sushi-grade salmon and hamachi. Because we knew the party would be nibbles and wine only, we opted for a very very early dinner (or, perhaps, linner). While I did my hair and makeup and generally beautified myself, Dan made sushi rice and constructed some lovely nigiri. Yum!

Sunday, as you all know, was Chinese New Year*. We planned a delicious meal of Chinese greens and mushrooms, stir-fried with sesame seeds and ginger, served over udon; and an egg-tomato dish we had several times in China that we found a recipe for. It turned out to be just as good as we remembered. Plus, I got a can of red (adzuki) beans and turned it into red bean paste, then stuffed some wonton skins with the red bean paste and fried 'em up for a tasty treat.

And then yesterday was our 3-year engageaversary, and in honor of that Dan made an amazing saffron risotto with sauteed mushrooms and basil-chicken sausage. And a salad.

*Oh, was Sunday something else, too? We didn't notice and don't bother celebrating that. Not when our engageaversary is the 15th. :)

Schroedinger day

2010-02-09T15:16:00.003-07:00

On my way into the gym today, I passed by at least 3 people who didn't see me and who ran right into me. This all occurred within a less-than-five minute period. It made me feel invisible.

I'm not small. I'm wearing a bright red shirt. But that few minutes made me feel like I don't even exist, today.

* * * * * * *

Over the weekend, Dan and I watched two movies that had, on the surface, nothing in common, but when I thought more about them I realized that there was quite a bit of similarity in some of the themes. The two movies were Big Fan, starring Paton Oswalt, about a man whose entire life and identity and self revolves around his fandom for the New York Giants, and The Hurt Locker, about a bomb squad serving in the military in Iraq. I very, very, very much disliked Big Fan, and in fact it left me completely cold and kind of disgusted; I didn't like any of the characters or the story and mostly I just felt a vague mix of nausea and pity for the man who had no selfhood outside of being a Giants fan. In contrast, I very much enjoyed The Hurt Locker, the main character of which is kind of crazy and whose identity is completely wrapped up in being The Guy Who Does Crazy Shit Like Diffuse Bombs In Iraq While Taking Unnecessary Risks. Perhaps the difference, aside from Hurt Locker being a much better movie, was that the main character didn't garner pity. The main characters in both movies were portrayed as being at least somewhat lost when unable to participate in The Thing That Makes Them Them, and I found it interesting that in one case I really appreciated it while in the other I just wanted to throw up in my mouth a little. In any case, though I'm not generally a fan of war movies, I give The Hurt Locker two enthusiastic thumbs up.

* * * * * *

Sometimes I wonder about these things, what makes people who they are. Is the definition of a person what he likes? What she does for money? What he fears? What she wants? What makes me who I am? And why do some people seem to have no doubts whatsoever about their identity, while others change theirs up over and over again? Is a person truly who they think they are, regardless of anyone around them? Or must someone be observed by someone else in order to truly exist? Do people get married and/or have children, in some small part, to have people that MUST notice their existence? What about people who are older, have lost friends and family, shut-ins? What about people who go days or weeks without seeing or speaking to another human being?

I don't have the answers to any of these questions. But I will say that feeling like one does not exist when one seems to go unnoticed by those around one is a very lonely and bizarre feeling.

Fantasy, reality

2010-02-04T16:18:00.003-07:00

I am a roller derby queen.

I am in graduate school.

I am someone's mother.

I am living in California.

I have an awesome job.

I have a renewed passport and a fabulous trip planned.

I am blonde and it looks good on me.

I'm a redhead and it looks good on me.

I have straight, white teeth and pretty skin.

I have a tattoo.

I am a size smaller.

I have a tarantula.

I have completed a marathon.

I own a house. It has an amazing yard/garden.

I have a kitty.

I have a moustache.

I have a husband who loves me very much.

I'll take it.

15 minutes

2010-02-01T17:49:00.003-07:00

"Do you shave?" she asked, rubbing her hand up the other girl's leg.

"Yes," the girl announced, proudly. "But my mom doesn't know."

* * * * * * *

My introduction to the mysterious female world of hair depilation and removal came during a discussion of body hair before a ballet class one time. I was approximately ten years old, and while I knew, intellectually, that my mom shaved her legs (the razor in the shower we shared was enough to tell me that), I hadn't really thought about doing it myself before that moment. Most of the girls in that ballet class were a year or two older than I was, and all of them were more developed, physically. The few of us 10-year-olds in that class, all pre-pointe, were desperate to catch up with our older and curvier (though not too much, it was ballet after all, where stick figures are coveted) classmates.

Shortly after that, I stood in the shower and contemplated my mom's razor. I'm gonna cut myself, I thought. She'll know! I thought. But I tried it anyway. Not that I needed to; at 10 the hair on my legs was still little-kid peach fuzz. But it made me feel grown-up.

I didn't really NEED to start shaving until I was around 12 years old, and it took very little time - I didn't have much hair, and what I did have wasn't really dark. As I got older I noticed that when I'd shave, I'd end up with what I figured was razor burn - rashy, irritated skin that stung if I tried to put lotion on it. Then, it hurt to put lotion on the next day. Because I was a swimmer and in/at the pool every day in the summer all through high school, I did what every swimmer/girl in a bathing suit every day does: I shaved every day. And it hurt. Boy howdy, did it ever hurt. At some point, I think I mentioned how much it hurt to my mom, but she didn't understand, maybe, since it didn't bother her. I figured there wasn't anything else I could do but just deal with it. I tried different razors, different razor blades. I tried a variety of shaving creams, gels, unguents. Nothing seemed to make shaving any less of a pain in the leg skin, so finally I resigned myself to it. (And one time, I tried Nair at a friend's house, and that was even worse and didn't get rid of the hair, so I said "Screw it.")

I went a week without shaving one time in college, and was totally self-conscious about it. College Boyfriend thought it was kind of funny, though I think he preferred me less hairy, but I noticed that if I shaved less frequently, my skin was less irritated, so I started only doing it once or twice a week (more, if I was going to be wearing something that showed my legs or armpits). It never got any better. After we broke up, during my swinging single days, I only shaved when I felt like I absolutely needed to. Then, I started dating Dan, and my shaving schedule (a new, triple blade each time, fancy all-natural shave goo, and no lotion for at LEAST 2 days after shaving = VERY EXPENSIVE) revolved around our visits to one another.

One day, my roommate asked me if I would help her wax her legs. She'd let her hair grow out, and wanted to see what the difference of waxing versus shaving would be like. I was game, and we spent an hour melting tubs of wax in the microwave, while we took turns troweling on and ripping off the wax. It looked semi-painful, but not too bad, and because I'd learned on my friend's legs it didn't seem like it would be too difficult to do it for myself. And I figured that it couldn't hurt any worse than shaving already did. So I let the hair grow, and I bought some wax, and I spent an hour melting tubs of wax in the microwave, and I troweled it on and ripped it off, and you know what? It wasn't so bad.

The real test came the next day, when I put lotion on and didn't scream. In fact, my skin was far less irritated than it had ever been from shaving. The hair took several weeks to return, and when it did it was finer and thinner. I never looked back.

Over the years, I've experimented some, trying to find the best brand of wax, figure out what works well with my skin - some brands have chemicals that my skin doesn't agree with, and some smell funny when you melt them. I thought I'd found the holy grail of wax at one point (it had only 3 ingredients!), but they changed the formula a few years later and it no longer worked as well. I was getting ready to figure out my next steps (finding a new brand? buying a melter and going with some sort of pro stuff?) when a friend of mine, who hails from Brazil, mentioned to me at a party that she was finally, after years of tinkering, ready to start selling her wax - a formula that worked well for her and several of her Brazilian friends, all culturally accustomed to waxing. I wanted to hear more. "Next time you're hairy, give me a call," she said, "and you can come to my house and I'll wax you and you can tell me what you think of the wax and my technique."

The next time I was hairy, I gave her a call, and the rest is history. My friend makes the best wax ever. She's even improved the formula recently, and is making her living from selling her wax online and providing waxing services to people in her home. Her hope is to grow her business and sell primarily to salons and spas, and to facilitate that process she's working with her boyfriend to develop branding and a website. On Sunday, perhaps as hairy as I'd ever been, I went to her house and we set up lighting and shots and I modeled her wax (well, I sat there while she waxed my legs) and her boyfriend recorded it for the instructional video on her forthcoming website. Being famous for being hairy isn't necessarily how I would have chosen my 15 minutes of fame*, but in payment she gave me 2 pounds of awesome, awesome wax.

*No, mom, you can't see my face in the video.

Snack fail

2010-01-29T15:33:00.003-07:00

So someone has been bringing in these assorted "100 calorie packs" of snacky things like cookies and crackers to my office, and I thought that today I might sample one, just to see what all the fuss is about. I've spent my 7+ hours in the gym this week and been eating mighty healthily these days, and it's Friday, so why not, right?

For the record, the 100-calorie pack of "oreo thin crisps" tastes nothing like Oreos. They taste sort of like chocolate graham crackers. And now the inside of my mouth feels funny in kind of a bad way. SO not worth the 100 calories. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Oreos to begin with (I like the chocolate cookie part, not so much the sweetened crisco filling), but damn, yo. Those things taste like ass.

I think I'll have to make up for it when I get home by having a slice of homemade oatmeal molasses bread with butter on it.

Dress-up

2010-01-28T15:44:00.003-07:00

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do was to dress up in my mom's old clothes/shoes or other things in our dress-up pile, and imagine myself a fairy, a princess, a superhero, a Fawncy Lady in a floppy green felt hat, somewhere else and someone else.

One of the pieces in my dress-up wardrobe was an old bone-colored slip of my mom's, half lace, that was held up by tying the straps into knots. I imagined that one day I'd have boobs that would fill it out, and I regularly paired with with any number of other pieces to become something I was not.

With my best preschool friend Megan, who is wearing a clown costume my mom made. I think in this photo I'm 4 or 5. We are in the chicken coop, as you can see from the small chicken behind me. I still remember choosing that particular strand of yarn to belt my "dress". And I'm still a fan of braids.

Taken at the same time as the first photo here. Lissa is wearing my old swan costume from my first ballet recital. I've got the slip tucked into a sparkly blue skirt, and I'm holding a fairy princess wand. It looks like June from the flowers, so I'm probably seven and Lissa not yet four.

Somehow, I ended up with that slip as an adult - I'm not sure if I borrowed it from my mom for some occasion and never gave it back, or what, but the realization I had when I was big enough to untie the straps and fill out the lace bit on the top was pretty mind-blowing. I don't think I still have it - if memory serves, it finally disintegrated sometime during my college years. But I've got the photographic evidence, and the memories of feeling like a Fawncy Lady in the chicken coop.

Knee, jerk

2010-01-26T15:19:00.003-07:00

Recent focus in parts of the blogosphere about food choices have got me thinking about the food choices we make and why we make them. Many of the regular bloggers I read seem to be making changes, throwing out processed food, eschewing factory-farmed meat and dairy, and making healthier choices about food in general for themselves and their loved ones.

Awesome, sez I. I've made similar choices about what I buy and what I eat for years. But all this talk about food and where it comes from and what's good and what's bad is, I've noticed, triggering my knee to start moving up toward my gut of its own accord.

Internet, I have a confession to make. When I read about someone becoming vegan, when someone tells me they are going to become vegan, I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's a weird roil of turmoil, of "oh crap!", and my mind automatically goes from "I like this person" to "Shit, I don't know what to think about this person now."

Admittedly, I think there's sort of a good reason for my reaction. I think I've written before about some ex-friends and some of the travails we had with them during the time when they were engaged and we were engaged. All our troubles seemed to begin with the day they announced to us that they'd watched some sort of PETA propaganda video and decided to go vegan. I tried to be understanding and accommodating (even making birthday cakes with no eggs and using vegan margarine and soy milk for the frosting) but damn, it was a trying time, which ended in frustration and tears and no longer being friends with them. I guess I'm just not OK with being proselytized to, regardless of whether it's about how Jesus should be my personal savior or tracts from Church of Vegan.

Even though I've got reasons for my reactions, it's still probably not healthy for me to snap to an instant negative judgment about someone when they announce a major dietary change. As long as they don't try to convince me that The Vegan Way Is The Only Way, I really honestly don't have a problem with it. It's just that, since our experience in 2007, whenever someone I know (either in real life or internet life) becomes vegan, I feel as though that person is going to turn into an asshole.

What about you, Internet? Do you have any knee-jerk reactions to particular situations?

Sidekick

2010-01-25T12:15:00.003-07:00

Let me tell you a little about Robin.

She likes the bathroom. We call her Bathroom Cat, sometimes, and when you go in the bathroom and she's in her spot on the sink she purrs and rubs against the faucet until you turn it on for her to drink from.

She does this silent meow when you talk to her. It's quite endearing, and might lead one to believe that she does not make noise. That, however, is entirely not the case. In the mornings, when my alarm starts going off, so does her increasingly loud "Hey, I'm in here, pay attention to me!" noise. I rescue her from the room where she sleeps at night (still keeping her separated from Loki overnight, primarily to allow her some time to eat and use the litter box without fear of being pounced upon). I get up and pee, and Loki is already crouched right outside her door waiting to be let in. I open the door and say good morning, and she runs over to me and puts both paws up on my leg to be picked up. I carry her into the bedroom and deposit her on usually-still-sleeping Dan before I get in the shower.

When we brought her home from the shelter in the cardboard box with holes, this tiny kitty managed to shred the inside and nearly escape from it; I had to hold it closed on my lap. She also yowled up a storm like someone was pulling out her guts with a grappling hook.

Everything about bringing home a new kitty says to keep New Kitty separate from Existing Kitty for at least a week, so we did our best to follow every instruction. After multiple successful escape attempts (through two baby gates and 3 feet of cardboard duct-taped to the doorway), we realized she was just going to figure out how to get out of anything. Since then, she's avoided floors whenever possible and uses us as conveyance from room to room (bedroom to bathroom to living room to her room) so she can avoid being pummeled by Loki, who doesn't quite understand yet that it isn't nice to sneak up on her.

They share the window, reluctantly

She loves just about every toy we've tried, seems thoroughly interested in People Food in general (something we do our best to discourage), and purrs at the drop of a hat. She's made it very clear to both of us that we are her people.

Robin became Robin for a multi-part reason. First, Dan's brother has always called Loki Batman, because he has a mask on his face. Fair enough. Robin will be Loki's smaller sidekick. Robin is also an escape artist and an acrobat. And she's got a reddish chest and belly.

Yesterday morning I had Loki in my lap and Robin snuggling up to my leg. It was the closest they'd been with no hissing or yowling since we brought her home, and both napped peacefully, Robin's head inches from Loki's tail. It's taking him quite a while to get used to having a new kitty around; I'm sure he's still mourning Petra, and he's always been extremely territorial and Alpha Male, and we're doing our best to let him show Robin that He Is The Boss.

Please excuse my unwashed hair.

It's been less than a month, and we're both already quite smitten. Robin has a lot of personality traits that are similar to Loki's, and some that are similar to Petra's. Plus, she's got some things that are Just Hers, and I'm sure as she continues to grow (and grow and grow, sheesh, she's probably twice as big now as when we got her!) we'll learn more about our new friend.

Loki, circa 2005

Robin, who is already taking after her big brother

Photographic evidence

2010-01-21T10:27:00.004-07:00

My camera's batteries died on Christmas Eve, and I completely forgot about replacing them until a couple of days ago when I wanted to take a photo of the breakfast Dan made. I realized, then, that I had a month's worth of photos I hadn't looked at - and that I'd gone nearly a month without using my camera.

Today I sat down and looked at the photos I took of our Charlie Brown tree, of the last photos we have of Petra and Loki snuggling, and of our trip to California. It hurt. I think I'd been avoiding my camera so I wouldn't have to see those photos, taken when I was so sad, mourning Petra before she died and mourning her afterward. I got out of the habit of taking photos regularly, and it's something I enjoy, so I'm going to get back into it, and also get back in the habit of posting photos here.

That being said, here are some of the photos I took while we were in California for two weeks of December. The first ones are of the drive out, and the later ones I took at the new location of Berkeley Bowl (they have a NEW ONE NOW!). And the last one speaks for itself. I'll have a whole other post forthcoming with photos from Armstrong Woods, one of my favorite places in the world, but I gotta do some processing on those photos first. Because man, it's dark in there.

Taken in Green River, Utah, in an ice-fog. Every surface was coated with what was either snowflakes or ice crystals or both.

Note to advertisers: when shilling cheap-ass crappy burritos, "So nice, you'll taste it twice" is really NOT the sort of image you want to be selling.

Puppy pile! My sister, her husband, and their half-grown pup Astro.

The blahs

2010-01-20T13:24:00.003-07:00

As you may or may not have noticed, for the three of you still reading this, I haven't been posting much. I think it's because I have the January blahs. For the past few years, we've gone on a fun trip in January. Not this year - the double whammies of Petra's illness/death and Christmas, coupled with the furlough (unpaid) days I have for work now, meant that we couldn't afford to do any of the trips we talked about.

So here I sit, in the blahs. The sky is gray. It's cold outside, not horribly cold, but not pretty and snowy either. I'm still not over my mild cold. I want to go snowshoeing, but we have to buy snowshoes. I feel as though I'm once again stuck in a rut, unable to move in any direction.

We've had friends and relatives over the last couple of nights for dinner, which has been a nice change from the usual routine of computer-staring and TV-watching. I haven't yet mustered the energy to start any new projects. At least the house got cleaned over the 4-day weekend I just had.

I think January blahs are normal; however, in recent years there's been a trip to look forward to and/or go on, and this year, nothing. We have a new little kitty, growing daily, who has helped to bring some laughter back into our house of Dead Kitty Sadness, but even that isn't enough to get me out of the doldrums. I continue to go to the gym nearly every day, trudge to and from work, and wonder when I'll feel inspired again.

Far-reaching consequences

2010-01-12T12:04:00.002-07:00

One of the things I hauled back from California was a box of my old crap, including a time capsule I put together for an assignment my senior year of high school, other Very Important Things (like my blankie!), and some of my college papers. One of the papers I found was written for an international resources and development class (or something like that) - a discussion of China's one-child policy.

I still remember the research I did for this paper. It was mostly pre-internet, certainly pre-Wikipedia, and to find newspaper articles I had to use microfiche(!) (Yes, Virginia, there was once a time, not too long ago, when you couldn't actually use the internet to find ANYTHING you were looking for.) I spent hours researching and thinking about the one-child policy and its implications for the future. And today, I came across an article discussing the effects from the policy, 30 years on.

In 1979, China implemented a near-blanket policy regarding family size. A given set of parents was only allowed to have one child. Certain exceptions were made for members of specific ethnic groups, or for if the first child was mentally or physically impaired in some fashion. But for the vast majority of the population, for the past 30+ years, you get once child. One kid, who will grow up, get married, and (probably) have one kid. And if you have more than one? The additional kids won't be educated on the state's dime. And if you're a woman who works in a factory, chances are you end up with a forced abortion - or, at least, that's how it worked when I was researching my paper.

But wait! What happens when all those kids who were born in the last 30 years grow up and want to get married? If you're in China, the gender ratio is highly skewed due to traditional beliefs and desires. In China, if you're only going to have one kid, you're likely to want a boy. In China, boys grow up to be men, who have higher status and greater earning potential. In China, male children care for their aging parents, while female children marry into other families. China has a long and storied history of female infanticide, a practice that, while distasteful at the very least, makes sense in the cultural context. The practice continued after the one-child policy was put into effect, and, once ultrasounds with gender-detecting technology became more prevalent, fell by the wayside as many women opted instead to abort their girls rather than bring them to term.

It's quite sad, really, that a policy that was intended to help with population control will have such long-reaching effects. Not only is there a horribly skewed gender ratio of as many as 130 males for every 100 females, but the consequences include millions of men being unable to marry. And women being abducted and trafficked.

Maybe in another 15 or 20 years, when the effects of the one-child policy take full effect, a cultural shift will come about. Girls and women are important, too. I understand China isn't the only place where sex-selective abortion is a problem, but, in my opinion, the fact that it happens anywhere is a problem. Maybe China will realize there's value in girls and women just as much as in boys and men.

We have a new friend.

2010-01-04T15:06:00.001-07:00

She needs a name. Suggestions?

Another year, another year-end meme

2009-12-30T13:18:00.003-07:00

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?

I did all the flowers for a big fancy evening hotel June wedding, all by myself. Yay!

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I made a few last year, but I'm not going to go into that. I think in 2010 I'll be a little more go-with-the-flow.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Jive Turkey gave birth to Sadie Rose Turkey. That was pretty awesome. Two of my cousins had their fourth and third babies, respectively.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Yes. Petra Cat Kitty died on December 10. That sucked major ass.

5. What countries/places did you visit?

January: Went to NYC and Connecticut, adding two new states (for me).
March: California (Bay Area and LA)
May: California
July: Road trip through Wyoming to Yellowstone, and through Montana on the way back (one new state)
August: Traveled around CO for work; went on a weekend mountain-climbing adventure near Aspen.
October: Road trip to Austin and San Antonio, TX, adding Oklahoma to my new state list.
December: Road trip to CA through Utah and Nevada both ways, though we took different routes (the way back was mostly Nevada and Wyoming)

No other countries. :(

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

A new job in a new state. And a fetus.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Obama being sworn in as the president in January was a pretty momentous occasion. Dan graduated in May, so that was pretty good. June 6 was the big wedding I did flowers for. And Petra died on December 10.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Ever-so-slowly learning patience. Also, my little sister and I exchanged teachable Christmas presents: I taught her to knit and she (re-)taught me to drive stick. I plan to actually get good at driving my own car in 2010. Also, with the exception of a small car loan nearly paid off, I became debt-free.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Same as last year (the lack of new job and losing camera), only this time I lost the camera out of my backpack here in Denver.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Thankfully, no, not really. I had a couple of minor colds and some annoying neck pain flareup, but that was about it.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

I didn't buy a lot. We mostly tried to save money and pay off debt. But I found a pair of walking shoes on our recent trip to California that I am thoroughly smitten with and think they'll probably last me a long, long time.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

I don't know if behavior is the right term, but Dan finishing his degree was hella awesome.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Sarah Palin. Several other "celebrities."

14. Where did most of your money go?

Paying off debt, savings, and vet bills.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

My 30th birthday in March. And doing the flowers for that wedding.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

Vampire Weekend, "M79"
Beyonce, "Single Ladies"

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Sadder for several reasons.
b) thinner or fatter? Fatter. Feh.
c) richer or poorer? We have a lot more in savings, so definitely richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Travel. Swimming. Wedding flowers. Being content with where I am and not being so impatient about The Next.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

TV watching. We got cable and we have a pretty TV and it's so hard not to take advantage of it.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

With my family in California.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?

I fell more in love with Dan. 21 months of marriage and we haven't killed each other yet, woohoo!

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Mad Men. Glee.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I try not to hate. It hurts the hater more than the hate-ee.

24. What was the best book you read?

I read a lot more books than I ever wrote about on here (including three in the last couple of weeks) but I think my favorite was Anathem by Neil Stephenson.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Dan discovered and shared a lot of new music with me this year, much of it local (the Hollyfelds). For some reason in 2009 I got interested in music again. I'd even heard of most of the music at that fateful awards show where Kanye got up on stage while Taylor Swift was accepting an award. Also, I realized I like Lady Gaga. She is wicked talented.

26. What did you want and get?

More social opportunities. We have become friends with quite a few people that we only knew tangentially last year. Having parties to go to is fun!

27. What did you want and not get?

More than I'll go into here. Best not to end the year on a downer note!

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

I don't know if I could choose a favorite. We saw so many good movies this year! The ones that stand out in my mind include Star Trek, Up, Away We Go, and Where The Wild Things Are.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I had a tea party where people dressed up in costume or wore mad hats, and I gave the attendees unbirthday presents. I was 30 years old. My sisters dressed as tea bags, which was awesome.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Petra not getting sick and dying.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

A hot mess.

32. What kept you sane?

Dan, and liquor, once again!

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I don't know if anyone really tickled my fancy this year.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

GLBT rights (again).

35. Who did you miss?

I missed everyone in California from May until I got to see them again in December. I'm never going that long without a visit home again.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

Wombat

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.

Patience is a virtue, and I often forget to just enjoy what is.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

"It's going to take a little time
While you're waiting like a factory line"
--Vampire Weekend, M79

So, we went to California...

2009-12-29T09:42:00.004-07:00

Hello, internet!

So...we kind of got in the car on Monday the 14th and stayed overnight in a $30 fancy-ish hotel room right off the strip in Vegas and then ended up in the Bay Area on December 15th. I so, so, so needed the break - having not been to California since May, I was extremely homesick. And we both needed to get out of town and away from our sad, Petra-less house. The drive out was relatively uneventful, the first day of which I spent approximately ten hours finishing a knitted giftmas present for my sister and her husband. We did not, as one might expect, gamble, or do anything other than eat and crash in our hotel room in Vegas.

The trip was exactly what I was hoping for - evenings spent visiting with friends and family, days spent visiting our Berkeley and San Francisco haunts. We spent an entire day in San Francisco on the 17th, topped by an awesome dinner at a Burmese restaurant with Monkey, up in NorCal for work. We slept. We attended birthday parties and threw parties of our own (complete with rockin' mamas and wombats); I baked cookies in one sister's kitchen for the other sister's first hosted extended family gathering in their new house. We met new doggies and patted old ones; we got loved up by Linus and drooled on by toddlers and saw some live bluegrass and had actual facetime with so many of the people I love most in the world.

It wasn't a white Christmas. It was green, and sunny, and warm-ish. It only rained on us once. We had sushi; we played games; we went to the movies (Avatar!) and slept in four different houses and opened presents and VACATED. And when it was time to pack up the car, late on Christmas Day, I was ready to come back to Denver, recharged for another little while. The trip back was also uneventful, and we spent most of both days driving listening to Alice Sebold read The Lovely Bones via downloadable audiobook. Dan picked up Loki yesterday and last night the three of us slept in our bed, still missing our sweet girl, but happy to be back together as a little family again.