through these glasses

earworms

last night i had dreams of owning an ancient blue pickup truck. ...that could fly. and getting a black eye the shape of vermont. and that poor miss kitty got stuck in the kitchen sink drain. because sink drains, as everyone knows, are shaped and function like the ones in the curbs on the streets that go to the sewer system. and a cat CAN get stuck in one of those. (well, either she was stuck, or the logo for the musical "cats" was alive and living on the side of my kitchen sink, blinking at me. (i'm not sure which option is more disturbing) and then i woke up with a tune running through my head. it took me a few hours to be distressed that i was intermittently singing "haha, hehe, hoho." i thought it was just a variation on the laughing yoga therapy i'd read about yesterday, until i realized the refrain to the earworm i was stuck with was: "happy place where life is beautiful all the time" uh oh. i'm not sure i should be grateful or not. for a brief moment in time, it displaced the earworm i've been stuck with since watching the kenedy center honor's musical tribute to mel brooks. while the tune is lilting and catchy in a beautiful sort of way, there is just something disturbing about humming over and over and over a line whose corresponding words are 'springtime for hitler and germany'

weathering the seafaring

her: "Any news on the boy ? Where is He? Sorry, I'm not helping."

me: "I got nothin. ugh. The boat is due back in port Saturday afternoon I think, so maybe some sort of contact then, but I've been telling myself not to expect anything until Sunday at the earliest.

so....

this is me being patient...

I. Hate. Patient.

In fact, why don't we just take the "i" out of patient altogether since it really doesn't belong there. That gives us patent -- as in cute patent leather mary janes I nearly bought yesterday to cheer myself up... now THAT I can relate to."

meme-i-pedia

Wikipedia Meme

via my internet crush

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. List any holidays
6. Post it.

March 23 - 3 events:
1775 - American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his famous speech -"give me liberty or give me death" at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.

1903 - The Wright Brothers apply for a patent on their invention of one of the first successful airplanes after much hard work.

2001 - The Russian Mir space station is disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

March 23 - 2 births and a death:
1887 - Prince Felix Yussupov, Russian assassin of Rasputin (d. 1967)
1953 - Chaka Khan, American singer
1964 - Peter Lorre, Hungarian-born actor (b. 1904)

March 23 - Holidays:
Roman Empire - The fifth and final day of Quinquatria, held in honor of Minerva.
Ancient Latvia - Lieldienas held in honor of Mara and other pagan goddesses.
Pakistan - National Day (Republic Day).

a piece of cake

A friend of mine loves to underscore her points with popular adages. Unfortunately, there's nothing worse than angrily saying something like "oooooh! you really are a piece of cake!!!" mid-argument--especially since having your sparring partner crumple in a fit of laughter wasn't your goal.

"I'm either a piece of work, or I take the cake." he quipped, struggling for composure. "I am not now, nor will I ever be... pastry."

Just yesterday, it was "Well I didn't just wake up off a pickup truck!"

"What?!"

"Oh, you know what I mean... wake up and smell the roses. I wasn't born in a henhouse." she harrumphed.

At this point it seems futile to try to untangle it all--turnips, coffee and foxes are jockeying for position like a pack of colts.

...and actually, I kindof like the idea of my wakeup call being rose scented. I've never been much of a coffee drinker.

petulant appliances

There are some days I wake up, roll out of bed and feel like I can take on the world. Impossible to do list you say? No problem; the difficult I can do, the impossible just takes a bit longer.

and then there's today...

My stereo gasped it's last wheezy, staticy gasps last night. My car is in serious need of some tlc from a good mechanic (as opposed to the sheisters at the dealership who took a look/see at it before I left on vacation), and now I have no airconditioning in the house. The window unit upstairs spits out hot air/ The house's central air spits out more or less cool air. in the middle of the night. when it's cool outside. but the outside unit where all the coolness happens? it's on strike. I've tried all of the paltry tricks I know to coax it into movement, but it's being as stubborn as an overpaid union worker who doesn't care that their lavish demands will bring down their ailing company as a whole and then there will be no money for anyone. 

All I really wanted to do this weekend was go and buy some annuals for the flower boxes and some showy perennials to fill in the gaping holes in the front garden. Did I mention the city put down my elm tree a year and a bit ago? I was all over the darwinism of letting a shade garden turn into a sun garden. I was even enjoying seeing which plants packed up and went home, and which ones put out welcome mats for the neverending sunshine. I'm just not so sure that it's the best use of limited funds... what with the general lack of working on the part of some key elements of my day to day life.

Can I go home now? I'm tired of being a grown up.

snippets

There's a certain brand of silliness that comes out when you've been brainstorming with someone for too long without adequate amounts of caffeine and/or food. It gets worse in the lull of a weekend midafternoon where you'd rather be curled up for a nap at home with the cat. for me, it hit a point on Sunday where we were utter nonsense and things like this started coming out of our mouthes:

"I think I've gotten all your snippets down."

"Snippets?!?! I don't have any snippets!!" (add the cracking veneer of an indignantly cross look here)

"I think there's an ointment you can get for that..."

"The snippets! they're everywhere! aaaaugh!"

"I think I just got one in my eye..."

___________

This is why I think I'm not suited to being a freelancer. While I like doing different and varied projects, I'm just no good at buckling down and dealing with timetables and deadlines in my off-work hours. I'd rather spend the day not getting the work done (...probably also explains the embarrassingly huge piles of laundry on my bedroom floor...). That, and the hunch I have that given the opportunity to work (read: live) in my pj's and bunny slippers all day long, I'd have no real incentive to wear real clothes (ever. again.), gives me a special kind of thankfulness for my day job this week.