"The trouble with unicorns" is that it sounds much better than "The trouble with drinking," which is the real reason I'm awake. Awake and wishing I had deployed better sense after drink #2. Ah yes, Psycho Suzi's -- home of the sweet, tasty multi-booze whatevers that come in cute carafes with cherries and little plastic monkeys on top. I should have brought my monkeys home with me -- there were three of them. Not only would they have perched atop my laptop screen and mocked me deservingly as I typed, but I could have sewn them down to something later on. Drat. But I guess I was too busy thinking about the bike trip home. A long trip, by normal reckoning, since I was being extra careful. And holding my skirt down with one hand, having forgotten to don my leggings before embarking. Which turned out to be not such a big deal, and more comfortable besides. Assuming I didn't offend anyone.
Three monkeys. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
The good news is that I had a great time. And got home before the sun set, in one piece; sort of a miracle considering all the construction and sealcoating going on between there and here. Loose gravel everywhere, signs and cones randomly blocking the areas adjacent to busy streets. I actually rode under one of those signs -- I'd done it sober, so I knew it was possible, though I was tempting fate a tiny bit. Had my helmet on, just in case.
So now, here I am, two cups of coffee three glasses of water two ibuprofen and a handful of snacks later, wishing I had kept it to two monkeys. From now on, this will be my measure of social-outing sensibility: how many monkeys. Something to keep in mind for next week, since I've convinced my church buddies to once again hold an all-staff meeting at Suzi's.
laptop confessional
Friday, July 25, 2008
the trouble with rules
The trouble with rules: they are by nature exclusionary. In this case, I apologize to one or two of my friends for not realizing until a minute ago that I've had my security set too high on this blog. Which means that no one has bothered to post comments, because it required registration and understandably many folks are reluctant to have to memorize yet another password. Oops! All fixed. And to all you spammers out there, who will now start leaving phony bot-propelled comments in order to get free ad placement: fuck you.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
the afl-cio
In the kitchen drawer of Really Useful Things, I have one of those round rubber grippies that helps you get the lids off pickle jars and such. I mostly use it to remove the so-called twist-off caps you find on certain beer bottles and other glass-bottled beverages. This rubber grippie came courtesy of the glass, plastic and pottery workers local, here in Minneapolis; the good ol' AFL-CIO. And whenever I need my husband to hand me the thing, that's what I ask for: "Honey, could you get me the AFL-CIO please?" Because somehow, you really feel equipped when you take a whack at a stubborn jar lid using all the persuasive power of the AFL-CIO.
Sadly, the thing is looking pretty ratty these days. Jagged tears in the middle where those nasty beer-bottle caps hook their edges into the rubber. Stained, a little dirty, but still functional. It's not a thing you can patch. What will we do without it? When it finally bites the dust, how can the average rubber grippie ever compare? Perhaps it's a not-so-subtle metaphor for the faltering strength of labor unions across the country. Still I think an essential champion of the worker, but some unions are so bloated and corporate in their own thinking -- it's an exception when I hear a good story about a union contract or a mediated dispute. My husband's union mainly gives us cause to worry these days, wondering whose side they're on anyway. Their achievements in the realm of protections for the tenured profs are a thing of the past; they are way behind on protecting the rights of the adjuncts, who are just another class of freelancers given no benefits or assurances of any kind, keeping costs low.
Nevertheless, the glass, plastic and pottery workers local can forever boast the glory of the best rubber grippies in Nordeast.
Sadly, the thing is looking pretty ratty these days. Jagged tears in the middle where those nasty beer-bottle caps hook their edges into the rubber. Stained, a little dirty, but still functional. It's not a thing you can patch. What will we do without it? When it finally bites the dust, how can the average rubber grippie ever compare? Perhaps it's a not-so-subtle metaphor for the faltering strength of labor unions across the country. Still I think an essential champion of the worker, but some unions are so bloated and corporate in their own thinking -- it's an exception when I hear a good story about a union contract or a mediated dispute. My husband's union mainly gives us cause to worry these days, wondering whose side they're on anyway. Their achievements in the realm of protections for the tenured profs are a thing of the past; they are way behind on protecting the rights of the adjuncts, who are just another class of freelancers given no benefits or assurances of any kind, keeping costs low.
Nevertheless, the glass, plastic and pottery workers local can forever boast the glory of the best rubber grippies in Nordeast.
burning down the house
So today I walked across the park to Cali, to get some egg rolls and cream cheese wontons (egregious calorie consumption, and me not riding the bike yet this week. Shame. Guilt. Yum.) After scuttling across Broadway, always dicey, I turned right and smelled a smell. That burnt-up-house smell. And there on the corner was the green stucco with the chain link fence, clearly gutted, with the broken windows still laying in the scorched grass. Boarded by now, yet charred holes gape from the second floor. Roof peeled back around the edges, melted flashing -- a total loss. I sort of vaguely remember the guy who lived there, a heavyweight white man who hung around in his garage; and probably ate at Cali a lot, since they are right across the alley.
I smelled that smell, and I wondered if it was or was not the smell from my dream this morning. After all, I launched up out of bed before I was fully conscious, propelled by that unmistakeable scent of wood and destruction. But it dissipated as I became aware, and left me with a sense of perfume. Meanwhile, white guy came around with a friend as I was leaving the restaurant, and woefully gave her the tour. I felt badly for him -- for the way his little green house took up all of the tiny lot on that Broadway corner, with barely six feet between the former rooms of his dwelling and the street -- what huddled shelter it might have provided him now gone. And who would build on that lot now? The City probably domained him out of as much yard as is legal -- it's a really unappealing location. Loud. And just down the street from the gas station where the clerk was shot and killed a few years ago.
The smell of burnt wood has so many variations. A home going up has a certain acrid note; the opposite of incense. Somewhere near my house there's a firepit or a smoker that they use at night half the summer, which produces volumes of cedar and hickory smoke and requires us to sleep with our windows shut. (Dammit.) But then, a campfire of pine and hardwood is a lovely, evocative thing. Crackling twigs and burnt marshmallows. The gradations are subtle. But what about those folks in California, who smell acres of woodland inferno drifting sootily across the land for weeks or even months at a time? And what else do the firemen know, can they tell what the age of a structure might be by the smell of it as it is consumed?
My dream leaves me with many more questions than answers.
I smelled that smell, and I wondered if it was or was not the smell from my dream this morning. After all, I launched up out of bed before I was fully conscious, propelled by that unmistakeable scent of wood and destruction. But it dissipated as I became aware, and left me with a sense of perfume. Meanwhile, white guy came around with a friend as I was leaving the restaurant, and woefully gave her the tour. I felt badly for him -- for the way his little green house took up all of the tiny lot on that Broadway corner, with barely six feet between the former rooms of his dwelling and the street -- what huddled shelter it might have provided him now gone. And who would build on that lot now? The City probably domained him out of as much yard as is legal -- it's a really unappealing location. Loud. And just down the street from the gas station where the clerk was shot and killed a few years ago.
The smell of burnt wood has so many variations. A home going up has a certain acrid note; the opposite of incense. Somewhere near my house there's a firepit or a smoker that they use at night half the summer, which produces volumes of cedar and hickory smoke and requires us to sleep with our windows shut. (Dammit.) But then, a campfire of pine and hardwood is a lovely, evocative thing. Crackling twigs and burnt marshmallows. The gradations are subtle. But what about those folks in California, who smell acres of woodland inferno drifting sootily across the land for weeks or even months at a time? And what else do the firemen know, can they tell what the age of a structure might be by the smell of it as it is consumed?
My dream leaves me with many more questions than answers.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
3am eternal
Remember that song? By Snap! The folks who brought you "I've Got the Power!" The POWAH.
I digress. Already.
A dream woke me, perhaps an hour ago, and I haven't been back to sleep.
I came to so suddenly that the details of the dream, the narrative, are almost non-existent. I remember someone offering me a choice of two things -- someone's hands held before me outstretched, a different object in each. I think I was supposed to choose based on the smell of the substance proferred, though to what end I don't recall.
In the first hand was something pleasant but forgettable. In the second hand (the presenter's left) was a piece of wood. It was very fragrant, and smelled like it was burning -- a perfumed wood, not like chips one burns on the grill but more of an incense. Cedar, or pinyon? The burning aspect of the smell was so strong that it woke me abruptly with the fear that my house was in danger, though the fear wasn't part of the dream. I got out of bed and walked all around. By the time I reached the kitchen on the other end of the house I knew there was no scent to detect. Everything was fine.
The scent in the dream was still strong in the first few seconds after I awoke, but quickly disappeared. And I was left with a little soundtrack running through my head, which isn't terribly unusual -- in this case, a piece from the score for Amelie.
I wish I could say that this dream had some significance, but the little I can recall belies it. It's probably just one of those things -- a strong scent recreated by the synapses, for the synapses. Nothing I can remember encountering lately in life. Just a little phrase, a scrap, of some sensual life I've lived without my conscious self.
I digress. Already.
A dream woke me, perhaps an hour ago, and I haven't been back to sleep.
I came to so suddenly that the details of the dream, the narrative, are almost non-existent. I remember someone offering me a choice of two things -- someone's hands held before me outstretched, a different object in each. I think I was supposed to choose based on the smell of the substance proferred, though to what end I don't recall.
In the first hand was something pleasant but forgettable. In the second hand (the presenter's left) was a piece of wood. It was very fragrant, and smelled like it was burning -- a perfumed wood, not like chips one burns on the grill but more of an incense. Cedar, or pinyon? The burning aspect of the smell was so strong that it woke me abruptly with the fear that my house was in danger, though the fear wasn't part of the dream. I got out of bed and walked all around. By the time I reached the kitchen on the other end of the house I knew there was no scent to detect. Everything was fine.
The scent in the dream was still strong in the first few seconds after I awoke, but quickly disappeared. And I was left with a little soundtrack running through my head, which isn't terribly unusual -- in this case, a piece from the score for Amelie.
I wish I could say that this dream had some significance, but the little I can recall belies it. It's probably just one of those things -- a strong scent recreated by the synapses, for the synapses. Nothing I can remember encountering lately in life. Just a little phrase, a scrap, of some sensual life I've lived without my conscious self.
Monday, July 21, 2008
reflecting pool
So it's obvious to everyone by now that the church has pretty much taken over my life. Enough so that I'm starting to forget what that first rush of faith was like, and my experience of the details is very much defined by what's on my desk, the church secretary's desk.
It's not that I miss the life before the epiphany -- like life before love, or before your children, the past is without appeal -- like the pages of a pop-up book as they go by, folding flat and closed like a closet while the new life unfolds and bursts forth.
But I've been lazy about the Bible lately, lazy about prayer (such an alien confession for most of you readers, not that I mind; though I can hear some of you squirming in your seats.) I'm procrastinating my seminary app, even as JJ plows through her architecture and engineering exams; and I'm obsessing over certain items that probably only exist to distract me from the path. In short, I suppose I'm typical. Undisciplined sinner. This isn't the Catholic church, though, so nobody asks.
But I think about it all the time.
Everything I do, everything I am, is encompassed by this now. "Faith is the desperate dive from the sinking boat of human endeavor," says Max Lucado, and once you jump there's no bottom. Immersed utterly. Will I turn into a mermaid? Will I splash to the surface just as suddenly as I fell in, some day, and wonder where I've been? I don't think so. The past folds up behind you and the pages only turn from right to left, around here.
Where to now?
It's not that I miss the life before the epiphany -- like life before love, or before your children, the past is without appeal -- like the pages of a pop-up book as they go by, folding flat and closed like a closet while the new life unfolds and bursts forth.
But I've been lazy about the Bible lately, lazy about prayer (such an alien confession for most of you readers, not that I mind; though I can hear some of you squirming in your seats.) I'm procrastinating my seminary app, even as JJ plows through her architecture and engineering exams; and I'm obsessing over certain items that probably only exist to distract me from the path. In short, I suppose I'm typical. Undisciplined sinner. This isn't the Catholic church, though, so nobody asks.
But I think about it all the time.
Everything I do, everything I am, is encompassed by this now. "Faith is the desperate dive from the sinking boat of human endeavor," says Max Lucado, and once you jump there's no bottom. Immersed utterly. Will I turn into a mermaid? Will I splash to the surface just as suddenly as I fell in, some day, and wonder where I've been? I don't think so. The past folds up behind you and the pages only turn from right to left, around here.
Where to now?
Friday, July 18, 2008
more on Ines Rosales
Turns out to be anise, not fennel. Duh.
There are lots of blog posts out there about the Ines Rosales crackers, a product of Spain (or so it is said.) Evidently there's also a sexy Fox News traffic reporter in NY by that name, so watch out -- she has a following. It's an interesting juxtaposition, when you Google.
There are lots of blog posts out there about the Ines Rosales crackers, a product of Spain (or so it is said.) Evidently there's also a sexy Fox News traffic reporter in NY by that name, so watch out -- she has a following. It's an interesting juxtaposition, when you Google.
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