Let this headache take over my brain and then pass, knit, knit, and laundry.
One thousand things are changing all around me. Each individual change is positive, but somehow taken together they are causing me to completely spazz out. Coworker D made the observation that if I’m in the midst of things exploding all around me, I’m calm and pragmatic. On the other hand, if things are unknown for any period of time ahead of me, I’m a total mess. I don’t like to think about all the possibilities for things to go wrong, but if something actually does go wrong then I’m fine. The life of a procrastinator, I guess.
At any rate, I know things will be okay. Things are actually pretty great, all elements considered. And after work today I found the perfect beer to represent my current situation. It’s a beer called “Lucky” in a bottle shaped like a demented, smiling Buddha. It’s so funny the way life presents you with perfect opportunities at the perfect time. So I’m going to try to be more like this drunk Buddha and less like my normal spastic self. Goals are good.
O and I watched a Joe Strummer documentary on the television this morning. It led to downloading the Mescaleros albums and rekindling my love affair with this song:
It’s a classic good times songs, and serves the dual purpose of making me feel awesome and making me cry, and that’s pretty rare. Basically perfectly constructed, like this 80° Halloween and my adorable costume. I figured this year I would do myself a favor and make myself look actually attractive, instead of like a creature-monster like last year. And no, before you ask, I am not going as a slutty pumpkin, though ladies at the party last night kept groping my gourds.
I’ve been having trouble sleeping for a few nights in a row. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been drinking caffeine later in the day or what, but over the years my nighttime ritual and my lack of acceptance of anything other than perfect sleeping conditions have intensified dramatically. Maybe I’m secretly a princess (Mom and Dad – are you secret royalty?). And while I think a pea would probably smoosh pretty easily under my weight and the weight of a hundred mattresses, here are other things that may indicate my gentle, sensitive nature:
- The princess and the tiny wrinkle in the mattress pad
- The princess and the sliver of air getting into the blanket cocoon
- The princess and the unevenly distributed blankets
- The princess and the pee
- The princess and the cup of water that spilled all over the bed
- The princess and the thermostat
- The princess and the breath hitting any part of her, even her own breath.
So, anyway, I think that all sorts of external things are playing a role in keeping me up, even beyond 5pm cups of tea. But that’s neither here nor there (nor does it belong here, specifically, on this blog). What does belong on this blog is this jam:
Life is too intense. Practice constant vigilance.
Yesterday, I bought a bright, shiny, shrinkwrapped copy of The Wild Things, Dave Eggers’s novelization of Where The Wild Things Are, the book and the movie. I’ve only read the first four chapters, but they are so incredibly good.
At 4:30 he was back in the cool comfort of his fort, peering through the peephole, watching for any movement at his house. No, he wasn’t cold. One might think that a boy who was out in the snow for so long would get cold, but Max was not. He was warm, partly because he had on many layers, and partly because boys who are part wolf and part wind do not get cold.
Big brother Erich, who was in town for the weekend, asked me to read it and give him some feedback about it because he thinks it might be a good book to teach his students, once he has a coveted teaching position. I think it will work, not just because so far it’s just a really incredible book but also because, at one point in time, Erich was this kid:
This weekend I dressed up like Ruth Powers at a very pre-Halloween Simpsons costume party. I also played some two-hand touch football. I caught two touchdown passes but then I was sore for days. It was intense! But then also fun, as activity usually ends up being.
Even more exciting, though, is that Becky S. and Thom C. put another human into the world! His name is Benjamin Franklin and he is a little perfect guy:
photo from papa Dogs & Music
I’m so stoked about new life today and I’m very relieved mama, papa and baby are all safe and happy. I’m not stoked that I have a cold and can’t go visit them and be awkward. Friends and new friends are the best.
I just spent an hour after work doing a pretty thorough inventory of my clothing in preparation for the fall. I just wanted to know whether I need to buy cardigans or not. Though in packing away all of the clothes I can’t or don’t wear anymore, I discovered a few things about myself:
- I am plain.
- The vast majority of my clothes are teeshirts. I mean, vast. I have three drawers that I separated into three categories: Bottoms, Long Sleeves and Short Sleeves. The fullest one by a mile is Short Sleeves and it is primarily teeshirts, and that’s taking into account the sweaters and sweatshirts and hoodies in the Long Sleeves drawer. The emptiest drawer is Bottoms.
- I like to buy band teeshirts and I like to paint on plain teeshirts.
- I have many (many) teeshirts that would be unsuitable to wear on their own because of immodest sheerness. I only have one plain teeshirt that I could wear on its own that isn’t screen printed or painted on. I just ordered three more exactly like it except in different colors.
- I have five pairs of pants that are suitable for wearing outside the house and three of them are jeans. I likewise have five skirts and three of them are black.
- I have like eight pairs of sweatpants.
- I have two pairs of shorts and they are identical running shorts.
- I like solid colors. I have eight articles of clothing in my dresser that aren’t solid (not including anything screened or painted, but including stripes).
- I have maybe two articles of clothing that could be described as “sexy.”
- I have not a single article of clothing that could be described as “whimsical.”
- My shoes are disproportionately fancier than my clothes.
- Over the years, my taste has become so rigid that unless a teeshirt comes from American Apparel or BDG, I don’t buy it. Of the twenty-two teeshirts I wear on a daily basis, only two don’t obey that rule. One was a gift and one I bought from a thrift store the summer of 2002.
- I have a giant stack of teeshirts that either don’t fit me or I don’t wear for whatever reason that I can’t bear to part with. It’s the largest stack of all.
This doesn’t include any special occasion clothes, of course. Those live in the closet and rarely ever see the light of day and are generally of a much higher quality. But I have determined that if I’m dressing for the job I want, then I want to be a record store clerk or a mechanic. I’m open to gifts and anything that is nice, comfortable, and colorful.
Moral: Let’s go shopping.
It’s September 21st. What? What is this? Where is my life going? Hopefully it is going here:
