Thinking, Planning

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED

2011-09-09T11:22:00.003-04:00

Check me out over at my NEW website: AprilLineWriting.com

You can register for creative writing workshops, read all the old blogs that are here, new blogs that are more interesting and better written and less self conscious.

I'm still building the site, and I might give it a facelift in the not too distant future, but it's pretty good so far.

On Truth and Creative Nonfiction

2011-08-09T00:07:00.002-04:00

I went to Pitt, allegedly the birthplace of creative nonfiction, for a semester for graduate school. Something that got paid a lot of lip-service was the role of truth in Creative Nonfiction. Here's where I've landed on the matter. Just today actually. First some back story:

I want to write a novel about my grandma. Baptized Florence, but Flossie, Flo, Sarge, or any other of a slew of nicknames to her friends and family. Florence Ella Leib died long about 2005, when my baby was just a wee baby. She was an ahead-of-her-time feminist pragmatist. At least that's the truth that matters to me.

Here are the other truths that matter to me: She served in WWII. She had a baby at age 17 to a guy who didn't marry her. She had 4 more babies with another guy who also didn't marry her, but who at least lived with her and pretended until he became a PTSD drunk and she worked 3 jobs to support her 4 kids, one of whom was my dad.

Recently, I was at some family thing--right, it was a family reunion with about 6 of the not-dead people from my grandma's generation, most of whom are now dying off. It was the other side of the family, but one of Flossie's cousins or something married one of my mom's mom's brothers or something. In any case, the two sides of my family are connected somehow via marriage (but not via blood thank the lucky constellations). Anyhow, all the folks in my mom's generation, who've started losing parents now, were all ruminating over how it's important to ask these questions we have about our parents' parents. Because before we know it, they'll be gone and there won't be any more asking.

Since then, I've been in minor panic mode trying to figure out how to get one-on-one with a couple of Flossie's living siblings who're cogent enough to converse. And it occurred to me today, as I read this disaster of a short story I wrote, that the important truth in fiction is the emotional truth. Whatever my grandma's youth was like, what I make up will be at least as cool and, as far as anybody who's alive can remember, as accurate!

Boy-oh was that a liberating epiphany. The stuff I know is enough. And unless there's some political or social or moral reason for the whole journalistic integrity thing, creative nonfiction can be fiction as far as I'm concerned. Arguably, all realist fiction is creative nonfiction. The only stuff that's really fiction would be dystopian sci fi and those sorts of things. But to a schizophrenic, even those things could seem real.

The notion that perception is reality has been hitting my home base pretty hard of late.

Book Group: Read the Free Short Story, "Cliff Hanging" first, okay?

2011-08-08T23:45:00.002-04:00

So like if we were really a book group, there are spoilers in here, so if you didn't note the title of this here blog post, go read the story first, m'kay? It lives Here.

I put this in a separate post because I didn't want those of you, friends of mine, who will read this story just because I wrote it, to bring my neuroses to the story. Of course, I want you to all wildly disagree with me, but I don't think you will.

Here's how I see "Cliff Hanging": It is a massive pile of bullocks. Not, of course, because it is poorly written. No, I'd say the writing is just about all it has going for it--except for some weirdness because I decided to go against my gut and not have 3 tense changes in the story, so the opening few paragraphs, which used to be past tense, are now present. Also, it's heavy-handed when in scene, and uninteresting when not.

I told myself I could do tense changes now because I'm not a student of fiction writing. I am now an expert, and I know what I am doing. You all know what a pile of BS that is, because we get almost all of the cool stuff we get by accident. But after the story was finished, I thought to leave the three tense sections as kind of a verse, chorus, refrain structure. Like it would somehow greater explain the narrator's lack of self-awareness and her autocide. (shut up, spell check. it is, too, a word. OED online says so!)

So I think I've lost it. I have read too many romance novels. My mind is now too addled to write literary fiction. At least I'm writing, right? That's swell. If there's any money in fiction at all these days, it's in genre fiction anyhow.

OK. Good things: it's only 1500 words. I think the bit at the end about the pink shoes and shirt that she doesn't remember buying is funny. I like the interaction with her boss, but I think the dialogue is potentially overwritten.

Anyhow. Since I don't live in a town with any of my writing friends anymore, I want you all to email me or call me or facebook message me and play e-workshop with me. I'll gleefully return the favor, and link to your blog from mine, and buy you chocolate when I see you. Or coffee.

Free Short Story: Cliff Hanging

2011-08-08T23:40:00.004-04:00

My lover leaves in one of those spectaularly dramatic, painful flurries of shouting and loving and self-loathing. Takes my intestines and pleasure along for the ride. I used to doubt that people really “didn’t see it coming.” I didn’t. That morning we cuddle before work, nuzzle and say love yous. And no joke, two hours after the door snicks shut behind him, my sister calls to say our mom died. It feels like a hangover: I don’t know where I am, and my head throbs in waves, as though my brain literally grows inside my skull. Things aren’t going too well.

I go to work at the greenhouse. It is the day we let loose the Sterlings to eat the Japanese beetles that came in during a fresh air cycle. I am certain to go home with bird shit in my hair, stomping and clutching my fists in organic hatred.

My boss, Geri the Hippie, rolls up on his Vespa and eyes my Subaru.

“When are you going to lose the gas hog?”

“When it quits running.”

He smirks, “I’ll buy you a Prius if you come to dinner with me.”

“Let it never be said that organic farmers are as evolved as their pesticide practices.”

“So that’s a yes?”

“That’s an aphid eating no, Geri.”

“Why do you want to work here if you hate Earth?”

“I hate everything.”

“No you don’t. You love your car.”

“My car does not talk or demand anything from me.” I say, and think a minute, “Also, my car goes harder than it really should after 250,000 miles.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Pig.”

“You’re lucky I’m a forward-thinking feminist. No other boss would let his environmental savages of employees talk to him like that.”

“No other boss would call himself a feminist, then call a woman who works for him an environmental savage.”

I always liked the idea of killing myself. I thought it would be really hard. I never really thought too much about trying, because it seemed certain to fail. I thought that the human spirit would always well up to buoyancy or vomit at the last minute. That the soul would not be snuffed so easily. I liked thinking about the bits of me—the bits that want to die and to live—warring over this cause of life.

I imagined them personified in spandex unitards. Death wore orange, Life wore blue. They pushed each other and wrestled across wood planks by water. A deck, maybe? A pier? I never panned out in my imaginings, only went in for the detail shots, like the way Death’s spandex bunched up in the space where his hip met his thigh as he wrapped one leg around Life to hold her still, squeezing her neck with both his bony, veined hands. And the fine hairs on Life’s cheek as she ground her blushing jaw against the strangling.

I always gave Death the masculine body and Life the feminine. Obvious, but still. Shouldn’t life and death be genderless?

I wake up that morning and look up at the water stains on the ceiling above my bed. One of them looks like a pig blowing smoke out of his face. Maybe, though, it is his silhouette, and he is bleeding from his mouth. A pig death by bludgeoning.

Could I bludgeon myself? It seems unlikely. What if I make a machine? There’s that movie, Taxidermia, where a guy partially Taxidermies himself, then sets up a machine to remove his head at a certain point.

It never occurs to me that feeling nothing is bad. I suspect people who are suicidal must feel the hell out of their feelings. The sadness preceding suicide must be physically painful. It must feel like appendicitis or a urinary tract infection. It must feel unbearably.

I feel nothing. I feel nothing so hard that I think it won’t be possible for me to feel it if my lover returns and my mom comes back to life. I feel superfluous. I am not especially good at my job or especially interesting, and when my mom lived, at least I felt like I provided some joy to her, and at least my lover got half our rent and some orgasms.

So without any real ceremony, I decide to end it. I choose a day that is bleak and gray and humid. I decide that I’ll take a drive after work and find a place, and then I will do it. I will throw myself into traffic, or into the misted river.

There is a bridge that separates north and south halves of the town. The top of the bridge is probably 50 feet from water. The water is gray and choppy. I was never fond of heights, but since I haven’t felt anything in several months, climbing up lacks some of the usual gut churning. I get halfway up, and the hem of my khakis snags at the vee of the wire lattice I’m climbing, I recall that this is a truss bridge from my environmental design course in college. I think fuck it and I let go.

I instantly regret my choice. For the first moment I feel like I’m not going to fall, like gravity is going to just give me this one back. The water below me is this hyper plane of bobbing, cotton clusters. The wind pushes into my sinuses and in the second moment I get that ear flood of roller coaster adrenaline excitement. I feel my skin flush and my hair lift at the exact same moment.

I crack a smile, or maybe a grimace, and that is when the fall starts in earnest. I am high enough up, though, that I have time to remember how to fall into water at high speed without hurting myself.

I point my toes and imagine myself as a pencil. Suddenly I am erect and getting sucked into water that is much colder than I expect in late June. The water’s surface scrapes my cheeks, but I don’t make it to the bottom of the river. I curse my mom’s ghost for insisting on swimming lessons. This totally would’ve worked if I hadn’t had swimming lessons.

I do the crawl stroke to the bank that’s only about 10 yards away and hope I don’t trouble any eels, and I get on the bank and suddenly I have this crystal chill of aliveness. It starts at my toes and radiates up to my forehead and I can’t stop grinning. I laugh. I laugh so hard my right ribs feel like they’re under compression. I look down and notice I’m wearing a pink shirt and shoes and I can’t remember buying them, and I hate pink, so I laugh some more.

A girl on roller skates stops for a second and says, “Fall in?”

I contain my guffaws enough to give her a palsied nod. My chest is full and I feel large and I want to go have a beer with a stranger, apologize to the guy who loved me in college who I didn’t love back, then go get a new lover.

Of those things the most feasible is a beer with a stranger, so I escort myself and my swollen soul and my wet, pink clothes to my favorite dive. I order a Newcastle draft and I scan the bar for strangers.

I notice my pants are so wet they’re dripping onto the floor and there’s this tiny puddle beneath me, and so I don’t start to laugh again, I try to imagine a tiny war hostage undergoing drip torture beneath my pink shoe. That sobers up my mood, and I suck down my Newcastle and order another.

There’s a guy a few seats down who I don’t recognize, so I slide off the stool with a wet-clothes-on-varnish groan and move over next to him.

“Fall in?” he asks.

“Yup.”

“On purpose?”

I blink. I didn’t anticipate that question. “No. Yes. Whatever.”

“I survived one, too.”

“You what? Seriously? What are the odds, man? I mean, I got this Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas feeling right now, and I just wanted to have a beer with a stranger. You’re the stranger and you’re telling me you lived through this, too?”

“Weird”

“Yeah.”

So then I think maybe this guy is just expressing empathy the way some people do, and he’s actually a lunatic, and I think how I need no lunatics or psychopaths, and I pay for my second beer which I suck down to generate some beer warmth for my dripping self, and I slide off my second stool and head for the door.

“Hey wait!” he calls.

I hold up my hand like I’m signaling a cab, and I hit the street.

When I get home, I Google “how to overdose.”

Counter Culture Dancing

2011-08-07T10:23:00.003-04:00

Couple things happened in my head while I was dancing my hypothetical balls off at Club Z in Williamsport last night with some of my girlfriends and our DD/supervisor/agent, Tom.

First, I was missing a whole lot during my crippled-by-self-consciousness 20s. Dancing at a gay bar is awesome. I did go dancing at a gay bar once in my 20s, with some gay temporary roommates. I got felt up (and not in a nice way) by some straight dude.

Which is a total quandary. What are the straight people doing at the gay bar? I know, I know. It's a bar, a club, there's dancing and the air is thick with poorly mixed DJ beats and cigarette smoke. The energy is contagious and it's totally counter culture. I guess there're some straight folks (like myself) who get a kick out of being someplace where different is normal. In Williamsport, if you don't want to hang out with the 20-23 set at Cell Block, it's the only place to go dancing.

But what was with the posturing straight men trying to grab my (luscious) bootie, and feeling up Amber, this drag queen who danced with us, and trying to dance with the irrepressible Hillary? What were they posturing? Were they pretend gay or pretend straight? Were they trying to feel us up so as to discern our sex? I feel like mine is fairly obvious. And Amber's was, too, but her girl parts done comparatively well. And Hillary is a feminine, shimmering pixie. Do their weasely minds believe genitals grabbing is more acceptable at a gay bar?

That was what I told myself the first time. But I'm older now and wiser and angrier and more aware of the very real way in which women (and very similarly homosexuals) are second class citizens, even now--in the future! I sincerely believe that most straight men are utter pigs and not to be trusted. And I follow @MsMagazine on twitter, so I get all these news feeds about the high sex-discrimination crimes that happen the world over. Now. In the future!

And when I got home last night and I was a sweaty, vaguely drunk, cigarette stinking mess in bed with my lover, and my body still ticked with energy and glee, when I thought about way in which the fun was kind of marinated in this palpable cultural dischord; I almost wept.

There is no minority for which I have greater sympathy than the transgendered/transvestites. I can't think of a worse affliction than looking in the mirror and seeing the wrong thing. Feeling like your skin got mis-sewn at the factory.

Summer Garden Tomato Soup

2011-08-06T20:34:00.005-04:00

First, a little on the choices for this soup. I think that milk in tomato soup is gross. I also think that recipes that fake it with soft bread for thickening are wrong. The texture of soaked bread is godawful.

I used a coarse cheese grater to shred the zucchini and the onion. You could probably also just chop the stuff and then stick blend it, or use a regular blender. I just hate the heck out of cleaning the stick blender and the regular blender. Also, the texture that's missing from a lot of tomato soups is present in spades with the cheese grater method.

Vidalia onions sweeten up beautifully when they're sauteed long time over medium heat. The sweetness of the onions and the queer starchiness of the zucchini do a beautiful job of giving this soup some texture and thickening, without the grodie slime of the soft bread, or the abomination that is just tossing in some milk or cream. There's no roux, and there's only a skosh of oil, so this is actually vegan, and contains almost NO fat, but is still really satisfying & filling.

Recipe: Summer Garden Tomato Soup

1 T olive oil

1 medium vidalia onion

2 large cloves of garlic

2 medium zucchini

1/4 c. fresh sage

1/4 c. fresh basil

2 T fresh oregano

1 t. salt

8 tomatoes from your garden, boiled and peeled, or a big can of san marzano tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1 pinch of tumeric

Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a dutch oven over medium high heat.

Grate the onion, zucchini, and crush the garlic into the oil. Cook, stirring often, until the zucchini has sweated off all its moisture and softened, and the onions are sweet. Stir in the herbs and salt and let it cook for a minute of two until the herbs smell nice.

Crush the tomatoes into the mixture and stir. Add all the juices from the tomatoes or can, and some extra water, too.

Throw in the bay leaf and the tumeric and allow to simmer, uncovered, over medium-low heat for an hour, or until it's reduced a bit. Reduce heat to low and cover to hold until serving.

Remove bay leaf. Makes about 8 servings.

I made some orzo that I stirred in just before serving, which was my original conception, but it was utterly superfluous.

The Quest for Clicks

2011-07-25T11:35:00.002-04:00

I'm sitting at Starbucks with Robin Kaye, brainstorming ideas for how to get people looking at our website. We're looking at great blogs by people in and out of the Romance industry.

Here's a great one if you're a working writer, or if you're holding a manuscript in your hands and asking, "What next?"

We also really like Mia Marlowe's Red Pencil Thursday.

Being a full time writer and editor is fun, fun stuff. In what other world could I spend a morning at Starbucks with one of my dear friends, reading blogs about writing?

Tomato Worms

2011-07-23T16:59:00.002-04:00

We found these two fellas in our Tomato plant today.

We took a trip wherein our plants didn't get any attention for about 48 hours, and then there was a massive, sideways-blowing storm; so where before our plants appeared to be happy and flourishing, they are now a little worse for the wear.

Our Sage continues to rage, but our tomato plant--on which we found considerable blight earlier in the summer, but which seems now to be under control--can't catch a break. We found these dudes there today.

Amy Winehouse

2011-07-23T16:55:00.002-04:00

Seriously? Apparently So.

And I am sad. Really Sad. I enjoyed her work a great deal, and felt an odd kinship with her self-destructive, sexy lyrics.

I may be more hopeful for her if I had any substantial belief in an afterlife, but her passing seems like such a peevish waste.

Random

2011-07-19T16:26:00.003-04:00

I bought some stuff from Dick's Sporting Goods lately. Had my first experience with fitting a helmet, fitting a mouth guard, and signing a release form. Seriously. These activities clearly qualify me as an athlete.

It's really difficult to explain to a five-year-old how it's possible that you have money that you can't spend on her.

Tonight is Fajita night.

It's a good idea to get 2-step authentication for the google account.

Healthy lunch makes me too hungry too early as much as unhealthy lunch. Who can win? Not this guy.

A lesson on Basil

2011-07-07T09:02:00.003-04:00

Front and Center, this is sweet basil; the basil that can be bought at the regular (non-specialty) grocery store. It is mild and complements tomatoes very well. It is also substituted quite a lot in Thai cooking and can be made into pesto sauce among thousands of other things. We will make it into tea later this summer.

This is the Thai basil. We have been curious about this one. We have not used it yet, but it has a nice, licorice/anise aroma to complement the expected sweet basil scent. We have been told that this is the basil that is used in authentic Thai cooking, though most of the Thai food I've had has used sweet basil.

Here is my little purple basil plant. It smells just like sweet basil. The seed pack (this being the thing that we grew from seeds) said that it was also used ornamentally. The interwebs told me that if we leave the plant alone, it will turn completely green. Shall I hover over it with my dropper of food coloring, I wonder?

And here's our little basil corner of our container garden. Right to left: Sweet Basil, Thai Basil, Purple Basil.

On the Garden

2011-07-07T08:40:00.006-04:00

This is my second year growing a garden with vegetables. We decided to grow a salsa garden + herbs. We have blighted tomatoes (sad, but that seem to be flourishing nonetheless), poblano peppers, jalapeno peppers, green peppers. We have herbs: parsley (curly and flat), rosemary, sage, thyme, basil (traditional, Thai, purple), marjoram, oregano, cilantro. Some of our basil returned from the window box of herbs we grew last year.

We are growing it in containers on top of the defunct hot tub that our landlords have promised to take away for the last 3 summers. Last year, we tried to use the hot tub for summer water fun, but it has a leak and needs some restorative work, so it was basically a money suck.

I love the garden. I love it more with a partner. I love especially how the tiny, tiny jalapenos grow up into the large, hot ones; how the tomatoes swell a bit more each day; how the purple basil--the only thing we grew from seeds--has risen and flourished and gets more beautiful each day. I love looking at it three times a day, recycling the fish tank or beer ice water into water for our plants. It makes me feel maternal (without the adverse effects on my body) and like our household is more efficient.

Our rosemary is so giant, it tripled in size, we are going to try to get it big enough to make our Christmas tree.

Another nice thing about growing a garden on an elevated space is that the pest issues are diminished significantly. We have had a few beetles on our basil, but besides that, we have been pest and weed lucky.

More on Reptiland

2011-07-06T21:56:00.007-04:00

This guy was cool. This picture is crappy, but he had stuff growing on him. Awesome.

This is Pearl in front of one of the rubber, animatronic dinosaurs
that she could stand to turn her back to.

This is my favorite butterfly. There were others.

These are my favorite snakes.

This is Pearl's new Smile.

She's standing in front of the turtles who we would later find doing the nasty.

Clyde Peeling's Reptiland

2011-07-06T21:51:00.003-04:00

This is, without question, the most amazing thing I have seen as a grown up.

Thoughts on Exercising

2011-07-06T21:21:00.004-04:00

I have never been an athletic type. I have always rather hated the smug, exercising population, and found them to be too, I don't know, too something annoying.

A thing about being 30: I cannot eat dessert and not gain 5 lbs anymore. Also, I don't have my stand all day job anymore, so I am particularly prone to squishyness. Another thing about being 30: my health is more important to me than it has ever been. I have accepted mortality. I want to see Pearl into college at least.

So I have set about being an exercising person. I take walks. I normally walk 3 miles. I try to walk at a consistent speed of 3.5-4 mph, so I am normally finished in a bit under an hour. I like to do this every day, but occasionally take a day off when my legs hurt too badly. I expect this will stop happening as I continue walking, and also that I will eventually walk more miles in the same amount of time.

Brad and I also play badminton, which, considering the low-impact weight and resistance of the sport, is remarkably good exercise and I always feel it in my sides and tummy the next day.

I used to walk with my friend, Lara. Then life kicked us both in our fannies and now we do not walk together anymore.

Blah blah, the point is, I get it! I have had these eureka moments wherein I catch myself self-talking to "push it" the last mile, or just really wanting to do better than I did yesterday. All the stuff my PE teachers admonished me to do. All the stuff that I always kind of thought, "hmmm. That's weird. Why should I intentionally hurt myself just because my parents' tax money is paying you to tell me to?" The stuff the other girls learned when they played field hockey or whatever other team sport.

Know what? I'm also joining Roller Derby. A team sport. Who knew? It's gonna rule.

I really like moving around. I feel really good when I'm all sweaty after. I love exercising.

I like it so much that today I did research about fat people jogging. People yell at me when I call myself fat, but it's true. I'm at least 50 lbs overweight, and that is counting back to my college low of a size 6, at which I still--weight wise--was in the obese squares on the height/weight charts.

It's okay. I own it, and owning it is the first step to working on it. Take that, chub!

Shameless Self Promotion

2011-07-06T21:17:00.002-04:00

My friends and I have started a business. Friend 1. Friend 2.

A book fixing business.

If you have a book and you want it to suck less, you should let us see it. We charge a reasonable fee. If you self-publish your book online, our fee will probably be tax deductible.

You can like us on Facebook. Revisioning Romances.

You can also follow us on Twitter: @RevisioningRs

Or you can email us if you want to know how to get the goods: info@RevisioningRomances.com

Here's a link to our website.

Notes from a Freelancer

2011-06-08T13:15:00.003-04:00

I have learned a few things:

1. It's best to troll major metro craigslist for new writing gigs (NY, Chicago, LA).
2. Sometimes, being the master of one's own schedule is dangerous.
3. Working from home opens the door to working all the time, which is a filthy habit to which I am prone.
4. It is no easier to make time for blogging than it was before I was a full time freelancer.
5. Wordpress blog is superior to Blogger. (Sorry, Google. I do love you).
6. People lie about wanting you to do work for them.
7. LinkedIn is a terrific resource.

Happy Announcements:

I am about 5000 words along in my novel. I've stalled working on it, since I have been busy with paid work, but knowing that I get to work on it once I finish my paid work is enough to keep me going.

Some colleagues and I are starting a company to help romance writers polish their drafts. It will be called Revisioning Romances. I'll link you once it's up.

Unhappy Announcements:

There are approximately 300 things I should be doing right now, some of these are laundry.

Maternal Insomnia

2011-05-25T01:42:00.004-04:00

It is 2:00 a.m. where I live.

About an hour ago, which was about 3 hours into my sleep for the night, my little girl seemed to sleepwalk into our room, crawl into bed, cuddle up against me, and immediately turn to dead weight. Heavy breathing and all of it. Sweet-smelling little kid noggin, hyper warm, but wiggling, as kids are wont to do.

My romantic partner, who suffers interruptions to his sleep poorly, asked what was the cause of the wiggling, and persisted in vocalizing his discontent until I was good and awake. As I am now.

The sweet child turned on the hall light, and the romantic partner shouted, "What the hell?!" I said, "Hey!" I brought the child back to her room, procured some water for her, and tried going back to the grown up bed. I laid there, stared at the lights that blinked off the ceiling for an hour.

The romantic partner, who can be cuddly in the night, asked me for some cuddles and reminded me that he loves me. I think this was his means of apologizing for being so vocal and impatient and annoyed.

Still. My sleep was interrupted at precisely the right moment that my body believes that I should be awake for the day's work. This may also have something to do with hormones.

Writing and Business Owning

2011-05-24T15:46:00.004-04:00

I'm so on a roll on my satirical novel about a church camp and its, um, dramas? that I don't, don't don't want to do my other work, which this week consists of proofreading a romance novel, writing a piece about fish for a newspaper's magazine that is just south of here.

Also, I need a website, and think I'm going to just use WordPress.

Also, I need to buy a url. I wish there was one I could just pay $x.xx for and have forever.

Also, Tooth E.T.s are in the works. See image above.

more online shopping: become.com

2011-05-13T14:10:00.000-04:00

It seems to me that Become.com is a one-stop-shop for really anything that can be sent to you in a box. The website is pretty, lots of high resolution photographs that are linked to pages of other items like it. I especially like the all categories link. In the all categories link, there are additional links under each category for top products and top searches.

I’m not sure how the site works, I suspect it is via some magic of database mining and then linking, because the text that appears on the top products page is not formatted consistently. This leads me to believe they’re somehow linking to the external sites from which they sell, for example eBay and Amazon.

Another thing that startles me about Become.com is that they seem to only be a launch pad to other sites, so the deals can be spotty. It’s not like they’re collecting the best deals on the web, then sending you there, it’s like they’re collecting all the things on the web, then sending you there.

Here’re a small smattering of items for which one could shop: in the shoes category, footjoy classics, hightop shoes, nurture shoes. In the books category: contemporary American fiction, chick lit, children’s literature. In the office category: office chairs, storage solutions, desk organizers

my office chair

2011-04-28T09:20:00.002-04:00

I spent 4 hours yesterday working my my office chair of my groovy office. I will post photos someday. My bottom got sore and my legs fell asleep. Maybe I need a proper office chair?

Also, I am still plagued by the idea that blogs need focus, and that mine doesn't have one. I don't know what to make the focus. Maybe I will start a new blog, and that will be where I exercise focus, but on what? I change my mind all the time.

Haha. Maybe I'll make one called Feminist Stories and write a new feminist story every day.

My sister likes my blog. I'm glad. I don't know if anybody else does.

The last day

2011-04-28T08:48:00.002-04:00

This is the last day of my work vacation before the last week of my work for the place at which I work.

I would like little more than to hang out all day and waste my mind on reruns of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, CSI, Criminal Minds, and whatever else I can scare up to lose my critical thinking abilities in.

Instead, I have a million loose ends to fasten. I am going to be delivering the paper the last week I work where I do, and so I will be fairly exhausted over May 2-6, I imagine, so any deadline I have during that time I'm filling prior to the hell week.

So I will finish up a couple of pieces for various news outlets, I will look into writing for a couple of places online, I will drop off my insurance card at the paper, I may apply for a writing job in Chicago, I will run to best buy and shop for a scanner, and perhaps a new Windows laptop. I may also buy Snow Leopard for my mac.

My blog is boring.

I had an idea yesterday that I may do over the summer. I will call it the Woody Allen Project, and I will watch a Woody Allen film every couple of days and provide commentary.

Patriotism?

2011-04-27T14:34:00.002-04:00

This morning began with little Pearl helping me choose her clothes. She was instructed to wear red, white, and blue today at school yesterday. I wish I had read her folder papers (she gets nearly a ream home daily) last night. She got dressed while I packed her lunch, I opened her folder full of papers, and I found the missive from the school about why she is wearing red, white, and blue to school today.

Apparently, a kindergartner and 2nd grader have a dad who's getting deployed, and that dad was coming to the school to raise the American flag this morning.

I feel like an unpatriotic beast, truly, but I might've made her choose other colors if I had read this blather sooner.

Fast forward to the exodus from our home. Pearl had her eye exam today at 8 a.m. I saw an article about Ron Paul in the waiting room copy of Esquire. The woman who helped us behind the desk looked a little bit like Amy Adams, on whom I have a minor girl crush (mostly for her role in Julie and Julia, but I admire other roles of hers like Junebug), and Pearl was telling her that she was wearing red, white, and blue to school, and that Mia's dad might go away and never come back.

I told her that the dad was going to Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the official story is that he's defending the country, but who knows what he'll really be doing. Amy Adams look-alike gave me a little chuckle.

What I wanted to say is that the official story is that he's defending his country, but really he's getting paid a lot of taxpayer money to shoot at brown people who have nothing whatever to do with this harebrained war against an abstract concept, and that the only thing that seems to be actually at stake is the American ego, and that this ridiculous pursuit is so far beyond unnecessary that it makes my teeth hurt.

Here's the part that hurts my soul the most: It is not this weird show of support and honor for this man who is, in fact, risking his life for his country, even though he has two small children and a wife who will be without him if he gets gunned to smithereens. It is that these apparently thoughtless school personnel mandate this show of support. To me, observations of patriotism should be a personal as the religion one chooses. I wonder if they would be as eager to celebrate a dad who is a prison guard? Or a dad who shamelessly takes his life into his hands by riding a motorcycle?

I know that there's no real way to predict whether one will have to go to another place and shoot at people when one enlists in the military. But that is the point, that's what the military is for, there is always a reasonable expectation that there will be war. Why celebrate this guy who knowingly risks his life, potentially widowing his wife and orphaning his children? Sterilization should be standard military issue, just like the haircut and the camo uniform. I suppose our war heroes would be a little less tragic if they didn't leave behind spouses and children sometimes, but would that be such a bad thing?

Now, I have some reservations about posting this, because I am reasonably certain that this post will actually garner comments on my blog from Googling nincompoops with misguided, self-righteous, conservative leanings. And to these people, I say only this: I am not a democrat. I am a libertarian. Look it up before you attack me and my education and my plastic framed glasses and my NPR.

Today's Miscellane

2011-04-25T10:34:00.002-04:00

Today, I learned that the bank I have been banking with for over a year and have never bounced a check, passed a bad check, or behaved poorly otherwise, would rather inconvenience and annoy me than harbor a check for me in a timely fashion.

I got new glasses! They are fabulous, and I can see!

I gave notice at my job!

I am watching Tangled with Pearl. It is adorable, but not feminist. Someone told me it was. They were wrong.

I have been working on my linked in profile, and making it thorough and beautiful for my soon increasing quest for freelance writing work.

My phone is almost dead, the mail just came, and I submitted a neato Q&A with a neato band. You can check them out at reptet.com.

Leaps...

2011-04-21T14:10:00.004-04:00

Dear Faithful (and unfaithful) Readers of this Blog,

This is the day that I have committed to my new life. My new life full of uncertainty and mastery of my own destiny. I suppose it could be argued that one is always master of one's own destiny, but this new endeavor of mine is a vocational commitment unlike others because the stakes are higher.

The stakes are higher because as of May 7, I will be a fully self-employed human. And I will be self-employed without the trappings of some other company giving me the tools. I will be president, CEO, and sole proprietor of April Line Writing. April Line Writing delivers newspapers for the moment, too.

The scary part: I am leaving an EXCELLENT job. One with benefits and a 401K and paid vacation. I am releasing myself into the cold, cruel, shit-economy reality that is America in 2011. There are people who will tell me I am crazy for making this leap of faith. That is for them. Here in my boots, I would be crazy not to make this leap of faith.

This is a leap of faith I have been waiting to take. I have reached a moment in my life as a freelancer wherein I have more work than I can manage with a full time job, but need more to match my present income.

More important, however, than the remarkable self-examination, neurosis, and slow beginning that will occur in the next several months is that I will once again be able to be a present mom and partner. I will take Pearl to the library and be able to hang out with her during her summer break. I will be able to make dinner every night and organize myself comprehensively. And I will have enough. I will not have more than I need, but I will have enough.

What this means to you: Maybe you will see weird stuff on my blog, and blog posts that don't make exact sense (these may be posts that I am being paid to write, banners I am being paid to post), and you'll get more of me. My loony thoughts, and probably my sedate, philosophical ones, too.

Weeping at work

2011-03-28T16:16:00.001-04:00

This morning our office/operations person asked the boss man if he weeps behind his office door every day a particular colleague works.

I said it must be nice to have a door to weep behind. I weep wherever I am.

Later, I was googling places to put Pearl and I asked another of my colleagues what he did when he was a kid. He said that he went swimming and skateboarding and so on.
Me: No, where'd you go while your mom was at work?
Him: My mom didn't work.

For some reason, that sentence sent me into a weeping tizzy. I still have the knot in my throat over it, and even as I type this I have difficulty not weeping again.

Oh wah. I think this must be self pity because I want to be a stay-at-home/work-at-home mom. Or because of my still-returning-to-hormones-as-usual-post-sterilization-surgery menses.

Love,
A

Jammie Dodgers

2011-03-27T21:46:00.002-04:00

I recently read this really hilarious thing about how the English think that Hershey's Kisses taste like vomit. I mean, imagine really clever, sarcastic, sardonic hate on Hershey's Kisses, but cooler and smarter sounding because English. Read it Here.

So at the Wegman's today, in the groovy international section where there are some real confectionary treasures, I picked up a packet (I believe that's the authentic word) of Jammie Dodgers. I chose these for a couple of reasons. I really dig sandwich cookies lately. I've been on a sandwich cookie bender. I ate almost an entire pack of vienna fingers (admittedly not even the best of the vanilla-on-vanilla sandwich cookies) all by myself the other day. I shared a few with the people I live with, but I was stingy. Another reason I chose the Jammie Dodger is because in this terrific movie by Aardman called Flushed Away, the heroine sewer rat (voiced by Kate Winslett) drives this cool boat called The Jammie Dodger.

The packaging is not especially promising. It's real red and yellow and a little bit overdone. So we bust into these things, and they taste like they've been hanging out in some mildewy basement for six years. The "shortbread" cookie is more like loosely packed saw dust. The "raspberry plum jam filling" is the texture of chewing gum and the flavor of cough syrup. When it warms up, it leaches onto your teeth and requires some aggressive tonguing.

My point in writing this blog is that while I don't altogether disagree that the Hershey's Kisses taste like vomit, this abomination of a shortbread sandwich cookie ignited in me a faint indignation that the national, waxy, Lazy American treat should be so verbally assailed by a nation that feeds its children mildewed sawdust patties filled with red cough syrup putty. WTF, England!

These are the shows I like right now

2010-12-01T09:40:00.005-05:00

Walking Dead: seriously, zombies? okay. I know, mildly ridiculous. But the show is captivating.

Bitchin' Kitchen: so bizarre and entertaining and absurd. Watch it. You won't be able to stop.

The IT Crowd: British and oh so, oh so funny.

2 thoughts about 2 items on the radio

2010-11-23T19:39:00.005-05:00

This evening, I drove Pearl down to Selinsgrove to meet up with my mom and spend her Thanksgiving break with her grandma, learning all about consumerism.

I used to listen to Jagged Little Pill over and over and over. I did not remember many of the lyrics to "All I really want," but the song took me back to being 15 and angry and the way I sympathized with the smart-assed moments of rhyme and allusion. I found out, too, that Lady Alanis is just making a throaty-alt-rock-girl noise when I always thought she was refraining, "A hiiiiiigher ground." Anyway. I was kind of impressed by the cleverness of the lyrics. They're tightly written and not boring. And sure, Estella is not an obscure literary figure, but whatever--at least it's something.

AND THEN, on Fresh Air, one of my favorite programs, Dave Davies interviewed this British veterinarian. Of course, pronouns are fascinating in every case but especially in this one. I'm getting ahead of myself. The program was about end-of-life for pets. When it's time to put them down, what owners should be reasonably expected to overlook/deal with, etc. But I thought it was really odd that regardless of the sex of the animal, the pronoun both Davies and the British vet used was "it." So here's my question: animal rights. Sure, on its own it's a question, but accepting that animals do or should have rights, and that there are some defined, legally accepted ones. So my question is, why is the academically sanctioned way to refer to animals with the pronoun it?

What's the deal? Euthanizing animals is totally cool (by which I mean socially and culturally accepted). We do it all the time, and for population reasons/lack-of-human-interest reasons (I think it's kind of effed up). Also, there are people who have bumper stickers that say "animals are people in fur coats," and "My boxer is smarter than your honor student." So clearly, there are folks, even folks I know, who would be incensed by the notion that animals are all its.

good news, and do blogs need themes?

2010-11-21T08:48:00.003-05:00

Good news: I get paid 3 days early.

Pearl is a healthy weight/height per the pediatrician.

Thursday is Thanksgiving

Do blogs need to have themes? All the blogs I see are about a specific thing. Nobody, who is successful at blogging, has a blog as schizophrenic as mine. I should get a theme. I know it! But I do not have theme for my life. I do and think about lots of things. I am a master of nothing.

Cochran School Nurse II

2010-11-17T13:44:00.003-05:00

The war wages on.

Pearl had a potty accident today. So the Cochran School Nurse called me and requested a change of clothes.

Yesterday, Pearl had the balance of her immunizations and her physical check up. Dr. O'Hara, her pediatrician (who is simply lovely), said that her school nurse is also a beastly, naggy person. I wondered out loud why someone who likes neither children, nor even people, should want to be a school nurse. We all laughed.

After Pearl's appointment, I dropped her and a copy of the physician's report (complete with immunization record) at school.

So today, after I helped Pearl change into her fresh clothes, the school nurse, who now has a name (Mrs. Miller--Pearl asked her), said, "Pearl showed me where she had all her shots. Can you give me a record of those?"

I explained, with a chill in my heart and a sneer on my face, that I turned them in with the office. She said, "Oh. Mrs. Thompson must have them."

Why are these elementary school professionals such poor communicators?

This side note is interesting to me as a feminist: When she called Brad, she called him Mr. Miller. When she called me, she called me April. I mean, I generally dislike being called Ms. or Mrs. Line (I get Mrs. a lot now that I have a kid. It's a bit creepy since I'm not a missus), but for the Cochran School Nurse, I would make an exception, and I am curious about the higher level of respect she shows to Brad. Hmmmm.

Robot Brain

2010-11-16T07:25:00.000-05:00

I had a conversation with little Pearl this morning that went like this:

"Mommy, do you remember when I went with you to buy this fix it tape?" she asked me, waving my white-out tape dispenser in the air.

"No, Pearl, I do not."

"That's because you don't have a robot brain like me, mommy."

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

Last night, she was dismissed from dinner because she was not eating. Stomping up the stairs to her room, she looked at me with daggers in her little eyes and said, "Don't look at me!"

pumpkin spiced pumpkin beer bread

2010-11-12T20:30:00.003-05:00

Here's a recipe I made up today. If I want to make it again, I will not remember. This is multi-purpose writing-it-down/sharing with you, so here it is. If you try it, let me know what you think.

Grease loaf pan, a full-sized one, or several smaller ones. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 t. each ground cinnamon, ginger, clove, nutmeg (some extra cinnamon would probably be good)
salt to taste
2 1/2 t. baking powder
pinch chili powder
1 T cocoa powder
2 T olive oil (or other vegetable oil)
1 egg
12 oz. pumpkin beer
1/2 t. almond extract
large handful walnuts or pecans
2 large handfuls raisins

1. mix together dry ingredients
2. add wet ingredients one by one
3. mix until batter is smooth. There may be a few lumps. It will be runny--thicker than pancake batter, but not at all sticky. No need to strive for total smoothness. You don't want to beat up the beer. :-)
4. stir in raisins and nuts.
5. pour batter into prepared loaf pan
6. bake for about an hour (50 minutes minimum) until a toothpick inserted in the center pulls out clean.

I served it with pumpkin cream cheese that I thinned down with milk drizzled over. But you should do what you want. The love man says it's yummy plain.

This is a day full of thinking and doing

2010-11-11T08:17:00.002-05:00

Today is the day I consult the physician about having myself sterilized.

Write a story.

Have my first parent-teacher conference.

My mom is coming to visit.

Send a sympathy card and maybe an inspirational book to dear, dear people who have lost someone.

Do laundry and clean our house.

Purchase 10 grocery items and replace our probe thermometer for meat cooking.

Possibly clean myself.

Definitely clean my child.

Play Monopoly Junior.

Mr Bubble T-shirt Offer

2010-11-07T20:25:00.002-05:00

So I'm in the shower thinking about how my multi vitamin is working because I'm losing less of my hair now (ah, 30). Pearl's new bottle of bubble bath catches my eye. It is Mr. Bubble. I practically forced her to get it, because like Dum-dum wrappers, the Mr. Bubble T-shirt offer always fascinated me as a child. I Wanted that T-shirt. I thought maybe I'd get it for Pearl. And one for me, too.

So I'm reading the offer, and I get to the part about, "while supplies last," and I think, Who are they kidding? Supplies have lasted since at last the late 70s, I'm sure.

I do some web research. Go here. Vaguely creepy, but some vintage commercials indicating that the T-shirt offer supplies may have been lasting since the 1960s!

The Village Company? Too evocative of The Village People to ignore. If it wouldn't be inexcusably tacky, I'd make a label called "things that make me go hmmm."

Dear The Olive Garden

2010-11-06T20:28:00.003-04:00

I came to your blessed haven of overpriced, fatty, glorified fast food for the first time in many months. I slid my lardy bottom across your glorious, vinyl booth seat and thanked the fates that I still fit. I did this because I have quit smoking and I wanted to eat something bad for me instead. I opened your menu and felt my sense of release and splendor disappear as my eyes scanned your offerings only to find that you have provided calorie counts on every single item.

I am a menu reader. I love menus. I love to revel in the mystery of the caloric content of the excesses. I love to tell myself lies about how much protein must be in the deep fried meat items, to imagine that a fudgy cake has some hidden nutritive value beyond increasing my serotonin levels. I love to order a whole appetizer and think it is reasonable as a meal, since--though designed for two or more persons--it is not a massive amount of food.

You have destroyed my suspension of disbelief, Olive Garden. You have soiled the joy I once experienced in the annals of your vast, rich pasta offerings. You have told the truth, and in so doing you have inverted the order of my skewed food logic.

I'm sure you have patrons who are grateful for this menu theater. I'm sure you have patrons who would not change their decisions about what to order based on these arbitrary numbers listed, in italic font, below the faux Italian titles of the dishes.

You have exacerbated the war I wage between myself and my desire to eat healthfully, except for when I do not desire to do so, which is when I come to you, Olive Garden. You have ruined the lone redemptive quality of your absurdist "Italian" cuisine: the mystery of the nutrition.

More, I feel strongly that you are inhibiting my freedom of choice. If I wanted to know, I would visit your website. You are reminding me of the guilt and shame associated with the remarkable overeating your bottomless salads and soups and bread sticks encourage. You have made a strong, ugly stand that you haven't a libertarian molecule in your Darden soul, and you have ruined what minor desire I had to visit your jolly, rotund universe of phony Americanized Italian dishes swimming in sauce and cheese and oily cuts of meat.

You are like the California McDonalds that have been ordered not to include happy meal toys in fatty meals to remind parents that they are shoddy moms and dads because they order deep fried slivers of "chicken" and "potato" for the developing bodies they have sired. You refuse to acknowledge my ability to make decisions for myself, or the possibility that I enjoy the fantasy that calories do not exist inside your plaster walls.

I may never return, for the fun, the joy, the lust is gone.

Sincerely,
April

PSPA Conference

2010-11-05T16:36:00.002-04:00

The good news: my presentation was neither too long nor too short for the time allotted.
They gave me a Starbucks Gift Card for showing up.

The bad news: only three students came to my presentation.

More good news: one of the three students talked about how I am her new favorite thing/person. There is something really sweet and inspiring about being the object of a teenager's fleeting affection. Especially when it's the hero/admiration kind.

I like Bones

2010-11-04T10:51:00.002-04:00

The TV series Bones is my favorite. I think season 6 is on now. Season 5 just came out on DVD. I'm a bit behind. But if you haven't watched season 5 to its conclusion, be aware that a spolier is below.

On twitter, my friend Jim (you can follow him on twitter if you want. His posts are amusing. @jamesforeman) said, "I just watched 15 minutes of Bones, really America?" that post was preceded by some musing about the "portentous" theme music on shows like CSI and Law & Order.

Jim hates Bones. But he loves House. I used to love House.

I'm currently watching through the fifth season of Bones. I'm on the last episode, actually, as I write this. I own all the seasons to this point. I got the fifth for my birthday.

I also have been known to watch Law & Order, NCIS, CSI, etc. The thing about those shows is that there's really never much follow up. Sure, on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, there were those episodes between Gorin and that kooky Englishwoman Nicole.

Through the fifth season of Bones, a lot of open ends get closed. The Grave Digger gets hers, Angela and Hodgins get married, Booth and Brennan admit their affection for one another, and there's an odd montage-ish flashback sequence wherein Booth and Bones describe their first case together, and that connect the current characters (who weren't really in the first season) to the narrative of the series. Also, there was a kind of horrifying plug for Avatar. One of the interns played I-forget-who on that, erm, film?

I commend them for realizing that sustaining the sexual tension between Bones and Booth wasn't going to work for a sixth season, and they did a really beautiful and light-handed job of letting that attraction out into the open without obliterating the tension and intrigue it causes.

I'm afraid, however, that the shark has been jumped. The last episode has Bones leaving to go Indonesia, Booth leaving for Afghanistan, and Hodgins and Angela leaving for France.

Of course, I'm intrigued, and I'll certainly get the 6th season, too, but I'm afraid that it's going to start over in a way that will be disappointing or gauche or just too over-the-top to believe. Or worse, the next season will begin with one episode showing the characters all wrapping up their work and lives in the far-off places, and then bringing them back to the lab to work through murders with a more-contrived set of tensions and conflicts.

Maybe this is the last season ever. Maybe the show is over. If that's so, kudos to the writers for not jumping the shark. If not, hmmmmmm.

more on the NaNoWriMo debate

2010-11-04T09:14:00.002-04:00

So if you didn't already, please go read Carolyn Kellogg's column responding to Laura Miller's piece that you can read by going here.

My last blog post is a link to Carolyn's piece.

I have never participated in NaNoWriMo, but Kellogg's piece made me want to. And the haters, particularly the commenter who called Kellogg non-logical and juvenile (with his very own style of non-logical and juvenile hating), and the idea that there is any universe in which writers exist in absurd proportion to readers (I do not know a single writer who is not also an avid reader--reading, and lots of it, is essential to developing the craft), made my writerly little soul twitch with annoyance and frustration.

So I don't know if we can join in late, but if we can, let's do NaNoWriMo!

12 reasons to participate in NaNoWriMo by my friend Carolyn.

2010-11-03T16:47:00.001-04:00

This is the link, so is the title

Seinfeld Trivia

2010-11-03T09:54:00.002-04:00

My girlfriends and I went to quizzo last night. There was a question about Seinfeld. It was a fill-in-the-blank sort of situation.

Finish this quotation: The sea was angry that day my friends. Like an old man trying to what?

so I guessed, defecate. But after so saying, I said, "it's either that of something about a deli."

The answer is actually, "...like an old man trying to return soup at a deli."

Oh my. We laughed.

Staples Copy Center

2010-11-02T09:46:00.003-04:00

I can't stand Staples Copy Center. It's like they find the surliest human beings on purpose. They give horrible customer service, can't work with digital files (even though they claim they can), are always backed up, and do shoddy work.

This dissatisfaction is not limited to the Staples in the Loyal Plaza, no. It extends to the one in Carlisle, too. And probably the one in Hamden, CT, also--though in Connecticut, I used Tyco.

Here's the thing. The mom-and-pop print shops rule. In Carlisle, I stand beind Rowe's Print Shop. Here in Williamsport, I'm a new fan of The Print Shoppe on Washington Boulevard.

I think I should start a movement: save the local print shop! T-shirts, bumper stickers. Yesssss.

Cochran School Nurse

2010-11-01T20:18:00.002-04:00

Pearl brings home at least a ream of paper each day.

Nothing in this ream of paper delights me quite as much as the condescending notes from the Cochran School Nurse. She does not have a name, apparently. When I met her, once, she struck me as particularly humorless, and the worst sort of medical professional: the sort who does not believe that laypeople can possibly possess a critical muscle.

The school nurse also sends home a blessed highlighted note each time a child has an accident in school. We received the second one today, only this time, instead of only highlighting the bits that she thinks are particularly important, she also circled them.

The school nurse either does not sign, or signs "Cochran School Nurse" on her vastly condescending notices to the general parenting public. She writes in the note that comes home with kindergartners who've had potty accidents, "kindergartners can be uncomfortable using the bathroom in this new setting." Really? I have got to tell you, that never occurred to me.

She also requests that a pair of underwear and pants be sent in the child's backpack. Here's the thing: Pearl had underwear in her backpack. The underwear was not utilized. So I think the Cochran School Nurse gets a big kick out of being condescending, or she genuinely believes that all of us parents are dimwits. One way or the other. I find it to be annoying.

Today, I composed a note to the Cochran School Nurse.

I copy it here for your amusement. I also highlighted and circled some parts.

November 2, 2010

Dear Cochran School Nurse,

Please find enclosed the sweatpants you graciously lent us.

Please also understand that the first time my kindergartner had an accident at school, the clothing that was in her backpack was not utilized.

It is important to me to let you know how helpful I find your notes to be—especially the highlighted bits.

I hope we can continue this back-and-forth with as much paper as possible. It’s just marvelous that I’ve received three notes alerting me that there’s no evidence that my kindergartner has had a particular vaccination booster, especially since I have alerted your office, twice, that my kindergartner has an appointment to receive her missing five-year shots and boosters this month!

Sincerely,

Cochran Kindergarten Parent

The saddest thing

2010-11-01T17:14:00.003-04:00

The saddest thing about my vacation has been watching little Pearl get swallowed every morning by her school. Her school is a pretty, brick building in a residential neighborhood. She loves it. But there is this thing that comes over her as we approach the building; this thing that scares me. She is willful and independent and sassy and she marches herself right into the school.

She has even started using the main entrance. There is a side entrance, designated for kindergarteners. Kindergarten parents are supposed to take their little five-year-olds there promptly at 8:45 a.m. The kindergarten teachers appear and shuttle their little lines of students one at a time.

At the main entrance, children wait mainly without their parents, and the principal and morning hall duty teachers call out the grades one at a time. Formerly, even when we arrived after 8:45 but before 9:00 a.m. (which is the window during which the students are permitted to arrive without being considered tardy), Pearl and I would go over to the kindergarten entrance.

But these last few weeks, little Pearl is eager to go in through the front door. She holds her back up straight and she gets this little look of fearless excitement and self-possession. There is an emotional war inside me: I am proud and sad and excited and gratified and demoralized and astonished and the vortex of all of this is a sense of loss. The baby is gone. The toddler, too. My girl is a girl. She's half way to puberty.

30th year and Blog Makeover

2010-11-01T11:00:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was my birthday. Now I am 30. I gave my blog a makeover. I'm going to be a better blogger.

working on a poetry workshop

2010-11-01T10:49:00.003-04:00

I am working on a poetry workshop that I'm giving on Friday at the PASPA (which I think stands for Pennsylvania School Press Association) conference in Harrisburg.

I want to talk about memory. How memory is the root of all writing, poetic and not.

I want to do an exercise about memory. I am going to use handouts.

I am trying now to decide whether I should make a little biographical note on the handout packet.

Novel Research

2010-10-29T11:38:00.002-04:00

No, not hey hey it's novel to do research (which it kind of is).

More like, researching to write a novel. These are the things I need to know about: Pig Farming in the late 40s and early 50s. Women in the military in WWII, what they would have been doing in France. Women's health and birthing politics in France in the early 50s. The rest of it I know about: bad romantic choices, guilt, and too much working.

Here are the characters so far:
Ella
Albert

There have to be children and other lovers.

This story will honor my grandma, my dad's mom. She was a before-her-time kind of feminist, but would never have called herself one. She was proud and smart. She was someone to admire.

Twitter

2010-10-29T09:49:00.002-04:00

Approximately three years too late, I am now a tweeter. Follow me at @enillirpa.

The Pig's Ear Pub

2010-10-29T09:43:00.003-04:00

The Pig’s Ear is a study in contradictions. It is over on Westminster Drive near Sheetz, the Econo Lodge, and The Loyal Plaza. It is a down-home style place with all the good feelings of a small, locally owned restaurant—complete with black and white, historic Williamsport photo prints on the walls—that sits in one of the most homogenized areas in our town. I assumed it was an English Style pub, but it is not. The best notion I have of the food is that it is Cajun Influenced. Soul Food meets Bar Snacks.

When my girlfriends invited me to Jon Mackey’s Quizzo at the Pig’s Ear on a Thursday night, I expected a less bar-like atmosphere. With the requisite neon Beer ads adorning the walls, a gauche hanging Miller Light bottle, Yuengling clock, and a pool table; the elegantly designed menu that is chock full of lovely eats was surprising. The offerings range in price from $4-$15.
Spanning two visits, I sampled a variety of sandwiches and appetizers. My dinner companions all gave me a bite. I’ll start with the highlights. Top three: Pig’s fries, Wedge Salad, and Crab Dip. These are pretty common things on a pub menu, but Pig’s Ear spins them right.

The Pig Fries were white potatoes and sweet potatoes mixed up, all dressed up in Cajun Seasoning and served with a little dipping cup of their Horseradish Aioli. The Aioli is perfect in its ratio of horseradish to mayo, and it stands up, too. So there’s got to be a little boost in there—maybe some sour cream? Anyway, they came out piping hot (and did both times), and the Cajun spice with the sweet potatoes and cool zest of the Aioli sent me on this joy ride of flavors. I was delighted.

In restaurant salads, temperature is all. Do not ask me for $9 and then bring me some wilting lettuce with spare toppings swimming in oil. The Wedge salad was ice cold veggies with room temperature dressing and bacon. A massive wedge of iceberg with an exact proportion of tomatoes, bleu cheese dressing, bacon and red onions arrived on a UFO of a square, white plate. Every bite had every ingredient, and the Blue Cheese Dressing was divine: a mild, creamy base with generous, large chunks of blue cheese. Best part was the price, $6.

The Crab Dip is uncanny, and also priced surprisingly at $9. An unbelievable portion of real lump crab, sweet and buttery, baked in a shallow casserole with cheeses and seasonings that, while I am unable to discern which they were, were a brilliant combination. The crab dip did not lack where others do—relying on the crab and cream cheese to carry them—it was rich and flavorful and comforting, scooped up with salty tortilla chips, and the chips did not war with the dip, threatening to overcome its decadence: it was a union. The minor disappointment in our first portion of this delight was that the tortilla chips appeared to be store-bought. Our second foray into crab divinity came with house made chips.

In other excellently rendered items, the slow-cooked meat sandwiches were incredible. The pork sandwich comes drizzled with this herbed aioli, the Chicago style beef with au jus is not too peppery, and not too dry.

The flash fried shrimp were tender and sweet and butterflyed, an accomplishment when deep frying.

The Italian deli sandwich has a pile of meat in it that is, again, just right. But I was not fond of the roll. With the slow cooked meats, the juices settle into the bread and the heftier, drier bread is perfection. With the cold cuts, I wanted a moister roll. Still, I do not condemn the sandwich.
Everyone at The Pig’s Ear is friendly, but our service was not the best. Of course, the servers appeared to be a bit busier than they expected to be, and even though they were harried, they were friendly and gracious and adequate.

The dining area is kind of awkwardly arranged around the billiards, but it works for the Pig’s Ear: it keeps with what seems to be their charming tradition of identity crisis. The sandwiches and fries are served in these vaguely modern black baskets with handles that double as the perfect rest for the soufflé cup of sauce or dip that comes with almost everything. The plates are big, modern, clean-edged circles and squares. The tables are clothed in white, there are white napkins, and white, paper placemats. The furniture is painted black wood, and the booths have black vinyl. The walls are a rustic shade of red.

So to the Pig’s Ear, I award five capers for simply excellent, well priced food, four capers for atmosphere that, while incongruous, is welcoming, and 3 capers for service. Overall, a four caper place. I’ll look for you there.

Franco's Lounge

2010-10-29T09:35:00.002-04:00

Before Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Community Arts Center, our cadre that had dwindled to a pair appeared for our reservation at Franco’s Lounge downtown on West Fourth. It was my first time. I was pumped. I'd heard such great things, especially about the duck tenders.

I am fond of appetizers, and generally would prefer to make a meal of them. Smaller portions, bigger flavors. My like-minded companion and I ordered a spread of appetizers, deciding on four. Of course, the duck tenders with raspberry sauce were the first selection. Then after much sighing and discussion that we would prefer to order all, we chose the fried pickles, the Tamari grilled shrimp and the Tomato and Pesto Bruschetta.

The fried pickles were astonishing, the Tamari Shrimp was deliciously smoky, perfectly done. And since Franco’s is legendary, and since most folks I’ve talked to have only fine things to say, it is with reservation and a bit of sadness that I report my first experience with Franco’s was more than a notch below expectation.

The Bruschetta was what they call peasant bread thickly sliced and topped with sauce and cheese and it was served warm. To me, this is bread pizza or cheese bread. Bruschetta is generally thinner toast served with cold meats, tapenades, and/or veggies. The much praised sauce that came with the “bruschetta” was nice, but didn’t blow back my hair the way I wanted it to. Also, there was not enough pesto involved in the dish to merit pesto as part of its name.

The duck tenders, however, were true stinkers. Dry and spongy and, to my mouth, inexcusably flavorless, especially when we were presented with about eight small, slender tenders that cost $9. The portion of raspberry sauce was generous and flavorful—a nice fusion of sweet and spicy—but could not excuse the general unpleasantness.

Having made my living in restaurants for two thirds of my working years this far, I am often loath to complain about anything. The duck merited a mention to our server. Instead of whisking away the platter and replacing it with a better prepared one, our server explained to us that “that’s how the tenders are supposed to be,” and asked us if we didn’t like the raspberry sauce.
She said she would “talk to [someone]” about it, but when she unceremoniously cleared our table and presented our check, there was no evidence that that had been any talking.

Here are the things that are excellent: Franco’s tap beers, the atmosphere, and half of the food
we ate. The draught selection is diverse and exciting, spanning IPAs to Wheats to Lambic. The place is tiny and intimate and simply lovely. Our server was friendly enough, but did not handle our dissatisfaction with any sort of grace; nor was she especially attentive.

So to Franco’s, I give 2.5 capers for food, 2 capers for service and 5 capers for atmosphere. That makes Franco’s a 3.17 caper stop. I will try again, but probably not soon.

The James Food Review

2010-10-29T09:33:00.005-04:00

The way The James hides in a cozy concrete corner downtown epitomizes the enveloping homeyness I associate with Williamsport. The Pine Street facade is unassuming, and any
evidence that The James is inside the Holiday Inn is delightfully subtle.

The atmosphere is lovely—low amber lighting and sturdy, cherry-stained tables are arranged in an open space in the main area of the restaurant. Even so, the feeling is intimate.

The menu comes in two pieces. The main page has soup, small plates, toasts, pasta, large plates. The smaller page has sushi: cut rolls, hand rolls, sashimi, and salad. Perhaps providing two separate menus is meant to explain the lack of continuity in the menu since, aside from three of the large plates (Asian Lacquered Ahi, Miso and Mirin Glazed Salmon, Pancetta Wrapped Hamachi) that invoke Japanese flavors, the sushi feels out of place.

The offerings are a mix-up of Japanese fusion; Italian fusion with a preponderance of tomato, mozzarella, and pasta; and some American superstars like a Bacon Cheeseburger, Cowboy Steak, and Cobb Salad. The small plates include Roasted Crab Dip, Panzanella, and Jumbo Hot Wings.

After our server took the order, we were presented with a plate of bread and seasoned oil. The oil itself was nice, but heavy with dried oregano, sage, crushed red pepper, and basil. It was odd to me that the herbs were just plopped into the oil as opposed to being infused by heating, then strained and garnished. The bread was not extraordinary. It was a tad stale around the edges and lacked salt. Our bread course foreshadowed the rest of our meal, which fell a notch below expectation.

I ordered the Chicken Agnolotti from the pasta section. The description read, “caper and Limoncello cream sauce”. What arrived were four large agnolotti swimming in cream sauce with capers, oddly sans garnish. The capers were briny and sharp in just the right way, but the sauce lacked its purported Limoncello component. The agnolotti were filled with plain, shredded chicken which was not seasoned. The pasta was made in-house but lacked the fresh and tender lightness I expected. The dish, taken as a whole, was boring.

My date ordered the Chipped Tenderloin Toast, which consisted of sautéed beef chunks nestled in a long French roll and a sauce that invoked gravy via cheese. The beef had a nutty, browned flavor, but the cheese-gravy was uninspired. The roll was nice: the crust crisp and the dough chewy, but the real treat of this plate was the eggplant fries. These were strips of eggplant, battered and deep-fried and served with ketchup, which I found to be unnecessary. The delicate tang of the eggplant was not overcome by the batter or by old frying oil. They were perfectly crisp. I liked them so much I opted not to finish my dinner and had a side order of the fries (which were surprisingly inexpensive at $1.50).

While the fare was moderately priced, in the $9 to $24 range with a side salad costing $3, I found the website’s claim of “fine dining in a casual atmosphere” to be a bit off. The food we sampled was satisfactory but not exemplary, certainly not on par with other fine dining. One does not have to dress or make reservations.

Fortunately, there is more to a dining experience than the food. Our server was pleasant and quick and our food was served extra-hot. We both ordered the Brown Ale, which was lovely. The restaurant was comfortable and pretty; the luminaries and hanging lights were shaded with natural pulp paper. The dinnerware, though incongruous with some of the atmospheric elements, were these beautiful, heavy, white, elongated rectangular vessels. The flatware had a nice heft and squared edges that matched nicely with the plates.

While some restaurant reviewers award stars, I will use capers. Out of a five-caper system, I will use the average from three categories. For Service, I give 4 capers for the superb speed and food temperature. For atmosphere, I give 3.5 capers, owing to the paradoxical elements but general comfort and prettiness. For the food, there can only be 2.5 capers. Overall, then, I award The James 3-1/3 capers.

I love food and I'm on a diet

2010-02-08T16:25:00.002-05:00

Hi.

For 2010, I decided that this chubby girl needs be chubby no more! That was 4 weeks ago, about.

I ate so much ridiculous and delicious food around the holidays, but each year, starting in November and ending after New Year's, eating gravy and overcooked meat and carbohydrate and fat laden holiday food is exceedingly delicious, but every year, I find myself eating nothing but grapefruit and dry tuna for about a week in January in order to feel detoxed. This year, I just decided to carry the torch and diversify.

I recently joined dailyburn.com. My boyfriend's on it, too. We're each other's motivators, which is good since we're both really into food. You could maybe call us foodies.

Anyway, for somebody who's totally into cooking and eating, when my daily menu looks like this

1 c raw baby carrots
1/4 c mixed salted nuts
2 string cheese
pita with hummus
grape tomatoes
other miscellaneous veggies
grapefruit
banana
other miscellaneous fruit
1 c. organic fruit yogurt from Wegman's

for days and days, well, I get bored.

So i finally got a moment to cook something and I made this turkey breast. I marinated it in lemon juice, garlic, olive oil. Then I baked it (a scoche too long, it's a bit dry), and i threw together some fake tzatziki sauce (lowfat plain yogurt, onions, cucumbers & a touch of black pepper and garlic powder), and I warmed up a pocket-less pita, and I added some grape tomatoes and feta cheese and cucumbers and baby spinach, and folded it over, and ate it up like a sandwich. YUM.

So today, I think I am making a huge, giant delicious spinach salad with the rest of the turkey and other veggie deliciousness for dinner. The point is that my little pick-around approach for the first several weeks was good because it got me in the habit of thinking about calories and nutrition and health and things.

Though I just had this kind of brilliant idea for a delicious tuna pita melt that would be kind of junk food satisfactory, but not unhealthy. At least, not as much as the pizza I've been craving.

photographs

2009-08-01T23:59:00.003-04:00

253 photos so far in 2009. of those, at least 150 were taken by someone else. Probably 50 of them are of my daughter. 53 are random. I do not prioritize photographs the way that some people do. For a short time, I remembered to take pictures of Pearl because she asked me to. Today was her 4th birthday party (her birthday was Thursday), so there was some requisite photo taking. But my mom took most of them.

Yes. Yes, I am very, very interesting.

Hahaha!

2009-07-31T20:57:00.002-04:00

My boyfriend, who is like the best guy ever,--No, actually, he's not like him. He is him.--told me he read my new blogs the other day. By new, I guess he meant that he read the blogs I wrote in March. Back when I was still working at the car dealership. I'd forgotten I had a blog, seriously. Seriously. So I'm thinkin' aw shit. I needs to do me some bloggin'.

Here's what's interesting.

In phase two of awesome birthday cake for 4-year-old (yesterday) daughter.
Been cooking some pretty delicious stuff of late. Recipes at www.allrecipes.com, www.foodnetwork.com and www.epicurious.com.
Am highly sleepy, but will be up for some time longer (see cake, above).
Doing consistent freelance editing stuff, have discovered serious detestation of ellipses.
Switched jobs again.
Moved.
Decided to lose some weight.
Drink too much coffee.
Had a sister graduate from high shool.
Had another sister turn 21.
Wish I could get back some of my innocence.
Will! Write! Romance! Novel! (Please, no judging. People READ them).

Finally, I will try to write more blogs. I will try. I don't really know who I'm writing them for. This blog is not nearly so artful as others' blogs. Nor is it focused enough to really gain a niche following. Blah Blah.

Lame

2009-03-08T20:08:00.002-04:00

Sheesh. I am a bad, bad blogger. I will blog more soon. I swear. As soon as things calm down. As soon as the moon is full. As soon as my feet grow two sizes. As soon as I start talking to my old friends again. As soon as I get some time. As soon as minutes get longer. As soon as a duck returns my call. As soon, just as soon as I can.

I love Pandora

2009-01-22T12:05:00.002-05:00

So this very attractive hipster man came into my office at the job one day. His name was David Romeo, of all super-perfect-literary-life-moment things. I was listening to Pulp (sorry kids, all I care to invest the time to find is a fan site), on CD in the CD drive of my horrid work computer. It wasn't even a burned CD. It was the proper CD with the case and liner notes and everything. Not MP3s. [It seems relevant to note that I am kind of slow on this whole music technology thing. I won an iPod Nano a few months ago at this thing, and I put like 9 songs on it and that is that. I keep thinking I should put the whole music library on it and put it in my car so I can listen to anything without messing with CDs, but I like CDs. Then I think I should sell it on eBay. But I bet the next big thing is coming out, so I missed my moment on the Nano selling.]

So David Romeo, who is trying to talk me into getting my bosses to get us up and running with eBay Motors goes, "Are you listening to Pandora?"
"No. Pulp." I said.
"I know." He said. "You should try Pandora. It's online radio and free. You tell it what you like, and it plays music like that."
"Cool." So of course, as soon as David Romeo leaves my office with cards for my bosses (who are luddites), I set up my Pandora account.

Anyway. So I made 2 Pandora stations so far. It's like LastFM which my Mac-antagonizing, hipster-mocking, IT boyfriend prefers. So if you are like a boyfriend of mine (who is also divine), maybe you would like LastFM more.

And Pandora has these cool concerts. And the whole reason I wanted to make this blog was to say that I'm so pumped about the embedded video. Pandora told me he was good for people who like Jeff Buckley. And I do. But I can't listen much because he, like Johnny Cash, makes me weep. I do not know how people can live and feel so much. I guess they can't because neither JC nor JB are still with us.

Lookeee!

Vocations

2009-01-21T09:01:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I did the impossible. I procured a different job in these our uncertain economic times! I even think I'm really going to enjoy it.

So hopefully, since I will have soon pulled myself out of this crazy job in which I suffer now I will be happier and less defeated-feeling and more-able to write blogs. Stay tuned, my people. Stay tuned.

!!!
-me

I tricked Blogger!!

2008-11-18T14:01:00.002-05:00

So I'm editing the blog for my job. And I stay signed in with my employment sign-in all day in the Internet Explorer browser. I like Firefox better. So I always open Gmail and other stuff in a Firefox browser window. And anybody with more than one google account knows that they automatically sign you out if you sign into another one in a new window (or tab) of the same browser. [I have like 4 gmail accounts. It's a thing.] But they DON'T if you do it in different browsers. Woo Hoo! Take that, Google!!

Sheesh. I wish I'd discovered Pandora Radio sooner.

Hoorah!

Crazy Youtube Video, even though I never embed them.

2008-11-16T20:43:00.001-05:00

This is wicked cool. It makes me want to video Pearl. vid-eee-oh.

I ordered business cards

2008-11-16T18:19:00.002-05:00

So like I keep saying, I'm so unhappy in my current job. Sad Days. I'm not an unhappy-in-my-job kind of girl. I like working, generally. I generally like my job. Just not this time.

So I went to Vista Print and ordered business cards for two companies I'm starting. (I suppose when I decide to take charge, I go all out.) One is April Line Writing, and that's the one I'm most serious about, and the one that already basically exists since I have three proper clients. The other is Mama Lirpa's Cookies.

I only have a groovy slogan for Mama Lirpa's Cookies. "We take the hassle out of home baking." The idea is that I'll sell cookie dough (or prepared cookies). I also like the idea of being a cookie caterer. I show up with the cookies and keep the coffee made and the cocktails refreshed so that the host(ess) can enjoy her party. That'd be fun. And I'd be wicked good at it. So anybody know anybody?

I joned LinkedIn. But seriously, NOBODY I know is on LinkedIn.

I think I'll change my employment on all the other social networking places.

Wednesday, I'm making cookies for a local B2B netoworking group.

Things are looking up.

Coincidences

2008-11-15T16:36:00.003-05:00

Went to Starbucks to look for a job. Ran into Robin Kaye who is a novelist. She does not even live in PA. She lives in Maryland and brings her daughter to Carlisle 4x a week for CPYB. I introduced her to the new Espresso Truffle at Starbucks. YUM. Anyway--one thing leads to another, and Robin and I have a coffee-with-writing date on Wednesday. Cool!

Received, interestingly, a Plaxo request from Pearl's grandmother (her father's mom) who, approximately a year ago, bailed out on meeting her. In the request, she classified me as "family." Odd. But interesting because I'd just been thinking how I should get back in touch with her.

Really, do. I mean it.

2008-11-05T15:12:00.003-05:00

Check out the Blogs of Note section at your homepage for blogger. Perhaps this is an obvious suggestion, but I have never taken the time to before today when I am wasting my last hour of work the way I have been wasting produce lately (please don't make me admit all the moldy tomatoes I have recently discarded). Greedily. Full of capital slime.

Blogs of note is neat. Tons of stuff about Knitting which is a tres hipster thing to do these days. Tres urban chic.

There is an important person in my life who insists that I am a hipster. I do not know if it is meant to make me itch under my skin or if it is meant to flatter me or just as a casual observation gone horribly awry.

I have been thinking a lot about what a hipster is. I do not know, really. Does anyone? I should consult Urban Dictionary. I bet they know. I am too lazy and tummy-rumbling just now.

And Oh My God Online Radio

2008-11-04T14:48:00.003-05:00

So, somebody recently pointed out to me that a lot of the music I like is either folk or David Bowie-sounding.

So I recently learned all about Pandora. (This is going back to that whole Luddite thing I've mentioned--I think it is probably decidedly unhip to only be learning about Pandora online now, right??) I like the Pandora interface better than Last FM. Just now, Pandora is playing some Rolling Stones for me. I feel like a jerk, but I find the Rolling Stones to be terribly boring. gasp.

Anyway--I'm liking this business of I tell it music I like, and it figures out my taste.

So far, it has not played me a single David Bowie song. bwah ahaahaha. I bet if I put in David Byrne it'll give me some David Bowie.

It's giving me way, way too much Velvet Underground. I like the Velvet Underground, but I've heard most of their stuff. I want to hear new stuff. So do I tell it Velvet Underground, then it quits playing so damn much??

I'm gonna' try it.

Oh kay. Now I want it to give me a bunch of brit-a-billy. (I just made that up. But I tricked you, didn't I? I made you think I know stuff).

And Oh My God the Crockpot

2008-11-04T11:02:00.002-05:00

I had this revelation. I mean, maybe it wasn't so revolutionary as I think, but, ahem, It occurred to me that maybe the wrong approach is making recipes in the crock pot. So far I have been displeased by my crock pot efforts. They have consisted of artichokes, mac & cheese and chili. The chili was the best thing so far. Not that the artichokes were bad, but I grilled them once, and I don't think I'll ever come up with a satisfactory alternative to the artichoke grilling. Grilled Artichokes is boss. Anyway--I've been thinking lately that the crock pot could make my life easier in some ways, and cheaper, too, so I should consider learning to use it more adequately.

So I invented a fall stew this morning that is crock potting on low as I type this.

It contains the following:
(more or less) 1 lb of left over steak, cubed
2/3 of a small peeled acorn squash, also cubed
1 small onion, chopped
1 small zucchini, sliced & halved
3 ribs of celery, chopped
1/3 c. frozen peas
small handful of wheat berries
2 giant garlic cloves chopped coarsely
bay leaf
cinnamon stick
salt, pepper
shake of cayenne pepper
bit of clove and nutmeg
2 T (+/-) tomato paste

I want it to be fragrant and wonderful. It looked like it would be. It was also quite pretty. I considered putting potatoes in it. I also considered carrots, but decided against b/c of the acorn squash. Anyway, I'm totally stoked. If it is tasty, I'm calling it "Election Stew" and going to make it every election year on Election day. This evening, Pearl and I are going to my folks' house for some nice Election Partying. We'll sit around being coy about our politics and bitching loudly about how partisan it all is.

November is Novel Writing Month

2008-11-04T10:29:00.004-05:00

I toyed with what to call this post, since it'll undoubtedly be so totally manic since it's been like ever since I blogged. July 20? Sheeit!

Here were some of the titles in the running:

Election Selections: Mad Musings from a Frustrated Libertarian
BYOB--and other nifty slogans for breast cancer awareness bumper stickers.
Do you understand Facebook? I totally don't.
Blah Blah: Boring my friends one at a time

But I went with November is Novel Writing month since it has crested in my noggin today, since I have not done any of the 15 pages I promised myself I would have done by today. 5 pages a day x 30 days is 150 pages. So it's going to be catch up a bit, but I think I shall manage. I have good ideas and a depressed streak going for me. I'm often the most productive writer when I'm feeling a bit low.

I saw a Breast Cancer Awareness sticker this morning that had a pink ribbon in a little white oval (like the kind people get when they go to the Outer Banks) that said "ta-tas!" I loved it. I thought another fun one would be "Bring your Own Boobies!" and "Titillating." I mean, maybe these are totally trite. I mean, no maybe. They are totally trite. But such fun!!

I am deeply frustrated by this fine election we're having today. The failure of the two-party system is so deeply implicit in it, and everybody's talking about the wrong stuff. Or maybe they're talking about the right stuff, but not letting enough people talk about it. It's like the government thinks we're stoopid or something.

I'm on a crazy job search. I apply for like 2 every day. I'm so finished with my job. I am not adequately compensated. And that is most of it, but there are other things too. Since I'm boring all my friends with the play-by-play of my frustrating and burdensome quest for a new job, I'll keep it to what I've just said.

And there's facebook. Sometimes I forget that facebook is something most people check all day every day. Yesterday I changed my status to that I was weeping, and I was. That's not something that I find to be so earth-shattering. I weep fairly often. I think it is healthy. So everybody I know posted a concerned response to my staus and I was startled. It was sweet, so very sweet, but I felt all guilty and stuff for having caused so much worry. It was really nothing--just the obligatory pre-menstrual weeping. I've wept a bit today already and will likely continue to do so. Anyway--I am really confused about facebook. The people I know who are supposed to be confused by it seem to get it way, way better than I do.

Maybe I am a luddite deep in my soul. Tuff. I'm applying for a job with Apple, Inc. later today. That's right. I want to increase Steve Jobs' wealth so that Obama can spread it all around and McCain can be like, "I have more houses than he does."

Go Vote, People!!

And Look for more-frequent updates.

What I just realized about my Blog

2008-07-20T20:55:00.002-04:00

First, I want to express why I think that writing is my art of choice. I never tire of reading my own words. I re-read each e-mail, I just read the last dozen or so blog posts I've put here.

When I have considered other artistic pursuits, I have been moodily turned-off by the notion of absorbing my own work.

I have jokily talked all summer of starting a band with my siblings, but that's just an excuse to hang out together, and to use my garage to its more, um, young? fun? romanticized? purpose. The thought of hearing the songs I write played back after I sing them to myself actually causes some serious anxiety. I always HATED critique in art class. It felt so invasive and primitive.

For some reason, critique in writing classes was exhilarating and awesome. Maybe because I thought we were talking about something? I don't know. But I know it was.

Anyway, one of the luxuries of loving the construction of one's own sentences is that I just really ENJOYED noticing that for the last 3 months (at least), about every other blog I've written has said basically the same thing about coping with adulthood.

I'm going to work on that.

Don't quit reading this silly blog, if you've been feeling fed up of my whining and self-absorption. I think I can promise some pretty interesting fiction writing soon. I've got some thinks in the works. YESSSSS.

I hate my job and the coffee there.

2008-07-08T09:52:00.003-04:00

People who shop on the internet are the most endlessly passive-aggressive people in the whole freaking world. Plus, everybody hates car dealerships, and if you're not right in front of the shopper, it's a lot harder to make him love you with your winning personality and surpassing cuteness.

The coffee here, though the woman in charge of it claims that it is the second-most-expensive commercial coffee available, is the worst swill I have ever sipped.

Quitcherbitchin, you say. You're right. I should quit complaining and just be pleased that it's free.

I think I shall risk offending the aforementioned person-in-charge-of-coffee and bring my own coffee maker & fine grounds. No more CVM mochas* for me!

*CVM mocha: 6 oz black coffee, 2 oz phony powdered creamer, 1/8 of a packet of hot cocoa. Add sugar or sweetner if you like. It's almost drinkable.

I like rain, but on the Fourth of July????

2008-07-04T07:50:00.002-04:00

?! I was all psyched to do a barbecue.

I always want to spell Barbecue with a Q. Now i wish I could go shopping. And nap the day away. :-(

Alas.

How do the wealthy get wealth?

2008-07-02T19:41:00.004-04:00

Since I have joined the ranks of the gainfully employed (don't get me wrong, I have always worked, always been employed, never before as gainfully as now, but still), and since I lived in poverty for an unfortunate period of time, and since I developed a deep seed of greed, I have been looking around me.

A lot of people work really, really hard and barely scrape by. Shop at Wal Mart, drive junky cars, live in passable homes that can't get sorely-needed renovations in a timely fashion. They're planning to use the equity in their home for their retirement. These folks look forward to yard sale season, go to church, have decent credit and are genuinely good people. I come from a family full of such people.

But some people work their faces off for about 20 of their most energetic years and along the way become wealthy, well-to-do, upper-upper-middle class. They have tons of dough squirreled away for retirement. They own beautiful homes with nice furniture and classy autos. They can afford subscriptions to fashion and gourmet magazines and the best cable package, new computers every year and the $50-$150 bottle of Tequila/Gin/Vodka/Whiskey instead of the nasty $8 one that needs to be diluted to be drinkable. They order beautiful pieces of furniture and jewelry to give as wedding gifts from shiny catalogues and use American Express cards which get paid off, in full, every month. They are also folks who go to church and are genuinely good. I have met several families of such people.

Neither of these two groups work harder than the other. There is nothing better about one than the other in the final, philsophical analysis. But wouldn't you rather belong to the latter group? I sure would. I'm not thinking I will ever be Martha Stewart--that woman is a bottomless well of opportunism, energy, savvy & WORK, but I want to be able to HELP Pearl with college. I want to have the resources to help take care of my parents in their aging so that their small estate for which they have worked their whole lives will not be absorbed by a nursing home.

So what's the difference?

Here're the only things I can come up with: what they do with their excesses and disciplined saving habits.

Those of us who just get by, we have little windfalls--tax returns, bonuses at work, unexpected inheritances of a couple thousand bucks. What do we do with them? We pay off a credit card, or buy a few gallons of paint or a fresh toilet or a new dishwasher or put it down on a new washer/dryer set, because the 700-year-old set we inherited from our grandmother's grandmother has finally puked--then we put the rest in checking, waiting for when it is needed. None of those things are wrong or bad, but they're not think-ahead kinds of things to do.

People who wind up rich save, save, save. They max out IRAs and contribute the max % to their 401K at work. They look for ways to build passive income. I think the IRS calls that kind "unearned" and taxes it more. They buy a few well-researched stocks with their few hundred extra dollars, then those few hundred extra can buy more stocks and can grow into thousands extra. It's not as mystifying as you think it is. Starbucks closed at just over $15/share on the first, and at the end of June, Hershey Foods stock was only at $37/share.

And there are free ways to learn about that stuff. My credit union offers free financial consultations. INGdirect offers a free high interest savings account (it earns 3%APY) and a very user-friendly, gradual entrance approach to investing in stocks through Sharebuilder. A friend introduced me to The Motley Fool which is a bunch of articles written about investing in plain English by entertaining, clever folks. At the end of each article, the writer-bio gives a bit of info about the kinds of stocks that particular person owns. NPR's Marketplace segments can be downloaded in podcast form, and are an extraordinarily deep well of information.

Home Equity: In the latter category above, I would be willing to bet big dollars (which is something those in that category would likely not do) that when they buy a new house and sell one, they do not roll every penny of equity into their new house to get a lower mortgage payment. They instead take ten or twenty (or more) thousand dollars and put it in a high yield Mutual fund, CD or they invest it in stock. Maybe they put it down on a rental property or make another physical investment that will appreciate.

Making choices like these, I can see how in a much shorter time than one might expect (10 or 20 years instead of 50), one can come out in a really good spot of the world of personal finance.

So here's my process to both resurrect my soiled credit and become one of the latter category: baby steps. I started by paying my bills on time, paying ahead where applicable. By forcing myself to consider non-necessary purchases for a week before making them. After several months of that, I started using low-balance credit-repair type credit cards. Using them responsibly but carrying balances (small ones, under $20--I don't think they care how much interest you're paying, just that you're paying it). I got a car loan on a pre-owned car. Car loans are equally arguably a super or a retarded financial choice. But for me, it's about my credit, not about my investments, because I don't have any of those yet. I force myself to save $200/month to an interest-earning account. That's not a ton of money, but right now I can't afford more. And before the summer is out, I will own some stocks. I'm doing reading and research and looking around me first. In August, I'll be eligible for my 401K through work. By winter, I'll own at least one CD. By 2010's end, I'll buy my mortgage from my dad, do some renovating, sell it, move in town and invest some of my equity. Where? Who knows. I don't think I have landlord's chops. But I might be able to be a flipper. I have an eye for design and potential. Who knows--by then perhaps I'll be a stockmarket guru and writing for Motley Fool myself.

at the lip of a downward spiral

2008-06-27T21:58:00.004-04:00

Today is the first day I feel like myself again. Since our little run-in with the law, I have been sort of revelling in self-pity.

Despite Cash Bash (where I got money, free food & booze and an iPod Nano just for selling some Subarus!!), hanging out with groovy peeps, QT with Ms. P, getting at least one new fan of my blog and having some small successes at work.

I tried to explain to my mom and sister earlier why I think it is healthy to allow periods of wallowing in the dark of self-loathing & pity. It did not work. I told them I'd be even more insane if I didn't. I do not think they were impressed (or convinced).

For example: I made up this thing that I say when I burp or fart: It's like a parody of the 23rd Psalm. "Pardon me, for yea though I belch in the valley of the shadow of gastro-intestinal anguish, I shall fear no flatulence." My sister told me that I must be quoting Monty Python. She said that tomorrow I may admit that I'd made it up about making it up.

Who gave the DVD players brains?

2008-06-27T21:56:00.003-04:00

There's this fairly marvellous feature in my DVD player--it always begins where it left off. But when it leaves off on the main screen, it begins at the beginning of the previews. Who made this happen? Who's the genius of marketing and memory and many other things I can't begin to remember?

Pearl's first run-in with the law.

2008-06-24T13:14:00.002-04:00

My mom and sister and I took Pearl to Hershey Chocolate World Saturday.

Then on the way home, we stopped at one of my all-time favorite eating establishments in Carlisle, Scalles. I would recommend it, but I can no longer bear the thought of doing so.

It was 2pm. There were not a lot of other people at Scalles.

Pearl was playing one of her fun toddler games which involved running between the table and the bathroom. It was making me nuts and scared, so I made her sit in a high chair. Pearl hates nothing more than encapsulation.

Pearl was screaming, at the top of her lungs, for like maybe 2-and-a-half minutes.

It used to be a good idea to take Ms. Pearl off to the bathroom or outside or something to get her to relax. Those tactics no longer work, in fact they often make it worse. She is stubborn and loves to make me look bad in public.

The owner of Scalles came over and said, "Hey. What's the problem over here? Nobody wants to hear that" to Pearl. It was funny and it startled her, so she shut up for like 20 seconds.

Then the owner went to where we could see him watching us and stood there, glaring.

When, about 1-and-a-half minutes later, Pearl finally started to seem like she'd relax, the owner came and asked me if I could take her outside and get her calmed down. I was hot and tired and hungry and annoyed by the negative energy emanating from his skinny shoulders, so I grabbed Pearl, put her under my arm and told my mom to call me when she and my sister were finished and I'd come get them. I bumped Pearl's head on the door as I left.

My mom, also annoyed (and sympathetic to the plight of a child who may or may not behave on no recognizable schedule), said, "No. We'll come too."

So they did. We left. We put enough money on the table for the food we'd consumed. Only 1/3 of the food had come to the table.

I took Pearl home and tried (to no avail) to get her to nap.

30 minutes later, a police officer came to my door. He told me I had to call the Carlisle cops.

I called the Carlisle cops and spoke to the NICEST police officer EVER. Officer Darhower. The owner of Scalles had called the cops on me, telling the officer the worst parts of the story to make me look like some white-trash weirdo who makes a habit of rolling on her food bills. Officer Darhower indicated that the reason for the call was that the owner of Scalles would like the bill to be paid.

I explained to the officer that I'd gladly pay the bill if the owner of Scalles would deliver the food to my door. I explained that the owner of Scalles had asked me to leave.

The officer explained that it was actually my choice to leave, and the owner of Scalles had just asked me to take my unruly child outside and get her under hand.

Silly me.

I was very angered and weeping through all of this. It stressed me out in a way I can't remember being stressed out as a parent so far--and being a parent is fucking stressful.

I may be excessively sensitive to the ways in which people who are not caring for children, working full time, keeping a house, and paying all the bills ALL by themselves judge the bits of my parenting style that come into public view. In fact, I know I am. But I don't think it's wrong to want privacy and tolerance from people in the World.

I don't go around telling couples who make out in public to stop because I'm really deprived, and it's unbearable for me to watch. I don't go around asking people with too little clothes and too much flesh to get dressed because they're grossing me out. I don't ask people to stop smoking or doing other things which may or may not irritate any number of other human beings. I endure my own irritation, most of the time, with a smile. Or if I am incapable of doing so, I absent myself.

So Officer Darhower called the owner of Scalles and then called me back, saying that the owner of Scalles was REALLY concerned about the bump to little Pearl's head. And that I'm welcome to come back to the restaurant if I come settle my bill. They'd saved my food in the refrigerator. Wasn't that big of them?

Blog Envy

2008-06-19T19:58:00.003-04:00

Okay. I know why I do not read other people's blogs.

INSANE JEALOUSY.

My blog is so boring and un-funny. Other people write funny blogs. Even other people named April. In Wisconsin. Right Here on Blogger.

I have serious blog envy and I am linking her over on the right, because she is cool and she has my name.

How many uncool Aprils do you know?

Toaster Ovens & Stranger Than Fiction

2008-06-14T19:34:00.009-04:00

I LOVE the movie Stranger Than Fiction, and as I'm watching it, I've noticed that the apartments reflect each character's personality.

Harold Crick's apartment is full of IKEA's minimalist tables and vintage late 70s/early 80s half-upholstered seating that is really geometrical. Mustard and Beige and Mossy Green. It's in a yellow brick building, all squares and big windows. It feels very 80s/Miami Vice/smoky lighting. Like those Molly Ringwald movies. John Hughes? Right. That guy.

His co-worker, Dave's apartment is in a concrete building with very, um, futuristic? lines. He eats vegetables that look like they were grown on Mars.

Ana Pascal's apartment is in a house--on the second floor of a row house. Her furnishings are eclectic and draped in beautiful tapestries from mixed eras--present, 60s, etc. Beautiful Orange and pink and yellow and turquoise. The lighting feels organic.

Also--this movie is plain beautifully written. I've heard Emma Thompson talk about "honoring good writing." It seems to me that she chooses movies that are extraordinarily well-written. Have you ever seen Treasure Planet?? It's a Disney film. It's FUN and good. Emma Thompson does the voice of the captain. She says, "I said something rather good this morning. What was it?... A ludicrous parcel of drivelling galloots. There you have it: poetry." I love literary movies. I love literary people.

Today, I replaced my toaster oven. I was trying to live without one. I was trying to just go with my regular Toaster. In the place I lived before here, I had just a toaster oven, no toaster. Then it caught on fire shortly after I moved here, so I bought a toaster because the one I wanted was on sale, and thought I'd do without the toaster oven. But I adore toaster ovens. They help. You can make small oven-meals in them without warming up the full-sized oven and wasting all that energy. And now that the weather is, forgive the language, FUCKING hot, it's great to be able to use just a cubic foot of HOT instead of 7 cubic feet of HOT when I make freezer pizza or jalapeno poppers or anything else that is small enough to go in the Toaster oven.

My friend Katney says that she has endured Ridicule because of her toaster oven. She has heard folks say, "It's not the eighties anymore, dude."

I'm sorry ridiculors. You are wrong. Toaster ovens are better than almost all other small kitchen appliances. They especially trump Microwaves. Microwaves are the work of Satan.

Convection is cool. Maybe someday I'll have a bunch of convection ovens and a beautiful, cast-iron, professional-grade Gas Range.

I also dig the front-loading washing machine. It truly does marvelous work. It makes clothing clean, but makes it look less-worn-out. Especially if it already looks worn out. I have to say. The only thing about living in the suburbs I wouldn't absolutely trade in if I moved in town is on-site laundry. I LOVE having laundry at home. Only thing is I wish it were either upstairs or in the basement. I know. Poles. But I am a woman of many polar distinctions and tastes. Nobody's holding a gun to you and making you read this. And if they are, well, thank you. But I see no reason to be so extreme.

Anyway. I think I wanted to say something more philosophical about my toaster oven, instead of analyzing the appliances in my life.

Update on my man hating: I am this close to starting to spell all words ending in men myn or min, depending. Womyn, Specimin.

Update on my urban/suburban quandary: I would like to live in town. I would be safer and happier. I'm having a hard time being patient, but I want to be. Patience is a virtue I do not yet have.

Update on Pearl: She had perfect potty-usage yesterday. Near-perfect potty-usage today, and her slip-up was my fault, not hers. And even though she's even not feeling all that well, she is a fabulously loving and calm. My new work schedule helps her with that.

What do we become?

2008-06-08T15:26:00.002-04:00

This morning, I woke at twenty to six, shut off the a/c, padded downstairs. I unrolled my Yoga mat for the first day of my mid-year-resolution: Yoga at least 4 mornings a week. 45 minutes of Yoga later, I put on the coffee and went out for the Sunday paper, which I signed up for at the supermarket because of the $20 gift card they offered. I unloaded the dishwasher and had coffee and the paper on the porch while the air was still wet, before the sun had her way with all of us.

Little Pearl came downstairs at around 7:30. She got her juice and her freggie and began her day with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory A la Mr. Burton.

I put in some laundry, wrote some lists and planned the menu for tomorrow evening when my sister, Ellen and her new boyfriend, John will join us for Dinner. Then I remembered the Challah I bought the other day and made some french toast for our breakfast. Pearl still preferred a hot dog or Dog!, though she fed her toast to the air and the couch.

We saw Kung Fu Panda. It was great.

The point of this minutae is that I am really happy with this day. 8 hours later, I'm really still energized from my Yoga with Shiva Rae, and I'm looking forward to dinner at my parents' house.

A friend just told me on the phone about his, er, encounter with a young lass on a Porche 911 in an alley in our Fair Nation's Capitol. A few months ago, I think the tale would have made me rather jealous and nostalgic for my own days of steamy encounters. Today, though, his story made me worried and glad that I no longer have those worries.

I've been giving myself space and permission to really hate men lately. To really bad-mouth them like my angry-bra-burning-super-political sisters and mothers of yore did. I have been angry in a way I never wanted to be, in a way that would have disgusted me because of the ways in which "feminism" seems to fail to notice or accept responsibility for the way it has affected (ahem, confused) men. I am still disgusted, but I am healing. It is easy to be angry at men because I work with a lot of them. It is also easy to pity them. And it is easier than it has ever been to fancy myself in a domestic relationship (with a man) wherein I accept the "female" role. It is easier to get peace with the hate when I indulge it. It is easier to see ways around it, to imagine the possibility that not all men are ridiculous swine.

I hope this process seems obvious to some of you. I hope that more of you have never felt the need to hate men, though they are loathesome creatures on a great many levels. I imagine some men feel the very same way about women, and with good cause. But they are not allowed to express it. If they do, they are suspected of the desire to beat women or to rape them, and these are unspeakable things.

I used to romanticize unhappiness, depression, self-hate. I have always been able to barrel through those periods of my lfe, but lately I have been seeing fewer of them.

So what do we become? Are yoga and a slow morning the answer to all of my problems of adulthood? Of identity? Where does this peace for today come from? I have become, in a short almost-four-years just about EVERYTHING I never wanted to be. A mother, a (looks like) permanent resident of South Central Pennsylvania, sentimental--openly and sloppily, a junior spinster, a man-hating feminist, a car-salesperson, a manager, celibate, complacent, a fan of chick flicks, fat and happy.

I suppose the good news is that I have not actually become my mother. Yet.

A Pen that lights up

2008-04-22T15:53:00.002-04:00

At work last evening, there was a pen on my desk that said on the side, "Jesus is Light Daryl and Barbara." It was clearly a favor from some pair of zealots' wedding.

Slightly cool about this pen: the top quarter of the pen was a clear plastic cylinder with what appeared to be a DNA helix in it (ironic, right??!), and there was a little button below the clear plastic part that, when pushed, lit up the little DNA helix with this lovely bluish light.

But to me, there was no dispute about whether or not to keep and use the pen. The punishable "Jesus is Light" is far too corny to grace my coffee cup full of pens.

So I gave the pen to the boy who sits in the cubicle on the other side of my cubicle's wall who does--in earnest--believe that Jesus is Light.

Later, I found that my other colleague left it on my desk, thinking that I'd have a quandary: the pen is cool, it lights up. The pen is uncool, it's about jesus. Keep it? Get rid of it?

If I had know that part of the story, I might have kept it as a souvenir of the fact that somebody besides me had put that much thought into my pen taste.

John Cusack & Nick Hornby

2008-04-22T15:05:00.003-04:00

I'm rereading High Fidelity because it's great, and because I just rewatched the movie--or, after three consecutive evenings of falling asleep at various key points, put together something like a viewing--and there is, surprisingly, nothing at all offensive about the way Nick Hornby's books and the movies made from them coexist in my head.

Now, and because my New Car has a six CD changer in the dash, I am analyzing myself as an appreciator of music. Here's what's in my six CD changer, in order:

1. Amy Winehouse's Back to Black
2. She & Him Volume 1 (it's incredible how MySpace can make even famous people seem kinda' normal!)
3. The Proclaimers, This is the Story
4. Robyn Hitchcock, I Often Dream of Trains
5. Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender
6. The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow Which is the only Shins Album I can't seem to get enough of.

Reading High Fidelity makes me wonder the following things:
1. Would Rob, Dick & Barry approve of this selection?
2. Why would I give a shit if they did or didn't?
3. Why is it that on this reading, I'm more focused on the music than the way in which the book seems to be Cliff's notes for the (often) dysfunctional workings of the male brain?
4. Why don't I have time for farting around with songs of my own anymore?
5. What's with the English snobbery toward the word "horny" when they use words like "snog" and "shag" for adults-only activities?

I've also been thinking of the ways in which my music taste has calmed down a bit over the years. I was, in my (much) younger incarnation, one of those obnoxious people who considered themselves "punk" about 10 years after anybody was authentically punk. By the time my posturing occurred, everything about punk had watered down a bit. Though I will say, in my own defense, and maybe even to my credit, that I was aware of all of that, even then, and I did try VERY HARD, which now seems far less admirable than it did then, but isn't it true what they say about hindsight?

In some ways, what I like now is (appallingly and startlingly) like what I listened to before I could choose, my mom's music: '80s radio country, and the AM station 960 which was then "The greatest hits of the forties, fifties and sixties!" She also likes and liked The Carpenters, Barry Manilow (gasp!), and Neil Sedaka.

I do still listen to Led Zeppelin's IV from time to time as well as Green Day's Kerplunk and The Violent Femmes, which are still far less hardcore than the music I convinced myself I liked 12-15 years ago.

There are some living affections for me, best among them They Might Be Giants.

Where do I find the time to read?

In the time during which I am not doing things I should be doing, like now, when I should be cleaning, washing bed linens, working on a pasta salad, etc.

my life is REEEEEEEALLY exciting

2008-04-17T17:44:00.004-04:00

I wish I'd been saving up millions of interesting things to say. But I haven't.

lately, I've been daydreaming and brainstorming about my linen closet, the presentation I'm supposed to give at the Pennsylvania Poets' society conference on May 2, the creative writing classes I'm supposed to teach this summer at Carlisle Arts Learning Center, how to fix my house, how to save money, and how to eat only the food that is required to sustain my life without feeling like I'm NOT indulging culinarily, being a FEMALE car salesperson, how to get employed from home without going in the toilet financially.

She&Him: Volume 1--that Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward thingy I alluded to in the last blog that I heard Teri Groce talking about--is fucking awesome. If you don't have it, get it.

Get The Shins (forever--they'll change your life, just ask Zack Braff)

Been watching a lot of Spongebob & Northern Exposure.

Spongebob is awesome. Everybody should have such a great attitude: I'm Ready!

Love,
-April

Should the blog have a particular topic?

2008-04-01T00:57:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking. Maybe if I want my blog to serve a purpose, I should use it to do something that I HAVE THE TIME to do, instead of trying to think of it as writing practice and possible venue for the rougher draftings of the novel pages, short story tries, etc.

Wouldn't this blog be cool if it were devoted to reviewing movies? Kids' movies? Surf's Up was fantastic. It is satirizing this other movie that I didn't see. It's smart, funny and extremely well-casted.

I heard this thing on Fresh Air about Zooey Deschanel and how she's also a singer. If I'd seen Elf I would have already known that.

See how writing only about movies wouldn't work?

Then I thought I could spend a lot of time writing about Sales. But I don't know anything about Sales.

Food. But the Food network is already saying it. So is Epicurious.com, recipegoldmine.com, foodnetwork.com, marthastewart.com, et al.

So I will continue to write about whatever occurs to me.

And it will continue to be boring and vain sometimes.

And I will continue to feel conflict over the whole idea of blogging and whether or not I'm the kind of self-promoter who does it. I am. But I have guilt. Thanks Protestantism. I am so glad I was raised in your clutches.

I think I converted my brother to the Libertarian way of thinking this past week.

This boy I used to love asked me if I would vote for Obama. I said I would not. He said I should vote for Hillary because she is a girl (do you see why I no longer love him?).

Why doesn't Hillary have a last name? All the other candidates are known by their last names. Hillary is just Hillary. Is the notion that women will not always have the same last name so deeply ingrained? I don't have a last name at work. I only introduce myself as April, even though I love my last name.

Busy Busy Busy Busy

2008-04-01T00:43:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, yes. Being a grown up does suck immense amounts of donkey schlong. But being a grown up rocks sometimes:

When I make decisions that will save money (canceling the cable aspect of my bundle and cutting the extra media cost in half, changing the cell phone bill, making more coffee at home).

Small successes at work (beating the senior member in sales during March).

Being able to replace the broken washer and dryer.

Light at the end of the EXTREMELY bad credit tunnel.

Small, nice things that make my highly overwrought mother's obscenely difficult life just a wee bit easier (cooking dinner sometimes and enrolling Pearl in day care for two days a week).

Staying up late with Northern Exposure and a glass of wine (that was on sale).

Doing all of these things and still being able to drive to Baltimore on my day off to visit my younger, fabulous sister, get Pearl new clothes for Spring, and go to Trader Joe's for good cheese, inexpensive organic milk and marvelous produce.

Oh sometimes life is just good.

Craigslist & what's happening to me?

2008-03-09T17:04:00.003-04:00

Something has happened to me. I don't know what it is, but Craigslist is no longer my favorite thing in the world. Wow.

Perhaps I am suddenly eager to be upwardly mobile. In all areas of life, but especially financially. And perhaps this yearning for upward mobility has cast a shade of snobbery over the notion of Craigslist and its grassroots, nonprofit shtick. Or perhaps it is because I no longer have an urban Craigslist, there's not a lot of super interesting stuff and pages, pages, pages of it. Harrisburg "gigs" are all links to those "work from home" ads, and the job postings are few! Instead of at least one page under each heading each day, there are 0-3. Maybe 4 or 5 on some select days.

I've sworn off internet dating. I have a profile over at OkCupid, but rarely check it (unless I get a message about having a message), and sometimes when it is late, I get a kick out of answering those personality questions, taking quizzes, seeing what OkCupid has to say about me, and skulking around the "Who's viewed you" profiles, often being positively horrified by arrogance, ignorance, sub-literacy or blatant lies.

Anyway, I was just trolling the Craigslist Personals. I used to get a big kick out of them. But today, they were annoyingly transparent and pathetic. I was also surprised to find that an overwhelming majority of the ads were from very, very young men (under 21) looking for "the one," men my age (25-35) hoping to start a family, and middle-aged to older men (42-59) looking for "NSA" encounters and/or discreet kittens on the side.

Perhaps the reason I found the personals so distressing today is because I have not been feeling so malcontent in my aloneness lately. I mean, who wouldn't like to get laid?, but I guess I've just determined that a love relationship is probably not in the cards for me until Pearl's older and all the men who are now married to the beautiful, vapid girls they dated in high school are divorced.

In fewer words, I didn't feel like one of the posters today. I didn't have an intense surge of empathy or of desire or of anything besides pity, really.

Additionally, I have been experiencing a great amount of feminist rage lately. I am very upset with men. All of them. They are whiny and obnoxious mostly. Except I really, really like them.

Anyway. What's happening to me? I feel like it's Puberty the Second. Everything's changing, and it's doing so without my permission.

Saving Grace

2008-03-05T22:57:00.003-05:00

This show is totally boss.

Holly Hunter Rules, and what I really wanted to say is how much the first part of this episode made me want to take line dancing lessons. How much fun would that be?!

Anybody want to take them with me??

the lovely hair salon

2008-03-05T22:11:00.002-05:00

My friend from High School, Justin Kelly, owns this salon, Studio 3. It's this fabulous high-ceilinged space over near the Target Plaza in Carlisle. He's got his own line of products and tons of Ikea furniture.

He says he's living the American Dream. He has a house and two dogs and a partner and a Volvo and his own highly successful business. If I wanted him to do my hair, I'd have to book 2 years in advance.

And I LOVE giving him and his stylist Jeannean my money. And I LOVE the whole grown up hair salon experience. I had a cut and highlight, and it cost $80, which is probably more than I've spent on ALL the haircuts I've had in the past 10 years, but I swear--I got my head shampooed and conditioned not once but TWICE with this awesome Studio 3 Mint shampoo, and the most excellent moments of utter self-indulgence and femaleness and estrogen-laden energy.

I'm finding that indulging all of this womanhood, or maybe not womanhood because I am a woman every day and I'm mostly comfortable with that. Maybe I mean that I'm experiencing a new kind of comfort with my own femininity, my own interest in prettiness, in nice hairdos, in nice creams, lotions and skin treatments. I have started moisturizing my face and getting excited about eyeshadow, mascara, moisturizing conditioners. I'm finding all of this to be both an extension of my newly realized militant feminism and in reaction to the fact that my job puts me in the presence of almost exclusively men on an hour-to-hour basis. And the whole thing kind of freaks me out. I'm not comfortable in this comfort or in my level of involvement in the comfort.

I have to admit that it's also a bit about Pearl. How am I going to be a mom to a very feminine little girl who will eventually have very feminine little friends who will pressure her to get her eyebrows waxed? How will I negotiate? How will I navigate unless I learn myself?

I don't want Pearl to be 20 before she learns that people actually do wax their eyebrows. I also don't want her to be shocked. Perhaps I should like it if she found the whole thing to be an horribly barbaric expression of cultural vanity, but I'm not holding my breath. I think she might possess her father's disinterest in a critical inner life which is another thing I shall have to learn to negotiate.

Mazel Tov.

Dillsburg & Fates

2008-02-28T22:54:00.007-05:00

Tonight I drove back from York via Pennsylvania Rte 74 N.

York is a gorgeous town. It's huge, urban, fabulous. There is a vacuum hospital. Can you imagine? I don't need to imagine anymore!

But about 20 miles later, 74 cuts through Dillsburg, and as I drove through I was swept back in time a dozen years. I was in high school and not long for my profession as a Christian. I'd switched churches and started hanging out with this girl Lorraine. She and I met from Bible Quizzing. Bible Quizzing is the only thing from church I still miss. Competitive memorization and smartness. Boss.

Anyway, Lorraine's family (which was just her and her mom) had more money than any family I'd met to date. We ate a lot of Crab Rangoon and Ben&Jerry's from the Giant grocery about 1/2 mile from the house L and her mom shared. The money thing is only relevant inasmuch as the exoticness of people-with-money I perceived and the awe I felt. They weren't people who acted like they had money, and now I'm not even sure they had soooo much money, it's just that they had more money than anybody I'd ever met.

I've lost track of a lot of friends, but Lorraine is one of the only friends I've consistently regretted losing track of.

And recently, I've been selling cars to some of her High School cohorts.

I think this is what the Cosmos does when it wants me to relocate old friends.

Sympathetic Roast

2008-02-28T22:26:00.003-05:00

I dreamed last night--the image has been with me all day--that I baked a live pig. Actually a Piglet because it fit nicely in my little 2 gallon dutch oven. It was contained similarly to a lobster (with pretty colored gum bands) when I purchased it from the store.

The piglet baked for hours, plain, smelling fabulous, but emerged from the oven still alive. It wasn't squealing (I read someplace that you don't hear in dreams. I don't think that's true because I heard all kinds of horrifying things in one of my pre-Pearl's-birth nightmares), but it was wincing as we cut into it, its flesh did not bleed but did not juice; and there was a pulse. The most distressing things were the Piglet's eyes: expressive and alert and begging, "No! Don't cut me! Don't eat me!"

Is this some kind of plea from my psyche to become a vegetarian?

Since the recurring nightmare of my childhood that ended in my being chased through a giant labryinthine rubber mask shop by a rotten man, there hasn't been such a vivid and plaguing image from my dreams.

SNOW DAYS

2008-02-22T14:58:00.002-05:00

Today's a snow day. Today is now several days ago, the day on which it snowed.

I had nostalgia on my way to work this morning about the glory that was. Snow days used to be marvelous, peaceful days ensconced in family, leisure and reflection. Sometimes also baking. Some of my favorite memories of my late grandma took place on snow days and involved much yeast, flour & kneading. I know now what an act of generosity it was for my mom to allow her kitchen to be hijacked by a woman who never really accepted her. I am glad she did. This is the sort of thing I should tell her. It will make her feel vindicated. "You know, like in the theory of retribution," said my 21-year-old co-worker.

As I inched along the highway behind silly snow drivers bracing myself for the angst there'd be at my job where we are required to show up especially on snow days, I wondered why snow days, like so many other things, are soiled by the process of becoming a grown up.

I was thinking today (actually today, no snow) about what age I'd go back to if I could, and you know--know all the stuff I know now.

I think I would be 18 again. The world was fresh. I was unjaded and out of high school. I had enough money for everything I needed. I had an apartment, a car and good friends. Life couldn't have been better.

Not that life now is bad, it's just that I'm kind of annoyed by this whole grown-up thing. I totally dig being a mommy, but I could live without so many bills, or with two incomes. But I don't really want any of the other liabilities of partnership. So basically what I'm saying is that I'm an un-satisfiable whiner. Yup. That's me.

Oh yeah--and the walking definition of the self-indulgent.

I'm so...

2008-02-19T20:56:00.002-05:00

busy. Blindingly so. Weeks and weeks have escaped without my notice.

My mind is mush. It's barely after 9pm and it feels to me like 2am after some late nights.

There is still so much more to do!

Today I bought file boxes for establishing my files. I've been seriously remiss in my use and maintenance of invoices, organization & adult responsibility.

I also cleaned up my house. It was filthy. It was distracting to live here. I'm about half way through the laundry with 2 12-hour work days coming up. I've started replacing my light bulbs with the high-efficiency ones. They're a little more expensive, but I remember a time when they were $14/bulb. I bought 2 for $6 at Target recently. And they have like an 8 year life running 4 hours a day!

Ms. Pearl is so cool. I took her with me tonight to work--it's my day off, but we were having a 2009 Forester preview night and some of my customers were showing up--and she played so well with this fantastic family to whom I sold a car a few months back. She's such a polite, delightful child. Surely she's intensely busy, and has the normal 2-year-old stuff, tantrums, lack of fear, etc. But she's such a little individual.

She makes me proud to be her mommy. She makes me want to be a mommy again. I don't really think that's in the cards for us, but it's true. I could dig a more-traditional family experience, and I bet Pearl would get a big kick out of having a sibling. But totally unlikely.

This is what happens when April doesn't sleep much, when April is working too too hard, when she doesn't keep up with her friends--she writes boring, boring, boring blogs.

She also has intense, intense dreams & anxiety. She is considering psychotherapy, and considering a full-time switch to discussing herself in the third person...

I am a greedy capitalist

2008-02-09T22:49:00.001-05:00

It's painful and rhetorically complicated to admit that. But it's true. In a perfect world, I would be a raging liberal and be comfortable with that. "liberal," as a rhetorical tool is a heavy, effective, efficient one. It increases my credibility with people I love, admire & respect.

Politics is not a defining factor for people I enjoy, admire, respect or love. The world is too gray for me to believe that a label, "liberal" or "conservative" actually means anything terribly important. But I might be alone in that assessment.

I do not define myself as "conservative." But I think the reason for my avoidance of that particular label is the rhetorical weight it has. "Conservative" means everything associated with evil: anti-humanist, hateful, narrow. But I am a registered libertarian which means that I am so completely involved with peoples' right to choose their thoughts, persuasions, loves, medical care, use of money, use of firearms--really, everything involved with living--unconditionally.

The underlying principle, besides freedom (which ain't a state like Maine or Virginia, instead a state of mind) is trust in humankind: the notion that people are inherently good, or if they aren't, they'll behave themselves because of their inherent notions of right and wrong.

Unfortunately, following unconditional freedom to its logical end means making few laws. Means allowing all free speech, gun rights, homosexual marriage, prostitution, drug and abortion rights and other things that "liberals" and "conservatives" view as offensive or wrong.

My girl knows right from wrong. She hides things behind her back. She apologizes and gives sweet hugs when I express anger, disappointment or sadness. And she does not even know how to go pee in the potty on a regular basis yet. She has a vocabulary of 20 words. She does not pronounce all the names of the grownups who're involved daily in her life. To me, that is powerful evidence of an inherent moral compass.

Aside from sociopathy, how can we fear absolute freedom? And even in our present state of governance, sociopaths are to be feared. But they are the exception not the rule.

I am afraid of laws. Laws could limit my ability to work myself into a work-from-home life. Laws could limit my free access to the internet. Laws could insist that I make reproductive choices I might not otherwise make. What good are these things?

It's not really possible

2008-02-09T07:09:00.000-05:00

That almost 10,000 people have visited this blog, is it? I have that counter thing set to "unique hits," too.

I got it here.

Any savvier-than-I folks care to weigh in on this matter? Jim already told me where to get a good web counter, but I forgot, so I just did a google search. You know, when i was a girl, google was not a verb.

By the way, folks. It's snowing. Don't that just beat the band?! It's a good thing my dad lent me the giant car that sucks in the snow & has transmission issues, since the fan in my car's broken.

Maybe I should be like that woman who was in serious credit card debt and started a website/blog soliciting donations to help her out of it, making absurd (but funny) promises about how she would not spend her credit once she got it paid down. I mean, if she can get out of like 100K of credit card debt, surely I could raise 20K to buy a car as a single mom, right?

What's more--that woman got a job working as a fashion writer from her desperation and financial irresponsibility! WTF?! I can't find this woman online, but I read about her in some print medium. Maybe one of you 10,000 readers saw the same piece and will better remember where to find it. Post a comment link, fools.

Speaking of single-mom-dom, here's this very affirming link for folks who find this single mom thing amazing, or for those of you who are single moms (If there are really almost 10,000 hits, you can't all be my friends, can you?)---

In Praise of Single Moms

Thank You, Thank you very much.

It has reached the point of

2008-02-06T21:41:00.000-05:00

exhaustion, tiredness & pain wherein I am mindlessly surfing the web, entering contests to win cars. I could win a car, then sell it to my job. I am trying to win that 09 Nissan Murano off NBC.com. Then I could buy the car I want in cash and buy an insurance policy, too. Problem(s) Solved. My car is starting to act reeeel funny. Like my last car did just before it was retired. Awesome. Thank Christ for Tax Season. Also, I am really into poking at my sinuses to figure out where the hell the pain's coming from. I think it's nasal.

The nice things: it's raining outside. I love the sound of rain. And episodes I haven't seen of Law & Order: Criminal Intent with Vincent D'Onofrio & Kathryn Erbe are on. I don't like the ones with that guy from Sex and the City as much.

I've seen all the ads I've been missing--the ones that people talk about.

And I think I've discovered a new favorite musician. I love the song on the MacBook Air Ad. Yael Naim. I've heard her before, I think. Bitchin.

bye bye,
wish me better.

We're Sick.

2008-02-05T21:09:00.000-05:00

This is precisely why I think blogging is vain. One has the impulse to write all kinds of minutiae that does not matter to anybody but the writer.

But it's true. We're sick. Ms. Pearl and I have the flu. She's got a fever and is napping off and on all day. I am achy and stuffy and taking lots of fluids. It's impossible for me to stay up longer than 3 hours. Day Quil and Ny Quil. Ms. Pearl's on cocktails of tylenol for fever reduction and robitussin between Tylenol doses.

Here's the thing that kind of makes me grumpy.

All week last week, two of the fellas I work with came in sick. They were all snotting and hacking all over the place. Each two days at least. Nobody told them to go home. Nobody acted like they were some kind of icky disease transmitters.

Of course, the first day I go to work all sicky, I get sent home when I'm not there for a full hour. Does that seem fair to you? My right to spread illness is less than my colleagues'?

Of all of my colleagues, I suspect I am in the least good financial position to take days off, for any reason.

Maybe it's really true that they are trying to get the illness out of the building. Maybe it is really true that they are sick of the sickness. But why send me home and not them? Why wait until I come in sick to start to try to get rid of the sickness?

Am I annoyed by this because I am constantly on guard because I am a woman and as such the rules are different for me? Am I annoyed because of the implicit double standard? Am I annoyed because I am sick and feel like utter hell? Am I annoyed because I had no patience for Pearl today?

We're sick. And we wouldn't be if the show room hadn't been filled with icky sicky for four out of six days last week. I just hope my other two colleagues don't get it. If they do and they're allowed to come to work, I am going to throw a fit. Maybe I should throw one now.

My Boss has Karaoke in her office

2008-01-31T18:07:00.001-05:00

My boss is really fun. She's full of creative ideas and always has chocolate kicking around her office. There is unflattering speculation regarding her level of productivity. But I have few doubts.

But this Karaoke machine in her office--sober karaoke is therapeutic. Possibly cathartic.

The trick is, I think, turning off your self-censor and feeling okay about public buffoonery, especially if the place you work is unkind to your gender and makes you feel rather demoralized but strong.

In fact, it is just this delicate recipe of conflict that allows me to feel as though Karaoke in the boss' office is something that I will grow to use as therapy. There is something so freeing and mood-elevating about belting terrible early-90s soul, doing both the boy and girl part badly, in the midst of would-be-business.

I faced the wall and the skinny black window and watched the screen and thought about nothing but me, in the moment, being anything that even resembles competent when it comes to the vocals. Belting, swaying, dancing. My throat got raw.

It was exhilarating like driving too fast crooning loudly to Green Day.

The non-present-just-a-wall-away audience empowered my noise. I let it hang in my throat. It felt rich like stout. Perhaps for the same reason marginalized populations assert their presence with noise, or ruckus, or passive-aggression; I did not apologize for my warbling. I did not even feel shame (once I got started). I just sang. Into the mic with the echo-box built in. With the volume way too high.

Damnit Jim!

2008-01-27T00:35:00.001-05:00

1. I didn't even need to watch the show, "How to Look Good Naked," only see the ads to know that it isn't anything at all how I critiqued it.

2. I am a bad friend who is apparently incapable of making phone calls.

3. I still don't want to watch "How to Look Good Naked," but I somehow feel obligated to do so in order to engage intelligently on the matter for the sake of you, Jim, and for the sake of my devoted blog readers (you know who you are).

4. I have better things to use my marvelous brain on.

5. For example: ending sentences prepositions in: edit: "I have better things on which to sic my marvelous brain." Indeed. Occasion for much more interesting adjectives. Oooh goody.

6. Isn't that word, sic, interesting?

Being a Grown Up Sucks

2008-01-27T00:06:00.001-05:00

Because it means that my life constantly exists on two planes: excellent and nose bleed.

These are the excellent things: I threw my first body shop party solo this evening. I did well, with cards. I am not a script-follower generally. I got a solid, positive, promising lead on some consistent freelance work today. I had two decent prospects at work today. I entered the body shop order in record time, and figured out how to order some stuff I didn't know how to order before. My sisters' friends' mom, Cathy, is a very, very cool woman, and I chatted a bit with her this evening. She is inspirational because she gets paid to do art. My dearest friends in the world, Noelle and Feike, will be visiting next weekend. I have been holding myself to New Year's resolutions and being proactive in doing things that will make me happier.

These are the things that cause nose bleeds: I am broke. Poorer than I've been since moving home. Patience, I keep telling myself, Patience! I need to buy new underwear. My cat, Oolong, is [in heat, retarded, sick???] and she keeps peeing on things. She has been living in the basement for 3 days. I want to take her to the vet, but i can't afford it. She needs to be fixed. I haven't had the time to write e-mail or update this thing in 5 to 7 days. All words for numbers ten and under should be spelled out, and I have screwed that up at least 5 times today, once in the e-mail to the promising-freelancing-work-guy. I am terribly sexually frustrated. The laundry is piling up, and I have more food in the fridge than I can consume before it spoils. If only unspoiled food could be traded for cash.

Often, when I am seeing the hardest edges of my adulthood, both planes are going breakneck.

I have no philosophical mental spew to soften these edges. I have no real idea of what to do except for to keep doing.

I get that Beatle's song, "Help!" for the first time, ever.

Look Good Naked

2008-01-19T10:25:00.000-05:00

On the TV Guide Channel, I learn more about the ways in which I am horrified by current TV offerings than I learn about what I want to watch.

My least favorite listing is Look Good Naked. Presumably, this show has a how-to format. I would also suspect that its demographic is heterosexual females aged 18-25. I have this suspicion for a number of reasons. I suppose I could watch it and find out for sure, but I am fairly certain I would be disgusted. I would probably feel bad about myself. It would also take all the fun out of this blog post.

1. Men don't care how they look naked, their partners will usually accept them unconditionally.
2. If men do care how they look naked, they probably don't need any tips on the how to.
3. Fact: men have higher metabolism than women, their bodies are designed to retain less fat.
4. I like to hope that people of substance over the age of 25 have realized that looking good naked is at the bottom of the list of necessary attributes in a partner. Or, if it is important, it is less important than it was before the age of 25.
5. There are many, many more depictions of nude or nearly nude women across cultures and publications than there are depictions of nude or nearly nude men, which is how we can guess with fair certainty what exactly they mean by "good."

Here's how to look "good" naked if you are a normal heterosexual female ages 18-25.

1. do not, under any circumstances, have a baby.
2. always do it with the lights off.
3. if you must eat, eat only things that say protien, vegetbale, fruit or water on them. No more than 1 lb of food daily, fewer than 500 calories.
4. Drink lots and lots of black coffee.
5. Smoke 4 packs of cigarettes a day.
6. Never engage in activity that may cause bruises, if you do get bruises, you should do it in the basement with the lights off.
7. Wax everything, every 3 days.
8. Save your pennies for 2 words: Gastric Bypass.

Here's how to look "good" naked if you are a filthy rich heterosexual female ages 18-25.

1. Hire a personal trainer.
2. Hire Oprah's cook.

Here's how to look good naked if you are me,

1. be me
2. don't worry about it
3. have pride in your stretch marks and hips
4. eat well

But here's the thing.

Looking good naked is totally subjective.

The TV program Look Good Naked is one of the many symptoms of the ways in which we have committed, as Americans, to a particularly unhealthy desire for sameness, narrow ideas of attractiveness and resisting individual thought.

Fried Dill Pickles!

2008-01-18T17:06:00.000-05:00

I'm making some!

Recipe to come.

I Bought Shitting Tea!

2008-01-16T23:02:00.000-05:00

I was at the grocery store with Pearl, right? And anybody who knows knows that shopping with a 2-year-old should get people nominated for Peace prizes--the 2-year-old and her intense social and physical discovery, the umpteen million shoppers who believe that they would do a better job being a parent to your child than you're doing, the dimwit 13-year-old cashiers and the Senior Bagging Clerks.

So I find myself in the tea/coffee Aisle. My colleague, bastard-who-did-not-create-myspace-url, has been talking up tea. But the tea at work is the dime-store variety and frankly, I am a bit of a snob. Coffee is drugs, and I'll drink tepid bathwater if somebody writes coffee on it, but tea--tea is like English or something, right? Should be savoured (see what I did there?) and enjouyed (again, less artfully). And I'm thinking, gee. I could go for some decent fruity tea for work. I wonder what's on sale!

Why I didn't just stick with Stash, I shall never understand. Oh wait. It's because I'm a cheap-ass single mother with too much to do and not enough time.

There's a beautiful red box. It has a marvelous Eastern pattern on the front. It says, "licorice," "individually wrapped," and the best, "slimming." The combination feels right and a tantrum and 15 minutes later, I own the beautiful red box. [Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that I purchased 2 red shirts and a red scarf at the Old Navy a short 2 hours later?]

I am feeling rather proud of the purchase, I am thinking, "even with my toddler, I make savvy and attractive impulse buys!" Wrong. For so many reasons.

I get home and the toddler monster is napping. I think I shall have a cup of tea. A trial run.

I read the box. I notice that the fine print looks awfully fine.

As it turns out, the tea is an "intestinal cleanser" made as a "dietary aid" during "weight loss programs."

I thought slimming was a word to get monkeys to buy stuff like coffee is a word that gets me to drink stuff. Slimming always has fine print, like, must do 500 50 lb curls daily in order for this to actually do any slimming. Right?

Not only does the tea seem to intend to deliver exactly what it's promised, there are about 4 box-sides worth of instructions. I am too afraid for the trail run. All I wanted was pomegranate or raspberry. Licorice sounded good, too!

Don't drink more than 16 ounces of this tea daily.
Don't use if pregnant or nursing.
Don't consume next to a fella named Ron.
Brew two minutes during initial doses. Eventually work up to personal taste.

I'm not making this up. (except maybe for ron.)

I took the pretty red box to work anyway.

I made a cup of tea.

I did not, as is my tradition, allow the bag to steep during the entire tea consumption. I brewed it fewer than 2 minutes.

The tea tasted a bit like warm dirt.

The tea did, in fact, make me shit.

A lot.

It also gave me gas.

Moral: check tea boxes more carefully in future. Understand implicit oxymoron in "savvy impulse buy."

This Dream I had

2008-01-16T06:24:00.000-05:00

First, the major players:
1. A boy I know, have slept with and know I shouldn't talk to anymore. We'll call him Dilbert.
2. His Girlfriend. We'll call her Angie.
3. A boy I know, have not slept with, and to whom am not sure I should have stopped talking. We'll call him Aaron.

Cameos:
1. My dad. We'll call him my dad.
2. A swell girlfriend of mine.

So Dilbert, Angie and I are conversating. That's right, conversating. As one often does in dreams. Angie is cool. She is talking about Dilbert's later-life circumcision (In life, Dilbert is Jewish). She says, "oh, he needed it. Like drawers need bottoms." I am listening with earnest intention.

Spontaneously, Dlibert breaks up with Angie and announces that he would like to do it with me. I argue and resist, since Dilbert has behaved so badly. And I am--in real life and the dream--in utter conflict over whether or not I should like him. at all. even as a friend.

My swell girlfriend calls and tells me that her physician has told her that she has every kind of flu virus in her body, and that that is very unusual, but he has not prescribed medication.

Then as suddenly as the conversation about Dilbert's circumcision began, Dilbert and I are having [very good] sex. (In real life, Dilbert is not much of a lover.) But the whole time, I am--aware of conflict and irony in a dream in ways I have never been before--pretending that Dilbert is actually Aaron. In my dream, that is how I explain the sudden transformation of Dilbert's skills in lovemaking. Aaron is almost certainly a very good lover.

This is when my dad appears. Somehow, there is nothing at all perverted about his appearance, just odd. He comes into the room where Dilbert and I are screwing and asks me to make him a hot sauce cocktail with the two bottles of hot sauce he's brought with him. He says, "take your time." He says, "don't mind me," and means it.

Then Dilbert begins to interview me about Aaron after my dad disappears. He tells me that he loves me because I love someone who isn't him. He asks a thousand questions that I am happy--and even more greatly aroused--to answer.

I wake up just after Aaron, as a floating head, has appeared to Dilbert (Aaron has no awareness of my presence or of the nudity) and Dilbert asks him if he loves me.

Aaron, of course, does not answer before I wake.

And now I puzzle over whether or not to break my fast from him and tell him about this bizarre dream. I think I shall'nt, for I fear rejection, and his fear.

Another Busy Day at the Car Dealership

2008-01-14T19:35:00.000-05:00

I did the Cryptoquote at work today. I often play the word games in the Harrisburg Patriot and the York Daily Record.

The quote was, "I hate the Pollyanna pest who says all is for the best." Franklin P. Adams.

The quotation is divine because it adequately reflects my rare mood of misanthropy and laziness coupled with fatigue and genuine malaise. It is also divine because it rhymes a bit. It's quippy and clever, like Constance Crawford's poetry. Constance is a member of Pennsylvania Poets and a retired English teacher. Her poems are wry and feminist and they remind me of Ogden Nash.

Sadly, I can't find anything online that could link you to info about Constance Crawford or the Pennsylvania Poets--at least not the particular PA Poets with which I am allied.

The most annoying thing about Blogging is

2008-01-13T19:09:00.000-05:00

That I formulate these marvey ideas when I'm away from this face-color-sucking screen.

The places I often come up with these brilliantly conceived mind candies are:

1. On Test Drives
2. When my hands are immersed in soapy water
3. While Driving

Why don't I get a voice-activated dictaphone implanted in my shoulder? Good question. My answer: I am not Bill Gates.

And Speaking of Bill Gates--I am most-aggravated that none of my particularly acerbic political rants have wound up here. They always seem to get wasted on my dad. Not that my dad's a waste. It's just, well, my dad is not the whole world wide web. He's just this one guy who always tells me "[I'm] tough" when I start to follow the logic of my politics of choice (libertarianism) to its nether regions. Being a libertarian is distressing and frustrating in today's political schema because it'd be like what happened if we got Hillary all dressed up in R. Limbaugh's suit and made him wear her panties.

I had this lovely little sauna-of-mind the other day about Marcy Playground. You remember them, right? That weirdo band from the early 90s that had their little pagan/wiccan/fantasy-readers'/trendily-retro songs. I mean, that's some complicated music! It's a little self-indulgent and overdone in spots. I think it came up at the wrong time. I mean, Radiohead hadn't reached its peak of pop-saturation yet, and I bet MP got accused of riding band wagons (man-oh! I'm a pun-ishing machine).

So I was sort of involved in one of those cult-like events of football fandom recently. As you probably know, Cathy Day is publishing this book Comeback Season, and not that I've been actively setting out to get into football or something, but I guess the notion that it might be kind of cool to be a girl who likes football seems a bit less offensive to me in my old age. I mean, I am softening. My ideals are getting all squiggley around the edges. Anyway. So I went to this restaurant with some of my colleagues who were watching the big Green Bay and Seattle game on Saturday night. And I wore green. On purpose. Because they were rooting for Greenbay. ?! I know. Who's eaten my sense of self respect and irony? Is this what happens to a gal who finds herself in a part of the country that baffles her? Am I so bored? Am I so desperate for peers?

Anyway, Cathy's MySpace made me remember the only good joke I've ever heard this blockhead I work with tell:

Q: Whats the difference between a BMW and a Porcupine?

A: With a Porcupine, the Prick's on the outside.

So I'm going to be updating my little linkeys over yonder. ------->

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