Smart girl.

" Don't settle just because you can have it."

find her here.

Sound

I was just laying on the couch in the sunshine (ahh, saturday mornings...), listening to the swish-hum of the dishwasher.

I am not very musically inclined, but i like to listen to things.

Animals convey all sorts of interesting meanings and statements with sound; hisses, chirps, sonar, growls, language. The whole planet reverberates with noise. Atoms and molecules knock against one another like dominoes and roll the energy along. Ants taste vibrations on the tips of their antennae, and rodents sense sound and motion with finely tuned whiskers. Birds sing out codes to one another along the lines of their migrations. Spiders listen to the vibrations in a pile of sand to feel out their prey, while humans jibber away to one another on thousands of dialects based on the same primordial language. We have a rhythm based on the beating of our living hearts. Our atmosphere is an auditorium, not only for thunderous concerts, but for relaying noise through the different strata. The oceans are liquid transmitters for sound waves, relaying the songs of whales across thousands of miles. And the ground thrums and rolls with vibrations, far underground.

Maybe we live on an orb of sound.

So then i wonder, is there another place in another galaxy where acoustics are not such an option? Is there an alien ecosystem which relies on light and color and display for its main form of communication? Or touch, or taste? or intuition?

Angry Mashed Potatoes

My roommate stole my potato masher, among other kitchen stuff, when she moved out.  I don't think she even eats anything other than coca cola and single serve frozen pizzas, whereas I am very touchy about my kitchen and my gourmet culinary utensils. Suffice to say, when it came time to pound the starchy tubers, the heavy duty ice cream scoop, the evil-looking meat tenderizer tool, and the combined  sheer will of two master chefs just wasn't up to par. They came out very lumpy. 

So i was doing my dishes this morning and i heard a ruckus across the street. I like ruckuses, and I am always looking to cause one myself, so I was very excited when i looked out the window and saw a tag sale across the way. I scampered across, and lo and behold, on the very first table, was the lovliest potato masher i have ever beheld. Even better than my old pilfered one from Target. Delicately turned wooden handle, gleaming stainless steel, and an old-school style zigzag mashing doo-hickey. And mine for only fifty cents!

My mashed potatoes are very happy now.

Phallic Enticement

Ha, yeah, that title got your attention, didn't it? Well, this post is not about what you are thinking, all you dirty-birdies out there! Or you may just have a limited vocabulary, especially concerning Ph spelling words. But I digress.

What I am talking about, as my trusty boyfriend would say, is ye olde one-eyed purple-headed-yogurt-slinger. Ewwww! quoth my six-year-old self. And now i have not only totally offended varius members of my family, but also miscellaneous peeps I have never met before in my life. My point is, I keep getting these penis enhancement spammy things in my email, and I think the whole thing is very silly.

1. I am a girl, and I do not, nor ever have had, a wee-wee.

2. Who is Herrera Hreczany? Where is she from? What does she eat for breakfast? Would she be my pen pal if i hunted her down and wrote her a love letter?

3. Hooray for those catchy pseudonyms in the subject line, all misspelled, with various garbled letters just plunked in wherever.

Because i like to collect fun stuff, I am starting the Penis Enhancement Spam Hall of Fame in the column to your immediate left.

(I saw that! Some of you just looked over at your shoulder and were pretty bewildered to see no throbbing johnsons in your immediate periphery! You are the same people who spell "F-o-n-e" in your brain when you're about to call someone!)

Nevermind that. Here goes.

The Red Paint Incident

Yes, I spilled a whole can of it on the art room floor today. I tried to mop it up, only I realized that someone had stolen our mop over the summer. So, fuming about people barging in my classroom while I'm not around and pilfering things without permission, I stomped around the basement of the school and promptly stole someone else's mop. I wheeled the rolly bucket into my room only to find that the red paint monster had spread itself across the floor, and was now attempting to devour the bottoms of some boxes as well as some unsuspecting classroom chairs. I attacked it valiantly, and got red paint on my shoes for all my effort. The floor turned pink. I finally slopped it all up into the crusty mauve-waterlogged pathetic excuse for a mop, rinsed the whole shebang out in the narsty-arse wringer/ bucket mechanism, and schlepped the whole thing back where i found it. Now my floor is clean.

And basically, that is what I did today. Yay, art.

Sometimes you just have to let things go, so they can finally heal.

Home

I think it's been weeks since I was there.

When things are hard I think about New Mexico. I've often wondered how I would remember it once it became something long after the fact, and what exactly would sit in the forefront of my recollection. It seems like the ordinary things are the ones that I hold on to. I wonder if they will start to wear and fade around the edges from all this handling, like a book or a well-loved shirt; and whether I will lose a little bit of them day by day from all the times I've turned them over and over.

Everything I am wants to be there.

I remember things like standing in the morning sun in front of his mother's house, looking at the clear blue sky and soaking in the light and the dust. Or standing in a parking lot blissfully soaking in the parched heat of the sun as it radiated off my shoulders. I remember the vegas which stretched across the ceiling, and the parts where they had splintered or cracked, and were nestled with knots. We drove across the valley past Albequerque, and i remember how I strained to see where the horizon ended, and where it was cut with blue hazy mountains, and the stretches of sand and sage. I think I might have cried a little bit to realize that i was really there, though i never let on how much it hurt me to feel that awake and alive. Sometimes I still dream about that landscape. I remember the rain, and the black thunderclouds sliced with lightning which rolled along the foothills, and water that vanished nearly as soon as it touched the earth. I remember the sound the wind made. I remember standing with him on top of the mountain, and realizing that I never wanted to go east again.

I am in love. And I am going to get home again.

Leaving Train

The finest silver needle
Shouldn't ever slide between
When lovers stand as parting friends
Gonna put myself on a leaving train
And I won't come back again

I could wait til morning
If it don't come down today
A dime says I won't be satisfied
Gonna put myself on a leaving train
And I won't come back again.

The words that go unspoken
on the color of the sun
And the coolin' air of the evening shade
And the breathless hours on the sleeping plane
And the last taillight on a leaving train
And I won't come back again.

-Gillian Welch

Vanquished!

I killed the clothes pile monster! He is dead! I dismembered him bit by bit, tossed a good chunk in a drawer, made a folded pile out of some other parts, and threw the rest in the washing machine. Take that, foul closet scourge!

Today I am attacking everything I have been procrastinating getting done. I am on an organizational simplification rampage! Arrr!

"Short Skirt / Long Jacket"

I want a girl with a mind like a diamond
I want a girl who knows what's best
I want a girl with shoes that cut
And eyes that burn like cigarettes

I want a girl with the right allocations
Who's fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She's playing with her jewelry
She's putting up her hair
She's touring the facility
And picking up slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnng jacket......

I want a girl who gets up early
I want a girl who stays up late
I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity
Who used a machete to cut through red tape
With fingernails that shine like justice
And a voice that is dark like tinted glass

She is fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She's touring the facility
And picking up slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnng.... lonnng jacket

I want a girl with a smooth liquidation
I want a girl with good dividends
And at the city bank we will meet accidentally
We'll start to talk when she borrows my pen

She wants a car with a cupholder arm rest
She wants a car that will get her there
She's changing her name from Kitty to Karen
She's trading her MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnggggggggg jacket!

(Hey Cake, that's me!!)

Speaking of the Lizard....

Apparently Dinosaur (see below) 's long lost twin brother, the artsy one, lives in my classroom. We reorganized the crayon boxes together this afternoon, and then made finger...well, claw? paintings. We had a long conversation about how the Cretaceous Era was a prehistoric renaissance of art and culture.

Then he chewed up my pencils. Bad dinosaur.

I love Dinosaur!!!

"He's 65 million years old and was at one point the king of the Cretaceous period. Now he likes tacos. "

mad props to Scott and Jo, hehe.

Meet Dinosaur!