Flotsam: January 2009 Archives

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Strange things are afoot at the Circle K. None of which I can talk about here. Sorry. Much of it is not my tale to tell.

In girlwichy news, however (which is mine and no one else's tale to tell), we're going to be experiencing some upgrades and/or alterations over the next few days-ish.

-Ish because it's Boywich who'll be doing the grunt work, and nice guy that he is, he's doing it out of the goodness of his heart, so I ain't gonna nudge him to do it quickly.

That will mean several things:

a) the site will hopefully end up looking a bit prettier.
b) there will be a live feed to my Twitter stream (I don't know what the proper term is, so as per usual, I'm coining my own.)
c) there may be a little downtime.
d) there may some unexpected scary crashes (ouch! don't hurt the cat).
e) I may need to stay out of his way by not blogging during upgrading.
f) the earth may open up and swallow its young, in which case, hey, it's been nice playing with y'all, and "I'll see you in hell!"

In News of My Life:

1. I finished my grad school applications. Somebody give me a cookie.
2. I finished my hat. Somebody give the hat a cookie.
3. Kitwich has twice attacked the hat. Nobody give her a cookie. Though I just gave her some milk, so I guess the tough-love plan is not especially in effect.

PS. If the whole novelist plan doesn't work out, I wanna be a rockstar.

Don't be alarmed, folks. Posting's light because I am in middle of major deadline, and there's no soup in my house. Erm, actually there is soup, but it's last week's soup. So I can either eat it, or make some rice and beans. Or something like that.

Tune in next week for further thrilling adventures of the contents of my fridge. Now, with more Nicaraguan dark roast coffee beans!

Oooh, that reminds me, I never had my 6pm cup. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm caffeinated.

Having a pretty good week, as it turns out. I've been spending lots of time working on my own fiction, which I haven't done in donkey's years, and the degree to which I am enjoying it, though it's a slog, bodes well for going back to school. So very excited.

It may require a change of abode, or a change of knee joints (having mondo paino in the kneeo lately, which means not so much with the 3 hr. bicycle commute), but I'll get it worked out in the end.

The cat is happy because I've been plastered to the couch for days, the bike is happy because I just took her for a wee ride to Miz Fury's place, and I'm happy because - oh, I dunno, it might have something to do with finally finally finally letting myself do what I'm meant to and want to do.

Yeah, like that.

Tra la! Now, bring me that horizon...

A friend of mine said today that she could feel that I was unhappy this week, even though I hadn't told her. I hadn't seen her or talked to her, or IMed with her, and at least twelve hours went by before I remembered she'd texted me last night and I hadn't responded yet.

I suppose the lack of communication is a clue, but I have the feeling she'd known even without that.

I don't know why, but sometimes the couple of people who are my very closest friends seem to know without being told when I am feeling like shit.

I love them for that, of course, though I still feel like shit anyway.

It's a complicated thing, the reason that I feel like shit, and I don't want to talk about it, tangled as it is with various shades of green and flavors of jam and some yarn that looks just like black hair and is really just impossible to count stitches for a gauge swatch on.

There's this cat sitting at my elbow washing so loudly I can hardly think straight, and I drank some warm milk with the avowed intention of putting myself to sleep with it, but really just because I wanted to taste something sweet and mild.

Kitwich knew what it was, and meowed for her cut. I'd already finished it off, but laid the mug on the floor so she could pull out the dregs with her paw. She is so clever. I have to think that most cats would try futilely to shove their big heads inside the mug. She merely sniffs, assesses the situation, and uses her foot.

It may be that I am doing the big-head-inside-mug thing myself, but I cannot stop, because, well, I simply don't want to. And all the thinking in the world isn't going to make me feel differently than I feel. In fact, it just gives me a headache.

I bought the wrong coffee and cried over it. I need a haircut again, though I swear I just had one two weeks ago. All my laundry is always dirty because I can't seem to get my back operational. I never did put all those millions of knitted gifts in the mail, and they are stacked in my house, awaiting wrapping paper and large envelopes and a trip to the post office which I never want to make.

I think of taking a bath but then remember that I never have the patience to see one through. Most of all, I want what I want, and I want above all to feel that I deserve to have what I want. Whether or not I have to actually get what I want in order to feel that I deserve it is a question that's yet to be answered.

I know that's a lot of openwork sentence structure to wade through up there. But that is the gist.

I liked this meme of Wendy's, so I think I will do my own bastardized version of it - bastardized because I hate following directions, and memeish because I love lists.

Indeterminate Number of Random Facts About Me:

1. I am currently singing a song in French. Okay, two minutes ago, but still.
2. I sorta-speak a couple of languages (including French), which is to say that I can converse on a kindergarten level, eavesdrop with aplomb, and semi-follow movies without relying on the subtitles too much.
3. I speak a very small smattering of a couple of other languages, but my accents are so good that native speakers will start talking to me, thinking that I am fluent.
4. My dream jobs are, roughly in order: novelist, photographer, mixer and namer of colors, dancer but not to anyone else's choreography, rock star, children's book writer & illustrator, winemaker, astrophysicist, bicycle tour leader, professional swimmer, kisser of sweet coffee-colored boys. Okay, that last one was just to see if you're paying attention.
5. I taught myself to bake bread when I was eleven or twelve years old. Then I taught myself how to cook everything else. I cannot, however, cook rice.
6. I wear radically different colors in winter and summer. Radically.
7. I own about 40 hats.
8. I have a really, really difficult time parting with books. As in, I've only done it once, and then only two small boxes' worth.
9. My bicycles all have names.
10. My two all-time favorite TV shows are Firefly and MASH.
11. I have been in love approximately four times in my life. Three out of four were philosophy majors.
12. My cat was born in the wild. Boywich once looked up several of her more esoteric behaviors and found that they are characteristic of imprinting.
13. I have had several close encounters with other wild animals - all positive and rather magical.
14. Boywich and I are very, very psychic. He once guessed the last name of a boy I was dating, with no hints and no prior information, and got it right on the first try.
15. When I was a kid I used to rename myself all the time, and I'd put those names on my school papers in lieu of my real one.
16. Sometimes my dad still calls me by one or two of them.
17. I am killer at Boggle but I kind of suck at Scrabble.
18. I think my very sexiest look is underwear, knee socks, and my pirate T-shirt.
19. To date, no one but Miz Fury has witnessed this outfit, but she concurred with that assessment.
20. I am older than many of my friends, but not than the boy in whom I am presently interested.

Hey, it's me. Remember me? The girl who used to post every other dayishly.

Yeah. Well.

I keep writing these little posts and then deciding they are too personal, or too dull, or half a thought but I don't want to tell you the other half, or I am not sure about that pic, blah blah, and then it sits there in the drafts getting cold, and who really wants cold brain mash anyway?

Which is ironic, since my brain is such a hotbed of feverish activity of late. Yes, I know, that's two warmth-related terms in one phrase. But there's a whole lot of cookin' going on up there right now.

Which is just as well, because we're headed into the coldest week thus far this winter, and I am madly strategizing ways to keep pedaling whilst also keeping my toes attached and in good working order. Not sure if it's even possible, honestly, with my current shoe-pedal arrangement, but we shall see.

They did actually clear the bridge this week, and I had a gloriously unfettered ride into town yesterday, and an only slightly icy one home tonight, which I handled well enough. Had that moment when I realized I was barreling downhill at about 20 mph and right onto a series of icy patches, kept my head when I began to skid, slowed down with my legs, braked a little in a relatively clear spot, and all in all kept control of the vehicle.

Yay me.

Yay me in several other ways this week, I think, though it's merely Monday. Again I am being cryptic, but I talked it all out with Boywich the other day, and it was all very interesting. Here's the general outline:

Everything is fixable. No opportunity is ever lost.

Also, I am a replicant, apparently. Or maybe not. Jury's still out on that one.

Aren't my clementines pretty?

Looking at the stack of things I've knitted for family gifts this winter, I can't decide whether I've accomplished a lot or whether I've spent an inordinate amount of time knitting what seems like very little.

The yarns are nice, anyway. A combination of stash and newly purchased things, so some of it is more to the taste of the recipient(s) than to mine. But you know, that is in the nature of gifts.

Had lovely rides today. The only way I could have had more fun riding my bike would have been to have 20-year-old knees instead of the well-aged ones I have. Oh well. "A girl does what she can, sire." Cute and quotable, that Drew Barrymore.

We're in for a big snow bomb again, so I will be trying out my new rollers. Hopefully not falling all over the place, but - well, there is gonna be a learning curve. I'll also likely be riding in some of the snow tomorrow, trying to get in a little outdoorness (and maybe a puppet show) (really) before I get trapped in the house again. I am not loving this winter.

I am having bigger thoughts than these, and I keep planning on telling you about them, but apparently the percolating process is still in effect. Either that or I'm just not ready to share my toys yet. Mmmmm, brain toys.

Bill Nye would love those, no?

He makes me want to add a separate list of people I have crushes on who are nerdy rather than hot but whom I can't help but love anyway. Carl Sagan's right at the top of that list. Leonard Nimoy. Andrew Stanton. Joss Whedon. Um, my ex. (yes, that would be Boywich) (big nerd, that one. and very sweet.) (no, I don't have a crush on him anymore; I am just saying, that's the category he falls into)

This Mars Rover driver who works at NASA and whose name I haven't a clue about (I've seen him in a documentary). Reading this, you may well be thinking that I myself ought to be appearing in someone else's sexy nerd list...

Also, and I am not sure what, if anything, this means - I keep having these dreams in which my cat has cloned herself and become many Kitwiches, and I am trying to sort out which one is the right one.

This will sound a bit bipolar after yesterday, but honest, I'm quite mentally healthy on the whole. I have noticed, however, that sometimes a down day is followed by a delightful one, as if to show myself that life is still worth its salt.

So here's a list. (It's been a while since we had a good list, hasn't it now?)

Things That Make Me High:

1. Exercise.
2. Preferably on a bicycle.
3. Buying new bicycles.
4. Coffee.
5. Socializing, especially after a protracted and perhaps unwelcome period of solitude.
6. Vinegary collard greens. Also yams.
7. Cute boys.
8. Sunshine, especially in midwinter.
9. Good music.

Okay, there isn't a tenth.

Apart from the cute boys part, and the good music (which I now have on but which did not figure largely into my day), I had all of those things today.

Oh yes, and:

10. Getting a haircut.

So there is a tenth.

Just don't tell my mom about the bike, okay? Or my dad. Or anyone I know.

xoxo,
Lizbon