Flotsam: March 2009 Archives

Restless today. Still haven't fixed the valve flat that spontaneously burst into song (or rather, loud hissing) on my way out the door yesterday.

Rather than fix it (which would have made me late), I simply grabbed an alternate bike and zipped away at top speed. Miraculously arrived five minutes early for brunch. Thank you, fastbike.

Indulged myself shamelessly in every way I could think of this weekend - though not in the one that really counts.

Spent money on the following:

mimosa et tartine et salade des fruits
tiny garnet nose-jewel
the good hummus
pedicure

Took a day off the bike(s) today to rest my knees, but even moreso my poor back. Walked to the spa.

Making soup. Really really distracted today by impure thoughts which will no doubt simply remain in the realm of fantasy, which is disappointing, but on the other hand I must be less depressed to be having those thoughts again. For a couple of weeks there even the lure of hot boy(s) was doing nothing to raise my antennae. (You know I'm depressed when...)

Hello, lovelies. When last we left our heroine in a huddled sad heap on the floor, things were looking bleak indeed. They're still looking bleak, but her mood has improved ever so slightly.

Put it down to a few uninterrupted days on the bike(s), or to a bit of judicious flirting, or to whatever you'd like.

I've been taking advantage of the still-pretty-fracking-chilly weather to keep knitting a few late-March items for self and friends. Ordinarily among spring's many gifts (hayfever, the nagging feeling that one ought always to be outdoors doing something fabulous, and that since one isn't, one is wasting one's life) is a sudden and total loss of interest in the knitterly arts.

I felt the first fingers of that beginning to take hold a couple of weeks ago, but then it got cold again (not that it ever really pushed fully into warm, mind you; there were just hints and vague promises), and so I kept knitting. And now I have a pretty pair of mittens that didn't photograph at all well in the incandescent lighting, but you may take my word on it - they are sweet.

And I am knitting another pair for a friend who massacred his first pair by the simple expedient of wearing them on the bike in a rainstorm. I am thinking that however pretty that Koigu stuff is, fabled in song and story, it doesn't hold up very well. I mean, one rainstorm, c'mon.

So the replacements will be in less-gorgeous but hopefully sturdier yarn that's already been road-tested by yours truly.

There's a whole thread on Rav about knitting for the bike, and I wonder if I ought to post some real-world feedback from my various knit-recipients. Enh. Too complicated.

I was telling my dad, finally, after 10 days of utter silence, about the various bad newses to which I have been subject lately, and he commented that any one of them would be enough to make a sane person's head spin.

Which would explain the impression of her I've been doing lately. I dunno. It seemed like I should just be able to handle it all.

Of course, that is how it always seems, with me. It's like a disease. I expect that nothing will ever break my back, and then what happens is that my body takes that challenge literally, and I end up with my back out for months and months.

Yes, the poking with needles seems to be doing something. I mean, something in addition to giving me strange bruises in even stranger places. It seems, thankfully, to be easing up my mobility a bit, and if I'd just stop doing laundry and twisting myself into unfortunate contortions in my sleep, the pain might even abate a bit.

Me: I hurt my back in my sleep.
He: Alone?

Sigh.

Top 10 Questions Asked of Lizbon This Week

Q1. Are you okay?
A. Sort of.

Q2. What are you going to do now?
A. No fucking clue. Shut up.

Q3. Can you come out and play?
A. No.

Q4. How is your back?
A. Terrible.

Q5. Do you have your new bike yet?
A. No.

Q6. When will you have your new bike?
A. No fucking clue.

Q7. What are you doing now?
A. Drinking coffee. Knitting. Sending out emails trying to get work. Watching TV. Hating.

Q8. Have you cleaned the cat box yet? (This from Kitwich)
A. No. I still can't carry the cat litter from the grocery store.

Q9. Is there anything I can do?
A. No.

Q10. Are you going to let this stop you from being a fiction writer?
A. No fucking way.

Unexpectedly laid up on the couch again. I hope I hope I hope (times 100) that it won't be for more than a day. Though I doubt it.

The ways of bad backs are mysterious and unpleasant. Made an appointment to get stuck with needles. At this point I will try (almost) anything.

I've been in a mitten-knitting frame of mind this winter, partly because a lot of people asked for them and partly because my one pair started to unravel and I needed to make myself some replacements. There is something cool about that, namely:

a) I've been knitting long enough to have a pair of mittens I made begin to unravel (they lasted several years, too - made 'em out of some leftover Mountain Colors Weavers Wool I'd bought for a gift project).

b) When I need a new knitted object, I can just -er- knit one. There's a measure of self-sufficiency and instant gratification there that's lacking in most of the rest of life. For the rest of life, you need to call upon fairy godcreatures and such. Which brings me to the following:

Top Three Wishes of Tonight

1. My back to stop hurting so I can go get my bicycle.
2. A delightful lover to appear out of nowhere and present himself for my continuing amusement. I have one in mind but perhaps it is pushing my luck to attempt such a specific request?
3. Something chocolate.

PS. Later addition: Damn. My laptop has just died a weird and jiggly death. Can I add a new or, better yet, cheaply repaired laptop to the list?

We've moved into that sketchy early-spring phase wherein the heat is on when you don't want it on and not on when you do, and so I have been pulling out some of the heavy knits that I normally can't wear in the overheated indoor climate of a NYC winter. (You expats know whereof I speak; steam heat + little control = windows open in winter)

Apparently Kitwich has been waiting to get her paws on them all winter.

Woke up feeling inexplicably decent this morning (I use that term loosely, as always). Could be that I've now had two days of 7 or 8 hours' sleep in a row. Could be that I needed to turn that air purifier off so the room would be quieter and not have a funny smell while I slept.

Could be that my body senses that this interminable winter is nearing its end. Could be that I saw you know who yesterday and that just made me feel better, even though I got nothing tangible in the way of -er- nooky out of it. Some people's presence is just like sunshine, I guess.

I've had three false starts in the past few days. I start to write something and then realize I'm just not in the mood, and why force myself, since it will only sound forced.

Still not sure if I am in the mood, but at least the coffee is right today. After the death of the French press beaker, which shattered in my hands while I was doing dishes one night, I ran out (or rather, shuffled - since I was precaffeine) and bought this. I've had one before, and liked it.

What I didn't realize was that the one I had before was smaller.

So I've been futzing with it, the first two or three days drinking the equivalent of three or four shots of espresso mixed with hot milk, and having the lid of my head blown off. The next couple of days trying to tone it down by, variously, not pouring all of the magic elixir into my cup, or adding a little hot water to it, or (today) simply reducing the amount of coffee and water I put into the thing in the first place.

And this morning I hit upon the right formula, apparently, since it tastes great. Still not the same; I swear I can taste the more finely groundness of the beans, and I still wish I had my French press back, and to that end I suppose I shall be fussy and order myself a replacement beaker, even though I've been forewarned by many customer reviews that it, too, will break one day while I am washing it.

It will be nice to have both, actually, since I do love espresso; I just prefer it black with sugar, and yet I have to have the au lait in the morning. Hey, as that stranger in the five and dime store told me, I'm eccentric.

Not sure how he figured that out on the scant evidence of watching me refuse a plastic bag and simply slip the espresso maker into my little cloth purse thingy. But honestly I can hardly argue with him.

Speaking of which, I am itchy with bike anticipation. I am waiting for ONE PART. Oy veh.

In other words, suffering the torture of the damned, watching other people get their builds done and ride away in glee. Haunting my shop every day in hopes that the thing will magically appear and that I'll be forced to leave one of my existing bikes as a hostage whilst I ride away on my shiny new pony.

(No, they wouldn't make me leave a hostage; I'm paid in full - but have you ever tried to ride two bikes at once in NYC traffic?)

Side note: people do do this; it's called ghost-riding. You ride one while holding the bars of the other one and wheeling it along next to you. It's difficult and not terribly safe and you run the risk of being pulled over by a cop and having to prove that the extra bike is not one you just stole.

There's another method, which I watched someone do just the other day, which is to hoist bike #2 onto your back and carry it while riding bike #1. This, too, is out of the question. I could carry a frame. I have carried a wheelset (and boy did I feel like a little superhero doing that). But a built-up bike? Nope.

No, the irony of it all is that to pick up my new bike, I will have to ride the friggin' subway. Ugh. Already dreading that part. So much so that I've mentally gone through a series of complex schemes trying to figure out how to get a friend to ride my extra bike back for me, either all the way to my place, or to one of their own apartments, where I could pick it up, but then how do I get there....you see the trouble.

Sigh. I think I need to go for a ride.

Life's been on fast-forward lately, and sometimes that means I take a little break from posting. Or I sit down to post and find that I am telling more than I'm comfortable with or not enough to be interesting.

Anyway. Happy snowy-ass Monday. It's always hard to discern actual snowfall amounts when you live in a city, because the stuff immediately gets piled to either side of road and sidewalk, and then you have impressive berms flanking canals of slush.

I went into town today via mass transit, which I hardly ever do, but I had various businesses to attend to, and decided to pass the time in between by visiting my favorite cafe. Where I saw my favorite handsome fellow, who'd been out working in the snowy mess all day, poor lad.

'Twas nice to see him, in a charged-air sort of way (for both of us, I think), and we flirted a bit, and then he left to get back to work, and I left to get my head shorn, as I am wont to do.

Made plans with my hairdresser for wildly coloured extensions in springtime, wished I'd brought enough dough to get them put in right this minute - I need a pickmeup.

Came home, hung out with cat creature, ate, ate some more, watched TV until the cable went kaput.

That sort of thing.

I am mostly catching my breath today. The weirdness of my weekend cannot be quantified with existing technology - or it's like gravity; sometimes behaving in eccentric ways that defy both Newton and Einstein. No, I'm not making that up; it's headlines.

I am not going into detail; those who must know already do, and the rest can just imagine for themselves. You know, like a Mad Libs. Hell, why don't I just write one for you? To play along, just fill in the parentheses with the words of your choice.

Anatomy of A Weekend

Friday: Lizbon gets a text message from (noun), inviting her to (verb). She writes back, explaining that while she'd love to (same verb), she can't because she has to bring (noun) to (place).

Later that night, Lizbon gets asked to (verb) by another (noun). She declines, saying she hasn't (past-tense verb) in (amount of time), and doesn't plan to start now.

Still later that night, Lizbon gets asked to do a favor, involving carrying (plural noun) to a/an (adjective) event. She agrees, and then gets asked to (verb) in an official capacity. She agrees to that too.

Even further later that night, who should walk in the front (noun) but the most (adjective) (noun) from her past. She says hello, how are you, and instead of responding to her question, the (same noun) says, Lizbon, this is (name), my (noun).

Then Lizbon is tired and desperately wants to get on her (noun) and (verb) home.

Saturday: Lizbon takes her (noun) into (place of business) to get some (verb) done to it, and gets asked to help out with a/an (type of event). She says okay. She (verb) very fast, and then comes back, to cheers and thanks. She then gets invited to a (type of event), but says she can't, because she has a date with a (noun).

Later that night, the (same noun) suddenly begins playing with his own (part of body) in the middle of the (place). Lizbon is (emotion) and really wants to (verb) away, but can't think of a way to manage that gracefully.

So she pretends not to have noticed. She walks the (adjective) (same noun) back to his (means of transportation), and feels obliged to (verb) him goodbye.

She feels very (emotion) by it all, and wants to fly fly fly home and wash her (part of body) out with soap. She hopes to never hear from (same noun) again, but supposes she will have to (means of communication) him the jig is up.

Sunday: Lizbon very very gladly spends time with several of her (adjective) friends, and tells them the tale of her (opposite adjective) weekend.