bookish dreamer

First things first, the weekend.  The weekend was a real-life honest to goodness WEEKEND!  With going out, and visiting friends, and a BBQ, and everything.  Not only once, but twice.  Ok, it did also involve a football game, which is not my favorite past time, but hey, I can put up with some athletics in exchange for some good company.

It just felt good to be out again.  And to talk to people in person who were interesting, and goofy. 

We actually tried someting new too.  Something frightening, scary, and frankly, bizzare.  A freakish phenomenon that I thought I'd never ever attempt.  No, not drugs.  That would've been normal, compared to this.  Oh no.  It was the truly insane video game called Dance Dance Revolution.  And it was, after a couple of ciders, surprisingly fun.  Yes, I'm going to hell.  Not because I'm living in sin, or because I'm evil, but because I've played DDR and liked it.

Of course, it rained today, so it seemed like the world was suggesting we just stay in and stay bundled under the covers.  The funniest thing about that feeling is that it's actually warm outside.  It's only because the air conditioner's going that it feels even slightly wintry.  It gave us the mental excuse for hot chocolate this morning for breakfast though, which was fun.  I managed to crawl my way out of the house for the lure of a movie and kittens on my lap at some friend's house though.   There's nothing wrong with a bad movie and good company.

Now, with the pimpage:
I'm interim-modding at beegee_icontest, and voting's open for Contest 18. We need more people to run over and vote so that the icon makers feel encouraged. The winner gets a pretty banner too. And hey, if you feel like you want to test your metal, you should think about entering the next contest, Contest 19.

So, there were 5 days in all.  And I felt the need to record them.  I think I’m doing this, this totally verbose little narrative that catalogues every couple of seconds and every impression that occurs, because I didn’t take pictures. I wasn’t in the picture taking mood. I didn’t want to spend my time behind the camera. But memory is flexible (if not downright leaky) and if I don’t capture it somehow I won’t remember it the way it was. So instead of misty-water color memories, hopefully these will stay sparkling a couple of years down the road. At least, that’s my excuse. It might just be because I’m a wordy mother fucker who doesn’t want to write her fic.

( read on at your peril... yes, boredom awaits )

A weekend top-filled with love.

The kind of love you feel when it's your first night back in your old town, and your best girl comes to pick you up at the airport -- even though it's miles away and a bitch to get there and silly to triangulate with cell phones. The kind of love that means you get to call your friends TURD and mean it, but never mean it at all (because, turd, in my world, becomes a synonym for love, too). It was the kind of time where a couple of cosmos and the rat-hole of a bar we still show up and at hugs around the table and friends you didn't even know were going to come out - bright and brilliant friends, the ones you missed before you left town even, that kind of time when it all comes together and spawns laughter and more hugs and a post-bar run to McDonald's to get the grease-coating your hangover needs to be nonexistant.

And, even though we woke up and didn't know where we were going the next day, we still found the wedding. We got beautiful and arrived on time and everything. We oggled the groomsmen, because that's what you do (besides, they were hot). I had warm fuzzies because the most handsome one was the one I got to go home with at the end of the night - the one that held me through the slow songs and got sweaty during the fast. Mine. I got misty-eyed at the toasts, because those were the words that were all about the love the two people getting married shared. Actually, they were all about love on all sides. A celebration of love - that's why women always cry and girls always turn to their men and ask "when will we?" because the two people who are doing it -- if it's a good wedding -- look so radiant with love that it's irresistable. And these two were. Radiant and irresistable, I mean.

After that was a night filled with maniac dancing and giggling and hugging and so much fun no one really wanted it to end, even when it was obvious we were all dragging on our last legs and not even Doritos and another drink would perk us back up. But there was love in the morning too, in the shape of a bottomless breakfast buffet with lots of bacon and make your own waffles and fairly crappy coffee but the faces of everyone you had a great time with the night before, near and dear, hugging and smiling through the headaches and the slightly twisted ankles.

It didn't end though, this stream of good will and happy faces. Not then. Instead we got to make sure the place my bestest girl is living in is approved by the family, along with the boy she's with. He did get the stamp of approval, although it's always conditional because no one is ever quite good enough, not for family. But enough that he can stay.

Besides, we gave him the trial run at the best BBQ in town, where I got to hug EVERYONE, because I loved them so much and missed them terribly and was so happy to see them that I probably squeeled, and that's hard for anyone to mesh with if they're coming from the outside. Probably not many places outside of California where the hosts know to put on a grill for vegans and a grill for the flesh eaters, and still have tasty side dishes that both consume in equal measure (and mean margaritas too). I know for sure there's no place that's more filled with people I was so happy to see - just getting to stand and link arms with them and see their grinning faces and know they're well and lovely and still as beautiful as I remembered, inside and out. And I got to finally meet the beloved of one of my best boys, too - kindred woman whose face I'd recognize in marble statues of goddesses and in the happy glow in his eyes. Unbelievably good to meet her in the flesh and see that she is as radiant in heart and soul as he, and that they make everything burn brighter together.

To end that night with hugs and fond farewells and not in sadness, but in renewed love for all these wonderful people I'm so blessed to have known and to know, to have gotten to see my family of my own making again, that's love.

I haven't been granted much in the way of greater joy than these things. At least not all rolled into one weekend. It made the going home, going to sleep, waking up and flying home all worth it. It made fireworks anticlimactic.

See? Love.

Our baby is having some trouble with her hind legs - she jumped off the window sil last night and flopped all over the place - we took her into the vet, and there's something wrong with her, but we don't know what. She's at the vet's right now, on saline drip for the day. We hear back in a couple of hours about her x-rays. The problem is that they have no idea what it could be, and it could be a whole host of things that might not show up on an x-ray. We hear back about those in a couple of hours. It may be a permanent condition, it may go away in a couple of weeks, it ... we just don't know.

I'm sorry if I haven't commented back to anyone - won't until we have her back home safe.

Mainichi gozen shichi-ji han ni okimasu. Asagohan o tabemasu. Nihongo o benkyoo shimasu. Gozen ju-ji ni Nihongo o kurasu. Nihongo o benkyoo shimasu. With Neil Sabrina wa terebi o mimasu. Nihongo o benkyoo shimasu. Gogo ku-ji goro bangohan o tabemasu. Nihongo o benkyoo shimasu. LJ o yomimasu. Nihongo o benkyoshimasu. Gogo ju-ni-ji ne nemasu.

Yoko Nihongo o benkyoo shimasu.

Translation:

Subject: Good afternoon!

Everyday I get up at 7:30 am. I eat breakfast. I study Japanese. At 10 am I go to my Japanese class. I study Japanese. I watch Sabrina on the television with Neil. I study Japanese. At about 9 pm I eat dinner. I study Japanese. At midnight I go to bed.

I study Japanese all the time.

HELP! I really wanted to learn this, but I don't think I quite realized what I was in for. I do now. Every day packs 3 days into one. There are words and words and more words. I did the above just to test and see if I could (we learned schedules today). I did! But eeep. All will be quiet from my corner of the world until I get a handle on this. Or, until I crack and need some space to vent.

Neil's pappa and friend are visiting this weekend, so last night I did the "must clean house so they don't think we're total wastes of skin" cleaning of the house. Neil, unfortunately, wasn't much help. He was determined to do as little as possible, and even though I cajoled more out of him than he was prepared for, he still won't hang the pictures in his office. We've lived here six months and apparantly he doesn't think it's worth it to look at things he likes. Yes, I know I'm being bitchy. White walls bug the shit out of me, and I'm edgy from not speaking in my own language and having a parental visit pending. EEEP.

Going now. It's really not as desperate as it sounds. Especially now that the house is clean. Yes, I am a type-A personality.

Menu:
+ Brie & bread, with fresh cherries and strawberries

+ Cedar-plank salmon BBQ'd with fresh oregano, basil and rosemary
+ Sauteed asparagus
+ BBQ'd white corn
+ Fresh mixed green salad w/tomato, mushroom & carrot shavings

+ Fried chocolate, banana, peach and strawberry pie

Company:
Two enchanting new friends, along with my beloved, who plied us with tequila and conversation till the wee hours of the morning. There were hugs hello and goodbye and interesting thoughts in between.

What we did:
We realized when we finished shopping that we're still Californians: there wasn't a rib or a steak or a bottle of bbq sauce in sight. Instead, we played in the yard and tested out the new tiki torches. We smoked and talked and giggled and pet the kitty. We lit the fire on the bbq, and finally got to use our kitchen to make dessert and still have a conversation with the non-cooks that didn't involve a lot of leaning around the doorjamb of the room (an open kitchen plan is the ONLY way to go). We tracked dirt back and forth into the house; we made good use of the chairs and table (thanks Maija & Ryan, for encouraging us to buy 'em); we made plans for future baseball games and talked about going to New Orleans.

Yep, there's hope for us after all.

The open windows of the house were our enemies when we moved in. No screens meant every flying or skating or zipping thing could find its way through our windows and into our place. We shuddered in primal (or effeminate?) dread at the thought of the creepie crawlies and kept the windows closed. Besides, our gallant protector and chosen companion, the kitten Felix, might've seen the open window for the invitation to terrorize the other cats in the neighborhood. She wanted to attack them through closed windows - that open hole meant a certain mauling for some tom or curious kitten that decided to look in on us. But keeping the windows closed all the time made the place a kind of stagnant box. No circulation, no wind, no breath of the outside.

Two trips to Home Depot later, with scarred hands and little metal screen shards on the porch, we managed to make screens for our windows. Does that mean we're now be-screened? Or just screening?

Regardless, we now have a way to admit the air without the creepie crawlies. We now have a way to keep the cat in and hopefully circulate some of the air out.

A word of advice: never ever rent a place without screens.

Actually, it's Orene. That's my mother's middle name too. And her mother's. Even though I don't think it's a particularly delicate name - it always seemed to convey a sense of sturdy practicality. It's a name you yell at the end of a hot and dusty day when you've been out working in the field. Midwestern to the core.

Or, at least, that's what I've always thought.

So today, on this holy day that we go around celebrating mommies, I kinda feel a little lucky, because I get two. I've got one moderately insane mommie, who happens to also have instilled in me most of the things I hold dear: morals, sense of self, love of books, ability to be good to people and to try and see the best in them. So I treasure her for that, even if she and I can't always figure out just who's mom and who's daughter in the relationship. This week was a good week, so she's not quitting her new job quite yet, not leaving for the Peace Corps next week, not quite yet. Instead she talked about getting more rainbows to hang up in her house, and what type of teas she's drinking. She is my herbalist, my mystical mommie, the one who shows me how the crystals worked and who demands I retain my sense of wonder through all this crazy cynicism out there. She gave me elves and art, gardens and sewing, crafts and crafty things, and is my one and only and forever mommie.

And then I've got my other mommie. I used to call her my stepmonster, because I'd heard it in a movie somewhere, and wanted to combine my utter terror of her as a child with this fondness I've developed for her over the years. She's great, because she's a bit of a hard ass, she brought her daughters up kicking and screaming and starting her own business, she taught me table manners by squishing my lips together so I woudln't eat with my mouth open, and now? Now we talk about religion and politics and movies and books (she's the one that got me reading Narnia and murder mysteries) and we share this overwhelming love for my father, even if he doesn't tell either of us that he loves us as often as he should. And we don't hold it against him. She sees true and clear and smart about everything, and she loves with a deep joy that I've only noticed in the past couple of years - something that we can both actually touch on, because she's been through enough therapy and has taught me how to say these things (and because my first mommie isn't shy about saying what's on your mind either). She is my sister-mom, and it makes me happy to have her in my life.

So, two mommies, two cards, two phone calls, and two women. I am blessed. I know it. So I wish all you people who have mommies a belated happy mothers day - and all you people who are mommies a belated happy mothers day, and everyone else, happy Sunday.

And instead of working, on this day of days, I puttered my behind off. ( So, click to see what random crap I did. (yes, there are some icons) )

Ok, this is what it means to live outside of California. This morning it was sunny, humid, and there were some fluffy white clouds in the sky. About twenty minutes ago, the fluffy clouds got a little darker, and I could see lightening on the horizon. All that lightening flowed over the city, and then we got crashing thunder on it's heels. We both get excited about thunder and lightening, because we just haven't seen it that often.

And then, the deluge.

Seriously folks. Rain dropped from the sky in bucketfuls. It's loud, it's crashy, and it's now created huge and magnificent puddles in our lawn. And at first, it was warm, too.

And now, 15 minutes later, the sky has exhausted itself, and seems content with making small grumpy thunder noises. And the birds are chirping again.

I had all these plans at the beginning of last week. Granted, they weren't flying to Peru plans, or even vacationing somewhere else plans, but ... they were my plans, and I wanted to do them. Instead, I took the week off and did practically nothing. Re-read books I've already read (and a couple I hadn't). Goofed around online. Did a teeny tiny bit of gardening, but mostly just enjoyed being able to sit on my back porch and have a garden. Great stuff.

Now though, now that I'm supposed to be back in full swing, my motivation is absolutely gone. I still want to goof around and play. Sure I'm interested in class, but as of this very moment, the looming to do list feels like a giant stone wall. I'd rather find excuses to be outside. It's absolutely beautiful outside. Sunny, bright, green and fabulous. And I've got this laundry list of things I'd rather not look at. Yuk.

( What's to do - boring stuff that you don't have to read )