year of clubs (not diamonds, hearts, or spades)

This time of year, I try to catch up on what I've missed, I read lots of magazines and short stories, and I look at cookbooks, imagining that I'm going to pickle more vegetables and try out neglected grains in the new year.

New Year's Resolution: PICKLE A DAMN VEGETABLE AND COOK THE MILLET IN THE PANTRY. Last year's was READ LESS. I failed terribly, although I have read less than normal in the last few months. Otherwise, I read too much, just like usual. I'm a failure at not reading too much.

My long-term life goal is PROCURE A SOFA, COUCH, OR DAVENPORT. It used to be PUBLISH SOMETHING.

Was 2006 good, or not good? It was good and not good. Duh. But I see crystal-clear-like that I need more socializing in my life. So I'm going to make a DINNER PARTY CLUB, WITH THEMES. Themes like "KAMPAI!! IT'S A JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE DINNER!" My fear is that I just don't have enough people to invite, and my friends will be like, "Um, do I really have to wear a Japanese avant-garde outfit?" and I'll say, "No, it's ok, just be comfortable," and then it will just be a regular dinner with my friends, but with screechy japanese music playing and inedible seaweed items.

Maybe I could advertise my dinner parties on Craig's List. But then I'm afraid that the whole thing will be misread as a belabored euphemism and will produce some kind of awkward sexual situation.

I have been reading top ten lists on Salon and in the NYT and Punk Planet to see what I missed this year, musicmoviebooks-wise. It seems like I saw hardly any movies! What's wrong with me??? I can't make up my own top ten movie list. Deborah and I are going to see either Volver or Babel on Monday. We agreed to see something with a one-word title.

I know! I'll start a Film Viewing, Discussion, and Making Club in 2007 to remedy this whole sitch. Watch Detroit Craigslist for more info on this great new club! And, no, it's not meant to be a euphemism for sex.

Mostly 2006 feels barely there to me. I need to work for a better 2007, with more adventure and fun. Did you know I'm the adventurous, fun type? I like to have stories. STORY CLUB!!!

Instead of being all kinds of fun, I'm ending the year feeling melancholy and restless and hard-hearted and nostalgic. Do I need to start clubs for those traits to help draw other MRH-HN's towards me?

MORE CLUBS IN 2007!!! (How many will my small but super cool gang of friends be willing to join?).

on christmas eve eve eve

Lately the thing to do at gatherings of ladies is to take silly pictures of ourselves. The ladies left just now and I still have the taste of smoked cheese and spanish wine in my mouth. how i love the ladies. so i got to think of how i say merry christmas, how i myself express that sentiment, and i thought i could do it verbally, like "merry christmas" or "joyeux noel" or "meri kurisumasu" or "god jul." or....OR i could let a picture do the talkin'. one of these images could show up in a mailbox near you, in the name of the birth of jesus or whatever:

super groovy

For Christmas, my sister and I bought my dad a thingie that lets you load old slides onto your computer (promise I'll pay you my portion soon, sis. Yep, reeeeeal soon). She's been loading some on ahead of time (promise I'll come help you with that one day reeeeeeeal soon). Most of our family photos are on slides, after all. Just because there aren't a lot of photos around doesn't mean my mom and dad didn't love me. It's just on slides, see? My parents did take pictures of me, even if it seems like they didn't. The loved me and they did take pictures. Tons of them. Just tons. Millions, probably. They weren't "too busy" tending to the needs of my overscheduled older sibling to point a camera at me. No sir. They were crazy about me and wanted to document every moment. And here is proof. Of course, in this captured moment, I'm putting something in my mouth. Most of the pictures are that way.



Mostly I like to look at our living room. My mom was super groovy then. I like the guitar propped in the corner, ready to be brought out on a moment's notice for a rousing chorus of Puff, the Magic Dragon, or Leaving On a Jetplane. I do really like that lamp, too. I'd put that lamp in my home.

lots to do at night

I'm scared to complain to people sometimes that I'm tired, because the conversation may end up going this way:

Tired? Well, what time did you go to bed?

Umm, around midnight, or maybe a little later.

And what time do you get up?

Oh, about 5:50 is when my alarm goes off, then I lie there for a little while thinking about how tired I still am.

I see...what pressing obligations prevent you from going to bed a little earlier? Kids? Work? Chores? Studies? A second job?

Oh, well, like, last night I had to look up pictures of famed designer Tapio Wirkkala, and there are other nights when there are other really important things like that I need to do, like look at the all the different cover art for the Moomin books through the years, or I have to look for an important piece of paper of some kind that I just then remembered about. Plus I can't go to bed without reading for at least twenty minutes.

Maybe you could start reading around 10:00 or 10:30.

(blank look)

***
Look how awesome looking Tapio Wirkkala was! He was a Laplander and the quintessential ruddy finn, by the looks of things.



I thought I had pinkeye, but I don't. So unless something else highly contagious enters my life before tomorrow morning, I guess I'll be going to school, and I guess I'll be trying to teach about government against a background of frenetic christmas anticipation.

Is there any way to GIVE myself pinkeye, do you think?

"Oh, yeah, I was going to start reading my book at 10:30, and be dead asleep by 11:00 with my clothes for tomorrow laid out and everything, but then I had to get up and, you know, do some research online about contaminating my own eye..."

Good night, then.

P.S. I like Cat Power, although somewhat against my better judgement. There is one song on "The Greatest" that centers around the line "I hate myself and I want to die." I like the song, not because I hate myself and I want to die, but because it's spooky and dark. Anyway, I read in an interview with her that she really was suicidal when she was making the record, and now she's feeling fine and adamantly doesn't hate herself or want to die, so now when she sings that song, she sings, "I don't hate myself, and I don't want to die." Why would anyone say, "I don't hate myself, and I don't want to die?" Doesn't just not singing it seem like a better idea?

Things I've Been Doing

Listening to Handsome Family, Kristin Hersh, Brendan Benson, Mazzy Star, and Hoaiho.
Wearing a lovely new blue wrist bauble from Chris.
Wishing for a new woodblock print like this one by Masao Ido.
Bidding on a Finnish mushroom bowl that my grandma g. had.
Hoping against any reasonable hope for a snow day tomorrow (forecast says that tomorrow will be partly cloudy with a balmy high of 45F).
Downloading "Fairy Tale of New York" (Pogues) for my drunken holiday enjoyment.
Looking for various pieces of paper that I misplaced but that must exist somewhere on the planet right now.
Singing, "I could've been someone - Well, so could anyone!"
Avoiding all the usual tasks.
Reading parts of The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006, from the library.
Starting to read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which Pam gave me last weekend.
Admiring the paper the aforementioned book was wrapped in.
Flipping through a bunch of magazines.
Oversleeping.
Forgetting my purse.
Eating salsa verde on potatoes.
Fantasizing about doing tricep dips in inappropriate locales.
Attending third grade musicals.
Standing on the desks of third graders to hang things from the ceilings.
Eating pretty cake with Chicago ladies.
Baking cookies with Chicagoans.
Not remembering my dreams at all.
Winning the bid on the finnish mushroom bowl that my grandma g. had.
finding one of the lost pieces of paper.
not going to bed like a good girl...

I have had my ears pierced since about age 13. You'd think I'd have the whole enterprise fairly well in hand by now.

Oh my god. I was going to write about this earring incident, but I took some illustrating photos and they are just too disturbing to show. Truncated earlobes are frightening. At least, mine are.

Instead, I'll tell you that I stopped at my parents' house to put some of my ornaments on their tree. All my old favorites made it on, including the wheat thin that kelly j. and i decorated with sequins and fake pearls as pre-martha high school crafters/sarcastic wheat thin eaters; the yellow piece of play-dough i made a skeleton print in and hung with a red ribbon; and the single section of egg carton that i splashed with sassy red and green paint when i was, oh, quite little, hung with its white pipe cleaner. as i admired these treasures anew, i felt that i hit my artistic zenith long ago. i don't do any cool projects like those anymore. what? YOU want a decorated wheat thin for christmas? hmmm... i might just be feelin' it...

going to chicago tomorrow. my earlobes are going with me. i just re-read the above and realized it kind of sounded like the earring incident resulted in my earlobes becoming detached. that didn't happen at all. now i really can't tell you the story because it would be so dull in comparison.

but i'm going to chicago, and we are going to have ladies' club friday night and i can't wait. then we're having co-ed cookie decorating on saturday night. and i'm going to just let this whole week of busy, busy school days, third grade musical practices, a Bad Tempeh Experience, unsettled contract/unsettled teachers, rumblings of millionaire bahamas-vacationing families thinking i'm spoiled because i have good health benefits, messy apartment, etc. slide away. i'm going to be just like the slider. mark bolan. t. rex. except that when he's sad, he slides, and i'm not gonna be sad, i'm gonna be the ebullient birthday girl.

it's a botched science project, charlie brown

Rats. That sums it up at the moment. And saying "Rats" makes me feel like Charlie Brown. When I was younger my sister would torment me by saying that my head was perfectly round, like Charlie Brown's. But that's a different story.

Rats, I say, because my science project mock-up doesn't work. See, I had a plan for tonight. The plan was to stay in with some strippers. Wire strippers, that is, plus christmas tree lights, a tin cookie sheet, etc. And for what?

The light up quiz board does not work.

I keep re-checking my work: Metal touching metal here, metal touching metal there... it's a closed circuit if ever i did see one (which i guess i barely ever have).

But it figures. I am simply not handy. There is probably something glaringly wrong that anybody else would notice. Even if I wanted to, I could never be one of those people who could say, "Yeah, it's a fixer-upper, but I am so excited to remodel it myself." Hell, no. I'd rather read and/or admire my Iittala wine glasses (below - pretend not to notice my horribly maintained fingernails). Home Depot freaks me out.

Ideally, in this science project, you touch a metal pointer to the correct quiz answer and the christmas lights illuminate in a possibly toxic blaze of glory (possibly toxic because christmas lights now are labeled as a lead-containing health hazard; it's actually due to the PVC coating, which is basically everywhere anyway. why do i buy all that organic stuff to eat, again?). It was going to be the coolest third grade project ever. By extension, I'd be the coolest third grade teacher ever, and that's what really matters in all this.

I was so excited. I touched the metal pointer to the correct answers.

Nothing.

Rats.

At least there's the Iittala glasses.