nothing to say, no one to say it to

Even though I have done so many good things that I like so far today (a walk, buying stuff at the farmer's market, writing, grinding ink and drawing, listening to Saturday NPR shows, reading my Moomin comic collection, taking a nap), i think i will scream if i don't talk to a real human being soon.

That said, I guess I'll have to make do with talking to you. Whoever you are.

But now it turns out that I have nothing to say. So, perhaps I'll just mention some things I have eaten lately.

There is a newish nearby market, which calls itself a "lifestyle center." Eeeew! I knew they would have good stuff, but it was hard to get past that. I finally went, and it has some awesome things. I have always wanted to make preserved lemons, but never have, and behold, they sell Moroccan ("what could be mo' rockin'?", Pam would ask. "Mo Rocca?" I would reply, after a pause, because I'm not as quick with the wit as she) preserved lemons in their olive section!

So I made green beans with preserved lemons. Super good! I also made another fava bean dish. The first go-round with the favas, I cooked them with ginger and bok choy. This time I marinated them in a lemony dressing. All about the lemons right now. I also marinated some red onion slices and some cucumbers for use in salads, but I tend to eat them by themselves, it seems. At Deborah's last night, we grilled vegetables and bread and had sandwiches with ancho chile hummus. Super good. Oh, and we had guacamole. It was my first guac of summer vacation, and my first barbecue of the summer.

I just got word that I will go to my second barbecue of the summer tomorrow, at Patti and Andy's! My summer theme is coming 'round. I'm so glad it's "vegetarian barbecue summer," and not something like "billy joel summer."

wild life

Little gross creepy crawlies have taken to squeezing through the place where the floor meets the outside wall in my front room. GROSS. GROSS GROSS GROSS! They are simple-minded, pathetic little beasties that don't understand who they have chosen to invade. Their lives are ridiculous. It's almost laughable, how lame and unrealistic their dreams and goals are. Almost laughable. But mostly just gross. It reminds me of when I had the Screaming, Flying Cockroach problem in my compartment in Japan. I went from horrified - unable to sleep, roaming the streets of my neighborhood until I gathered courage to sleep in a tiny ball on the bathmat, the farthest point from which I had seen it - to trying to humiliate it. "You are so stupid and pathetic. You can't do anything fun. Why do you bother? Your brain is a joke," etc. Then I would be at work and imagine it lounging on my "chair" (a term I coined to loosely represent the thing I put on the floor and then sat on sometimes) and watching my T.V., not cleaning up after itself, just an annoying houseguest of the peskiest sort. This gave way to a total giving in on my "I don't use chemicals in my home" stance, and I staged a full-on bug bomb attack. I moved all my things into the closet, as best I could, set off the bomb of chemical doom, then took off to a friend's house for the night. The next afternoon, it wasn't nearly as nuclear holocaust-like as I had imagined, but it was eerily quiet. I couldn't hear any high-pitched screams. The houseguest seemed to be gone. A short time later, I heard a neighbor lady screaming, "GOKIBURI!" Which means cockroach. I apparently drove it into her apartment.

I don't want to drive my current critters (which I'm reluctant to fully describe, because I'm already in their existential throes enough as it is) into the home of the couple that just moved in next door. They seem super nice. I wish I could send them straight to Frat Boy's place upstairs. That would be great. But I get the sense that these losers stay pretty low down.

The bug bomb, by the by, didn't get rid of my little frenemy altogether. One summer night, a season or more later, I heard the inimitable high-pitched scream and I knew. I found it and, psychological horror now truly piqued, went toward it with my upraised shoe. Is there anything more horrible, really? The thing was huge and hard. Whacking it with a shoe would have been like bludgeoning a small mammal to death with a stapler or something. But I was determined to off the motherfucker. As I approached it, it let out a blood-curdling scream and leapt at my face. I screamed like hell and ran, out the door, down the apartment building stairs, to the curb, dialed my unsuspecting boyfriend, and then waited an hour for him to drive across town to fetch me. Neighbors looked at me funny, or funnier than usual. I smiled weakly and said, "Gokiburi."

It wasn't even because of my current creepies, but I switched around my bedroom and my "office." I now sleep in the small room whose window is not easily accessible to anyone walking by outside, and my office is all big and spacious and I can open the blinds because I don't care who sees me working on my computer versus sleeping in my skivvies. I am keeping the bedroom really bedroomy. That's right - no extraneous whatnot unrelated to sleep. I've decided to use my summer leisure to do a study on sleep, with me as the subject. Does all that wacky good-night's-sleep advice work? I was planning on starting last night, but I got involved in something. I made myself wake up early today so I'll be all ready to start tonight.

I'm also going to buy a new bed. I'm in research mode. The problem is that the bed I want is the one pictured here. It is not a bed that just anyone can have. It is not a bed for a regular person of regular means. But it is the most beautiful bed I have ever seen. All beds should follow suit. Now I have this in my head and nothing is going to seem right.

happy

I'm happy right now. i've only been off of school a week, but i have already brang the fun. For one thing, I've been saying "brang" a lot more, and it feels right. but that's just the beginning of the fun i have brang. I turned in my classroom keys on friday and then hit the road for chicago. mere hours later, i was sitting at the bar with my ladies and two mysterious brothers. Pam and I went to Madison in the morning. Of course, we only travel as guests of the governor of whatever state we are visiting, so we checked into our Governor's Club hotel room and then I went to my Lynda Barry class.

Lynda Barry is so great. I already was in awe of her, but now I also flat-out love her. She was so normal and nice and hilarious. She invited us to stay and talk to her at lunch, and acted like we'd be doing her a big favor by doing so. The second day, she brought tons of work samples for us to look at, and also her chinese ink painting supplies, and spread it all out and taught us all how to do that during lunch, if we wanted to learn. She also said she could never draw birds well until she realized that they don't really have necks. I totally understood this. And i mentioned that I like the sock monkey she draws, and she was like, "Oh, that one is so easy. You can do it, no problem. Here, let me show you how!"

So there was the drawing inspiration, but of course it was a writing class, so mostly it was doing tons of deep work with writing. It was similar to a process I've done before, but I got tons of ideas not only for my own writing, but for teaching writing, too. She was so supportive and motivating and it was very important that I saw her system of organization of her teaching notes. Basically a collection of notecards spread all over the table, with just a few words on each, all cattywampus but sense-making to her. And to me, actually.

We also got to sing the song "Jimmy Carter Says Yes," led by Kelly Hogan, who organizes LB's classes for her.

Pam and I enjoyed free cocktails on the governor, then ate at an awesome place that reminded me for some reason of bars I used to go to in Nagoya. Particularly, it reminded me of Yagiya, the exciting exterior of which is pitured above. It didn't look at all like Yagiya, but that's where it felt like I was. We also meandered about a bit. You know how I love to meander. The second day, we ate Nepalese (or Nepali? Which is best?) food. Awesomely awesome.

That's what Lynda Barry taught me - that "awesomely awesome" is the kind of thing I should be writing more.

I have lots more to say, because then we went back to Chicago, and then I spent days with Chris, and saw lots of other peeps, and just came back last night and saw "God Grew Tired of Us," as part of a Save Darfur fundraiser.

Life has recently been divided into various chunks of enjoyment. But I'm all super distracted for some reason and can't continue writing this now.

I luff summer!

fear my prowess

I got a run today at the mandatory kickball game!

An athletic scourge on the school no longer.

I feel I earned the extended periods of time I otherwise spent chatting and swigging cold coffee in the outfield, sometimes facing away from the diamond. Those fifth graders never kick it out that far, anyway.

I started writing and a bunch of job related stuff came out unexpectedly.

I won't go into the boring details (pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable), but this day was mythic in its exhaustion making opportunities. I felt boxed in and under-challenged, except in the patience department. So I've been all brain-deadily looking on the internet for other career options. Just looking, of course. Just one of those days, really.

But I have to tell you something secret about myself. I SUCKED at my business jobs and can never do anything remotely like that again, ok? I always did just enough to not get called out. I found I didn't really care at all. I lacked passion of any kind. I like to pretend that I have this great work ethic, burdensome in its magnitude, but really I'm just clever enough to get by. I'm clever enough with words that I can hide the lack of content. A professor wrote something just like that on a paper once - she was almost dazzled enough by my language to ignore that I really didn't say that much.

It's not something I like admitting. But I'll tell you even more. I'm organizationally retarded, I HATE making business related calls, and I have no mind for details. I'm daydreamy and unfocused. I avoid with a vengeance. When those daydreams drift to alternate job paths, the sad truth is that I'm not cut out for any of those dream jobs (i.e., southeast Asia correspondant for NPR).

I just looked at my old diary that I kept online while I was working at the translation company, and remembered it all so vividly. Those days were the worst. Here are a few supporting quotes:

"Shit, I messed something up and it's too late to fix it. Well, if you receive your HMO benefits summary in Arabic, and something doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll clear it up for you."

"I nearly bought a pair of dominatrix-looking boots at lunchtime. Ready to whip those projects into shape and show them who is boss. But I'm so not the boss of my projects. I didn't buy them."

"God, I wish my co-worker would shut up. The complicated project involves module 2 and module 3, and each module has sections 1, 2, and 3. All day she has been talking constantly about it. Module 2, section 3 is fine, but module 3, section 2 is not, and modules 2 and 3, section 2 have this issue, whereas only module 2 has that issue with sections 1 and 3. I don't have any idea what she's fucking talking about."

"At my meeting, my jokes fell flat. "We are still working on the lead poisoning prevention brochure," said co-worker. We have been working on this since Jeff was a pup. "Still???" said I. "God, in the meantime, a bunch of kids have gotten lead poisoning!" "We have sent the Arabic translation of the gambling awareness brochure to the State of MI for a final review," said co-worker. It's the 50th or so such review. "Meanwhile, dozens of Arabic-speaking people have developed gambling problems!" I said. Well, no one laughed, but I did. Then I started imagining stroking a cat's belly. A soft, silky, cat belly. I thought about this for a long time. Then I started thinking about stretching exercises. I want to stretch out, and i want someone to hold my hands while we spread our legs and sit feet to feet, then we take turns leaning back, as far back as the other person can take it. This made me start thinking about other couples' stretching exercises and imagining photo layouts of couples in matching warmup suits, doing various couples' stretches. I snickered out loud. I was afraid that when they asked me to give updates on my projects, I was going to blurt out something like, "I like couples' stretching exercises!!!"

God. See what I mean? Unfit. But able to act the part.

This is really depressing me right now. I see that I'm basically unloveable (so much so that I don't even know if I am supposed to keep the "e." This, from a fourth grade spelling bee champ!!!).

At least there's Galaxy 500. I'm good at listening to them.

fava beanz

The Sopranos! We hardly knew ye, and ye will be missed.

What a crazy ending. I have to watch the whole thing again. Was the guy at the end familiar, or not? Meaningful, or not?

I'm all hyped up about it. I just got home from watching it, and I had just today vowed to start some sort of soothing bedtime routine to try to teach myself proper grown up sleep habits. Instead I am drinking wine, looking around online, changing my sheets, and cooking rice, and it's just about 11. The plan was to do some relaxing stretches, put on some quiet music, or some such shit, and lights out by 10:30. Oh well. Tomorrow night?

I was hoping that in my sheets I'd find my ring which for years I have worn on the middle finger of my left hand. It is square on the outside and round on the inside, and I've literally had it on since at least the late nineties, if not longer. One day at school recently I suddenly realized that it wasn't on. "Oh my god!" I said, right out loud. "What?" they said. "My ring!" I replied. They all started talking at once. "The square one, that's round inside? On the middle finger of your left hand?" Then I realized that yes, I'm truly under a weird scrutiny all day, every day, and this makes my job tiring.

But only for 3 and a half more days.

Anyway, the ring was not loose at all. So how did it come off? I imagine I took it off in the night, due to some dramatic dream, and flung it deep into the sheets.

I have had a headache since Friday. The exact moment it started was at the end of our "read-in," which involved an afternoon of sleeping bags, pillows, flashlights, and books (real purpose: keep 'em busy while I started taking stuff off the walls). And pajamas. NOT FOR ME, THOUGH. The moment that 28 kids started telling me at the same time that they couldn't roll up their sleeping bags was the moment the headache began in earnest. And despite copious sleep at strange hours all weekend, it hasn't let up.



I bought fresh fava beans today! It has always been a dream of mine.

Screw the good sleep habits. I feel fantastic!

Ashtray bed

The weekend is almost over, but who am I to complain? 9 more days I have to rise in the darkness of morning and then go teach kids. 9 little days, then I'll be off to Madison and Chicago, then I'll be back with leisurely days at home, a trip up north, a workshop here or there. Just nine old days between this and that.

But complain I do. I don't want the weekend to be almost over!

The dude upstairs is a ruiner of sleep. He had a party last night. Fine; I have no desire to be that person who gets mad at someone else's party. But the party started at 3 a.m., woke me up, and hit a peak of obnoxiousness around 4:30 when they gathered on the front porch to smoke and talk about strippers. The porch is right by my window. The window is by my bed. I was essentially on the porch with them. They were essentially in my bed with me. They were pretty much shouting in my ear about strippers and their crazy stripper-related hijinx. And blowing smoke into my eyes. It was all atrocious. I finally slammed shut my window and they all started laughing. How hilarious that they pissed off some dumb chick! They are so crazy and fun!

I was scared of them, as I am of groups of drunk men, so I didn't say anything. To put my face in my window and ask them to be quiet would be to draw too much attention to the fact that they were basically hanging out in my bed. So I left the window closed and tried to close my smoke-stinging eyes.

Have you ever slept in an ashtray? That's what it was like. I slept in a Japanese ashtray once. An American ashtray is much the same, as yucky places to sleep go.

Fertile at the garden center

After a lunch out with my mom and aunt recently, I found myself at this big garden center with them. They know their plants. They know their flowers. They know their soils, their mulches and seeds. They know their Latin names, even. They wandered around and spoke intelligently about the growing things around us. I wandered around with a little drool at the corner of my mouth, pointing and simple-mindedly saying things like "pretty," "nice," and "orange." I don't know my flowers, or my plants. It's sad, really. But I did see something that quite struck my fancy at the garden center that day. The suburban, upper-middle-class garden center. The golf-shirts-and-khaki-shorts garden center. I saw a dude. Not just any dude.

A dude dressed in a fancy white suit and a black shirt, like Nick Cave might wear, and a white tie.

A dude with a very dramatically long mustache, like Dali might have sported.

A dude with big ol' shades like Elvis favored.

Oh my god. What was he doing at the suburban garden center? So brave and bold. He could so easily have soiled - literally! - that suit! He was so dashing. I mean, Nick Cave-Dali-Elvis? Come on. I was totally ashamed of my own dull fashion statement. I could barely look at him. I NEVER see dudes I like. Almost NEVER. My mom was kind of giggling about him. I don't think she understood that my excitement was in no way ironic.

He was fancy yet manly, you know? He was Fanly.

I'd like him to accompany me to my end-of-the-year staff party. Him, or, of course, Danny Dollrod has an open invite.

Punto

Yesterday was the day that the fourth grade girls at my school found out from their trusted teachers that they will one day begin to bleed from their vaginas, and they will spend about a quarter of the rest of their lives in that condition. Yes, they got the changing-bodies-and-periods talk. After school, I saw the fourth grade girls walking around all dazed, with big-eyed shock all over their faces. They probably felt duped. Who can blame them?

In other health news, I can't seem to get a good stretch in my hamstrings. I don't know what it is. But those who know me well may know that my basic life philosophy is that the key to happiness is well-stretched hamstrings. So I guess I don't need to spell out my emotional state these days. That's part of why I haven't been writing. I also haven't been writing because of poor internet availabiltiy in the home, and because of grand adventures, etc., keeping me too busy. And my period.

scary post

Why do I get so mad when I get home and someone is parked in my space? The person might not know it's my space. But I know, and it pisses me off but good. I guess I just feel like, I don't have a washer/dryer; I don't have a place to sit outside; I don't have any windows in my kitchen; but goddammit, I have a conveniently located assigned parking spot!

So tonight, like other nights, I wrote a note and stuck it under the car's windshield wipers. A note along the lines of, "Hey, this is my space." Nothing crazy. But tonight, unlike other nights since I've lived here and found someone in my space, it's nice weather (the air right now is cool, but in an edge-of-warm way). And I want to open my bedroom window when I go to bed. I've been doing that, and feel just a little uneasy because I'm on the first floor, and the windows are low, and the parking lot is right there. And if I make the parking space stealer angry, he may enter my home through this window, right? It would be very simple to do.

So I just went out and removed the note!

This is how freaked out I am lately. I didn't realize how strong a psychological grip these low windows would have on me. I'm not usually one to freak myself out about living alone kinds of things. I'm only keeping the one window open while I sleep (cramping my fresh-air style), but still, I'm waking up to any sound with a start. I dreamed last night that someone came in. It is not helping that I'm reading A Strange Piece of Paradise, in which the author recounts being attacked while camping and hacked up by an ax.

Maybe I should pick out another book.

Also, I think I should get a piece of wood to wedge in the top of my window so it can't be opened wider from the outside. Or at least sprinkle some shards of glass on the outer sill.

P.S. I was going to put a picture of an ax on this post, but I started looking for one and got scared. I am not going to look for pictures of axes anymore. One picture that came up was of the Virginia Tech guy. That reminded me that I had a dream that I was supposed to meet him for coffee, but I didn't want to go. I was scared of him, and also I was afraid for people to see me with him, because I knew they'd all recognize him. But then again, I was afraid to not go, because now I knew how violent he was, and I knew he would come find me.

I'm not going to look at anything on the internet, read books, or stay up late anymore.

Open letter to inanimate objects everywhere

Dear inanimate object;

Should you find your way into my hands, consider yourself warned. I will drop you. I will not be able to sustain a grip, and you will clatter to the floor. Be you fork, phone, roll of tape, or apple, you are not safe with me, inanimate object. That's just the way it is these days.

xxx ooo merrichan

reading today

I am reading Ma Jian's "Stick Out Your Tongue." A few years ago, I read his memoir, "Red Dust," which I loved. In Red Dust, he writes about his time spent wandering, hiding from government censors in the remotest parts of China and walking, walking, walking. It was all very romantic, and I found Ma Jian to be very hot in a renegade artist kind of way. Today I started "Stick Out Your Tongue," which if I understand correctly was the reason he was running from the censors. The book consists of stories that all take place in Tibet, and they show a side of Tibet much different than the Hollywood Buddhist/prayer-flag version. Ma Jian writes about some horrible, horrible things in these stories. Think lots of maiming, rape, and congealed yak blood. It's a very slim book, and I just now lay in a patch of sun and read about half of it, but I need a break from the desolation. He is such a good writer, and I know he spent time in Tibet, so it makes me wonder how much is based on real events. Anyway, the Chinese government didn't like his take on Tibet, and so he was banned from ever publishing in China. Which I guess I don't really understand - the Chinese government isn't exactly pro-Tibet, so why was he banned over this? I think they just like to harrass artists and writers.

Now he lives in London. I tried reading his novel The Noodle Maker earlier this year but couldn't get into it. Maybe i'll give it another try.

I love reading about China and reading Chinese literature. I'd like to study Chinese, and I'd go there in a second. I'm a little worried about the bathroom sitch, though. That's the only thing.

Inexplicable shame in paper or plastic

Will Ferrell is staying across the street from me at the fancy hotel. He's been eating at the bar that would maybe be my local if I wasn't afraid of seeing school people there whilst drinking too much.

Recently, I'm just kind of ugh. You know?

I got the new Trader Joe's catalogue in the mail today. I do love Trader Joe's, although a lot of the stuff I won't eat because I'm a snob who doesn't understand the logic behind "deconstructed burrito bowls." I don't really like pre-prepared stuff, I guess. See? I'm a food snob. It's just that it takes less than 10 minutes to make a real, fresh burrito, you know? So you just end up left with a plastic container to get rid of.

But there are some things there that I love. Like mango black tea!

Today I was there to get some mango black tea, it so happens, and Friendly Guy was all like, "Hey, welcome back! Great to see you! How have you BEEN?" Does he actually remember me from weeks ago, or is that just Friendly Guy's work survival schtick? He touched me on the arm, oh so comfortingly and supportively, and said, "See you again soon!"

Much different from Mean Guy, who forgot to read the section of the Trader Joe's employee manual about over-the-top friendliness. Recently, this cash register conversation transpired shortly after M won a bag of fancy stuff from her local Trader Joe's from the monthly contest you get to enter when you bring your own bags:

Me, holding out my brought-from-home bags: "My friend got a bag of fancy stuff for bringing her own bags - do you do that contest at this Trader Joe's, too?"
Mean Guy: "We don't just GIVE you that for bringing in your bags. You have to enter and win."
Me: "Oh, I know. Can I enter?"
Mean guy, huffily: "Lots of people enter, you know. Just because you enter doesn't mean you'll win. Some people enter every month and never win."

Yes, I do get the basic idea of contests, Mean Guy. Thanks for the inexplicable shame.

Help!

I have a problem and need advice. My students are doing biography book reports. They all get to choose who they do, but they have to be dead (this is my attempt to get them not to do a Detroit Pistons player, American Idol contestant, or George W. Bush; Reagan is now fair game, though. Damn!). One of my students really wants to do hers on a famous Asian or Asian American. I'm all for it, of course, BUT - I cannot find a single kids' biography book about a non-living person from any part of Asia! I've scoured online resources and my library's catalogue. Anyone have an idea or know something I don't? I hate that I have to tell her no, sorry, there is NO ONE from Asian history who is important enough for someone to have written a book about... I may just lift the "has to be dead" requirement and suggest Maya Lin, because there's a book about her...

Maybe this suggests a writing project for me!

cass corridor crash pad

People in my world often seem to have second homes of some sort. No one in my family does, but school-related people do, in numbers I find shocking. Usually these second homes are on a lake or an ocean, or near a lake or an ocean. For some reason they are not generally in cities. Tonight I thought about how I need a second home - or, a second rental - in Detroit, for use on the weekends. I have always wondered about this grandiose, abandoned castle on Cass. Here's what I found on the Metro Times website:

"Known by locals as “the castle,” the grandiose, turreted GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Building is still there at 1942 Grand River on the corner of Cass, still boarded up, still owned by the city and still occupied solely by pigeons. Built at the end of the 19th century, the castle has been vacant since 1973."

Maybe I could just have one turret as my weekend crash pad? Hmm... Pigeons. Gross! Forget it.

See, I am trying to go out more, with Pam as my role model. I'm not really interested in going out around where I live. I drive to Ferndale or Detroit. Tonight Alice and I went to two places in Detroit I'd been wanting to go to. Both were great fun. Before tonight, I had never had a dude try to pick me up by telling me about the awesome new walk he tried out at his fashion show today. He is a model, you see. He told me about how he innocently took off his shirt one day at some fashion event, and within minutes was handed a different shirt to model and whisked onto a runway. Ever since then, he's been in high demand as a model.

He must have said "model" at least twenty times in less than ten minutes. I don't think I said it at all.

all-night garage sale of the mind

I just lost a big long entry. I think it's because my pinkie nail is too long. Something got pressed. I don't know.

Do you know the song "Billy Boy?" It's totally haunting me right now. In the constant loop it's playing in my mind, it starts as a chorus of cheery hay-riding children, then slows to a macabre horror movie high-pitched refrain. That's maybe just what happens when one of your job requirements is to dress up like a pioneer schoolmistress two days out of every year and teach readin', writin', and 'rithmetic to a bunch of kids dressed in knickers and bonnets at a one-room schoolhouse. Two. Whole. Days. Including fake beating them with fake hickory sticks. While wearing calico. Things go funny in your head. Trust me. Especially when you have a fever. Like me.

I'm feeling better, though, and I'd like to catch you up on what I have and have not been doing.

Recently, I have not been doing these things:
- having insomnia
- settling on a new master plan for my hair
- maintaining an interest in the small bit of gentle online stalking I normally do
- having planned or surprise thrillz
- the splits (but I just checked, and I still can)
- seeing Hot Fuzz
- cutting my pinkie nail
- maintaining communication effectively

I have been doing these things:
- admitting that I should do something about my hair
- eating frozen black cherries
- switching out the summer and winter clothes
- buying nail polish (next step: apply nail polish)
- dragging myself by the elbows through a desert towards my oasis, Friday, 3:10, which has now come and gone, leaving me much refreshed
- drank outside at mollie's a la summertime fun
- signing up for Lynda Barry class in Madison
- listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (at least right now I am)
- deciding that I want the summer to be all about people hosting and inviting me to barbecues of skewered vegetables and soy protein shapes, and beer.
- fondly reminscing about the crush i used to have at whole foods. anything seemed possible back then, in late summer of 2006, when any shortage of cereal or kale would get me all excitable...
- counting down the wake-up days until summer vacation.
- finding a list chris and i made called "A List of Things to Do on the Eve of the Summer Solstice: 1992 Edition." There are 27 options listed. Some highlights include: Flint Expo; home body piercing; visit pam; fix washing machine; balance eggs; shoot: guns, pool, and heroin; and all-night garage sale.

misfit girl doll

Tonight was my school's Family Fun Night. Or, as I call it, Family Freakin' Fun Night. Not that any freakiness really occurs. It's a school carnival, basically, with a cakewalk and games and stuff. Promises of fun be damned; we are always pressured to go, and it always leaves me a little depressed and misfit-toy feeling. It's actually held at my old high school. Around these families in a social situation, I feel just as misfitesque as I did back in the day.

Looking for this picture, I read some guy's opinion that the misfit toy girl, above, was a misfit more for psychological than physical reasons. Touche! (Sorry - I don't know how to do the accented e on my mac and am too tired to look it up).

This week: I got tenure in my district. I also got 1% retroactive pay on what I've made this school year so far - because we finally settled our contract. One percent didn't come to that much, but it's enough to buy a nice new piece of art... and I think that's a good way to celebrate a milestone... but I shouldn't... but I want to... and I have just spent hours looking at art online and pondering... but I probably won't... will I?

I saw a lovely $10,000 Japanese print and had to laugh. People don't really spend that, do they? I am agonizing over whether or not to spend less than two hundred dollars!

There's nothing funny or fun to report! I ate sushi tonight. That was fun. I had work obligations 4 out of the past 5 nights. Neither funny nor fun. Perhaps writing in the ol' di isn't the thing to do after that kind of week. I'll try to build up something to say before I write again.

Back in the day (junior high?) - Smiths "Meat is Murder" t-shirt and a magazine - Star Hits, maybe? My red folder has a Far Side comic taped to it. How zany! And there is a radio/tape player in my bed, just visible behind the blankets. I look really mad. My eyes look weird. Twenty years later, I still don't make my bed. I still have that t-shirt. My hair is not asymmetrical (which it was in those days). Maybe it should be. Also, I still sit on the floor with stuff around me. Sometimes in the midst of a project, I box myself in.

My glamorous friend, Lisa

Lisa apparently has a higher tolerance for pinchy sensations than I do.

Letter Proposition

Do they make pasta sauces in small, single-person sized jars? Or must one be coupley to enjoy waste-free pasta eating? I am tired of throwing away old uneaten pasta sauce. I remember for awhile one could find small cans of black and garbanzo beans, but I haven't seen those in awhile. Could this niche be the answer to my "summertime extra income stream" challenge?

Not wasting pasta sauce now joins "free rides to the airport" as reasons to be part of a couple.

Can you tell I'm on spring break? All kinds of time to think, in conjunction with ample fridge-cleaning opportunities.

This has been the craziest spring break EVAH!!! MTV should totally have a camera rolling in my apartment. Unlike every other break in recent memory, I have been crazy... PRODUCTIVE. Dudes, I am never productive. This is huge. The room with the monster has finally been exorcised, and it now can function as a proper office. What did I discover in this process? Well, I discovered that I have a completely inappropriate amount of stationery. I have a bunch of weird Japanese stationery; I have arty paper; I have homemade "Fuck White Supremacy" stationery; I have weird old travel postcards; I have too-bumpy-to-write-on stationery; I have more stationery than is in any way reasonable, especially considering that I don't write letters.

So here's the deal. Would you like a letter from me, Imaginary Reader? Just leave me a comment to that effect. You will have to give me your email address. Then via email, you will have to give me your real address. I know. It's weird. But if we go through all that, I will send you a letter on carefully selected stationery. Or, most likely I already know you and your address. Still, if you want a damn letter, you have to sign. No sending me a text message. That's just the way it is. Don't even TRY it, bucko.

digging deep

My eating life has been all about noodle soup lately. I'm on a "I spend too much money on food" kick, wherein I'm trying to go deep into the cupboards, eating what I have before breaking down and going grocery shopping. It turns out I have quite a lot of noodles (soba and udon), plus a bunch of soy-ginger broth, plus a ton of frozen edamame and other vegetables, and seaweed. Hence, noodle soup.

It brings back to mind my old idea for a cooking show called "Poorly Stocked Kitchen." The contestants try to make do with the slim pickins in a, well, poorly stocked kitchen. Chris would definitely win, no matter who she took on. She always could whip up some good shit from some mighty incongruent ingredients. That's how I remember our roommate-hood, at least. I would look in the cupboards and see a few blobs of mustard, half a can of beans, soy sauce, and old packets of yeast. Chris would see a delightful Pan-Asian feast, somehow, and it would be really good to boot.

I went to two movies on Saturday night at the DFT. I saw the Thai cowboy movie "Tears of the Black Tiger," and the Jonestown documentary. Both were good. I don't really like writing about movies, or books, even though I love movies and books more than I love most other things. I chalk it up to the art snob dude who exerted terrible control over my opinions for a few years. Yeah, it's still his fault, somehow. Why not? Anyway, I enjoyed a glass of wine before each film and did a lot of people watching. People kept smelling a certain way that reminded me of student co-op parties at U of M. Not really a pleasant smell - in the patchouli family, but different. I hadn't smelled it in years, and oddly, I smelled it all throughout that night. Then in my car, driving home, lo! I smelled it again. Only I was alone now. Which could mean only one thing.

I was the student co-op party smelling girl!

Damn Lush products! You know, I like the idea so much, and they are all so pretty, but this is the second thing I've bought from them that has left an unexpected lingering hippie odor!

I have been watching season 7 of Buffy again (thanks, Jen). As they talk about the impending apocalypse, and how something is coming, I keep getting it mixed up in my mind with April in general. I will have a spring break, then when I return to school I will be slammed with a near-apocalyptic maelstrom of events and stress-inducing obligations, all involving intense preparation and task-mistressing. I am not looking forward to it.

I look ahead in my calendar, feel a chill pass through me, and brace for it - from below, it will devour me. Or from above, or the sides. Someway, April is probably going to devour me.

See you in May?