defective

after months of dithering i finally bought a teakettle. it was worth the wait: i absolutely love it. the mirror finish smoothly reflecting the kitchen, thereby the world; a whistle like a train hurtling down the tracks; a jaunty spout cover that is truly the jam in my jelly donut.

i’m preparing tea the other day when suddenly the lid and some rusty bits clattered right into the kettle leaving me with a plastic knob in my hand and a dumb look on my face. eight weeks and the whistle assembly sinks to the bottom in a vinegar-scented splash without any warning that it was tired of whistling in the first place.

how do things just fall apart? things i don’t expect because they were well made or expensive or swiss. there doesn’t seem to be any reason for failure until the item is examined and i think about how i used it. in this case, it was a pretty tight fit. maybe i used too much force. maybe the heat on the stove was too high.

there may have been a flaw, something overlooked at the time of purchase. something hard to see in the new, shiny surface and my excitement of boiling water. flaws masked by the lights in the store or loud music. but after a year of searching this one seemed perfect, whatever the shopping conditions.

what am i supposed to do now?

i could take the kettle back to the store. but where’s the receipt? i don’t think i have it. can i be one of those customers stridently demanding a new teakettle? because if i demand loud enough, i can get it. it’s the unspoken law of retail: get nasty, mean customers out of the store under any circumstance.

then i think maybe i can fix the lid myself. looks like a little super glue might do the trick, but why would glue hold it together? it might work for a while, but that stuff is pretty toxic and impermanent. this is tea i’m talking about.

of course, i can always use the kettle without the lid, but without the whistle a teakettle is just a misshapen pot. is that what i want to boil water in for the rest of my life?

i feel there’s a lesson in this, but i’ll be damned if i’m going to work it out today.

i am totally in control

rarhghaaaa, with angry light (click for big)

just how i’m feeling right now. it’s entirely possible i am distorting the space time continuum as you read this.

everyone feels like this on occasion….don’t they?

it must mean i’m ready

i ordered some clothes the other week and yesterday in the mail i received some of them including a navy blue polo shirt that looks pretty cute with pearls, the reason i picked it out. as i try it on, i see this is the exact shirt my mom used to wear, which i did not realize as i shopped.

i guess i’m ready to have kids, i’ve got the mommy-shirt.

p.s. have you noticed a trend? towards little people? methinks someone’s feeling her age around here…

hop to it, before you’re dead

i sat on the balcony this morning to jot some notes and inadvertently watch the sky lighten in what i’m told is an easterly direction (compass points one of many weaknesses).

i wrapped myself up in a big feather comforter to combat the chill and wrote until i just couldn’t hold the pen, whereupon i wrapped myself more completely in the feathers and thought, “i must look like a blood-filled tick. blood-filled ticks must be toasty warm with all that fresh blood under their skin. how nice for them, especially in winter.” gross, right?

hidden by pastel clouds, i compare the sun’s interplay on the sharp edge of low mountains across the bay to the fiery hues across the fields of idaho, and what runs through my head: the bridge is beautiful and useful but kind of blocking my view, this coffee is good and ticks must be warm with all that blood.

i don’t stop there. i wonder how it feels as the blood courses into whatever anatomy of a tick holds blood. if they know how silly their legs look when only a quarter of each sticks out of that blood-sac-body thingie. whether they enjoy being full or is it more like when you eat too much at thanksgiving and feel uncomfortable for two days. do they enjoy a good game of touch-football after?

someone will tell me they don’t feel at all. they are only parasites without conscious knowledge or subjective experience: eating, procreating, dying. someone will go on to say that the middle one is most important, we are all required to do so and to not do so is to deny our lives of all meaning. the end.

and that someone would be my dad who wastes no opportunity to impress upon me how important having kids is. i’d say he has completed this mission, yes?

today’s fortune, if today was five days ago

i suppose i could take some space here to elaborate on my last entry. then i reread this site and some drafts unpublished (n.b. yikes). explanation is not really my thing. i seem to prefer puzzling unrelatable writing. how annoying. for you.

instead, i’ll share a fortune from a cookie of same. i haven’t done so for some time, even though they have been piling up. and fluttering down, every single time i open my wallet.

this one’s from idaho, on the occasion of “oriental dinner” day. (dinner is lunch, supper is dinner. visiting idaho is a bit like living ‘little house on the prairie’ and day designation is largely inconsequential in the old folks home.)

“an unexpected event will soon make your life more exciting”

i haven’t the nerve to ask the new full-sized super eight ball if this unexpected event has happened yet. one might think i would notice if something unexpected had happened or if my life had suddenly become more exciting. i suppose i should be able to.

maybe i have noticed and i’m just not saying. maybe the exciting part hasn’t started yet, leaving some wiggle room as to the actual event horizon. maybe the event has passed and i’m hoping there’s going to be a second.

at any rate i sort of prefer this state of unknowing. sweet mysteries of life make my arms tingle. and the back of my neck where the cute short hairs* grow in tiny almost-ringlets.

*totally unrelated end note – yum: i love those hairs. they’re my favorites.

whew

i be busy. and a little bit sad. and a little bit happy. and a whole lot manic – i hope i hide it well.

so i’ve been living at an old folks home, not their name for it and today lunch was late, which causes residents to drift off back into their own worlds. one resident, when implored to sit down to eat, said “what’s the difference?” indeed.

now enter one of the world’s cutest babies in the world’s tiniest pair of soccer shoes i have ever seen. my emotions are so stymied i am actually unable to cry. or cry properly, i’m not really sure what’s happening, which is kinda weird because i’m in public.

i don’t want to be the crazy lady in an idahoan barnes and noble who loses her shit and is good-intentionally surrounded by hordes of totally nice if oddly dressed locals.

it could be i belong in the old folks home. i certainly seem to fit in there.

oh dear, it’s almost lock down time. i gotta run…

moisturizer replacement #1

if the smell of just-decaying rose turns you on, then this is your lotion.

for the rest of you, take a cut rose that never fully opens in the vase yet remains full of water. wait until the saturated logy head nods to one side but still smells ok as you pass by. then get right in there, touch your nose to the still velvety petals and inhale. something has definitely gone wrong in its soggy center. that’s what this lotion smells like.

kind of reminds me of my great grandmother who family lore paints as anything but a pretty picture. something about her smelled sweetly of rose to me. maybe it was her rose garden.

i was too young to know anything other than the weird old lady who had a vanity full of mysterious pots and tubes of unknown womanly stuff. for this the scent is appealing: hidden delights, a continuum of life. however the stench of a death rattle is appalling with its constant reminder of mortality.

beyond this, i am torn. the recycled and eco-printed box (in eco-dull color) proudly lists what is not in there, but the real ingredients sound like a mad chemist’s diary. sure, enviro-lotions and soaps come from a lab, but homey names give a homey feel and a biblical paragraph of scientific names reads like someone couldn’t get it right.

i suppose i feel hydrated and protected from low humidity conditions, but what happens in the morning when i wash my hands – will the thin film of security rinse down the drain?

in case this lotion succeeds, i can probably learn to love decaying rose. as i remember it now, i wasn’t that fond of almond either.

note to self: do not drink and write

the following is the result of blogging whilst drinking. sans edits. well, some edits. i’m sorely tempted to send it packing without edits at all. and i have. oh dear. throw on your gaiters folks and wade in, if you dare.

today i returned a pot of lotion, an expensive lotion to a cheapie like me, because it smelled funny. not just funny, but gym sock funny.

i live for this lotion. for the last four years i have been using it and in the em-thirty or so years before i was all “lotion? gross! what for? say, what’s this scaly stuff on my elbows?” then one day ta-DA! lotion! oh how wonderful! and it was wonderful. for four years. i even got my brother-in-law in on the action and now my sister-in-law is totally in to this company. she even buys going-away gifts from them, which is something because if my friends move away i am not going to reward that kind of behavior with nice gifts. shessh.

now, i don’t want to overstate the case, but i am easily responsible for one half of one millionth, maybe two!, of their annual sales! i am a goddamned force to be reckoned with! why, at our national yet local grocery store, in the pre-made sandwich department, i got the tomato slices to be nestled between the meat and lettuce instead of oozing into the bread pieces. i mean, i don’t have proof, but ever since i made that comment to the manager, the tomato no longer sogs the bread. how cool is that?

that’s right. it’s cool.

anyway, i have crafted a fine note to the fine people at the fine company who decided to change the ingredients in my favorite, nay, my only lotion, ever. a letter in which i explain the issue and the inconvenience it will cause me. i fully intend to finish editing it and send it off, snail mail style, to their country of origin. where i hear they speak the english quite fluently. (ha! so unintentionally funny – i didn’t know they were a british company!!!! i am so much funnier drunk! i wonder if i’m sexier too? where’s my mirr…oh. no.)

but that is not really the crux of my story (did i mention i have been drinking? this is akin to drinking and walking, only more dangerous). the real point here is that when i returned the lotion, the expensive for me, can’t imagine why they changed it, especially since all the bad carcinogenic ingredients, the real artificial stuff, (tee hee real artificial! what is that?) still seems to be in there…wait, what was i saying? oh yeah, the super fine saleslady (not the glowering at me like she personally mixed up my batch of lotion lady) suggested, in the fine “keep a customer a customer” manner to which as a retailer (and shopper) i am quite used to, she suggested that i could, at holiday time, when it came out, buy the soap that smells just like the lotion i was now returning.

uh, what?

i think i’ve heard this line before, but it usually goes like this: “we don’t have a 36A in stock, but you know, a 34B is really the same thing!” [insert cute perky smile here] sure, sweetie! magically my 36 inches of rib cage has contracted by 2 and my CUP* size increased! if it was that fucking easy, don’t you think i’d be a damn B-cup already?

so i get it. the soap smells the same as the lotion used to. presumably. i will have no actual way to know this since i have run out of the lotion, whose scent has changed, and i’ve never bought the holiday soap that smells like the lotion because guess what? i’m not on the market for soap. can’t you just see me smoothing soap on to my hands, elbows, feet, and, on alternate nights, my neck and face?

gorsss!!!!

in preparation for this little entry (little? really? which end of the binocs am i looking through?), i have done some intensvie goolge research (hooray for the library sciences!) on this particular company and damn if they aren’t exactly the reasons i thought this lotion would be safe from the dastardly effects of commercialism. but you see, they live to sell, who doesn’t, in this world of selling (besides me)? (i live to ridicule. i’m mean like that.)

…

entry concluded. wine bottle empty. next time you make turkey burgers (make them!), add lots of fresh ginger. do it. do it now. it’s delisciousulish.

did i spell that right?

* that would be a volumetric mesaurement versus linear. or something. i onlhy has a bs in physics, ask someone with a phd in math if i’m right. or a freshman in high school. either one would know better than me.

wedding bells are ringing, ringing

a spate of employees in our small company are getting/have gotten married recently and when i say spate i of course mean two. not to each other.

there are worse things to do with your life.

heroin comes to mind.

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

a slight misnomer in title today as i don’t believe in god, per se, but i DO believe in dave matthews band. the man is a goddamn musical genius who surrounds himself with musical genius. not that i’m any kind of professional. i did take piano lessons for a few years and i sang in choir throughout high school with, i was told, an impressive range. so there’s my credentials.

and who, who do you suppose i saw today, ok, who did my husband and i see today? i…i’m so lightheaded thinking about it…swoony even…weak in the knees for heavens sake! wasn’t it just dave matthews his very own davelike self, sitting in the very front of the tour bus and oh my dave matthews didn’t he just wave back at me, ok, us??? yes. yes he did. and i’m never showering again. look, if you don’t believe me, i have a picture:

proof positive there is a dave

there! just there! don’t you see, in that shadowy portion just to the left of the driver, that small flesh-toned blur? that is freaking dave matthews. ufo followers have less proof than this.

i have never ever wanted to throw myself in front of a bus so much before in my life.

and i’m not even conveying the level of dorkdom that is involved in this outcome. i mean, we are like king and queen of dorkusville. happily so. dave matthews, i want you to know sir, i will be your dork any time. any. time. drop me a line: i am totally free. and it’s not like i have explicit permission from my husband, but i’m pretty sure it’s ok for me to leave him for you. no pressure, i’m just saying.

seriously, i’m gaa-gaa. pathetically. i almost can’t do anything. like how much more horribly could i write this? how many more details could i forget to add? i did manage to make my first batch of pie crust dough, which i refer to as dave matthews dough and i will probably not be able to make the dessert tarts i was going to because it’s dave matthews dough! if i do make them, i’ll have to send him one! but what’s the address for a constantly moving tricked-out tour bus?

i have always been a member of the emotionally remote too cool to care because it hurt too much to always be rejected club, but i believe i have gotten beyond that today, in this one exception. i will join the fan club (maybe), i will obsess over locations, dates, times and my work schedule (unlikely), i will compulsively read the gossip rags for information on his current dating status (probably not). AND OH MY GOD I THINK I’M GOING TO FAINT – can i make this font size any bigger BECAUSE DAVE MATTHEWS JUST HELLO.ED ME, ok us, ON TWITTER!!!! i don’t even understand twitter!

i was really looking forward to seeing the camden concert in a few weeks, but now i’m over the moon. AND NOW I’M ON MARS. i’m almost ready to go “almost famous” over this. wait! i am ready! let me just grab an extra pair of earplugs and some dramamine…

update (hours later): i did it, i used the dave dough and here they are, my first tarts/pies ever:

all of them stars

and dave, where ever you and your tricked-out tour bus are, this one’s for you:

gosh, i hope you like strawberry rhubarb.

you know, ordinarily, i’m quite levelheaded. i think i like this better.

woo HOO!