President's Day

I am not really sure what President's Day is for. Presumably to settle politics in some sort of Hunger Games scenario.

So obviously, I was not eligible to participate. I sewed a pillowcase, instead. 

It fit the first time I zipped it, which was lucky because I accidentally tore off the pull tab and can never get it open again. No washing for you, pillowcase.

The cat watched me from on top of the hutch. For about 20 minutes, she just sat like this:

Yes, that is my actual cat. I had to check several times to make sure she was alive. She was. Well - animated, at least. I have a shovel ready if she's not actually alive.

We went to the beach, which I did not document because we were all huddled against the whipping sheets of sand. Went home smooth and blemish-free. Except for the sandblast scabbing.

In the afternoon, my mom figured out how to text me.

Gavin made a model volcano.

He assembled the mold, poured the plaster, painted it, and then we murdered all the cardboard villagers.

In the evening, I started knitting kilt hose. And, I admit it, they are wool - I am taking my life in my hands.

But I opened a window, so that should totally stop me from dying of asthma.

Lent starts Wednesday. I am giving up beer, chocolate, not exercising, and other people's drama. This last one is difficult, as there is a giant angry wife after me, pressing her face against the library window every morning to see if I'm - I don't know - banging her husband over the circulation desk in broad daylight*. But as of Wednesday, I promise to stop wearing push-up bras just to piss her off.

*In case this does not go without saying, I AM NOT.

Craft Corner DEATH MATCH - you deserve a crown, regardless

The challenge: crowns!

I made a miniature werewolf crown out of card stock, and the cat ate it. But that was ok! Because we got an extra week to work on it!

That extra week contained Valentine's Day. And a police report at work. So... I forgot.

Thursday is a late day at work, so I threw the kids out of the car at school and bellied up to the love-day loot.

Checked my email and - OH GOD YERMITS HAS FABRIC STIFFENER. I AM SUPPOSED TO BE MAKING A CROWN.

And...

*trumpet solo*

I have my crown, REGARDLESS of time management skills

POSE TIME

Then the crown went to work with me. Whoever wears the crown gets to brandish phones and fists at the rest of the staff. Because we deserve it.

See proper crowns from Yermits, Robot a Day, and Sarah Apple over at

  Craft Corner DEATH MATCH dot com!

Craft Corner DEATH MATCH - repetition repetition repetition

Repetition is my bread and butter. Libraries are cathedrals of repetition. Our volume of repetition is such that we have masses of signage taped to every surface and hanging from the ceiling on twine, so we can just point and gesture with our eyebrows after our voice boxes have burnt out.

We project warmth and availability with our grace and charm. 

Except when we don't, because a hobo has just rested his balls on our desk.

Most-asked question: Where is the bathroom?
Answer: Down the hall. That hall right there. There is only one hall, go down it right over there. THERE you go, good luck.

Second most frequent question: I don't have my library card.
Answer: that is not a question. Also: no.

Third most frequent question: Can I plug this in? 
Answer: Sure, if you are using it. You just can't recharge things.
Question: but I don't want to use it, I just want to charge it.
Answer: What did I just say?

The books. The books never end. You check them out, beep, and check them in, beep. Which is kind of relaxing, and you can hum little songs about Pablo Neruda's vagina poetry and Paul Theroux's cannibalism. Beep. Angel-mermaid erotica. Beep. Quilting vampire slayers. Beep. Spacecraft zombie-virus outbreaks. Beep. Immortal-albino-detective murder mystery. Beep.*

"Can I charge my car battery... in the bathroom?"

Repetition is fun. You can hone your diplomatic wit when people ask what you thought of The Hangover 2, and devise different ways to gently warn people that you have wasp spray behind the desk, and know which creeps are sneaking into the bathroom to steal the used sanitary napkins so you can set traps for them. Repetition makes my day worth tarting up for.

See what repetition is repeating itself for Yermits, Robotaday, and Sarah Apple over at our NEW SUPER FANCY ACTUAL WEBSITE - Craft Corner Death Match dot com!


*All of these are real books. GET TO A LIBRARY. Just don't eat soup off the dictionary or pee in the potted plants or try to check out with your Supercuts punch card.**

**Also all real things. GET TO A LIBRARY AND SEE WEIRD THINGS.

Even keel

Quite a week.

* Was politely rejected by a decent-looking man, before I could even properly thoroughly embarrass myself. edit: word has reached me that I did, in fact, properly embarrass myself.
* Ran into a guard rail while dodging a cement truck on the Curvy Road of Doom. edit: the road claimed one of our friends yesterday.
* Missed a call at 4am from my mother, worried because the wasband had gone missing. He was eventually found (not by me).
* My mother subscribed me to groceries-by-mail, so several boxes of bread mix, nutella, coffee, cat food, and canned meats arrived. I love mail. I love food. This was amazing.
* Dragged the boys out to beaches all weekend. Jogged in the surf, nailed them with water canons, yelled about a breaching whale, sacked out in a bikini listening to Led Zeppelin, and talked trash with friends.

I couldn't be assed to take pictures, but we were here (Hamoa):

That big fluffy tree on the beach there? That is me laid out under it, trash-talking. My friend and I watched the paddlers off shore, and I tried to convince him that we should start a Sad Sad Single Person Canoe Club. We agreed that if we just went back and forth in the bay, we could totally watch our kids play on the beach. Exercise AND good parenting. We just need to find boats to steal now. 

Back at home, I made black-eyed peas, fresh bread, and tiny coconut cakes.

There was frisbee in the back yard. We are terrible at it, and all of us are now striped with horizontal bruises; mostly because Leif's strategy is to charge up while you're not paying attention and clock you in the shins with the frisbee (which he calls "playing musubi").

Gavin does not know the rules, either.

Weekends like these are great. Even if I can't get a date. Which brings me to...


Sexy men, please stop reading here

I am not a doll person. I am also not a cat lady. But I remain afflicted with too many cats and I am secretly charmed by miniature things. This would probably manifest like Barbie trashes her dream house if it had free reign. Which it does not. But it would be awesome.

Try to deny this. ALL MINIATURES.

So, having established myself as not a crazy doll person/cat lady - when I was six or seven, my mother shelled out her precious working-college-student dollars to buy me a Sasha doll. This was a doll that could make any little Newfie girl in my Catholic school cluck their tongue enviously and yell, "That's a siiin!" We weren't really clear on what "that's a sin" meant, except that whatever a sin was, it wasn't fair and we wanted one. Later we realized it meant, "that's a shame", and I still use it to annoy my mother if she catches the roast on fire.

This doll traveled to the reservation with me, dressed in little poufy hand-made dresses. I lost one of her shoes - which now cost the same as actual human shoes - and that little white leather shoe has been sitting on some dusty shelf of guilt in the back of my brain for twenty years. My mom stuck her in a box and mailed her to me this week, packed in holly-leaf tissue and padded with mini liquor bottles (my mom wins at package-making).

So I knit her a sweater. And a hat.

And while I sewed on the little clasps, my brain tripped on a 5-htp pill (or one of several mini liquor bottles) and started thinking things like, ooh, I can make tiny Scottish arans! And fair-isle! And Hogwarts uniforms! And I can open an etsy shop and sell doll sweaters for $50 each and get a publishing deal for a book of doll patterns and OH MY GOD SHUT UP BRAIN.

(cat picture, which I BROKE)

"DOLLS LOL"

And you shut it, too, cat.

Hawthorn

I sat outside in the evening and finished the sweater. It's really heavy and way too big, but soft enough to inspire narcolepsy.

I'm a bit lost these days, drifting around with the kids and my coffee and my knitting and sketches. Leif has been sleeping through the nights, and I'm finally in my own bed, pinned down by cats, reading until all the electric candles turn off at 10pm. Sleep is still a thin, shadowy thing.

But maybe not anymore, with a narcolepsy sweater.

ok, I'll play again

copying Jiveturkey for two years in a row.


1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before? ate tiny tacos, saw a real hipster mustache, made cryptozoological porn.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't remember. That points to no.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Rose! Rose did! And I totally noticed on her fb feed days before she gave birth! I am a terrible, terrible friend.

4. Did anyone close to you die? if "anyone" includes "a dog", and "close" means "a few feet away", then yes. Humans Family are all accounted for. DON'T GET ANY IDEAS, PEOPLE. edit: I failed to note the horrible, sudden death of one of Mike's close friends. I try not to catalog his griefs among my own, but it is terrible not to mention it.

5. What places did you visit? New York, some Dunkin Donuts in New Jersey.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011? Fidelity. OH SNAP. Ok, that's out of the way, let's proceed.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Haahaha, no. Erasing them all with booze - applied straight into my ear.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? This is depressing. Wait - a book! I published another book! Why do I keep forgetting this?

9. What was your biggest failure? I'm on application number THREE for childcare assistance, because shit keeps happening to my paperwork month after month. I would like to get that hammered out so I can buy food again. I was only half-kidding about sharing the cat food when I fed the horrible cats tonight.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? injury of most pride: cut my thumb on my oatmeal. Also: ongoing mystery ear problem, split my foot on a stocking holder, got my first inhaler, and fell down stairs again.

11. What was the best thing you bought? the Harley jacket - except I didn't get to wear it, because I kicked out the guy with the motorcycle before I could learn to ride. So... not that. The red dress, then.


12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Leif, for not peeing on my rugs anymore.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Well, I did listen to the new Nickelback album. Also, the cat has been peeing on my rugs.

14. Where did most of your money go? rent. Half for a house I loved, half for a house I do not.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? I get a kick out of packages in the mail. Especially when they contain paintings of Bakersfield, giant robots, Steelers merchandise, tiny bottles of cognac, homespun, and Aero balls. You guys blow my kilt up.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
This song by this guy who looks disturbingly like me.





17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? sadder
b) thinner or fatter? very slightly thinner
c) richer or poorer? kind of a lot poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? naked sunbathing

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? talking to people after 2 drinks. SHUT UP, SELF.

20. How did you spend Christmas last year? walking around the mall, getting up at 5am, eating things.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011? Ahh, no. I really did not.

22. What was your favorite TV program? Misfits. Being Human. Doctor Who. Parks and Rec. Dexter kind of tanked this season. Psych couldn't decide when it was on. I'm waiting for a new scifi series, syfy.

23. What did you do for your birthday in 2010? drink moscato and eat cake with my mom.

24. What was the best book you read? The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor. Just started reading The Scottish Prisoner, Diana Gabaldon's latest, and the first sentence has "cock" in it, so that's off to a good start.

25. What did you want and get? coffee from space.

26. What did you want and not get? Childcare assistance. Attention from someone I have no business wanting attention from.

27. What was your favorite film of this year? I think I'm going to have to sneak behind Harry's back and say True Grit for this one, actually.

28. Did you make some new friends this year? Yes, but he requires a lot of paperwork and I'm scared of his wife. Also I found a kitten. Because I needed 4 cats.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? ... a yule log.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010? lazy Hepburn

31. What kept you sane? friends, running, my sons, passive internet stalking

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Nathan.

 and Mitchell.

I like mops of hair and eyebrows, I guess.

33. What political issue stirred you the most? The whole pay cut for state employees thing really blew.

34. Who did you miss? B, G, H, M, P, J, J, J and R. That was illuminating, wasn't it?

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010. Don't set your pot mitts on fire while you're wearing them.

Christmas 2011

Christmas Eve - my mom's house

Roast beast, yorkshire pudding, neeps and taties, moscato, pear tart with gorgonzola. After the feast, we all sacked out in front of a Christmas Story, the boy wrote his letter to the fat man, we put out a shot of the Glenlivet for Santa, and my mom found the cat up on the table gnawing the roast. He's old and decrepid and mostly toothless, so we were kind of impressed.

how I want to spend my old age

Christmas Morning

 The boy dragged his granny downstairs at 5:00am. I woke up to the glow of tree lights in the hallway and prodded the sleeping child next to me. Halfway through the candy and present fracas I discovered that Santa had somehow misplaced a Beyblade arena in the closet, and I nearly took out the tree by falling off the stairs with it. As I went down in a shower of ornaments, the plastic arena flew behind the branches, and nobody was the wiser. Smooth.

It was the year of the Zim for the boy. Through a hassle involving defective used electronics and a tired Apple Genius, Gavin had a gleaming new iPod deposited into his hands, and we didn't see him again for two days.

My mom inspected her new DDR and ate dubious Japanese melty candies while the infink and I set up an imperial bagel shop.

On my part, it was the year of the caffeine. My mother gave me a device that delivers coffee from the future, humming from a little red craft that punctures foil pods and beams them into steaming single-serve cups of stimulant. I have named it Dr. Brew.

and I love him

While my mom laughed with her baby sister in Canadaland on the phone, I assembled the Christmas meat pie with the surplus roast beef (trimmed of old-man cat slobber), with little dough cutouts of the boys on top, all crafty-like. By 7pm, Leif had just about enough of this festivity shit.

The moment he realized he still had get through a meal before he could go to bed

He managed to drowsily eat all the beef out of his pie without passing out face-first into the gravy before I brushed him up and chucked him in bed. When I skidded back downstairs and reclaimed my glass of cherry wine (from French Lick - which got funnier and funnier the more of it we drank), mom pulled out the old bottle of Braddah Kimo's Undrinkable Grain Alcohol Rum and set fire to the plum pudding.

secret ingredient: your eyebrows

It didn't seem to be enough of a fire hazard, so she poured on more, and the flames shot a foot up. It was magic. Flaming pudding is one of the best things ever.

Boxing day


Terrible DDR dancing, stories over coffee, leftover gorgonzola on pear slices, and then back to the airport.

I had a horrible moment in the airport when I had kissed the kids goodbye, gone through security croodling my appliance box, and a woman at the gate turned to admire it. "Oh, is that a single-serving one?" And I started crying, because I was leaving my children behind and going home with a single-serving coffee machine.

Felt better when I saw the Tardis-coffee in the morning, though.

What's been going on

My doctor would not give me fancy drugs to make me happy, because my anxiety is "situational". I know, right? What a quack. Sure, I'm stressed because of money and time and responsibility, but does knowing that make me any less likely to drive the car off a sea-cliff? Well, yes, but only grudgingly. I'm loading up on 5htp, instead, and waiting for the hallucinations and lucid nightmares.

This would be a good place to note that the kids are not with me, because they are spending winter break with grandma and their father on another island. So I'm by myself, which makes it totally ok to be irresponsible with vitamins.

And because I am the sort of person who worries about dying from vitamin overdoses, I've been jogging and cleaning and knitting and in general getting on in a really impressively boring manner. I am filling the time and loneliness with paring down - my belongings, my expenses, my underpant size. I don't need to be able to afford meat, because homemade bread and soups are fantastic. My furniture is good quality, my dishes are sturdy white china, my blankets are hand-quilted, my sweaters are hand-knit, and all I have to do is get rid of the detritus - junk mail, old toys, unused diapers, ratty blankets, that pot mitt I caught on fire - and try to keep the place simple and clean. Ta daa. Take pictures of my house for Shack Chic, I am Amanda Blake Fucking Soule.

Clearly, the 5htp is working.

And my patrons keep me engaged. There is the hobo who spends all his crumpled, sweaty dollars on our book sales, hoarding hundreds of books in mouldering piles for an orphanage in Thailand he claims to be starting. There is the muumuu hobo with a little dog she scoots around in a baby stroller, with a card to show it's a service animal - that service is elusive until you realize that baby-dog is the thing keeping her heart afloat. There is the hobo we all suspected of being a crazy child abuser, who was just arrested for being a crazy child abuser. My hobos keep me strapped to humanity, which is tender and tough and horrible in ways that are really important and funny and scary. I love them. Except when I hate their fucking guts.


And here is a draft I wrote a few weeks ago and never got around to posting because PATHETIC:


-------------------------


12-10-11
I took Friday off to attend Christmas program and fundraiser stuff with the boys. Dropped them off at school and had a few hours to kill. The landlord had not paid the garbage men to pick up the Thanksgiving refuse, so I pulled on my shittiest jeans, opened all the windows of the car, and loaded two garbage cans of rancid rotting turkey into the hatchback for a ride to the dump. Chased an optimistic stray dog away from the maggoty bones I dropped. Drove off with my head out the window, trying to find a song on my ipod loud enough to drown out the smell. The wind sort of whipped the putrid carcass odor around in circles inside the cab. It was a tossup between forensic anthropology and library science for grad school; my current profession at least gets me laid more. Which is to say not at all, but at least I smell better while not doing it. Did not gag, though, which was a nod toward my ass-kickingness as a would-be corpse-examiner. As I pulled out of the dump, I passed a good-looking man I have been passively keeping an eye out for, and gunned it when he braked and waved because, well shit, maggoty carcass stink is not the best way to earn a place in a man's heart. I hope.

You know what kind of men love smelly carcasses? Bears.

There is something empowering about throwing all your shit out at the dump. I peeled out of my clothes, burned them*, found my running shorts, and went sprinting outside to run down the road to the bay. I didn't even stop to walk and pretend to fiddle with my ipod when trucks drove by, so they received the full visual impact of my jiggly parts, which are unexpected and alarming. The beach was empty, billowing with cold mist from the surf, and I did a skipping-hop-run to the music down to the pier and back again. Nearly died of muscle spasms on the way back up the hill. Showered all the garbage and running off, collapsed on couch. Much better than crying into knitting. Idiot-epiphany.

Lost it at the Christmas program, though. The kiddo was adorable and a bit of a ham, Leif sat on my lap and clapped dutifully, and all the other parents had plans for the weekend that did not include hanging out with my sorry ass. 'Holiday baking with family', and that kind of nonsense. I took the kids home and cried quietly into the laundry for a minute or two, then washed the car, grilled some sandwiches, made cookies, and put on a Christmas special while handing out egg nog. Mine was mostly brandy. Gavin curled up and said, "Ahh, best day ever," and I said, "Huh, where?"

Because when you can't make it, fake it. Their memories are more important than mine right now.

*threw them in washer

lizards, wolves, and a red sweater

Look. THERE WAS YELLOW. And then there was black and grey and purple again. It makes me mad looking at it. I want to slap it and tell it to put some pants on and get its fingers out of the nutella, life's not that bad for fuck's sake. Then I hear a wolf howl somewhere off in the middle distance, and knit another row of purple and grey.

But there is also red. Am making a sweater out of babby-melter acrylic, since sheep hate me, and because it is very slightly cold outside. I promise not to wrap any babies in it and set it on fire.

And I am drawing giant hair-snatching lizards. 

Since my computer died and I got left with the laptop and no wacom tablet, this next book is going to be fancy, with paper and pencils and paint and all that. I am excited about this one, because I get to do stippling and also because the lizard horrifically maims the protagonist.

Which reminds me, I completely neglected to mention the new book. Sometime in October, I received a nice box with a big stack of pantless Christmas mice, said, "Ooh! That's lovely," and then forgot to show anyone or do anything with them. Partly because there won't be any book signings this year, since all the book stores went out of business. It is a hollow accomplishment without the free lattes and harassment of Nook salesmen.

Now I am sad and have to take my scarf out to Hot Topic.

not the new normal

After my mom flew home, I cried all over everything. Doing the dishes, in the shower, into couch pillows. I didn't mean to, it just happened; some instinctive response to stop us from getting separated from the herd and falling into a tar pit. I didn't need a tar pit, though, because I also had a head cold, and was busy burying myself in soggy tissues. And I couldn't sleep, except long enough to have short, crappy dreams about not being able to sleep.

After a few days of this, though, I was feeling bushy-eyed and overtired. Maybe it was just because I changed out of boots and into sneakers during lunch break. Sneakers are made out of the hides of very energetic creatures. Wikipedia tells me that they are made of "vulcanized rubber". So in my Vulcan-hide sneakers, in the late evening, when the library was quiet and empty, I raced my book cart around the stacks. I dug out all the sex and gore books hidden by 5th graders behind the comics and replaced them with better ones. Found a novelty cookie cutter in my bag and took a picture of it. Felt kind of okay for a bit.

In the morning I hid my face in my coffee cup, embarrassed about acting like a damn idiot. Is this like when someone dies and you feel guilt the first time you laugh? Nothing wrong with being a damn idiot. I put on Hepburn swoops of eyeliner, dressed in new pants and a nice black shirt, adjusted my bosoms, and found some stupid stripey green fleece socks. Start small.

I walked Leif into preschool, eyeing him for signs of my head cold. He looked fine. A few small sniffles, a cough over his cereal that morning, but nothing gooey or rattling - and anyway, his teachers would call me at work if he started spouting green snot. One of the dads walked by.

"How's that cough?"
"Oh?" Leif isn't coughing, was he coughing yesterday? Our kids aren't even in the same class. "Seems ok. He has allergies, a bit, so it's hard to tell what's cats and what's cold." What am I talking about?
The dad said, "Because he can just keep that cough to himself! Haha."

I started to say, "HAHA. IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE I'M DOING THIS ALL BY MYSELF," but I did not say that, because that doesn't even make any sense. Holy shit, I'm already turning into an unhinged hermit. I need to get a trespassers will be shot sign and a string of squirrels. (Fun fact: when I do a google image search for "hermit with squirrels", I get a bunch of furry porn. Don't do that.)

The "new normal" is going to find me soon. And I won't be a crazy-eyed, squirrel-porn-nightmare-suffering  person when it comes.