grumbles and grunts

Update: I still don't wash my hair, yes really.

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:29:00 +0000

I have not washed my hair in 266 days.
This is 266 day hair.

Hello, yes, I still don't wash my hair. And no, I don't mean "just without soap." I'm not sure why this is such a difficult concept to grasp; I am not making some kind of verbal wittery where I actually mean I DO wash my hair but only every other month or only with wheatgrass or only in natural spring water. I just stopped doing it, and this is what my hair looks like.

How to stop washing your hair:
(Please pin this critical information to pinterest*)

1. Buy a shower cap, preferably with flowers and/or kittens and butterflies on it.
2. Don't wash your hair.
3. ...............
4. ...................
5. ..........

Clear up any remaining confusion? Great! I'll be over here, having a nice lie-down and doing nothing, definitely not washing my hair.

My hairs have reached critical lengths, and don't get me wrong, after 4+ years of growing that's a good thing!, but it still sometimes comes as a shock when I'm scrambling down the hall to the bathroom in the half-dark and I suddenly feel something lightly stroking the top of my butt and I'm like, "WHO'S THAT, BACK OFF RAPE GHOSTS!" and I spin around in circles swinging my claw-hands at the air except hey it's just my own hair, super long and touching all the unexpected things. Like my own butt. Also sometimes it tries to strangle me in my sleep. MY HAIR IS HAUNTED.

I had a little trimmy-trim on the ends, hence the break in the non-washing streak, and also I shaved the back of my head please don't ask so many questions. The important thing is it's here, guys. My hair is finally the breast-covering shirt my heart always dreamed it could be. When I pretended to be a mermaid leaping around in a shell bra at the swimming pool I never expected I would at the same time look so much like an escapee from a plural marriage compound but hey, those are the sacrifices we have to make to help a little girl's dreams come true.

*Do not pin this to pinterest
**As the original post detailed, thoroughly and in large letters, your success with attempting this method may vary based on your own hair's magical properties or lack thereof.

I want to wake in the woods beside the lake

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:32:00 +0000

take better pictures with your iphone : your questions? answered.

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:52:00 +0000

Just when you thought the worst was over- oh right, turns out months after my original iphone tips and tricks post some of you still have ....a lot of questions. Hey, I can't blame you. It's a hard-knock touch-screen world out there. Here are the answers to your most-asked questions, alphabetically organized and categorized and you know, whatever.

Q. How is the image quality? What about printing your photos?
On screen? You'll never have any problems. Printed? Well, now let's talk about that. I won't sugar coat it - it depends, and there are limitations. For prints anywhere up to 10 inches x 10 inches the quality is fine. Standard 4x6 or 5x7 prints will for the most part look just as good as if you took them with a DSLR.

The down side is that you're not going to get high-quality poster-sized prints for your living room; the final images sizes just aren't big enough, and the more filters you run on a picture the more grainy it'll get. Barring those two factors, however, the output is fine for everyday snapping.

(And this is all based on the current 4S/5 capabilities, there are rumors that the new hardware will have an even higher image ratio. Larger quality images are coming, it's just a matter of time.)

There is one important caveat to all this though, which is to make sure that all your apps are saving your images to full size. Which brings us to...

Q. Can it/does the iphone save full size images?
The built in camera saves images to the largest size it can, typically 3264 x 2448 pixels. When you use apps, some of them take it upon themselves to scale it down your image size, often without asking you, which will cause your photo to look fine on the screen but like absolute junk if you ever decide later you want to print it out. Beware!

How to change the quality settings:
Instagram - Instagram automatically saves all photos to 2048 x 2048 pixels, though it varies by the make/model of your specific phone. (It's even lower for the 3GS and 4.) It has no plans to release full size image saving in the immediate future. Images printed from an instagram picture will fuzz out if you get much larger than 5 x 5.

I have a major beef with this, like a really big hank of stinky rotting cow left out in the summer sun. I back up full size edits of all my photos before I port them through instagram. Apps that turn your instagram photos into books and magnets and car seat covers always sound neat, but be aware they're going to be using those smaller size files to do your prints. 2x2 magnets? Probably fine. Full page 7 x 7 photo book? Not gunna look so hot, from personal experience sad face frowny party.

Camera+ - From the camera screen push the menu button in the lower right corner. Scroll down the "Quality" and select "High" to save at full resolution.

Snapseed - Snapseed recently updated to automatically save at full size. To check the size of your picture open it in Snapseed and push the question mark in the upper right corner. The size is listed below the image information.

Afterlight/Afterglow - When you're done editing your image push done. On this screen select "Max." Note that the maximum size on Afterlight is smaller than the original, there is no option to save at true size.

VSCOcam - When you're done editing push the export button and select "Full/Maximum file size."

If all you're ever going to do is look at your images on a screen it may seem silly to waste space saving at full size, but you may regret it later if you decide you want to print out one of your favorite images, and I mention this, also, from very regretful personal experience.

My official recommendation: For best results always print directly from your full-size files.

Q. How do you print your pictures?
Once you download your iphone photos to your computer via iphoto or your preferred method, you can have them printed any way you would normally print pictures from a digital camera. You can put them on a disk or flash drive (or send them electronically) etc. etc. to your favorite printing spot, print them out on your home printer, or hit up one of those photo kiosks.

I normally print my pictures through snapfish because it interfaces with flickr (which is where I backup all my full-size images). I simply select pictures from my image library and then snip-snap, send them electronically over the interwebs to my local drugstore and they're ready within the hour, on the way to Grandma's house so I don't look like the slacker mom.

I have also used blurb to print several photobooks and have been very pleased with the results. For formal prints I use a local printing service and provide them with images on a disk.

Q. Can you tell me more about Camera+? How do I use it? What is all this stuff?
Camera+ is one of several apps (yes, there are other options) that bring some of the advanced functionality of a DSLR to the iphone, which means it has a few bells and whistles that, if you take the time to get the hang of them, can really improve your images.

As I covered in my original iphone post, my favorite thing about camera+ is the exposure/focus control. While in camera mode inside the app, touch the screen with one finger to direct the focus. Add a second finger to adjust the exposure. BAM! Better light control is now at your literal fingertips.

It also has an exposure/focus lock function. After you set your focus on an object and set the exposure point, touch the lock icon in the lower left corner to lock it in place. Now you can move your camera around (physically) while the focus/exposure remains the same. This is great for capturing bokeh or tracking moving objects through space.

Here's an example of how that might be useful:

For this picture I locked the focus on the bars before we started spinning.

Beyond the focus/exposure, my other favorite part of camera+ is the faster shooting rate. Because it saves your images to its internal library instead of the camera library, it is able to shoot images in a row much more quickly than the native camera. This means you can crush through a ten pictures trying to catch a jumping dog without that painful lag time.

Is the actual shutterspeed faster? I can't say, officially, but experience has taught me that if I want to escape the blur and capture motion camera+ is the way to go. As an additional bonus, you can turn on the 'live exposure' option and view your ISO on the left side of the screen to gauge your light/speed.

Montion blur = BUSTED.

Q. Is there a zoom? Have you tried the HDR mode?
There is a zoom function built in to the iphone camera as well as one within camera+. As far as I'm concerned they're both completely terrible and look like crap, but if that's your jam knock yourself out, I'm not here to hold back your creative juices. It's okay for taking pictures of funny looking people you see at the mall, I guess.

I have not experimented much with the built in HDR function, but yes that's a feature that exists, and there's also an app for it. Essentially what it does is take several images at different exposures and then merge them into a single image, so you (hypothetically) get the best possible combination of lights/darks. You can access it inside the built-in camera by pushing "options" and turning "HDR" on.

Q. Have you tried [insert XYZ] app?
I am an app-slut in the worst way, so I will give most anything a ride around the parking lot. Often I'll try something out for one or two pictures, get bored, and delete it because the options/quality aren't ringing my bell.

The current lady of the hour is PicTapGo by the genius people at Radlab. Their new editing app is a miniature version of their full photoshop plugin, which I also have (and love), and it's delightful. Ten thumbs up high five pigtapgo!

Q. You mentioned shooting "macro," what did you mean?
I have a macro lens which adheres to my phone and allows me to take teeeeny-tiny pictures of teeeeeeny-tiny stuff. There are several companies making them but the one I have is from photojojo. There's a learning curve, but quality is outstanding. I did a full macro lens review here.

Q. What it instagram and how do I use it?
No.

Q. What a great post! We would love to republish it for our readers without paying you, but don't worry we'd totally put a tiny link to your blog at the bottom of the article!
You seem really sweet, but I don't do anal.

pin this on pinterest
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well, for one, I think this house is a reflection of your sick brain

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:16:00 +0000

...No idea where he gets it.

never make the cow eyes at Colonel Sanders

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:27:00 +0000

A few weeks ago Jon, Jude and I celebrated a perfectly lazy Sunday morning by hitting up McDonalds to mack on some breakfast-freaking-burritos. Yes, sorry hippy dip gluten-free-organic-dirt-covered-free-range friends, I'm normally on board with your colorless gloop schemes but I'll also freely confess to breaking my chemical-poison embargo before 11am on selected weekends. (And also any time I really need to feel the beautiful plastic caress of a McFlurry in my esophagus. It burns so good.)

Jon went up to order our food while I ran interference with Jude at his preferred table ("with the puffy seats, Mom!"), and as he was blabbing my ear off about how Optimus Prime is his best metal space-brudder a man in his upper 70's in a filthy, tea-dipped t shirt walked in the door just in front of us. Within a fraction of a second the guy had zeroed in on Jude, who was obliviously chattering away 2 inches from my face, and started veering towards our table, crooning in a sickly sweet voice, "SUCH A PRETTY LITTLE GIRL. HEYYYYY SWEET GIRL...."

I've mentioned it briefly before, but I don't bother correcting strangers when they mistake the Jude for a girl because of his longish hair, even though it is A) really not that long and B) he is the bro-est bro that has ever bro-ed C) what the hell go away. I shot the guy a single steely-cold glare and refused to respond to his cow-eyed advances until he finally proceeded around the corner to do whatever the fuck it is aggressive old people do at McDonalds at 9:30am.

I shook off an involuntary shudder and breathed a sigh of relief when Jon whipped back around the corner with our food. We went on to eat our burritos and panclocks in relative peace, minus all the times Jude tried to eat butter straight out of the plastic bin and then rub it on my face.

When we were ready to go I went back up to the counter to ask for a refill on my coffee, but as soon as I turned and saw that guy hovering around I knew it was going to be crabapple bad news. I stepped up to the edge of the register to get someone's attention and Creeper McCreeps made another immediate beeline in my direction, crossing at least fifteen feet to get my attention.

"You have such a pretty little girl. Sooo pretty. How old is she?"

"Uh..."

"Let me show you these videos of my granddaughters dancing that I keep on my phone to look at while I'm all alone in my shed in the woods at night while I touch my ...arrangement of rusty saws."

And he pulled his crusty cell phone out of his pocket and tried to show it to me with his meat paws also maybe I made up that last part but it was totally implied I could tell.

"Uh..." I shifted backwards, handing my cup across the counter and leveraging some serious side-eye. I angled slightly so my back was towards him and made a scary clown-smile at the manager. As soon as my coffee reappeared I bolted for the door, snagging Jon and Jude on my way through and glancing over my shoulder. "We need to leave. Now."

Never, never, to that point in my mom-career had the screaming red alarm in my gut shaken bell tower that loudly, and fuck if we didn't need to get our kid as far away as possible from that dude right that very second. I would have stabbed someone in the face to steal their bicycle and never looked back.

In retrospect, I can't help wondering if I was maligning a kindly, misunderstood old grandpa with no social skills. Was I thinking the worst for no reason? Paranoid? I mean, just because he comes off like the creepiest human of all time, surely that's an unfair characterization or something, right?

Except. Except. Except I have never, ever had a skin-crawling reaction like that before. Except, all joking aside I fully believe in the powers of a parent's intuition. Except, the undeniable SOS my heart was sending to my brain said no. goddamn. way.

So sorry random old man that we will (hopefully) never see again, but I refuse to feel guilty for not being "polite" to you. Maybe you aren't a creeper after all, but probably you should considering being less of an extreme perv alert, because that shit's not on the up and up 'round here. No way, no how.

Tell me: Has your gut ever sent an emergency mayday to your face? Have you ever had your HIGH ALERT alarm bells go off?

my branches are waiting for you, like arms

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:49:00 +0000

put the bullet in the barrel

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:30:00 +0000

When I was in primary school my neighbor was my best friend. She was exactly my age plus one month and lived exactly my house plus one house over, at the very top of the tallest hill, and one evening like 3,342 others my mother called over to her kitchen and to tell me it was time to come home from our eternal play date.

I hopped out the back door and started on my merry way. I remember it being a particularly pretty evening, the kind where lazerbeams of twinkling golden sunset shoot through the branches of the trees and mist swirls low on the ground indicating extremely beautiful poor air quality. The grass was crispy green and slightly damp on the soles of my feet as I rounded the corner to the front of the house and strode confidently towards home.

Just as I crested the peak of the hill I put one foot in front of the other and stepped straight into an open drainpipe that just so happened to be in the middle of the yard and just so happened to be the exact diameter of my grade school thigh. I looked around in alarm as half of me was suddenly swallowed by the earth, flailing my arms like a rat on a tiny boat, a castaway tethered in an undulating sea of grass.

After the initial shock wore off and I took stock of my situation a more pressing sort of panic settled into my chest. I yelled and wiggled and waved my useless arms in the golden light like a tulip planted in the bloody yard for the better part of an hour, surrounded by dancing sunbeam unicorns, and thought, "WHAT. IF. NO ONE. EVER. FINDS ME."

No one ever did, and then I died and worms ate my leg. The end.

(What do you think this is, Lost or something? Eventually I pulled myself out and went home, slightly traumatized and cutup about the leg but no worse for wear, and when I worked myself up into a tizzy and told all the nearby adults about what happened they shrugged their shoulders and told me to go play in the street. I MAY AS WELL BE DEAD, OKAY.)

let the roots & soil drink of me

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:39:00 +0000

straight at the sun

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Sat, 04 May 2013 15:23:00 +0000

hush now creature, dry your eyes

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:35:00 +0000

go home pinterest, you are so goddamn drunk

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:46:00 +0000

How to start your seeds in twee little ice cream cones like you're the Zooey Deschanel of gardening, a real life primer in just 20 easy steps!

1. Put on a full-skirt cotton polka-dot dress, apron, and heels, or the pajamas you've worn the last three days.

2. Carefully arrange 75 ice cream cones on trays all over your deck.

3. Futily attempt to keep wind from blowing over formations of cones.

4. Use a measuring cup to fill each cone with mixed soil types 3 / 5.

5. Divide into groups by plant type and lable each cone with permanent marker.

6. Plant your seeds like a carefully tending mother hen! Grow, my darlings, grow! Mommy loveums yous! Do not attempt to nurture cones with the warmpth of your butt.

7. Gently dribble a dime's worth of water into the center of each cone.

8. Watch as cones begin to slump alarmingly to one side. Suddenly remember that ice cream cones turn to mush when they get wet.

9. Run around the deck screaming and desperately trying to corrale the avalance of ice cream cones tipping over and pouring precious seeds and dirt all over the ground.

10. Cry.

11. Move surviving, mushy cone globs into cooking trays WITH SIDES.

12. Relocate to sunny spot. Ignore for several days.

13. Check in and notice cone globs have accumulated an alarming amount of mold.

14. Do nothing.

15. Devotedly tend your black mold farm for many more days. Cry.

16. SUCCESS! SEEDLINGS EMERGE FROM THE MOLD FARM!

17. Attept to tell seedlings apart. All labels are now fully obscured by the onslaught of creeping mold.

18. Escort cones outside. Plant at random.

19. Watch out the window as idiot dog immediately runs outside and consumes all seedlings/moldy ice cream cone tummy treats.

20. Congratulations! THANKS PINTEREST!

come out of the hatch naked with your hands in the air

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:08:00 +0000

I'm rewatching Lost, all by my lonesomes, because sgnp made me do it and Jon despises Lost with the power of ten-thousand supernaturally enhanced water bound sun-spheres. As I was cruising along the initial pilot episodes (Hurley! I missed you! Whirrrrpooghghffsssss EXPLOSIONS!) the camera swept up the beach and there he was, ol' fuckface Mc BOONE, swiveling his carefully highlighted skull around on top of his beastly neck. It all came flooding back: BOONE. GODDAMN BOONE.

Indisputable fact: Boone was a useless slackjawed moron with a fat neck. Except, in the years since Lost, the former sister-boner has somehow turned his life around. No longer is Ian Somerhalder Boone: dumbest character ever, he's now Damon Salvatore: popular vampire teenage dream, watch him put his hands on me in his skin-tight jeans la-la-la-la-la, and while almost the entire population of the earth would agree that even with its multitude of faults Lost was a better show than The Vampire Diaries, the key difference is that Ian Somerhalder is 95% of The Vampire Diaries' draw AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY.

I watched fucking Boone fumble around the fuselage, searching futilely for a pen he couldn't understand no one needed, and I started to wonder -- How did this guy manage overcome the life handicap of being fucking Boone to pop up a few years later a decent actor and attractive human? How did I completely overlook his potential ability to smolder while holding a cat? Did he sell is soul to Satan/Beyonce? Is he a goddamn wizard? How does one recover from a case of the BOONES?

How did this happen? Because Boone was a terrible character.

Boone was a terrible character. I mean John Lock and Jack and Sawyer and Toothy and Ben and Boone's sister-lover and Agent Snappy-Snap Rodriguez -- they were all terrible characters to some degree or another, but Boone was the terriblest. When he got crushed by a falling beach ball or whatever and kicked the bucket 30 episodes later, I poured myself a tall glass of vodka and toasted to his eternally annoying damnation.

He was stupid, whiny, over dramatic, and only seemed to pop up when the writers wanted to stretch out a side story to maximum brain-numbing capacity. His back story stalled out right past the part where he wanted to whisker-kiss his sister and he never contributed anything to group game night. He was useless at best, and managed to complicate things miles away while standing still on an empty section of beach away from all sharp objects and bears. While he admittedly had some better moments as the show went along, I could just never shake my initial impression of fucking Boone. That was it for me. Done. Nope.

How did this happen? Because the guy who played Boone was a pretty good actor.

Despite my admittedly irrational hatred of BOONE, capital I idiot, none of the above actually had anything to do with Ian Somerhalder, "actor." In fact he was such a good actor he took acting like a moron to the absolute limits of reality. He pulled a rope out of his chaps, lassoed stupidity, and committed to it utterly and with his whole soul. We wrapped his hands around the throat of stupidity and choked the life right out of it.

Ian Somerhalder is such a good actor I really BELIEVED he was a moron. He never had the opportunity to be anything less than a complete idiot, and he fully embraced that challenge like a goddamn PROFESSIONAL. Do I hate Boone? Yes I do. Was that Ian Somerhalder's fault? NO. It was his RESPONSIBILITY as a man, and as a human, and as a surrus act-or. I hated Boone because I was supposed to hate Boone, because Boone was so deliciously, perfectly, hateably killable. In that bizarre and twisted way that only Lost can manage, my hatred of him may actually qualify as his extreme success.

How did this happen? Because Boone was a the fifteenth wheel on the blind date from hell.

Not everyone was as oblivious to the guy's potential good qualities as I was. There were plenty of Lost fans who didn't roll their eyes and scream at the TV every time Boone's face hung open on screen attracting a cloud of tropical flies eager to fill up that vapid space in his skull and start a breeding colony. The trouble was Sawyer, or more accurately, Sawyer and his abs and his Kate & Jack PB&J love-triangle, pushing out its elbows and hogging up the sexy-time sized portion of every 46 minute block of mystery.

There was only room for so much man-candy on that god forsaken island, and Boone was constantly in peril of slipping into a Dharma Initiative-styled redshirt. He didn't have the screen time to bloom gently in the sun and open his petals, and the show didn't have room for him anyway. Do you know how much confusing shit was going on on that show? THE SHOW WAS CALLED LOST, AND I WAS. There was no room in my bank of conspiracy theories for the guy that might-be-hot mucking things up in the background, not to mention that his every appearance was part and parcel to his sister's and she was just as unlikeably irritating as he was.

In essence, Somerhalder was never going to be a leading man in Lost world, so he kept his head down and used his awesome skills at acting terrible to land himself a right proper gig as everyone's sassy, drool-covered kitty-treat.

...On the other hand, someone could have just walked up to him on set and said, "Hey man, you'd be pretty hot if you could keep your mouth from hanging open all the time like Lady Chatterly's glovebox. You should try that, maybe you'll get your own show." And then he did.

MYSTERY SOLVED.

can you hear my springasm from there?

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:02:00 +0000

I've been having an elicit, filthy love affair with this tree, for very obvious reasons, which came to a dramatic and unfortunate end last week when some asshole thunderstorm showed up and said, "But Jamie, I thought you were only in outdoor love with ME?" and I was all, "Sorry thrilling thunderstorm, you know I love anticipating your barometric pressure changes but that tree and I have something special for one week out of every twelve months and I'm not going to let you stand in the way of our special romance. Also I love lakes and trees not covered in blossoms, and scenic views and I'll get freaky with pretty much any sunrise ever. So, you know. It's not like we're exclusive." And then the thunderstorm flipped out in a jealous rage and was all, "I WILL DESTROY YOU, BEAUTIFULLY FLOWERING TREE." And then it did. The end.

Nature really needs to get a grip.

I think you and my friends should hang out (on the weekends)

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:33:00 +0000

I wrote a highly scientific breakdown of whether or not I would have clam-on-ham relations with James Franco the other week, and then a very kind reader messaged me and said she knows a guy who knows a guy long story short, James Franco and his bropal read my post and shared a hearty chuckle.

Whether they were laughing with me, or at me, or at the idea of attending the festival of clam-jam your guess is as good as mine, but in my head they were all eating pizza because my default imagination-station setting for all celebrities is to picture them rolling around on the ground in a beanie, eating pizza and getting snoopy.

Janet Jackson: snoopy! Walter Cronkite: snoopy! Gary Busey: snoopy! Congratulations, I guarantee I just made your life a million times better.

After breaking out in an awkwardness rash and high-fiving some enthusiastic looking couch pillows, I laid down and tried to sleep off the fact that James Franco read something where I used the word "bonealicious" unironically in public and then compared his face to a mystery burrito. Later that same day I fell out of my chair and knocked over a large potted plant.

- - - -

The happiest I've felt in weeks joy-punched me in the chest right in the middle of reading a 400-page document about SQL database program management. Halfway through what by all accounts should have been the world's most tedious document little callouts started appearing in margins that said things like, "This table field is completely ineffective. The reason why they set it up this way eludes me," and "Warning: If you do this with your external database it will give your Administrator terrible nightmares."

The further I read the more convinced I became that the author had gotten midway through the epic task writing it and lost his goddamn mind. I started sending screenshots to my coworker and giggling maniacally into the arm of my sweater. I leaned across our cubicle wall, "Psssst! Hey! Hey! Are you seeing this stuff? This dude is great!"

My coworked leaned past his monitor just enough to make eye contact, sighed, and leaned back without saying a word.

I sat at my desk all afternoon, reading the musings of a person driven insane by poor programming and sending a deluge of screenshot after screenshot to my coworker's computer, occasionally punctuated with exclamations of, "Comedic gold!" while he continued to ignore me.

When I got to page 243 (2-4-3!) the first sentence read, "This is the chapter that has been years in the making. And it's a real yawner." I threw my head back and cackled with unbridled glee, "Oh man, DJ HUNT IS KILL. ING. IT."

"..."

"The only way this could be any better is if his name was Mike."

".........."

"Mike? Mike ... Hunt?"

"................................."

After a while I declared to no one in particular, "This room is the same temperature as my skin. I think my organs are going to float out into space."

Finally, he leaned back over, "...Are you high?"

Tomorrow is a bright new day my friends.

woke when it was dark, wait for day to start

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:19:00 +0000

For as long as I can remember I've had moments in my dreams where part of my brain wakes up but my body stays asleep. In the midst of an unremarkable dream a switch flips and suddenly I'm awake inside my head in the darkness and I try to open my eyes, move my head, make a sound, but my limbs are dead weight and my tongue is an anchor.

I can feel the panic starting to crawl up my throat and I can feel Jon's skin, warm underneath my hand. If I could just squeeze his arm -- I try over and over and over and over to force my fingers to move, desperate to let him know I'm there. Nothing happens.

I'm screaming and screaming inside my head, straining against a body that might as well belong to somebody else, chewing on the effort of trying to force my jaw to spit out noise. The minutes feel like hours. Sometimes the minutes are hours. Nothing happens.

The past six months I've been walking through a waking dream. Things happen and I'm not really there. I look in the mirror and I don't recognize my face. I sit down to gather my thoughts and stare at an empty page.

I suspect I might be made of wires.

I've been waiting for the fog to lift and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting

Nothing happens.

morning light

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:15:00 +0000

you only live thrice

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:54:00 +0000

This week Jude told me his first real joke. I mean he says plenty of things that are jokes, but usually only to me because I'm insane and we're doubly insane when you put our insanebrains together. I would blame Adventure Time but trust me, we were like this before. However until now rarely have his jokes been things you could tell to say, a stranger in the grocery store and expect any kind of reasonable reaction.

I was standing at the sink in the kitchen, diligently rinsing something probably I don't really remember when suddenly Jude ran in from the living room and started poking me in the back of the knee.

"Hey mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Hey Mom! Mo-"

"YES, YES, YES. WHAT." I scrambled, as my left knee buckled and I pitched forward into the sink. "Hi, what can I help you with?"

He looked up at me, with maniacal glee shooting out into space from the whites of his eyes. ".......... Guess what?!"

"I don-"

"CHICKEN BUTT." And then he clutched his stomach and laughed and laughed and laughed and snorted and fell on the floor and laughed again. "CHICKEN BUTT. Mom! Chicken butt! That it! That's what I said. You laugh now."

This wild new fad as continued every hour on the hour three or four hundred times, now with random words inserted after 'chicken' like 'chicken... PEANUT!!!' and 'chicken TOOTHBRUSH!!' because he ascribes to the chapter guidelines of the Gertrude Stein Non Sequitur School of Joke-Telling, just like his mother.

And so it begins.

I was walking for miles before I fell in

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:43:00 +0000

sometimes you have to burn everything down so you can have nothing at all

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:26:00 +0000

I'm loathe to admit it but I finally understand why so many pesky people warn you about all the perils of age 3. Within the last few weeks Jude has reached a before unknown level of unmitigated jerkiness, and I'm not quite ready to say 3.5 is my least favorite age but let's just say if I get punched in the chest one more time I might turn into a 300-foot irradiated lizard and destroy a nearby village with no memory of how I got there. Just... the irrational rage, and the screaming, and the punching? Really just the punching. Can that stop now? Thanks in advance.

Here's an example of an everyday conversation in the grumbles household right now:

I walk into the living room, holding an empty cup. "Jude, Dad bought juice. Would you like some juice?"

Jude turns his head and starts staring me down, searing off my skin with the heat of one thousand suns. "I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!"

"Well that sucks, sad story man. But..." I point slowly and emphatically at the cup, "Do. You. Want. Some. Juice?" Point at cup. Point at cup.

My clothes are actually afire now from the power of his death stare and terrified mice are abandoning ship, pouring out of my orifices.

"-- YOU'RE NOT MY MOM ANYMORE." And he turns his head back towards his puzzle/alphabet game/episode of Phineas and Ferb and continues on his merry way.

"...So no juice then? Great." Shuffle back out of the room, /end scene.

He's the most adorable anarchist I know.

--Except, of course, when he isn't being a huge asshole/typical 3.5-year-old he's the smartest, funniest, most ridiculous person I know and I can't get enough of him I just want to eat him up gnahhhhhh. Ten minutes after the punching stops I'm ready to scoop him up and nom on his Jude-face while he screams in terror because his mother is a love-raptor with a hunger for moar love.

The good news for the safety of the public at large is that this very special behavior seems to be reserved for me and me alone. There's a little white-linen covered table in the corner of his heart with a placard that says I Heart Mom!! and then he runs over smashes the table to bits with a hammer and gets up in its face and tells it it sucks real bad. Is this the price one pays to raise a lovely, spicy young human? Because OUTSIDE the table in his heart which is reserved only for me he is funny and polite and quick to be helpful and kind. He seems to be getting along in life quite fine, great, even, except the part where he is mean. To me.

There seems to be a special developmental phase that only comes around right before he learns something big. Some awesome new skill is rolling around in there, sucking up all his brain bandwidth and holding it hostage with learning, meanwhile his skills of acting like a boy instead of a feral dog are rendered null and void. The week before he learned to walk he screamed like mad for hours on end; the week before he started talking in sentences he threw things at my head; the month before he started asking me existential questions about the purpose of space and stars he threw my heart in the trashcan and set it on fire.

By Monday he'll be ready to rebuild a motorcycle engine with his eyes closed. RIGHT? I mean, totally worth it.

does not compute (into awesomeness)

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:44:00 +0000

I can barely understand how this is a real thing I saw with my actual eyes.

IT'S JUST ME HERE AND ALL THESE GODDAMN DUCKS

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:13:00 +0000

Every February 28th at 11:34pm a man in a blue suit stands up from behind his desk, adjusts his tie, and turns off the switch at the end of the hall. It's his only job, his life's purpose, and he takes it quite seriously. He goes back to his desk, waits 26 days, and then turns it back on.

Every February 28th at 11:34pm I go crazy and stop talking to other humans and considering running off into the woods. Goodbye forever two-legged mammals I once knew, I will stay here and become one with the trees and maybe stop remembering you probably.

I'm in strict denial that I have seasonal affective whatever because hey! I like winter just fine. December? Fine! January? Delightful! The blustery grey dearth of early February? Okay! February 27th? Yo baby, what's up? March 1st -- BAM! WOE, WOE AND PAIN. SADNESS AND DEATHHHHHHH. LIE ON THE COUCH. EAT ALL THE CHIPS. I'VE LOST MY WILL TO LIVE REAL LIFE. IT'S ALL SO FUTILE. I CAN'T MOVE MY ARMS AND LEGGIES. WILL THE DARKNESS NEVERR END >.

...You know, that general sort of thing. It's super duper.

I haven't even been able to stir up the effort to write about how I don't have the effort to write about anything which, wow, that's a pretty low bar to not shuffle over on your way back to the couch. Weak effort, really. Go flog yourself. (I have been! I seem to have plenty of energy for self flagellation which seems appropriately angsty.) Meanwhile the best introspection I've come up with are four sentences about standing next to some ducks and an essay on walking to and from the bathroom a lot of times. It's a thriller, let me tell you.

The greatest part about this little seasonal phenomenon, besides shouting, "I CAN'T RELATE TO YOU, HU-MAN" at strangers in the grocery store checkout line, is that one day a month or a week or two days from now I'll wake up and look outside at the plants and stuff and snap back to normal like nothing ever happened.

Since I seem to disappear on mental spring break without fail at the exact same time every year, I've been trying to cut myself some slack about voting in absentia, which is a great idea but also not really happening. Even knowing that things will be back to normal soon I've given myself five or six black eyes and torn off my left arm which I only use to play video games anyway. I'm not sure if that means I should just duck and cover until it's over and power through it, but something will happen one way or the other or I'll fall asleep.

This morning while I was driving to work I saw the sun for 30 whole seconds, and even though it was blinding me and I was about to careen off the road and die in a fiery explosion I couldn't look away because SUN? IS THAT YOU? THIS MAY BE THE ONLY TIME I EVER SEE YOU AGAIN AND I MISS YOU SO MUCH PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME ARGGGHHHHH MY EYES ARE BURNING.

Writing about writing is the barfiest. My mouth feels hot and it won't stop snowing. GAH.

and here's where your mother sleeps, and here's the room where your brothers were born

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:33:00 +0000

I love most everything about our old, old house, even some of the little quirks most other people would find unlivable. The stereotypical drafts, the 100-year-old dust everywhere, that time we thought it was slowing giving us brain damage, when you randomly don't have electricity in your garage for three years – all delightful side effects of not living in a cookie-cutter tract home no one has ever died in! Look what you're missing out on, slackers!

(Pro tip: The murder remnants build valuable character, you see, it's the perfect environment for raising really crazy children and everyone knows those are the very best kind.)

When I was six months pregnant we renovated our kitchen, and by "renovated" I actually mean taped it off from the rest of the house, put on a respirator, and destroyed everything within reach with a goddamn sledgehammer. When we tore into the 11-foot wall in the center of the room we discovered the entire thing had been constructed with little scraps of plywood and stuffed full of old newspaper, also a figurine of a monkey holding a some bananas and a bunch of live wires that went noplace.

Is this normal? No! No it is not! Hey, welcome to old house life.

Important facts about living in an old house:
1. You can't fix anything without ten other things breaking
2. You'll never figure out why the people before you did any of these strange things
3. Yeah, maybe just tape over that giant hole in the bathroom wall with duct tape though, it'll be fine
4. Code? What is this "code" you speak of?
5. You're all going to die here
6. Mice!

Every time we go to replace something, no matter how minor, twenty other irreplaceable prehistoric things break along the way and absolutely nothing is ever "to code." Do you know what kind of building codes they had when our house was built? Ulysses S. Grant was President, I'm pretty sure most people still lived in tents made of animal hide.

Anyway, it's been standing strong for 138 years so somehow I think we'll all probably be okay and not dead. It's that kind of faith in the ability to endure the very depths of human madness that I find so endearing about all this old crap in the first place.

I've made peace with the the tradeoffs one must accept to live among awesome oldness, so when we discover our ceiling is held together with little strips of rotting muslin or that our water pipes are traveling in an infinite loop inside the walls I nod and smile and learn how to solder pipes and restructure wiring, but I think I've finally found the one thing that will make me draw a line in the sand and challenge my house to a fistfight.

Do you know what a sink that won't drain is? A GODDAMN BUCKET. Will I wash myself in a bucket? NO I WILL NOT. If I wanted to live in a field with Laura "Singalong" Wilder I WOULD GO TO THERE. Look here, house, my expectations are pretty low, in the grand scheme of things, but I'mma need all the sinks to drain in a timely fashion.

Our bathroom sinks have been plagued with slow drainage since sometime before the Carter administration, due to a combination of old-as-fuck and no-seriously-old-as-fuck pipes and until recently my go-to solution was a half-gallon of Draino and a good snaking, which is a terrible long term plan but it returned things to a temporary state of usability without having tear apart the entire wall so eh, you know, whatever.

Unfortunately, after New Years our downstairs bathroom sink finally kicked the middle finger into high gear and no amount of Draino was going to help, and I know that because the pipes started leaking underneath because holy crap, you can't just cure all your problems by pouring acid into them. WHO KNEW!

(...I knew.)

In a fit or rage we took the whole damn thing apart and threw it away. During the process of replacing it with an orgasmically adorable new sink (which I will now go rub my face on and make sex noises) and its adjacent plumbing, Jon discovered that the pipes inside the wall were full of bottle caps because HEY. OBVIOUSLY. OF COURSE THEY ARE.

Lesson learned.

update: still the most ridiculous person I know

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:23:00 +0000

...No, seriously.

roundup: where I've been when I'm not here

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 16:51:00 +0000

Victoria’s Secret Model Cameron Russell Condemns Modeling In TED Talk: ‘It’s Not A Career Path’
If you are ever wondering if I have thinner thighs and shinier hair will I be happier, you just need to meet a group of models, because they have the thinnest thighs, and the shiniest hair, and the coolest clothes – and they are the most insecure people on the planet.

Hack The Planet: Burger King, Guy Fieri, & Jeep Hacked By Internet Pranksters This Week
There’s nothing quite like watching a corporate meltdown happening right before our eyes, even if their jokes are terrible and we have no idea what they’re talking about.

Life Advice For Lark Voorhies From ‘Saved By The Bell’: Stop Giving Interviews About How Crazy You Aren’t
Unfortunately for the former Lisa Turtle, going on television to tell everyone how crazy you aren’t is typically not the best way to look sane. Also, don’t make… that face.

Ke$ha Drinks Her Own Pee In New Documentary, Smells Like “Shrimp On A Diaper”
Among the wide range of reasons we could choose to disapprove of Ke$ha, now she’s drinking her own urine because hey, otherwise you might try to steal it from her. Yeah. I know.

Justin Bieber And Rihanna Hooked Up – And Selena Gomez Is Not Happy About It
Unfortunately for poor, tiny-faced Selena Gomez, not only does she now have to reconcile the idea of boyfriend-boners past, but Justin and Rihanna may have been making magic sandwiches as recently as this past November when they were very, very alone, repeatedly, at length, deep inside the Hotel Giraffe. Oops?

five shot challenge : light

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:43:00 +0000

Shireen tagged me for a five shot challenge with the theme of light, and even though everyone was pissed that these weren't pictures of sunsets and trees I am digging on them and lighting candles and playing them Boys II Men in the evenings. The most interesting part, which I neglected to mention because I like to keep things mysterious, is that they are all miniature scale models. Now go back and look again. BOOM, brain 'sploded; life changed.

(I've taken pictures there before. That tiny shit, man. It gets me every time. I can't resist a good scale model.)