Stress and Stars

I Really Just Wanted an Excuse to Write Bafflingly

2013-06-13T09:02:00.001-04:00

I have to time leaving my job perfectly.

If I leave between 4:55 to 5:00 on the dot, I'm fine. No problems! Might get stuck behind vehicles driving more slowly than I would like, but not a big deal... I just have to pay attention.

If I leave any later, though, if we just don't make it out the door or I stop at the store to pick something up (last night, it was delicious turkey bacon), I find myself having to deal with a group of people who take their lives into their hands every time they get on the road.

Who are these people, you ask?

Moped drivers.

Mopeds are sort of bafflingly popular in the town I work in; I can count an average of ten to twelve I'll see in a day, sort of put-put-putting around town past my window. The people driving these mopeds are never wearing helmets, and there have been days where more than half of the ones I've seen haven't even been wearing shirts. Not that I honestly blame them, what with the blazing sun and 15,000% humidity that is a fact of life I haven't quite adjusted to yet.

No, the moped drivers in town don't bother me.

It's the ones chugging away on the extremely busy country highway during my commute home, on the only road I can take that will get me home in less than a hour, that are a problem.

I'm impressed at their serious chutzpah, though.

They can't really drive above 40 miles per hour, and that's at their fastest. The highway I drive to work on, however, is full of hills and curving bits, which translates to a Moped whose engine is screaming I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can at a dismal 20 miles per hour or less the whole way up every single hill, with a line of fifteen to twenty cars backing up behind them.

Cars going the opposite direction - people coming home from Greenville up to the town I work in - are zipping past us at a constant clip, making it so there is just no way to safely pass the Moped drivers.

People pass them anyway.

I have watched an angry trucker (I know he was angry because of the gesture I could see him sticking out his window) fly around the poor guy hugging his moped for dear life. I've watched them be passed by every single car and wondered what it must take to drive the hour from one town to the next (it takes me a little over 20 minutes, but with the speed these guys are driving I'm thinking it's closer to an hour for them) being passed so often and in such dangerous places by angry, impatient, end-of-their-long-workday people driving screaming metal deathtraps.

For me, mopeds are a thing of serious anxiety. For one, if I get stuck behind them I also have to navigate a less-than-safe passing situation, since there is basically only one place where you can easily and safely pass anyone on that road. And only about four spots where it's even legal.

For another, if I get stuck behind someone else who is stuck behind a Moped, I will watch them inch closer and closer to the poor guy sitting on his little scooter, almost touching the back of his vehicle with their bumper, shouting and waving their arms and generally being as much a road hazard as the guy on the Moped is.

I hate getting stuck behind them, because it feels like a holding pattern for an accident that is always just about to happen. It makes me miss tractors from back in Illinois; they may be slow-moving monsters, but they are big enough that you can see them from a mile back, so you have some warning. With Mopeds, the first car in the line is usually nearly on top of the guy before they even realize he's there.

The worst part, though, about Mopeds is that it means I will get home later. Because I will get stuck as one in a long line of backed-up drivers stuck behind a guy put-put-puttin' along the road like it ain't no thang.

Mopeds may not have been meant for highway driving, but some people spit in the face of safety and all reason and common sense.

I try as hard as I can to grab that extra two to three minutes on the road in the evening, because it makes all the difference. The Moped drivers leave their places of business - or residences, I don't know what they're doing honestly but I do assume it's work - at just after five o'clock. So if I can get past the second stoplight of my drive home before they do, I'm safe the whole way.

If I leave even a couple of minutes later than usual, say not getting out of the store until ten after 5 like I did last night, the first half of my drive becomes a monotonous slog of trying to interpret the obscene gestures of the people in front of me and feeling overwhelming pity for the guy on his Moped using a busy two-lane highway on a pseudo-vehicle that was never meant to be there.

I ended up in stand-still traffic last night anyway. There was some kind of accident outside a gas station right as I hit the final third of my drive home. It must have been something crazy, because I counted no fewer than seven emergency vehicles, and that's not counting the cop cars. That's just ambulances, fire trucks, and a couple of lit-up SUV-style things. I hope to God it wasn't someone on a Moped or a motorcycle.

I sat behind a truck... and sat... and sat... and sat. I had kind of had an intuition when I and the rest of the traffic on the road had to pull over for two ambulances and one of the emergency SUV's, sirens blazing, that went flying past us, but still.

I don't really have the self-preservation God gave a goat, so rather than turn off onto a side road when I saw that, I ended up in the line of traffic anyway.

Eventually a cop drove slowly past us to tell us how to take a certain road ("If you turn right and right and right, you'll be fine!") and get around the accident site, which led to the most pitiful line of people attempting terrible three-point-turnarounds you've ever seen in your life. On either side of the highway at that point there are fairly deep ditches and then an awful lot of trees, so it was not an easy turnaround situation... and for some reason nobody wanted to drive the four hundred feet up and turn around in the gas station parking lot.

Which is what I did, because I do not like ditches.

So my drive home, which should take about 25 minutes on any usual day, took around 45-50.

There is a special kind of empty place your brain gets to after your drive takes twice the time it should, where everything just shuts off and you find yourself not even hearing the voices on NPR so much as letting them wash over you. Your brain is nothing but vaguely furious buzzing.

Luckily, the answer to that problem is an easy one; spend about twenty minutes playing with your dog, who doesn't care that you're late because he has no sense of time and no matter how long you're gone, it's been SO MANY HOURS and he MISSED YOU SO MUCH.

The best part of having a dog is that it is hard to be mad that your day was slightly inconvenient when there is somebody who is so happy you are there to play with them that they fall over from sheer ecstasy.

5 Things Friday - All Links, All The Time

2013-06-07T17:53:00.000-04:00

Every time I think to myself, you know, I don't need any more coffee mugs (usually I have this thought while playing the Tetris game that is trying to fit all our mugs on the shelf they belong in), I see something like this, and I realize that there can never be enough.

Or then I see a shirt and I think, maybe enough mugs (as I force the cabinet door shut and it insistently cracks outward, just the slightest bit, pushed by a handle I just can't figure out)... maybe enough mugs...

but never enough shirts, right? I say this while steadfastly not looking at the jillion other shirts in my closet.

I really need to stop going to anthropologie's website. I feel like soon there's going to be some kind of serious talk about spending way too much time on websites for clothes I can't afford.

But my impending clothing and/or mug intervention is not really why I'm posting today.

I'm just going to leave a few links here, some interesting things I've been clicking around on this week.

1. Dressed Up Like a Lady is one of my absolute favorite of-all-time fashion blogs. Cammila wears the weirdest, coolest things and strangest, best outfits with grace and a serious rock-and-roll attitude. The post of hers I want to share, though, is her 'What I Eat' post, or at least the first one of what looks to be a series.

One of the things that I had to look at, when getting healthier, was how my exercise plan was and continues to be a big part of it (albeit one I am keeping to myself, for a couple of reasons), but what I was putting into myself was more important. The regional/local delivery service that we are currently getting vegetables and fruits from is fantastic, in no small part because it's thanks to them that I have been eating enough greens to choke a small donkey.

Now, I don't eat exactly like Cammila does (I am far too much a fan of meat, bread, and my demerara sugar), but the woman knows what she's talking about. Go read! Read! Read and leeeeeeeearn! And keep in mind that Cammila isn't telling you what to do, except when she totally and completely is. Because she is awesome.

2. The Navajo Nation has been working hard for years to preserve their language and make it more widely spoken and available to the population. One of their latest efforts is also one of the coolest; they're translating Star Wars, from start to finish.

The Navajo language is one of the most complex languages in the world. They touch on it in the NPR interview that this link is to, when he talks about the different types of objects. Well, that counts for nearly everything. The professor who taught my absolute favorite class in college (a Languages of Native North America class I took my senior year; I was one of only a few undergrads and definitely the only art major in the class, I'll tell you that) worked extensively with the Navajo and much of our classwork touched on their way of shaping thoughts into objects; round, small, soft, rigid, flat.

So... that's really cool.

3. This CNN piece of fluff on tomboy style.

'Tomboy' is an interesting term, since it is basically just used to denote any woman that dresses in a fashion that's been declared 'masculine', or at least less than 'feminine' by her particular culture. What means feminine and masculine, of course, changes rapidly with time; less than a hundred and fifty years ago, pink was considered the 'masculine' color (after all, it's a shade of red and what color is more dynamic and manly than red?) and blue the more wishy-washy 'feminine' one.

At some point, fairly recently insofar as history goes, we decided to switch those colors up.

Then, we pretend it's set in stone and I can't find a single baby girl dress for my friend's soon-to-be that isn't pink or so couched in ruffles I can't imagine how anyone's baby is supposed to play in it.

I really like the slideshow, personally, although I may disagree here and there with who CNN declares a 'tomboy', or what makes one. But it's always been nice to see other women in the world who never felt comfortable in the odd, uncomfortable little ruffles and floofy things girls are often informed they are supposed to wear.

This whole conversation makes everyone so glad for my mother that she had another daughter who did enjoy the occasional floofy thing, doesn't it?

4. Merrick's Art's DIY on making a version of the anthropologie patterned-back shirt I like so much. She always makes her DIY's look so great.

This is probably the answer to my "love all the things at anthro, maybe I can afford that single teacup" problem. You know, to just learn how to sew and make my own!

But I think we all know I'm too lazy to do that.

Instead I'm going to read the DIY and then go back to sighing wistfully over the pretty things. And sighing more heavily over their price tags.

Send help.

5. Here's something you haven't been hearing much about on the news; there's a tuberculosis outbreak in upstate South Carolina.

I'm not joking.

An employee at a local elementary school was put on home quarantine after they tested positive. More than 400 people in the school system have been tested now, and more than 50 people have had preliminary positive test (those people are not necessarily contagious; mostly, children aren't. That's something new I learned today.)

The employee I am calling Patient Zero, because I have read too many zombie books. They are likely the first to have the disease of this particular outbreak... and they ignored DHEC's instructions to stay home, lied to DHEC about where they were going or who they had spoken to (and who therefore might be at risk), and changed their story more than once.

So DHEC sent them to "a medical facility", to be "contained". So that they wouldn't continue going places where more people would be exposed to the pathogen. Because apparently when DHEC told this person they had TB, a hugely contagious disease that has been one of the top killers of mankind since the dawn of our species, their response was to go cough on people.

Good job, buddy.

What's even more interesting than that?

DHEC has known about this since March, and the news reports are just coming out now. The superintendent of the school apparently wasn't informed about why DHEC had swarmed all over the school until late May, at which point he sent out notes to parents as fast as he could.

So... would you like to have a conversation about how angry and scared all those kids' parents must be, finding out that their children were at risk and DHEC's response was, 'meh, we'll tell 'em later'?

Well, now it's actually out that DHEC screwed up and, in response, they apparently fired several people.

It's all very exciting.

I have been staring at everyone who coughs without covering their mouth with growing, obvious horror as the days go on, as the school in question isn't actually all that far from where I work or where I live. I am bathing in hand sanitizer at work all day.

I kind of feel like there's going to be a movie about this in six years and Morgan Freeman will play someone wise who nobody listens to until it's too late, and they'll only just barely contain it, and maybe monkeys will be involved somehow.

Wait, I think they already made that movie.

The Mad Tagger of Travelers Rest

2013-06-03T14:55:00.000-04:00

There is someone who keeps tagging things on the Swamp Rabbit Trail, up near Travelers Rest, with this.

For the longest time, I thought it was the word 'Argyle'... as in argyle shirt patterns, vests, stuff like that. And I kept trying to imagine what kind of person would pick 'argyle' as their Hardcore Graffiti Artist Name. Maybe he just really likes vests, I thought, or maybe he doesn't even know what argyle is and thinks it's some kind of venomous snake in Australia.

I have this mental image of Argyle, the Mad Tagger of Travelers Rest, spray-painting his name on every conceivable flat surface while pushing his taped-together glasses back up and making sure his suspenders are tight enough. After he's done being super hardcore, Argyle goes home to play video games and tell people on the internet what a super-cool graffiti artist he is.

Then I realized...

Argue.

Argue is the word spray-painted there, not Argyle.

This isn't in any way the name of Argyle the Mad Tagger of Travelers Rest.

This is some kid with a can of spray paint out there thinking that spraying a word like 'argue' on the side of a clock off the Swamp Rabbit Trail will somehow cause the runners, walkers, cyclists, and various and sundry assorted animals they bring with them to really, y'know, think, man. About, like, the world.

And you know, good for you, kiddo. Although I mostly want to argue with you about why you'd spray paint your super-helpful suggestion on something put up by the city for the public good and not on, like, an empty brick wall or something. Ooooh, or a tree. Wouldn't that be super-political and whatnot.

Honestly, though, whoever you are, I'm not annoyed at you. Not really.

What I'm really annoyed about is that it wasn't Argyle, after all. You don't even understand how happy the idea of Argyle made me.

There's no bespectacled graffiti artist sneaking out in the middle of the night between Bioshock Infinite levels or quantum physics discussions, sweater-vest always on, trying to make his mark on the world. There's no 15-year-old Mathlete just hoping to overhear someone asking, Who is Argyle, anyway? No taped-together glasses, no suspenders, no nerd-graffiti-subculture in Upstate South Carolina headed up by the shadowy figure of Argyle.

This makes me sadder than you can ever know.

Things From My Phone

2013-06-01T17:30:00.001-04:00

I cannot tell you how much I love having short hair. I end up growing it out over the course of a year or so, because I am terrible at doing more than the occasional trim, and then we cycle back around to South Carolina's incredibly humid spring and summer and I can't take it anymore. Usually around the time I realize I have done nothing but wash my hair and pull it back in a ponytail for a week straight, I decide it's time to visit the nice people at Great Clips and listen to them tell me you have so much hair fifteen thousand times while most of it finds its way to the floor.

On the other hand, the humidity is still nothing to sneeze at (or rather, the air is the thing that is making me sneeze forever and always), so headbands and I? We become very, very good friends. And we are going to stay friends until the temperature gets back into something I consider manageable.

Which... will probably be late October.

In any case, I have barely taken any real photos at all with my regular camera this week, so I don't have any good stuff to show. Also I received some less-than-stellar news yesterday, so I'm not exactly feeling overly effusive.

Here's a few things from the last several days that are helping brighten my mood:

The bracelet I bought at Artisphere and my two new bracelets from Liz Daly Designs in downtown Greenville. Between those three, they will go with essentially 80% of my summer wardrobe. I'm still eyeing the turquoise and orange from Nicole Wayne, though.

I've got a wedding anniversary coming up, right? That's a reason for presents, isn't it? I don't even know. Do you even get presents at five years? Is there some kind of etiquette for this?

I don't know why I'm even asking; I am terrible at etiquette. I still have to remind myself not to stick my elbows on the table when I'm eating.

(Also I know I took that photo in my car, but I swear upon all that is holy that I wasn't driving at the time.)

Puppy playdates!

Jason had some friends over last night, and a couple I had previously not met came by, Hester and... I do not remember her SO's name, which makes me a terrible hostess, but in my defense I wasn't actually there most of the night. In any case, they brought their little four-month-old pile of extra skin and cute over and he and Indy got on like gangbusters.

It was actually really difficult to get them to hold still long enough to even get a photo this good.

I'm debating blowing it up poster-size and tacking it up over the bed with white text over it that reads "THIS IS WHY WE NEED ANOTHER DOG. LOOK AT HIS LITTLE FACE."

Because why have one dog when you can have two dogs, right?

Beer.

There's a great scene in an earlier season of the Simpsons when they visit Australia, and Marge tries to order a cup of coffee and it turns out they don't know what that is, they only serve beer. That scene runs through my head literally every single time I am buying beer.

Last night before meeting my friends for dinner, I stopped over at Community Tap, a locally owned beer, wine, and growler store. My original plan was just to pick up that four-pack of local Greenville brewery Thomas Creek's new Chocolate Orange IPA, but I ended up walking away with Vanilla Cream Ale, too, which we had before and really liked. I'm not usually an IPA person, but Jason and I tried the Chocolate Orange last night and agreed it's probably the strongest IPA we've ever tasted. Nice and super-hoppy, a really strong flavor, bright citrus notes. I really enjoyed it! If you like a really mild IPA, though, you may not like it.

I picked up Edible Upcountry while I was there, too, a local foodie magazine that has expanded more and more in the couple of years we've been living here. I know at first I could only find it in a couple of places, but it's kind of exploded now! My favorite natural foods store (and coffee bar, not coincidentally) in Pickens carries the magazine now.

Our first tomatoes! They hardly count right now because they are the size of my thumb, but I noticed while looking them over today before I left for work that we have at least eight of those little things starting to pop up! I am so excited for fried green tomatoes and then ripe ones later on!

Jason and I planted an herb garden out front this year, as well as keeping a hanging basket strawberry bush (that is producing exactly two strawberries at a time, which is... kind of problematic if we want to do more than eat them in two bites), and then we have this tomato plant and a hot pepper plant, too.

Seriously.

Fried green tomatoes.

Cannot wait.

I force Jason to make most fried things. Something in his southern blood means he is better at frying stuff. Don't argue with me; we've proven this through many, many attempts and pseudo-failures on my part and the seemingly effortless perfectly crispy frying on his. In my expert scientific opinion, southern people are just better at frying stuff.

Except pumpkin blossoms.

I am a boss at pumpkin blossoms.

These Old Navy shoes.

I am living in these shoes right now.

They're cute enough to wear nicer places, but casual enough to just wear with jeans and a T-shirt wherever I go on my day off, too. I have them in which off-white color and in black, but it's really the off-white that I find myself pulling on every other day or so.

Being as they cost me something like 15 dollars, I don't actually expect them to last much longer than this summer (I have a somewhat similar pair of orange shoes I bought last year that have basically no rope braid left on the back already), but I think I've already gotten my money's worth.

So, yeah.

Those are some things making me smile right now.

I hope at least one of them made you smile, too.

Peachy Pancakes For Two

2013-05-31T07:40:00.000-04:00

Man, it's been a while since I've done a recipe. Not for any particular reason; I've been cooking up delicious foods (especially since Jason and I started getting a localized veggie/fruit delivery every week), but I keep eating them so fast I forget to take pictures. And what's a recipe without photos? Well... it's still a recipe. But much less fun to read.

Anyway, yesterday I had a little extra time in the morning and made myself an adaptation of a pancake recipe I found while trying to search for 'healthy pancakes'. I'm going to tell you right here and now? No such thing.

What I did manage to do was take a distinctly unhealthy recipe and make it very slightly less unhealthy.

So, easiest awesome Sunday (or... Thursday) morning breakfast in the world... Peachy Pancakes!

Ingredients

3/4 cup whole wheat all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

3/4 tsp baking powder

Pinch salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup milk

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

1 egg, beaten

1 ripe peach, diced as finely as possible

Canola or vegetable oil, for the pan

Onto the Creation!

This is the easiest thing ever. Mix all your wet ingredients (minus the peaches) together in one bowl and all your dry ingredients in another. Add the dry to the wet and mix thoroughly, then fold in your diced peaches.

Heat up a tablespoon or two of the oil in a skillet. Drop in the pancake mix with about two tablespoons for each pancake. When you start seeing bubbles in your pancake (like little holes in the surface), flip to the other side. You should need only a minute or two for each side.

Your mix should make about six pancakes, which is perfect for two people.

You can top it with syrup, whipped cream, or whatever. In the photos I topped it with a couple of tablespoons of nonfat Greek yogurt, which I really like the taste of, and some blueberries and honey. Looking at the photos makes me wish I'd had whipped cream, though.

I'll Have You Itching by the End of This Post

2013-05-30T08:42:00.000-04:00

So right, my story.

If you can't handle bugs, now would be the time to click away and go somewhere else and look at pictures of fluffy puppies or something.

Here, here's a fluffy puppy:

Click 'Read More' to read the story, if you think you can do it. Everyone else just spend about three minutes staring at the fluffy puppy.

So anyway, Tuesday I took the dog for a walk. We wandered around the lake over at Furman University, but after a couple of miles I just wasn't really feeling it, so I gave up and we came back. I showered, changed clothes, all the fun stuff.

A couple of hours later, I am sitting at the computer. I have a nervous habit of scratching at my scalp occasionally. I think we've discussed my many and varied nervous habits before. So I go to scratch at my scalp, and there's... something on my head. Weird.

I managed to pull off whatever it is, and then I realize -

those are tiny legs moving.

The thing I just pulled off my head has legs.

Legs that are moving.

I shrieked and flung the tiny thing into a glass of water, because it made sense at the time. Then I shrieked again.

It was a tick.

There was a tick on my head.

I shrieked for several more minutes (which causes absolutely nothing to change, but it sure felt good), while both animals stared at me in affectionate bafflement, while trying to decide what to do with the tick. As far as I can tell, the tick itself was mostly just enjoying its unexpected dip in the pool.

To be honest, the noises I made have me wondering why the neighbors didn't call the cops, because I'm fairly sure it sounded like a really prolonged murder going on in my house. Maybe they think I took up Alaskan throat-singing or something.

You know what, that's not fair. Go here and see some serious throat-singing, because it is actually really freaking cool.

I panicked. I managed to light our candle-lighter-thing, but I couldn't convince myself to actually approach him enough to dump him out of the water glass. I think I barely touched him with the flame and gave him a quick dunk in my nail-polish remover before flushing him straight to Toilet Hell.

He probably wasn't dead. I probably just gave my injured little bug buddy a slightly toasty roller-coaster ride to wherever our sewage comes out. And removed his totally-last-season manicure. I hope he enjoyed it.

I checked the dog and cat over pretty thoroughly and saw no sign of any more on either of them. This was only vaguely reassuring, because I made the mistake of asking Professor Google about ticks and I discovered there is a species of tick that infests houses. The dog might have brought one of them into the house. It might have jumped off fo him to go build a happy little cabin in our floor boards and then we'd end up having to move out like at the end of Poltergeist, only instead of ghosts it was just be a crowd of little waving legs trying to pull our imaginary children into the closet.

I don't even know any psychic mediums who can talk to ticks! We'd be doomed!

I spent the rest of the day staring at the dog like he was poisonous. Dogs find this method of dealing with problems very confusing.

The cat gives the dog that look all day anyway, so I think she was mostly confident that I had finally joined Team Hate the Dog. She seems to think that we didn't actually bring the dog home, he just appeared as if by some malevolent magic and the three of us are sort of stuck with him.

The only good thing Professor Google told me about the tick was that he most likely hadn't bitten me yet, since he was flat and all of him came away easily. So there's that.

Then again, Professor Google also told me what had most likely happened is that the tick had brushed off the dog onto my lower body - my legs or something - and then crawled up my shirt until he found my head and I'm going to scream again if I keep typing.

The moral of the story is that Professor Google is my worst enemy and my best friend, all at once. And also that writing about bugs is the quickest way to make your entire body start itching all at once.

I think I need a shower now.

Don't you kind of feel like you need one, too?

Haircuts, Fuzzy Demon-Things, and Other Such Nonsense

2013-05-29T17:41:00.001-04:00

Most of the time when I disappear for a few days with no advance warning, it's a good sign.

This last weekend is no exception.

I really did mean to write something, but I got a bit swept up in my weekend! I may have over scheduled myself between Sunday and Monday, but I regret nothing.

Sunday was kind of a whirlwind from morning through night; I had plans starting from 11 AM and didn't even get back to my house until sometime around... seven? Maybe? I honestly don't even know anymore.

I remember getting a haircut, though, and then having lunch with a friend at Coffee Underground (because seriously, not having caffeine until nearly 1:30 in the afternoon is simply unacceptable). That's got to count for something. We wandered the shops downtown until I couldn't help myself and picked up a couple of neat leather bracelets at Liz Daly that go with basically everything I wear all summer long.

The worst part was wandering around the new anthropologie in downtown Greenville, because this season's clothing may as well be a letter addressed to me that I cannot afford the postage for. Except that that metaphor doesn't make any sense, but we're going to ignore that.

When we landed back at my house, my friend had asked about some books on history and I think I ended up pulling something like fourteen off my shelves, stuffing them in a bag, and giving them to her to borrow. She may regret having asked to borrow "a few" and letting me choose what counts as "few".

Monday, I had lunch with two friends and their respective children, a toddler boy and a spankin' new infant girl. We ate at Tealoha, which is about as new as Sarah's baby.

I am planning a return visit with Jason and to try and remember to take photos then. Tealoha has much the same concept as a coffeeshop, but with variations of tea taking the place of espresso or coffee in the drinks. It was incredibly light and airy in there, thanks to a nice forest-green and light brown color scheme. Every single worker we dealt with was friendly, and actually I'm fairly sure I met the owner and she was lovely and friendly, too. So all-around a great atmosphere.

I had a Masala Chai Latte which was blissful heaven. Sarah had the same, but iced and blended, and that was like delicious spiced ice cream. Jo had the blended Jasmine green and strawberry. We all had a sandwich and Sarah and I ended up splitting a chocolate marble loaf because who can resist dessert? Everyone knows if you split it, it doesn't count.

I had a turkey and bacon sandwich. It came on super crunchy ciabatta bread and was divine. There was pesto, and some greens I could put on it so I could pretend it was healthy... delightful.

The only negative thing I can even come up with is that the sandwiches were a little higher-priced than I'd like, as they didn't really come with any side dish of any sort. I think that will probably be rectified later, though, and has more to do with the place having literally just opened and still getting its sea legs, so to speak. I would have appreciated some fresh veggies, chips, or the option of a cup of soup or little garden salad or something like that for what I paid.

The drinks, though. I ended up buying a few ounces of looseleaf tea to take home, and I've already gone through half of it. Whoops. Oh no. I'll have to buy more. However shall I cope.

This has nothing to do with anything, it's just a picture of a weird animal Jason and I saw a couple of weeks ago and I just realized I never showed anyone.

What is this? Is it a groundhog? A mole? Some kind of fuzzy demon? I demand an answer to this mystery that doesn't involve me having to put any effort into finding out!

Anyway, right. I was trying to explain my weekend.

I ran through the grocery store, came home, and had enough time to throw together some Irish Soda Bread (this is not quite the recipe I use; I got mine out of a 3- and 4-ingredient cookbook I bought back when I had my very first apartment in college) before we ran over to my in-laws' to have dinner. My sister-in-law is about to head to Italy for a few weeks for a study-abroad program and we wanted to make sure we saw her off right! Which, on my end, apparently just involves being paranoid about all the bad things that could happen.

Which is basically what I do.

Obviously I could have thrown something together yesterday, but while I had Tuesday off (since I work Saturdays, my long holiday weekends are Sunday-Tuesday) I did... surprisingly little. Other than a story I'm going to tell you for tomorrow's blog post, because I think it's funny enough to deserve its own post.

Today I was back at work, and I'm home to heat up leftover lentil and rainbow chard soup I found while googling what to do with rainbow chard and made for dinner last night. I threw in a couple of cut-up zucchini since I had no celery or carrots and one of my favorite tricks, a chipotle boullion cube from a box my friend Shelly gave us forever ago. I'm still working through it, but it's my favorite trick to add extra spicy flavor. Also I sure did not use a gallon of chicken broth. Because that is a lot of broth.

So, in short... whew.

This doesn't have to do with anything either, except that this shows you what happens when I try to take a nice haircut photo.

We are a photogenic people.

Or not.

This is What I Do With My Art Degree

2013-05-23T07:51:00.000-04:00

Mary Hogue

Every once in a while, I wade on in here and start talking about art. Today is one of those days. Those of you completely uninterested should probably go watch videos on youtube until you forget that I am a giant art nerd. To save your internet connections, I'll stick a jump-cut here. Click 'Read More' to read the rest of the post.

I thought we'd talk about gourd art; it's far less appreciated than it should be, and one of my favorite forms. Personally, I have a tough time relating to 3D work, but gourd art always gets me when well-done and either vibrantly colorful or really leaning on the natural colors that the original gourd came in.

It's a pretty ancient form of artwork, when you get down to it; the history goes back incredibly far in Africa, Asia, and Indigenous America. Maybe that's why I like it so much; my interests always tend to skew towards prehistoric, non-traditionally-European forms of artwork. If you ask about my absolute bare-bones favorite art in the entire world, I'll start showing you cave paintings.

Source

But that's not what we're talking about today.

We're talkin' 'bout gourds.

another piece from Mary Hogue

The American Gourd Society is sort of the official national group for the U.S., with little splinter groups for nearly every state. I'm going to start by showing off a couple of artists local to the Upstate and Blue Ridge regions, and kind of branch out from there.

This is my favorite piece from the website of Country Craft Gourds, based in Greenville and is usually at the Farmer's Market on Saturdays. In fact, one of the reasons I most regret having to work Saturdays is not getting to wander past and look at these beautiful pieces of work all summer long!

Angie is really open to custom orders, which I always like to see. Plus she seems to give private lessons, which is making me very interested indeed.

When Jason and I went up to Bryson City last fall, I was planning a return visit before we were even all the way back in town. One big reason for that was a little art gallery and store right off their main street that held Sleepy Hollow Gourds.

The gourdwork here is just absolutely gorgeous.

I'm really drawn more to a little color but otherwise letting the gourd be itself and less the intricate and elaborate carving that you often see.

I'm having trouble tracking down the little gallery and I think it may have been closed since, which makes me very sad... but maybe there'll be somewhere else in Bryson City we'll be able to see Sleepy Hollow work and see what's changed.

Here's another regional artist; Debbie Skelly, and her site Gourdgeous Decor.

She's got quite a few pieces on her site that are colorful, but this matte black one actually stood out to me a little bit more. I like the feather detailing quite a bit.

Vincent Van Gourd doesn't really have any really good, large-size photos of their work online, but here's a smaller sample. They were one of my favorite parts of Artisphere this year. Their gourds were intensely colorful, in many of my favorite fall colors; burnt orange, deep purple, a dark almost hunter green.

I wish now that I had thought to take some photos so I'd have some to show you of the design work; incredibly intricate, intense colors, just really good stuff. Some of the best I've seen.

They travel from show to show, so you might check the website to see if they'll be anywhere near you anytime soon!

And, to finish up, a few examples off of etsy:

Virginia Vivier at EspritMystique

Easy black-and-tan, natural gourd color, twist on traditional step-pattern designs.

Sam Willoughby at The Willies

Obviously, I'm a fan of horses. I just like this unusual version in which he carved gourd like wood to make this neat equine idea.

Connie Vest at Vested Interest

The really intricate designs, like this leaf-and-stipple pattern, are usually managed with wood-burning techniques.

Dani Montoya at Natural Art by Dani

I really like the way she did the waxed linen thread around the top here, and the design is really nice. I like the shading techniques used quite a bit.

I'd like to end, if you don't mind, with something a little bit silly.

Because silly art is art, too.

Sombrilla Verde, shop by same name.

I see this as absolutely perfect for sitting on a high shelf or dresser in a nursery or little kids' room. The top actually comes off, so you can keep things inside. Once the kiddo is older, if they're anything like me they'd love having a pseudo-secret place to stick all those interestingly-shaped rocks they're bringing home to wash in the kitchen sink.

Oh wait.

Was I the only one that did that?

In any case, there you go; a few examples of what I feel is an under appreciated art form. Either you made it all the way to the last sentence, in which case you deserve a cookie, or you didn't... in which case you probably still deserve a cookie.

Because cookies don't judge.

Wordless Wednesday: Afternoon Sky

2013-05-22T06:00:00.000-04:00

Be OK

2013-05-21T17:58:00.001-04:00

Photo from Time Magazine

There's a joke, that people who survive a tornado always come out saying, "It sounded like a freight train" when a reporter sticks a microphone in their face.

The reason they say that is because that is exactly what they sound like, or as near as to make no difference. The roar even almost sounds like train cars rattling across tracks.

Almost always, the tornado siren at the local fire station is blaring alongside it, adding a discordant, horrible up-and-down-and-up wail on top of the wind trying to flatten the world. If you're in it, you are deaf to each other until the noise dies down.

The mercy of tornadoes, what little mercy there is, is that they don't last very long.

Except that sometimes, they do.

We get flippant about tornadoes in the Midwest. They occur so often that they become something we are mostly cautious about, but discount their destructive potential. People stand outside with cameras and cell phones while a funnel cloud bears down on them, or drive out on country roads to get just the right shot. There's a video circulating on youtube right now that a man took while driving his SUV around a parking lot, with the massive Oklahoma tornado heading right at him before it changes direction. That he walked out of it uninjured was nothing short of sheer dumb luck.

It's a risk we take because fatality counts from tornadoes tend to be so low that we forget what a tornado can do when given flat land and plenty of time.

My thoughts are with people in the Midwest today, but most especially with those affected by the huge EF4 (news has just reported that they are officially declaring it was an EF5) just outside Oklahoma City, in the little town of Moore, a town most assuredly devoid of fortune; they were decimated in 1999 by a tornado with the highest wind speeds ever recorded.

As always, the stories that come out of storms like these are stories about the best that people have in them; neighbors helping dig out a man's canine best friend, teachers throwing themselves on top of as many students as possible to shield them from debris, people showing up to help rescuers dig to find those trapped in their own storm cellars, men and women carrying injured children out of a ruined school, citizens declaring over and over again, "We will rebuild."

Because that's what people do. It's what we're best at; adapting to each disaster in order to make ourselves less likely to be as badly affected by the next one.

Living where I do now, in Upstate South Carolina, I don't have to think about tornadoes in the same way I did back in Illinois. I no longer listen for the telltale siren every time there's a thunderstorm that fits the pattern, and I don't check for watches and warnings on the news the way I used to.

We discount the danger of tornadoes in the Midwest because we see them so often, the warnings and watches are very nearly part of the routine of spring and early summer. Maybe an occasional few houses get flattened, but it doesn't seem that bad from the outside. We drive under green skies now and then or find our cars dented from hail, but for the most part, we don't see much more than an EF1.

It's the risk Midwesterners take to live in what I personally think is one of the most beautiful places in the country.

But oh, what a risk it seems, when we see something like this.

My thoughts are with Moore and with those who lost family members and friends. My heart is with the mayor declaring they will rebuild.

Of course they will.

It's what people do.

We take the blow and stagger, then get back up and rebuild.

here's a link to a small USA Today article on how to help

Not Quite Zen

2013-05-18T19:54:00.000-04:00

I went and sat on our back porch and everything smelled like honeysuckle.

The sounds were all calling frogs and birds and the dog rolling around in the grass. The sky is a little gray with clouds and it's humid, but it just seems to make the noise seem even closer and clearer.

For a moment, I was content with the sheer perfect serenity of the moment.

I was one with the universe, et cetera and so forth.

Then I sneezed six times in a row, suddenly couldn't breathe, and had to come inside.

Stupid nature.

Berries & Grins

2013-05-17T18:30:00.003-04:00

Our first strawberries, fresh and warm from the sun, ready to pick.

A happy dog, just finished rolling until he coats himself entirely in clover.

Two ways to make your May evening just that much brighter.

Even if just going outside to take the photos made me sweaty. Stupid humidity.

Every spring since we moved here I consider moving to Canada. Every winter I remember why I don't.

Like Sunday Morning

2013-05-13T12:03:00.001-04:00

It was a good weekend.

Saturday we hit up a friend's birthday party, where I ate entirely too much spicy guacamole and regret nothing. Also we watched a six-year-old run around wearing the remains of the Snow White pinata as a hat, which is its own kind of joy.

Artisphere happened this last weekend, and while that whole adult-with-a-job-every-Saturday thing meant I had to miss Friday and Saturday's festivities, we were still able to make it up there Sunday morning. The events downtown are one of the reasons we love Greenville so much, and Artisphere is one of the best. Artists apply for booths to run up and down Main Street, which is shut down for the most part to handle the pedestrian traffic.

There's a lot of pedestrian traffic, you see.

The booths are great; there's a really good mix of photography, painting, other 2D options as well as jewelry, metalworking, woodworking, ceramics and tons of 3D work as well. Jason and I hit up nearly every booth for a while, really taking a good look.

Then we realized we had begun to skip booths simply because we were hungry, and wandered back up Main Street to try a new place I'd seen in the news; Sully's Steamers.

Sully's is a steamed-bagel-sandwiches kind of place. I had an idea of what I was in for the minute I realized how large the menu was. We were greeted almost immediately by the friendly people working there and decided to eat our sandwiches outside since it was so nice and there is some seating out there in the sunshine.

I couldn't decide what I even wanted (there were simply too many delicious-sounding things), so I ordered a "wild card", which is basically telling a bunch of strangers behind a counter "I trust you with my taste buds; do whatever." I told them I have no allergies and I like everything, so make me something cool.

I got a Sinful Steamer on a jalapeno bagel.

To say it was good is... somewhat of an understatement.

It was awesome. Cheese, barbecue sauce, meatballs, bacon... it was all there on a slightly-spicy, chewing, crispy-outside bagel sandwich. Jason got something called "Ted Wins", but I honestly have no idea what that was because I hardly looked at his sandwich; I was way too focused on my own.

Definitely a place we're going back to, especially on days when we head downtown and really walk all over the place and work up an appetite.

After lunch, we were right back into the crowd so we could check out the booths we had been missing. I ended up picking up a bracelet from Nicole Wayne, this awesome very simple bright summer green;

I am currently making eyes at the turquoise and burnt orange iterations as well. Longing, hopeful eyes.

We had to head back so we could get ready for Mother's Day dinner over at my in-laws' house, which was a great time... except for the part where our dog chased their cat up a tree because he wants to be friends so badly and cats tend to mistake that eager speed for hunting. That was sort of mortifying.

He did love all the open space in their yard to run in and all the new people to slobber all over. He's actually pretty chill today; I guess his weekend wore him out as much as it did us.

Today is less fun; errands, mostly, and a long-overdue dental appointment that I can't say I'm particularly excited about. It was interesting to talk to the receptionist who answered the phone and hear her sort of amused resignation when I told her how long it had been since I'd gone to a dentist, though. I'm guessing she gets that a lot, especially since so many people lost insurance during the recession and so many people my age never really could afford it in the first place.

So, basically, today is brought to you by the magic of benefits.

Favorite booths at Artisphere; obviously Nicole Wayne, Sandi Garris, Marie-Helene Grabman, William Baker, Donald Boudreau, Amy and Jeff Dallas, and Vincent van Gourd.

Stay Out

2013-05-08T13:26:00.000-04:00

So yesterday, I received a packet from Montana in the mail.

Yes, the state.

No, I have no idea why Montana is sending me packets. It was sent to my name and address, though, so clearly Montana is interested in knowing things about me.

Anyway, I look at the plastic bag it came in, and this is the first thing I see:

Stay out of Montana...?

That's kind of rude. How could they know to ban me from the state yet, I've never even been there!

I mean, at least give me a chance to prove I'm only going to make a spectacle of myself first!

... and why would you send a highway map along with your "KEEP OUT" packet? What kind of people are running their visitors' bureau exactly? "Here is all our natural beauty that you will never experience, bwa hahahahahaha!"

Rude, right?

Then I opened said packet, and this is what it actually says:

Step out of bounds.

Oh.

Well, that's much nicer.

That explains everything, right?

Except for how exactly they got my name and address and why they want me to come and visit when I'll only give them cause to regret it.

Although I guess they don't know that yet.

Ssshhh.

Don't tell Montana about me, okay?

I want them to be surprised.

Is... Is That Blue Sky?

2013-05-06T15:57:00.001-04:00

YES.

YES IT IS BLUE SKY.

Divine, amazing, sacred sunshine-y awesome not-raining blue sky!

So of course I dragged the dog out for a freakishly long walk to enjoy it.

The trail was a little worse for wear after three straight days of downpour with occasional wind-gusts (we met the clean-up crew on our way back, clearing away the debris), but that didn't stop me and my intrepid canine companion. We laugh in the face of damp!

6 and a quarter miles later, we finally decided to be tired and crawled back in the car to come home. He started running circles in the yard an hour later. It's taking me... somewhat longer to get my energy back.

Today I've managed to make a cajun chicken salad for Jason and I to eat for lunch at work, started on tonight's dinner (sort of; I washed some of the greens that will make up the salad because why not?), have had about enough coffee, working on the second load of laundry, and I'm cleaning the bedroom. One could almost feel accomplished if one could not turn around and see what a mess the living room is.

That's why I just don't turn around.

5 Things: Upon a Rainy Day

2013-05-04T17:03:00.000-04:00

The Upstate's in a cold, wet place right now. It's been rainy off and on, and never really sunny enough to dry things up. Tonight we're supposed to receive a few inches of rain, which means there are flash flood warnings all over the Upstate, North Carolina, and even northern Georgia right now. (Obviously, people in Illinois and the Midwest in general are rolling their eyes at this already; they've been dealing with floods for what feels like a couple of weeks now).

I worked today, but I think everyone's ideal cold rainy day is a day at home staying warm and dry, right?

I let myself day-dream last night and kind of put together a wishlist of rainy day things; what I'd like to be wearing, what I'd like to be drinking, reading, the blanket I want to snuggle under... anything I could think of. Just dreaming about taking the chill off.

Also, to be writing the word 'chill' in May in Upstate South Carolina is deeply amusing to me.

1. The Book I'd Be Reading

Superman: The Unauthorized Biography by Glen Weldon

Most of the people in my life know that I've got a soft spot for the Man of Steel. People think he's boring, and it's a point to them that he really is often written in a way that is deeply boring. He's just... Superman. He wears a suit, he saves the day. Recent versions have turned him into an even more obvious allegory for Jesus Christ; a Savior who comes to Earth to save us from ourselves and even dies and then returns later.

Superman, though, can be an intriguingly complex character.

We're talking about a man whose entire sense of identity is built around a kind of abandonment complex. The core of him is that he deeply wants to be human; he looks like us when he wants to, he talks and acts and thinks like a human being in many ways. In the end though, he's not human. He's Kryptonian, the last son of a dead society (until, of course, comic writers wanted badly to introduce more superheroes like him... then we get SuperGirl and all sorts of chaos in the mythology). He wants to be one of us, but inevitably he is constantly reminded that he is not.

What does that do to a person? There aren't a ton of Superman comics that really get into that in a way that feels serious. Kingdom Come is one of my favorite books of all time; it's a generation-gap story at its essence, about old-school Superman and the way the world essentially disowned him by moving on. Superman is hiding out in Kansas, back to living the simple farm life he grew up with, after becoming increasingly disaffected by the growing violence of a new generation of superheroes who apply power without a sense of responsibility. It's a love letter to the old-school DC heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman, and a kind of cautionary story about the true result of the newer generation of superheroes, who are more about what their powers get them and what they can do as opposed to who they could do it for.

He's graying around the temples but still a huge and powerful man, angry and righteous while still, in the end, good. The effect of who he is trying to live in the world and the toll it takes on him is made clear. He's not exactly a nice person; how could he be, when he has spent his life being underestimated, overestimated, and forced to walk among people inherently inferior to him?

Weldon's book starts at the beginning and traces Superman's life, who he has been and how he's been used as generations change and the beliefs and values and things of importance change with us. I deeply want to curl up with this book on a cold afternoon, just me and a blanket and maybe a snuggly dog, and dive in. Weldon is a certified Superman Fan, which bodes well, and I've read some good reviews from other critics who like Superman.

Maybe it says something about me that my two favorite superheroes are the two most often consigned to the one-dimensional claptrap bin; Superman and Captain America. I like these genuine good guys, trying as hard as they can to work in a world that isn't quite the one they thought they knew or the one they really belong in. They can be complex, but are often underwritten and painted in broad strokes, used poor or not used at all in favor of superheroes that can be more easily made gritty and dark, or witty and irreverent, without sacrificing a huge core part of their character.

Actually, now that I've written this I think Jason and I will hit up the bookstore here in a little bit. Hm.

2. The Outfit I'd Be Wearing:

Sweater Shirt Pants Slippers Socks

Look, I can be a huge comic book fan and also want to wear pretty things, okay?

I love me some teal. Love love love. This nice open-weave sweater can work during the summer on warmer days (IE, almost every day) with a tank top, but for this rainy-day imagining I'm doing, a nice long-sleeved shirt underneath helps you keep warm. The idea here is basically one step above pajamas, but nice enough that if I have to leave the house for some Godforsaken reason, I don't have to do anything more than switch up shoes.

I own this Land's End shirt, which was a Christmas gift, and it's incredibly soft. A little short, though, for those of us with a tall person's waist and tree stump legs, so I mostly layer it under things.

Skinny jeans, SmartWool socks (do I ever wear any other kind?), and black slipper-moccasins with fleece on the inside keep me warm while I sit and read, even without taking into account...

3. The Blanket I'd Be Snuggled Under:

Vintage Striped Wool Blanket by CharmHouseVintage over on etsy.

I just love this blanket. I think it's even shown up on an earlier 5 things. I love stripes and sort of deep forest colors. I go look at this on etsy every once in a while, but I'm a bit loathe to spend $65 on something I'm just going to cover myself with while I'm sitting on the couch.

Oh well.

Nothing wrong with day-dreaming, right?

4. The Tea I'd Be Drinking:

Vanilla Chai by Amanzitea

Cold days call for chai, in my opinion, and maybe a little caffeine to combat how warm clothes and blankets and dim light can make you sleepy. Amanzitea is near to us, so it's the tea place we've been visiting most often, so I'm thinking this awesome chai is basically what I'm looking for. A little honey and a little warmed milk (or almond milk, which is what we have in our fridge right now) and basically I'm set for the afternoon.

We've talked about how much I love tea, right?

Right. Of course we have.

5. Who I'd Spend the Day With:

You knew who this would be.

Oh, what. Did you seriously think I wouldn't take this opportunity to be sappy and annoyingly cutesy? That's what bloggers do, right?

But hey, there isn't any ideal day where Who I'd Spend the Day With isn't half the reason it would be ideal.

And other sappy shnoogy-woogums type of stuff can be imagined here; I won't make you all hate me by continuing any further with it.

In other news, a friend of mine just had a baby, who I've already had the good fortune to meet when she was only a day old. It is always a surprise how very very tiny newborn babies are. They seem like the smallest and warmest of little bird-bone fragile things, and I find myself holding them like they will somehow spontaneously combust. Nonetheless, she opened her little eyes and looked at me. Well, she opened her little eye. She is not yet fond of opening both at the same time.

Babies, you guys.

Babies.

Baby Got a Brand New Bag

2013-05-03T20:40:00.001-04:00

I has a new bag!

I ordered it from Monday Morning Studios over on etsy. It takes her about two weeks to make the bag to order, and then she sends it out. I received it last weekend and have been carting it around essentially nonstop since.

The fabric is really thick and strong, the inside is lime green which is one of my favorite colors (the other is that turquoise blue on my shirt up there), the print is super cute, the colors basically go with every single thing I own. The leather strap is cut to order and adjustable, so I can wear it as a tote bag or the way I am up there, as a messenger bag.

Basically, this person? This person is my purse person now. Forever.

It comes with a pretty, helpful tag and a note thanking you for your order.

Also the colors?

The colors are perfect.

Even the dog likes it.

I will pretty much be wearing this all summer, I can already tell.

And, y'know, into fall.

Maybe in winter, too.

Sorry things have mostly been radio silence this week; I haven't been feeling great, so I haven't been up to much, which means my life doesn't exactly make for interesting stories.

Unless you really enjoy stories about me drinking tea, because I am doing that like a boss.

What Happens When I Try to Take Pictures of Flowers

2013-04-29T13:13:00.000-04:00

This seemed like something everyone here might enjoy.

Rainy Day(s), Wish I Had...

2013-04-28T20:49:00.000-04:00

It is raining. It rained yesterday. It started raining the day before that. It's going to continue to rain until probably Tuesday. This makes for a moody time... or it would, except that I spent most of my day busy giggling over brunch with friends at Southern Culture.

Which makes for an awesome happy day that even sad gray clouds cannot penetrate. Take that, sad gray clouds.

I met up with several of my female friends; most of them had the bottomless mimosas, we nearly ALL had coffee, and I had a crack at their Bloody Mary bar, which was wonderful. Except I really would have liked some pickled shrimp or something. On the other hand, I got to put a stick of freaking bacon in my drink, which goes a long way towards making up for the lack of shrimp.

One black bean burger and stack of fried green tomatoes and a whole lot of coffee (and mimosas, for the others) later, we did some splitting apart and a few of us went to my friend Sarah's house. And then there were cookies. Because Sarah makes us lattes and cookies and then we will follow her everywhere forever. Like caffeinated drunk puppies.

So this rainy day has nothin' on me. Can't crack my shine. So there.

On the other hand, rainy days do make me think about useful clothing items I inexplicably don't have, like, y'know... rain boots... or... a rain coat... or an umbrella...

Boots, Chooka off of Zappos

Coat, Volcom also off of Zappos

Umbrella, Target

Even my ideal outfits full of things I want but don't have are... colorful.

I tend to look like a box of Crayons threw up on me, and I like it that way.

Whatever, I do what I want.

Can't crack my shine.

Certainty

2013-04-26T17:36:00.000-04:00

When I was 11, or maybe 12, my mother and I went to a bookstore.

It's not exactly a notable beginning for anyone who knows us in real life; my mother and I always go to bookstores. Always.

Barnes & Noble is the place we inevitably find ourselves at the end of the day that we go into town when I am visiting Illinois or they are visiting here, and for most of my childhood a visit to the bookstore was a sign that my mother and I had gone out to get the groceries alone. It was our final stop; the groceries in the car gave us a time limit on how long we could stay, something we desperately needed, as otherwise we could easily lose an hour in there.

In this particular story, however, we went shopping in Champaign; I don't remember why. This was before the days of my obsession with Hot Topic (at the time of my teenagehood, the closest one was in the Champaign mall, roughly 1 hour and 10 minutes from our doorstep - not that I counted) and we didn't go to Champaign all that often.

This day, for whatever reason, we did.

There wasn't a Barnes & Noble there that I remember, but there was a Waldenbooks inside the mall. Generally, there was a rule to these things; we went to a bookstore, I always got a book. Maybe not always always, but Mom and I are Book People. She is where I learned that you never have enough books until you don't actually know how many are on your shelves.

From the moment I learned to read, I would usually prefer books to anything else we might buy anyway. Except for toy horses. But that's another story and shall be told another time.

(Name that reference, get imaginary internet prizes!)

In any case, we hit up Waldenbooks before we left the mall. Waldenbooks were small places, crammed floor-to-ceiling, which I kind of liked; I've always liked the way books smell, and picking through a haphazard pile only to find the perfect book I didn't know I was looking for is one of the great Zen moments of my life. There is a victory to be had in rumpled messy bookstores. Although that's not really how I would have put it at the time.

Keep in mind that in this story, I am 11 or 12 years old.

Mom said for me to pick out one book for myself. I lost myself in looking around; by this point I mostly bypassed kids' or what passed for young adults' books entirely. Young Adult sections at bookstores are huge now, but at the time you might find a shelf or two, with a few Francesca Lia Block books, maybe some Lois Lowry or Cynthia Voight. Beyond that, I either had to make do with kids' books, which didn't interest me any more, or try and convince my mother that whatever book I picked up didn't have anything in it I probably wasn't old enough to read.

In one of the nonfiction sections, I came across a book that I was interested in. I spent some time flipping through it, then took it up to my mother as she looked at magazines waiting for me, and told her this was the one I wanted.

She looked at it; a trade paperback with a white cover, with How to Write & Publish Your First Novel scrawled across the front. To her credit, all she responded with was, "Are you sure?"

I told her I was, and that was that; we purchased the book (along with a couple of other books for Mom and a magazine maybe) and left. I didn't wait until we made it home. I pulled the book out of its bag right away and started flipping through it as soon as the van was headed back.

"So you want to be a writer?" Mom, navigating a couple of intersections to get us back on the Interstate, headed towards home.

I nodded, skimming a section on genres. Sci-fi/fantasy looked right, I thought; it matched the stories my best friend Rikki and I had often told each other, it matched the kind of stories I made up on my own, and the books I liked best.

"What do you want to write?" Mom asked, and we started to talk while we drove home.

She never said 'no' to the book, or that it wasn't a responsible purchase. My mother's reply was not to tell me that she didn't think an 11 or 12 year old needed this adult reference book, or to start telling me about all the hardships and reasons I shouldn't want to write books. She didn't try to talk me out of it, never made me feel for a second as if it might have been the wrong choice to buy it.

Instead, she asked me about being a writer, and we talked about it for most of the ride home.

It's my mother's birthday today, and I've spent about a month going back and forth on a story that might explain what my mothe is to me.

What I've come up with is more than a little bit inadequate, but it is this; when I told her I wanted to be a writer, her response never even hinted that she didn't believe I could. In the same fashion, when I told her I wanted to go to art school, she never said that wasn't an option. Although she may have hinted at more practical Bachelor's Degree pursuits now and then. When I got on a plane by myself for the first time at 19 years old to go spend two weeks with a family in upstate South Carolina and she had only met their son that I was dating, she saw me off to the airport, hugged me goodbye, and I didn't realize she worried about me until long after I got back in Illinois safe and sound.

Besides, it was a book. Your children can never read too much, or have too many books. Which is another thing she taught me, one among the thousands of lessons I've learned from her.

Happy birthday, Mom.

P.S. does it count as being a writer if I just write stuff for free on the internet?

Because It's Just That Sort of Day

2013-04-25T08:59:00.001-04:00

Have a fish with a cactus growing out of its head.

Sometimes, They Have an Adventure

2013-04-24T18:54:00.002-04:00

Dog ownership is like a fairy-tale. Only instead of giants and ogres or princesses you have an eternal toddler who WILL NOT STOP CHEWING ON THE SQUEAKY THING which, granted, you yourself bought him. Also there aren't any swords. So really it's not like a fairy-tale at all.

Except that our neighbor dog today managed an incredible feat of daring and escape - right into our backyard.

I've mentioned before, although maybe not here, that Indy made a couple of trips into the neighbor's yard (and one, memorable, heart-attack inducing trip into our back neighbor's unfenced off-highway yard where I found him, I kid you not, smelling dandelions) until we figured out the spots where the previous homeowner's dog made holes Indy was small enough to wiggle under. At this point, he's mostly big enough that he can't get through the smaller holes and we've blocked up the big ones.

Our neighbors have three dogs; a roly-poly bark-machine Dachsund who would seriously be my favorite neighbor-dog ever if he wasn't so bite-y, a little fuzzy sort of ankle-height dog whose breed I am uncertain of, and a big furry black Lab who wants to be my friend SO BADLY. There is also another dog that lives two doors down who is the size of my left hand who comes over to hang out, but again, it is the size of my left hand. So usually it doesn't stay long.

So I was working on dinner, kind of humming something to myself. The dog was out back, and the cat WAS but because she is a cat, she only ever wants to be wherever she currently isn't. Which ended up being a huge stroke of luck, because she had just come inside.

I realized the dog-bark tenor of the little Dachsund had changed; this is usually our signal that Indy has gotten over there. I put on my best mad-owner face and stepped out my back door...

... to be greeted by a surprisingly huge, happy-to-see-me ball of black fur chasing Indy all over my backyard. Which he, by the way, was totally cool with. So they are rough-housing and all over the place. I stood there, just... staring at them, trying to decide what to do, when I see the neighbor lady over at her fence.

We looked at each other with nearly identical expressions of confusion and exasperation. The Dachsund, I would get. There are holes he could get through. Little teacup puppies? Sure. But the biggest dog they have?

"I'm sorry," The neighbor lady says, with an oddly plaintive note to her voice. "I don't know how she got over there."

We pause for a moment longer, watching the black dog briefly pin Indy, at which point they resume racing frantic circles around the yard.

The neighbor hands me the Lab's leash over the fence, and I manage to clip it on her. Indy, however, has other plans and is currently involved in trying to re-start the wrestling game he loved so much. The Black Lab, who is not enjoying the wrestling game when her leash is on her and I'm trying to hold her down, twisted her head right out of her slightly-loose collar and away they went.

The neighbor lady comes around to my carport, where the gate to my yard is, and we stared at each other once again.

"I really don't know how she did it," She says, if possible sounding even more plaintive. I reassured her that we would hold no ill-will, considering we have found our dog in her yard something like four times in two months when we first got him.

I managed to tear them away from each other, shove Indy inside the house (with the yowling, unhappy cat, who wanted to go outside. She should be grateful I didn't just toss her out there and leave her to fend for herself with the Black Lab of Friendliness), and headed back to try again.

This time, I got the collar back on her. The Black Lab, scenting defeat, calmed down and happily trotted over to her owner as if nothing had ever happened. They headed back to their place.

I aimlessly wander the fence, unable to really even see where she might have got under. Indy has been back out since she took her dogs in, and is terribly disappointed.

It occurred to me, as I stood there contemplating the chain-link fence between our yards, that she might have jumped over.

Further, it occurred to me Indy might have seen her jump over and therefore realized he could do that himself.

With a sense of horror-movie level foreboding, I headed back into the house to make dinner.

So dog ownership is a little bit like a fairy-tale after all, I guess, in that sometimes dogs have adventures, and all we can do is try not to get new white hairs out of the experience.

Still, I'm holding out for some treasure next time.

In Which I Wound Myself

2013-04-23T18:00:00.000-04:00

This is what I did to myself today.

This morning, while cutting up an apple to put in my oatmeal (welcome to my exciting daily breakfast routine; oatmeal with an apple, some raisins, almond pieces, and cinnamon. Every day. And it's never any less delicious), the knife, which is somewhat dull, sort of skipped off the apple piece and... well.

I stabbed myself in the hand. Well, I didn't stab so much as I attempted to turn my own skin into a part of my breakfast, which my skin disagreed with, but apparently the knife was totally up for that.

Specifically, I managed to slice off part of the top of my middle finger, just above where my fingernail would be if I didn't bite my nails as part of my amazing and varied plethora of nervous habits.

Whenever I hurt myself, no matter how minor or major the wound is, I respond exactly the same way, with a huge, loud inhaled surprised gasp of air, a moment's pause, and then "OW OW OW OW OW" or "GUUUUUHHHHH" when the pain kicks in. I gasp when I stub my toe or hit my nose on something (like, memorably, Jason's forehead. More than once, even), I gasp when I trip and twist my ankle, I gasp when when I cut my hand and I'm bleeding all over the place. So every time it happens, Jason immediately goes into SERIOUS HUSBAND RESCUE TIME mode. Which is going to be super handy when something serious actually happens.

To be honest I wasn't sure what part of my finger I had even injured until I was on bandage #3, other than 'the part covered in blood'. When Jason asked if I needed stitches, I said no reflexively.

It bled so much that it went through the first bandage in roughly twenty minutes, before I even left the house. While I am not an overly squeamish person (it's hard to be squeamish when your favorite book genre is serious horror and you spend years cultivating a frankly worrisome knowledge of Romero zombie movies), I have a hard time looking at my own skin just sort of hanging around in the breeze. So I... didn't.

In retrospect, though, before I tell Jason I don't need stitches I should probably actually verify. Or, y'know, at least look directly at the wound.

Nope. That's not how we do things 'round these parts.

I bled through bandage number 2 within an hour of being at work. This was definitely progress in the 'how long it takes to go through my bandage' department, but I still had to dig around for another one. This time, I decided to be a grown-up and see how bad it was.

I inspected the problem, decided I probably didn't need the top of my finger anyway, and wrapped it up in bandage number 3.

Which didn't stick, because it was a small bandage and the part that is injured is the very top... ie, the Bane of all Band-Aids. So I wrapped Bandage 4 on top, and that didn't stick either, because it was in a terribly awkward position.

On top of that, I couldn't find any duct tape and I was beginning to worry about leaving a trail behind myself if I went looking. And not a trail of breadcrumbs, either.

So I taped the stupid thing down with Scotch tape.

Now I feel like my own hand is flipping me off all the time, but hey, at least I'm pretty sure it stopped bleeding. Granted, there are so many layers of bandage and tape at this point that I'm also pretty sure that if I am still bleeding, I won't notice unless the whole hand goes.

But what's important here is that I solved my Band-Aid conundrum.

Never let it be said that I am not a resourceful woman.

We Are

2013-04-19T18:00:00.000-04:00

For those who may be unsettled by the content, this is a poem regarding the Boston Marathon, so read at your own risk. When I wrote the first half Monday night and the second Tuesday morning I didn't realize we would know the identity of the pustules that set these bombs so quickly.

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

Show me a death toll,
I will show you the living
running right back in

regardless of fear.
They dodge shrapnel, they fight smoke.
The living do not

wait, don't hesitate.
Panic, after all, just noise.
They'll think about it

then, not now; now is
cradling children, carrying
wounded out. Boston

is bigger than you.

Now is microphones
shoved in unwilling faces
and willing ones, too;

analysis, no
end to who what where when how
no end to asking

why. For now we ask
in an endless rhythm, Why?
Like your answer could

ever satisfy us.
Now we watch the living, mourn
our loss. Boston is

better than you.

Wave your casualties
as the only hint of a
cause you might kill for.

Hide; your kind always
do. Hide from us, though it won't
last. It never lasts.

It is a wound, true,
but we've been wounded before.
You are not special.

You are tiny men;
you always are, with tiny
dreams. But we are

better than you.

Cry out your death toll
I will name you a failure.
You will always fail.

We are not your kind.
The living turn back, running
to rescue those hurt.

We cradle children,
carry the wounded as far
as our legs will hold.

That first moment of
smoke gave us away, told you
who we are. We are

bigger than you.

From a safe distance
murderers watch a bomb, and
call it victory.

We rush in, this time
no different than the last
or the time before.

Fear is for later,
for then; this is now, and now
they race back in, once

again. The living
defy your death toll, deny
you your moment. The

living turn to face
your bombs head on; uncertain
but needing to help.

You can hide; we'll find
you sooner or later, we
always do. Meanwhile

we help each other.
We grieve for the lost. Still, we
know the truth; that we

will always be

bigger than you.

Bonding, Sort Of

2013-04-18T10:04:00.001-04:00

This is as close as they'll ever get, although the dog steadfastly maintains otherwise and insists on following the cat around the house. He seems to think her yowls and hisses are just her way of saying I love you.

He's an optimist, that puppy. Although I think all puppies are optimists by definition.

In the background is my Young Adult library (L'Engle, Lois Lowry, Neil Gaiman, Ellen Wittlinger, Phillip Pullman, etc and so forth), Carl Sandburg poetry books, Penny Arcade's collected comics, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Kate's Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant collection, a book on aromatherapy someone gave me (Shelly? I think?), The World Made Straight by local author Ron Rash, and the Chronicles of Narnia.

And that's only the top shelf.

Someday I will tell you how many books we own... just as soon as I know the answer to that question.

ALSO:

Go over to the Noisy Plume and read her poem today, written after Boston but I think with the recent factory explosion in West, Texas it's just incredibly applicable to this whole week.

"this will only go so far, and then it too shall pass."