alright?

iron & wine - arms of a thief

Me: Wow you’re cute.
TH: Not many people have appreciated that fully.
Me: So what’s your deal?
TH: I’m up for grabs. Want to touch my woodwork?
Me: I dunno - this is kind of sudden, I just started looking.
TH: I’m strong like bull . . .
Me: Are you sure you’re available? There’s no sign out front.
TH: I told you, I’m kind of a private sale kinda house, not open market.
Me: Uh huh. Are you a pain in the ass? I mean, why aren’t you taken already?
TH: The world is fucked up, what can I tell you? Everyone wants new new new.
Me: I dunno if this would work out really - I mean, you talk a good game, but you’re in the SUBURBS pal, ya know? I’m more shabby chic.
TH: No, seriously, I’m virtually misplaced here. Look at me, I have one foot in another continent altogether, like fairytale fodder.
Me: Sigh. This is gonna cost me I can feel it.
TH: Not that much, I’m kind of a bargain once you fix me up - you’re good at fixer uppers, clearly, or you wouldn’t have been mooning at me from the curb all this time.
Me: Welp, I could use a change, and I can see your appeal . . . So okay.
TH:
Me: I said okay.
TH:
Me: What? I’m not offering enough or ? I could offer more.
TH:
Me: Or even a little more than more.
TH: No.
Me: What do you mean no? You just talked me into this?
TH: Nope.
Me: Look, you don’t know me very well yet - I don’t really do NO.
TH: Well get used to it.
Me: No!
TH: No. Or yes. Whichever applies as thwarting you, that’s my answer.
Me: That only makes me stubborn.
TH: Noooo kidding? I’d have never guessed that.
Me: Well which is it then? A real no? or a ‘I want you to want me more than my no’ typa no?
TH: No.
Me: O fuck you. Seriously. Do you think this is going to work to make you go like hotcakes off this cold curb you’re sitting on? Cz I highly doubt that - experience suggests you’ve been sitting here empty for over 2 years bub.
TH:
Me: Are you serious with this?
TH: No.
Me: No you’re not seriously saying no, or seriously you’re saying no?
TH:
Me: You just got auctioned back to vacancy. Way to go. Stupid house.
(pause)
(pause)
(pause)
(snow melts)
(seasons change)
(pause pause)
TH: Hey, how’s it going?
Me: Huh? YOU AGAIN?
TH: Sorry, I got kinda hung up back there, been real busy . . .
Me: I’m not interested.
TH: Yes you are.
Me: I’ve been shopping in Kenmore. Bought myself a car. I’m over you, you were merely the “transition relationship”, thru which I learned more about my own real estate desires, that’s all.
TH: Want to touch my woodwork?
Me: hahahah well, yes sort of I do, but that’s not the point.
TH: What’s the point?
Me: You are some kind of impossible, that’s the point.
TH: Ok, just thought I’d check.
Me: Well wait a minute - are you available this time? I don’t want to dick around and end up merely annoyed.
TH: I was wise, and withheld myself for this moment of even greater opportunity for you. My price is good, my garden is a blank slate.
Me: Siiiigh.
TH: C’mon, take a look around, no commitments just some woodwork lust between old friends.
Me: I’m not really into touching your woodwork just for kicks, ya know? I want to build a fire in the fireplace, not walk around your empty insides pointlessly.
TH: I’m in great shape, the fireplace is ready to go.
Me: How’s everything else?
TH: Well, you have to expect some issues, that’s only natural.
Me: Little issues, or terminal issues?
TH: Go with your gut - you tell me.
Me:
TH:
Me: Okay. I guess I got time to improve my yoga practice meanwhile. I forgive you. Now let’s get it on, cz I been looking at landporn for months.
TH: Probably.
Me: You better stop screwing around w the probablies, I just plunked down a 2k deposit and $500 inspection.
TH: I have to think it over.
Me: WHAT?? Your fucked up owner bank can sue me if we don’t work this out now.
TH: You always jump in too fast and hard.
Me: You talked me into it, AGAIN.
TH: Then you’re a slow learner, eh?
Me: omg I hate you.
TH: No you don’t.
Me: Look, I agree to be willing to sell you later, but for the moment we’re either giving this a try or not before I lose any more resources in the attempt. Just be honest.
TH:
Me:
Me: I’m gonna kick your ass.
TH: You’re gonna have to because there’s a leak under the concrete floor of my garage.
Me: Somehow, deep down, I knew this was coming. Why are you driving me crazy?
TH: No.
Me: hahahahahha o shut the fuck up with your no’s.
TH:
Me: Is there more? Is the leak under the garage the full monty, or are you gonna try to kill me while I pet your woodwork for years?
TH: Maybe.
Me: Can I ask you something?
TH:
Me: Um, are we dating? lol

This house is proving itself to be some kind of impossible yet again, or meant for me ft. a royal pain in the ass. I dunno. All I know is that I’m hip-deap into it every which way and gonna get thru to other side okay, or wipe out my personal resources for houses altogether into the indefinite future. (exasperated motherly sigh) And in the process, I've spent days upon days getting Big Red cleaned out, sweating so much that it'd take a paintscraper to get the crud outa my pores. God damn stupid houses. I wish my orientation was Renter right now, WAY. >:(

the house ("Turtle House" is its nickname, which appears to be sticking) is testing my love. the water meter was busted, which is why we couldn't do the plumbing inspection bc we couldn't get water. the city has to replace that. but this is WHITEYTON, so of course at 8 am this morning as soon as we called them, they rushed right over, apologizing for there being a crack somewhere in their town. (hahahahah) they replaced the meter, but still no water . . . there's a main break under the driveway. they're rushing around now getting the pipe maps for the city - up to halfway down the driveway, they fix it. beyond that point, I have to fix it. I'm praying it's not under the garage floor, czzzz that would be that 4 ft of cement previously discussed. and of course I couldn't dig that up until I owned it, thus taking on whatever that amounts to . . . then again, if there's no water coming into the house, then it's impossible for there to be broken pipes INSIDE logically speaking since there would have been no water in 'em. I think Turtle-H might have not let any water come in, armscrossy-like. you'd think this might scare me off, but of course no - I thought "I love watching backhoes" . . .

I'm either really committed, or somebody should commit me - I dunno.

(many) mixed feelings

Sometimes when I think about leaving this place, The Red House, I am in actual physical pain. I get a stomach like I ate a bowling-ball quiver, as if those weren't mutually exclusive feelings in one gut. Yesterday, my skin almost melted off me in successions of freak-out shedding. I have rarely been so in need of having my hand held, and only FPH surfacing w the calvalry kept me from throwing the hell up before dawn.

But I persist w this house, the same one, which was re-listed and they called me and asked me if I still wanted it the day before they showed it generally, giving me the advantage of first/highest offer to their asking price (ie my last highest bid before the auction) - and I decided yes, I did want it still. For many reasons. Such as if I don't stop living with OJ maybe I won't be able to love her any more at some point, and I'll open the door and accidentally kill Poke with a garden utensil before I realize what I'm doing. And I'm bored, creative energy wise. And feel like this house I live in is me and I am it but I'm needing to outgrow myself and so the shedding is the thing as much as it is the pain. And I want to go out grazing where there are so many people potentially viable from a social point of view that I'd have to be helen keller to miss all the opportunities (bc let's face it, W-A-T-E-R is my idea of chit chat half the time) . . . and more. I have a feeling that I don't know all the personal/emotional reasons yet.

And the house itself. Everyone who sees it kind of can't understand what I like about it sooo much, cz as Bale Dave put it, "This place is some kind of odd." Today I learned better what it is. I had the first half of the home inspection (I still have to have the water turned on and the plumbing inpected - today was everything else). Turns out that it's built entirely of masonry. Although it looks woody, it's all stone or concrete. The rafters (not the show ones, the ones that hold up the second floor etc) are made of concrete. No, seriously. The entire second floor is concrete under the tile or carpeting whatever. The floor downstairs is stone, or plank wood on top, w concrete underneath. The walls are a foot thick, the inside walls I mean. The home inspector said it's built like a bomb shelter, top to bottom, "unique to say the least." I thought: This house is built like men I like, solid as if trashcompacted sorta - like Doug. If my grandpa had been a house, he'd have been built just like this one. Like you could punch at its palms all day while it read the paper and laughed at your effort, amused by your curly little relentlessness.

The pipes could still be busted, and embedded in concrete that'd be quite a project to fix. So it's not written in stone yet ( ha ha ), but I got a feeling that this is gonna be my new digs after all. Despite the tweeking out, of which I will do plenty more God knows, I am announcing my intention and desire that it be so.

Wild Light - "Red House"

Booka Shade- Body Language (Interpretation)

for virgo (potens) this week: In Terry Pratchett's book Wyrd Sisters, there's a passage in which he talks about how the sun conspires with the forest to pump millions of gallons of sap hundreds of feet from the ground up into the sky. And it all happens "in one great systolic thump too big and loud to be heard." That's the kind of activity I recommend for you in the coming weeks, Virgo. Collaborate with the source of all life -- the physical sun, if that's your preference, or God or Goddess, if that works better for you -- to pull off a huge movement of lifeblood that brings sustenance from below to above.

electronica, for my nerves (like a cigarette only different)

crystal method - (get) busy child

moby - natural blues

agoria feat. Scalde - Baboul hair cuttin

nina simone - turn me on (tony humphries got u turned on dub)

The quicker you wrap your head around disappointments, the less you're tortured. Want little in the first place, and you're ahead of that curve. Between overextending yourself into desire and having to retreat from it, there is the urge to haul off and slug somebody. No? O yeah.

"Escape From NY," Ass

kiss this one

anoushka shankar/karsh kale/norah jones - easy

First time in 3 years that it didn't rain. Ever since I lived in Elkhorn, I've loved the smalltown fireworks shows the best where you can sit right under them and the firemen are there and you can feel the boom boom in your back as you lie on your blanket. So we hauled ass out to Art Park - I had scoped it ahead of time w the locals, so I knew to set up in the library parking lot of all places, and sure enough they went off dead above us except for those ones in the pic that bloom up from the gorund like Las Vagas showgirl backdrops. That and 2 kosher hot dogs and I was almost totally fine.

Steinski - It’s Up To You (Television Mix) [for my nation's b(ullshit)day] - love this song, high rec

Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out (Daft Punk Remix)

for virgo this week: When Tom first arrived in Santa Cruz from South Carolina at age 22, he was homeless and had $110. He quickly scored a temp job as a laborer, doing menial tasks at construction sites. His first assignment was at a place where a delivery truck had accidentally dropped a load of lumber at the bottom of a hill instead of at the top where a new house was to be built. Tom's job was to carry the heavy boards and beams up the hill one by one. He felt a bit like Sisyphus in the Greek myth -- that forlorn character whose punishment by the gods required him to push a boulder up a hill again and again, only to have it plummet down each time as he reached the peak. Unlike Sisyphus, things got better for Tom. During the next 15 years, he became a successful real estate agent. One day he sold the million-dollar house that had been built from the wood he'd once toted up the hill. This is a perfect time, Virgo, for you to predict and plot out a long-term personal triumph that will match Tom's.

jakob dylan (bob's kid) - something good this way comes

peter gabriel - down to earth [from the Wall-e soundtrack]

It's cold and rainy. I want to be deep in the woods to where you can't smell anything but that, the green smell. But I have to hold still, so I have to be here holding still. These pics are from Zoar Valley pre-ear, where I conked my head (setting my ear up for its fall) and we all got caught in the current - Dan went under once and was gonna have to drown or let loose of the dog, and I saved that sorry beast's life by grabbing him by the ear. OJ joked that for him, who belches snot by the bucket whenever it thunders even a little bit, that was like getting raped in prison then saved by the evil warden.

dan and ectoplasm

me lone

I keeled over in yoga and haven’t blogged anything beyond then bc the blog is becoming a smear of stress entrails, like roadkill of my intentions. The world spinning, whoosh whoosh, my eyes chasing the walls as they whirligig. I finally dragged my ass into the hospital w the pukers and junkies caught in the spokes of the American medical system blab la. I tried the emergency clinic first, which then wanted to put me in an EMT vehicle w the siren (NOOOOO!) until I found Dan to drive me. On the way, he’s laughing his ass off at my relentlessly sucky summer and then we try for an upside (pause) – Hey I got one, if I have a brain tumor I won’t have to bother much with the whole “O I don’t want you to see me this way!” schpeel. It was damn funny, but maybe you had to be there.

What ails me is a tiny kidney stone in my inner ear basically. I had a salivary stone once, similarly – the downside to having good little brick outhouse type bones is that your body makes calcium out of anything it can find, and that’s what “stones” are. Current treatment is scrip-strength Dramamine 3x a day and wait for it to stop rolling around in there cz there's no way to get it out. “Tipsy” will never be a happy word in my vocabulary ever ever ever again.

The irony is, among other things, that this happens to athletic people mostly [soccer players especially, fyi], who are swishing their head fluids around working up a sweat (and then crying too much, in my case, blowing my nose and knocking a chunk of calcium loose from someplace), and who are then doomed to try to hold still for weeks. And I’m not supposed to WA, cz that will make me ear-gooey. Funny huh? Hold still and don't cry. While I'm at it, maybe I'll grow tall.

I missed this guy in town last Thursday night w Martin Sexton as I was hooked up to an EKG at the time, while the techs flirted with each other over my trapped body. Mike Doughty: Looking at life from the bottom of a well [I'd like this song even if I weren't in a well (theoretically)]; and Thank you Lord for sending me the F train

I suppose at least all that's gone wrong recently has been put into a new perspective, yet again. I don't need a car or a vacation, or anything (theoretically), except myself whole. I haven't spun since yesterday, quietly grateful for it. I went to say goodbye to my friend George last night. He got a new job in Panama City FL, and his wife had a stack of houses off the internet, all with kidney shaped in-ground pools, which gave me flashbacks to watching Alexis and Krystle knocking each other into the water in cat fights. I said, Aren't these sets of 80's nighttime dramas? George and I giggled, and since she's from the Czec Republic she had no idea what the hell we were talking about. I'll miss him. But I didn't WA. My compasionator is currently caputz.

"Better in Time," Leona Lewis

yoga for dudes [stupid video]

why are sock puppets funny? [bc I have brain damage] [not good]

Martin Sexton, Will It Go Round In Circles

For just $50 extra a year, I opted for rental insurance - that’s where they give you a rental car for the length of your repairs. I didn’t even know I’d done it - a kind of passing thought of “meh what’s 50 bucks” typa thing as I dimly recall. Yesterday, I dropped Stan off at the dealership hospital and Enterprise showed up to give me a MONTH loner. Lemme tell ya, those are like the hotel rooms they rent by the week. TJ gets in and says “This smells like when you give a dog a bath to make it smell better but it doesn’t work.”

Since wa “not doing anything anyway”, X was up my ass to take the kids an extra day of course, which given the Friday night options was okay by me. They go off to WI now to spend a week with X and Grandma Jody, so last night was kinda the special meal before the execution. We went to see The Hulk. I really love little boy movies. No, SERIOUSLY. You can’t really tell by the pick, but Ed Norton is totally hot. And The Hulk learns to control his awesome powers by doing kundalini yoga breathing exercises, which then I taught to the boys when we got home. ;) They’re still young enough that they actually believe I’m some kind of unique warrior type mother. Oma, X’s step mom, and Opa back me up on it, as she does Tai Chi and has a collection of swords to go with, and Opa swears to them that there is a special breed of super short super fierce women in the world and they’ve got TWO in their family alone!! They have faith in it completely.

All this was improving my mood to the point that I thought maybe the self-pity tears would take a break today, especially since it seems the sun is out for the FIRST DAMN TIME in literally weeeeeeeeks, but then I remembered: omg I signed up for the damn garden show tomorrow. And I welled right up, noowawawa. My inner virgo is a real pain in my ass, for real. Remember the last time, when the yard was perfect and I won a Buffalo in Bloom thing and/but I stayed locked inside all day like I had flesh eating disease? Actually, I think I’ll probably go with that plan again . . .

For anyone interested, today marks the solstice and apparently it’s a big one - for the next few months, there’s gonna be hurricanes and cataclysms galore that will mark spiritual rebirth on a global scale or lack thereof (and then we’ll all die), so the astro yogis tell me . . . Thus try to, um, whatever it is you’re supposed to do. Stay in bed probably. How much trouble can you cause the planet from there? In fact, yeah, do that and try to find somebody worth taking with you - that seems monumentally more difficult global-love-wise than recycling, but maybe that’s just me. (cry)

Okeeee, time to mow the damn lawn. Extension cords beware.

"I Love You My Hope," Hird - from DmS, I like this song a lot and was hitting it on repeat in Stanley - tiz my tune pick for the summer solstice.

Would you like your horoscope?
Not really.
"Jump into the creative process, if possible -- but make sure that you turn off your internal editor or critic for the time being. It's a handy feature to have, but for now it just gets in the way of the flow."
Um that means you, so could you stop talking all day? You’re in the way of my flow.
Your flow is self-pity on full faucet - It’s not like you were in the car.
I know.
You could have been in the car and on the highway and could have crashed and gotten a speed sign pole through your face and lived through it and now be a vegetable with half a face in a nursing home.
Yes yes, I know.
You'd be drooling and pissing your pants . .
Please shut up.
You haven’t moved in hours.
You're exaggerating and I’m supposed to be meditating on a beach for the next 9 days so what’s the difference?
Meditating is self-improvement, a 2-hour bath with a baked goods and beer hangover is just pathetic.
I have a headache, I like baths.
You could have gone to the end of school year picnic with the kids.
I wasn’t on the chaperone list for the picnic.
Because you didn’t sign up.
I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ON A PLANE TO A BEACH IN A FEW HOURS.
But you’re not.
O shut up shut up.
I’m just saying, you could have used this opportunity to have been a more involved parent.
Omg I hate you, I’m waiting to hear from the insurance company and then I have to take the car in and get a rental and all that bullshit, please just leave me alone.
There’s nothing stopping you from doing yoga twice a day all week and making your own vegetarian meals - you can be your own retreat.
Hahahahahshuuuuuuuuuuuut uuuuuuuuuuppp.
Well it’s true, it’s a chance to self-actualize and then maybe you can incorporate more retreat like elements into your actual daily life.
Seriously, I’m going to put a gun into my mouth in a second if you don’t shut up.
You, sensibly, do not own a gun.
Ya know, if you weren’t so god damn obnoxious, I might not have drunk that beer and ate all those brownies - ever think of that? You drive me to despair, and I’m already in despair.
If you listened to me, you’d have called a sitter and gone to the late night yoga last night and wouldn’t be sitting here like a brownie truck ran over you now.
What would I be doing? I’d be waiting to hear from Wendy the Hutt either way.
You can’t take a cell phone to a school picnic?
(stare)
That’s not going to work, I’m in your own head.
(stare)
La la la not going to work.
I’m going to drink a beer if you don’t stop.
No you’re not, you’re even too pathetic to be self-destructive properly and I know it. Except for crying your nose half off your face that is, which looks great, that “flu” look is really sexy this year.
Crying is not unhealthy. I am not repressed.
HA, you wish. You look like shit, really, you have to think twice about ruining what’s left of your looks.
Why? So Jasper will stay true?
Hey you got the bikini and the wax anyway, you could go to the JCC pool maybe, meet a nice Jewish man . . .
Yeah right, first of all the men at the pool have fuzzy shoulders and ugly wives, second of all you set my brain on fire every time I’m in a social environment, third of all you set my brain on fire every time Zorba sets my brain on fire so that’s 3 brain fires going most of the time even before God smites me, and thus altogether I’d end up like I always do at the pool: vaguely ogling the concession stand guy and/or the Chinese adoptees in the wading pool like the LUNATIC YOU TURN ME INTO.
Why don’t you get up and have some tea - it has anti-oxidants.
Sigh. I suppose that doesn’t sound too bad.
And then you could read your vegetarian cookbooks and start a self-retreat shopping list . . .
O for christ sake SHUT SHUT THE FUCKING HELL UP.
I’m just saying . . .

zen failure - code red

At some point despair seems kind of funny or something, like you cry yourself into a laughing fit, and it starts mid-conversation with the insurance agent named “Mike” who sounded about 12 years old and to whom I went bonkerinos wailing away about the sky falling on my vehicles all the time like God sends weather to reflect my personal life which is serially cold as hell, just plain shitty, and occasionally balls out disastrous, and now I’m headed into hysterics caught between a fuckhead at a dealership likely to take forever and make the roof leak when he has to saw the god damn thing off and another fuckhead at the insurance preferred collision chain who wants to charge half as much to “pop those craters right out” and I might just have a nervous breakdown (which would look like what worse than sobbing all this into the phone at a Mike?). He said he’d look into it, clearly frightened. The next agent was “Wendy”, an elderly woman with a chain-smoker’s voice, who called back and started with “So, I hear you’re having a bad week?” But then as she was calming me down, Mark (the yoga studio owner) called to cancel the retreat bc of hurricanes hitting more than a month before the official rainy season so I’m not going on the retreat and am out nearly a grand on the flight. I’ll spend allll next week here without the boys, sleeping aloooooooooooone no doubt as Zorba watches the god damn Euro Cup in a bar with some coeds. [my love stars for today: A series of long days have left you feeling worn out. Let your sweetie know that a little TLC would be much appreciated. A soak in a warm bath followed by a back rub will help you melt that tension away.] And that’s when all the blood ran out of my heart and into brain-blown wawa giggles, loloooolol. Even the Dalai Lama can pretty much kiss my ass at this point. And fyi, I’ve cried so much in the last week, that between me and Ectoplasm a house party’s worth of spirits have had their way slimed and primed, and I’m sending them all to curse the crotches of Canadian coeds with open sore herpes. And no, I don’t care what that does to my damn(ed) karma.

lightspeed champion - no surprise (acoustic)

emmylou harris - all that you have is your soul

How well are you capitalizing on this year's unique opportunities, Virgo? Now that we're halfway through 2008, let's take an inventory. I'm hoping that six months from now, you'll look back and make the following declaration: "I've learned more about love in the past 12 months than maybe I ever have. I've also become far more skilled in the art of making myself happy. And I've finally figured out how to purge some of the martyr-like aspects from my generosity, which means I'm better able to give without strings attached and I'm more attractive to interesting people who are inclined to give me things I really want."

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

and then golf ball sized hail came down and put hundreds of dents into and scraped the paint off my new car as I watched trapped in a Target parking lot and that's 2 cliches in one: when it rains it pours, and the straw that broke the camel's back -- cz who would I even call to cry to as everyone around me flipped open their cell phones reaching for solace and I just stood there

"Acid Test," Emma Pollock

I'm reading the Dalai Lama right now, The Art of Happiness, and after work and sitting on my porch I'm reading that and I'm thinking "yeah man, I am going to find inner peace and shit" and I feel kind of a zen glow of equilibrium is just right THERE and then I take the book and the kids to music lessons and, well, sometimes you and your kids and your van are sitting in a parking lot at 8 pm and the van is in a pool of gas bc it blew its fuel pump somethingsomething so says the tow guy whom you've seen already just a few weeks ago like you're starting to get CHUMMY with the tow guy from AAA who regrets to inform you that you've used up your towing miles after this and at that point I suppose since I don't melt down this inner peace stuff is sort of helping me out but, um, NOT MUCH cz I could really use a new car I'm afraid and it's not that I can't get one it's that I don't want one really I just want the one I have to stop breaking but it's not going to stop breaking and in that case I'd like some eggroll to deal with the whole car thing cz honestly I just really don't want to and feel too girly to give a shit about what a 1.8 engine thingy even is which brings to mind the whole eggroll presence impairment issue on top of the fact that the cat (OJ's cat) bit me and the dog (OJ's stupid fucking dog) pissed all over the kitchen again while meanwhile she hasn't paid the rent before she blew town and saddled me with her crackmother unwanted pets and her apartment smells like a Cosmic Piss took a piss in it and I kind of want to strap a grenade to the van and then stick OJ and the cat and the dog etc etc in it and so I get the feeling that I'm not going to reach Enlightenment anytime soon bc I'd have to pretty much slap the utter shit out of nearly everyone to make room for Enlightenment to show the hell up and not have to step over piss or around anyone's bullshit to get to me.