Barefeet (3:30 PM):
jartoots is history.
ShireMonkey (3:30 PM):
not in my heart
Thursday affirmations
2 hours ago
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Bears!
Would it be rude of me to say in my Match profile how I appreciate it when a guy uses spell check, or point out that as a writer, I appreciate ... something? Hm, just asking you makes it sound potentially rude. But is it? Is there a way? im tared of gtting..notees like THs!!! U know!!
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
It was a dark and stormy night ...
The power went out the other night, and this became an Event. I'm not sure why. Do you know why? Does life really change that much? No, no it doesn't, but it could. What if you need the microwave for emergency oatmeal? What if you ... uh ... You know, the oatmeal is all I can come up with.
Out it was for two hours Monday evening. I was momentarily baffled till the really-no-difference realization. Couldn't use my computer, but that could be taken as a good thing, a very very good thing. All I really wanted to do that night was read The Children's Hospital anyway. Sometimes you get what you wish for.
Two and a half years, 1,200 miles and three hurricanes ago, I was well-prepared for a power outage. (Make that two hurricanes ago; Lessons were Learned from Charley.) But my preparations got discombobulated in the northerly directioning, so there was some befuddlement and reconnoitering.
I rediscovered batteries and an extra flashlight, reinstalled in a lantern some batteries lost in the hamper, sat by the back door with the book and waited for the fireflies to come out. A little after 10 I was on the floor enjoying the dark and the fireflies when tiredness started to hit. As I said "Time for bed!" and stood up, the lights came back on with a screech.
(The screech actually came from those kitty-frighteners, the carbon monoxide detectors: HEY WE'RE ON AGAIN. So is every neuron in my brain now, MERCI BEAUCOUP.)
And then, I was disappointed. Without the lights and other electrimugification, it was Something. It was Interesting. It was a Change, Different. Now everything was the same again. I didn't even want to go to bed while it was out. I would be missing it.
Out it was for two hours Monday evening. I was momentarily baffled till the really-no-difference realization. Couldn't use my computer, but that could be taken as a good thing, a very very good thing. All I really wanted to do that night was read The Children's Hospital anyway. Sometimes you get what you wish for.
Two and a half years, 1,200 miles and three hurricanes ago, I was well-prepared for a power outage. (Make that two hurricanes ago; Lessons were Learned from Charley.) But my preparations got discombobulated in the northerly directioning, so there was some befuddlement and reconnoitering.
I rediscovered batteries and an extra flashlight, reinstalled in a lantern some batteries lost in the hamper, sat by the back door with the book and waited for the fireflies to come out. A little after 10 I was on the floor enjoying the dark and the fireflies when tiredness started to hit. As I said "Time for bed!" and stood up, the lights came back on with a screech.
(The screech actually came from those kitty-frighteners, the carbon monoxide detectors: HEY WE'RE ON AGAIN. So is every neuron in my brain now, MERCI BEAUCOUP.)
And then, I was disappointed. Without the lights and other electrimugification, it was Something. It was Interesting. It was a Change, Different. Now everything was the same again. I didn't even want to go to bed while it was out. I would be missing it.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
EFF.
Here's a problem with the raw format I took almost all of Saturday's photos in: Flickr won't upload it.
EFF!!
Now I have to convert them all?
EFF!!!
You know how long this is going to take me now. Hrumph. I'm off to read.
EFF!!
Now I have to convert them all?
EFF!!!
You know how long this is going to take me now. Hrumph. I'm off to read.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
This is Rheta's doing.
I have never felt like I belonged anywhere, with a few exceptions. Maybe rarely with anyone, either. Always slightly out of sorts or step, the world around me one half step to the left of me, it moving one direction, I another, infinitesimally or at miles per hour.
The lone exceptions would be a. our house and yard and pond and 2. Disney, which I’ll explain in another issue.
We moved here when I was 8. I swore an oath that I would buy the house left at 69 Candy Lane when I grew up. At about the same time, at least in my memory, I also sang about the houseboat I would have on Freeman Pond and the sleepovers that would ensue out on the water at the new home. Not realizing yet, not consciously, that my parents’ inclinations did not align with even the most timid child’s adventurous imagination/hopes.
What a mistake it was to make me an only child. (What a mistake in any instance.) Was I naturally painfully shy? Or did I sense my parents’ fears and cottony layers of mental, psychic, psychological, nonpermissive protection and react to all that?
My Mom’s big family had (still does) a cottage on Rushford Lake, which is ... maybe east of Olean. My cousins went there loads. Not me. My Mom had hated it there, and so I had to suffer in a new way. I cannot understand what good they thought they were doing me. I mean, I can, but how could they not have seen what they were stealing from me? How could they have thought I would end up a happy, well-adjusted, full-living person by playing at home by myself?
Granted, I didn’t spend that much time playing alone till we moved from 69 Candy Lane. Maybe they misunderstood what would be available to me friendwise on our new street. They definitely underestimated my shyness, whatever its cause. You can’t be a shy only child and live in a neighborhood where the more-spread-out kids all go to the public school while you go to the tiny private Catholic school and find a way to fit in. It does not happen. No amount of dance lessons or summer tennis lessons where other girls relentlessly flirted with the instructor or years of Girl Scouts -- especially when you do not let the child go camping -- will change that.
So, yes, definitely, take her away from the summers at the lake too, except maybe an afternoon here or there. Yes, please.
Let’s take a look at her, shall we, playing upstairs with her Barbies for hours on end, enacting Tarzan-like scenarios and husband-stealing hussy-secretary notions (the husband always politely resisting). Another look shows her hitting a softball around the backyard by herself with her wooden blue baseball bat. Wherever it lands, she walks over, picks it up, and hits it again. Repeat.
Or, see her playing solitaire while watching The Price is Right, Maverick, The Twilight Zone, Star Blazers or Happy Days, or sitting on her bed reading Nancy Drew.
One summer I spent all my time with neighbor Amy Bos. That must’ve been twixt 5th and 6th grades. In 6th Ellen became my best friend, so I finally had an ally.
But in high school and college I spent a LOT of time out in the yard alone, reading, writing, getting tan. I didn’t know how to live my life differently, how to fix it. I was not capable. Peaceful nights here in Ithaca now will make me sigh wistfully for the nights I sat up into the wee hours, again reading and writing, plus watching Letterman, writing down the funniest lines inside the front and back covers of books I was reading, singing and dancing along to Axl in Sweet Child of Mine. And then I remember that the memories are … insubstantial. They’re memories of flights of fancy in my imagination, not of Times with People. No first loves. No first kisses. No sneaking out at night. No awkward fumblings with neighbor boys at 13. No Spin the Bottle. One school ended before we got there; the school that followed was already long past it.
You see? You see the Mark of Loki now? Can you doubt his existence or interference now? Riding roughshod over the connections of my life? My first real true kiss didn’t come till I was 18. EIGHT-EEN. I spent four years then in love with that boy, a boy I did not date, a boy I would have to apologize sincerely to if I ever crossed paths with him again.
Which I sure as hell hope I never do.
So I developed a deep communion and connection with the land of my home in OP. It is still my anchor, the place where I really feel peace and release. Like many people do at the ocean. (Which I always felt, too. Like I was a secret ocean demigoddess or something.) (This could explain the bathroom thing ...) I’m lucky to have it, I know. but what happens when my parents move? Since there are no people to whom those memories are tied? No one I can laugh with as we remember tricking Dad or punching a hole in the wall or the dents we put in the car. It’ll be a longing, a friend lost forever.
My Mother now regrets having made me an only child. She is so close to her own five sisters, and as they age that gets more and more important, I’d hazard to say. My Aunt Pat is still single, but she does have all of them. What will I have? In another 30 years will my cousins come back around and pull me back into their own nuclear folds again, the way we were in the early 1990s? I could get lucky and marry into a close, medium-sized or big family. But what if I don’t? What if I marry another only? What if this greatest fear of mine continues to come true and I am alone for the rest of my life?
What happens to me if I get cancer, like my Aunt Katie? And I have no sisters to hold my hand?
Where do I belong?
I returned to NYS because I felt its pull. Sometimes you have to leave a place to find out that you belong there. But I have never felt like I belonged in the very city I grew up in, not like That. Not like You Might. Whether it’s my parents’ overprotective fault or not, what do I do?
Where do I belong?
The lone exceptions would be a. our house and yard and pond and 2. Disney, which I’ll explain in another issue.
We moved here when I was 8. I swore an oath that I would buy the house left at 69 Candy Lane when I grew up. At about the same time, at least in my memory, I also sang about the houseboat I would have on Freeman Pond and the sleepovers that would ensue out on the water at the new home. Not realizing yet, not consciously, that my parents’ inclinations did not align with even the most timid child’s adventurous imagination/hopes.
What a mistake it was to make me an only child. (What a mistake in any instance.) Was I naturally painfully shy? Or did I sense my parents’ fears and cottony layers of mental, psychic, psychological, nonpermissive protection and react to all that?
My Mom’s big family had (still does) a cottage on Rushford Lake, which is ... maybe east of Olean. My cousins went there loads. Not me. My Mom had hated it there, and so I had to suffer in a new way. I cannot understand what good they thought they were doing me. I mean, I can, but how could they not have seen what they were stealing from me? How could they have thought I would end up a happy, well-adjusted, full-living person by playing at home by myself?
Granted, I didn’t spend that much time playing alone till we moved from 69 Candy Lane. Maybe they misunderstood what would be available to me friendwise on our new street. They definitely underestimated my shyness, whatever its cause. You can’t be a shy only child and live in a neighborhood where the more-spread-out kids all go to the public school while you go to the tiny private Catholic school and find a way to fit in. It does not happen. No amount of dance lessons or summer tennis lessons where other girls relentlessly flirted with the instructor or years of Girl Scouts -- especially when you do not let the child go camping -- will change that.
So, yes, definitely, take her away from the summers at the lake too, except maybe an afternoon here or there. Yes, please.
Let’s take a look at her, shall we, playing upstairs with her Barbies for hours on end, enacting Tarzan-like scenarios and husband-stealing hussy-secretary notions (the husband always politely resisting). Another look shows her hitting a softball around the backyard by herself with her wooden blue baseball bat. Wherever it lands, she walks over, picks it up, and hits it again. Repeat.
Or, see her playing solitaire while watching The Price is Right, Maverick, The Twilight Zone, Star Blazers or Happy Days, or sitting on her bed reading Nancy Drew.
One summer I spent all my time with neighbor Amy Bos. That must’ve been twixt 5th and 6th grades. In 6th Ellen became my best friend, so I finally had an ally.
But in high school and college I spent a LOT of time out in the yard alone, reading, writing, getting tan. I didn’t know how to live my life differently, how to fix it. I was not capable. Peaceful nights here in Ithaca now will make me sigh wistfully for the nights I sat up into the wee hours, again reading and writing, plus watching Letterman, writing down the funniest lines inside the front and back covers of books I was reading, singing and dancing along to Axl in Sweet Child of Mine. And then I remember that the memories are … insubstantial. They’re memories of flights of fancy in my imagination, not of Times with People. No first loves. No first kisses. No sneaking out at night. No awkward fumblings with neighbor boys at 13. No Spin the Bottle. One school ended before we got there; the school that followed was already long past it.
You see? You see the Mark of Loki now? Can you doubt his existence or interference now? Riding roughshod over the connections of my life? My first real true kiss didn’t come till I was 18. EIGHT-EEN. I spent four years then in love with that boy, a boy I did not date, a boy I would have to apologize sincerely to if I ever crossed paths with him again.
Which I sure as hell hope I never do.
So I developed a deep communion and connection with the land of my home in OP. It is still my anchor, the place where I really feel peace and release. Like many people do at the ocean. (Which I always felt, too. Like I was a secret ocean demigoddess or something.) (This could explain the bathroom thing ...) I’m lucky to have it, I know. but what happens when my parents move? Since there are no people to whom those memories are tied? No one I can laugh with as we remember tricking Dad or punching a hole in the wall or the dents we put in the car. It’ll be a longing, a friend lost forever.
My Mother now regrets having made me an only child. She is so close to her own five sisters, and as they age that gets more and more important, I’d hazard to say. My Aunt Pat is still single, but she does have all of them. What will I have? In another 30 years will my cousins come back around and pull me back into their own nuclear folds again, the way we were in the early 1990s? I could get lucky and marry into a close, medium-sized or big family. But what if I don’t? What if I marry another only? What if this greatest fear of mine continues to come true and I am alone for the rest of my life?
What happens to me if I get cancer, like my Aunt Katie? And I have no sisters to hold my hand?
Where do I belong?
I returned to NYS because I felt its pull. Sometimes you have to leave a place to find out that you belong there. But I have never felt like I belonged in the very city I grew up in, not like That. Not like You Might. Whether it’s my parents’ overprotective fault or not, what do I do?
Where do I belong?
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
We've got special boots that beat the path to my house
Crazy month this has been. I missed you so, did I ever.
First up was a smallish party I had (oh I guess I told you about this already. But I'm going to keep talking anyway). Took photos, but they came out crappy because it was afore I remembered the ISO setting on mon appareil de photo. You know how I get, so you know how consumed I was with the partay. (How I hate that word, and how I love to use it regardless.) Big-time thanks to Emily, Marshall and Julie for pre-party prep help; Jessica for filling the quichettes; and Melissa and Mary for their cleaning-doing. A certificate of achievement and adoration and happy long life to each of you.
Next up was Reunion weekend. You can see a bunch of photos I took here, along with those snapped by Adam and Matthew. I volunteered to take photos Friday. Friday was a very, very hot day. Florida hot. Badness hot. I don't know how people staying in the dorms did it. (Alumni have the option to stay in dorms, see.) Lots of showers? Brought their butlers? Poor butlers, all gussied up in their fancy butler suits. How they hate Reunion weekend.
(Mildly interesting: When I was fresh out of college, I worked at our local teensy, family-run newspaper, The Southtowns Citizen. I was an intern. This meant I did whatever needed doing, for free [except for delivering papers to mongers of different sorts, for which delivery day I got paid $20]. One of these whatevers was the Inquiring Photographer, which I HATED. I was so shy, I would've cut a toe off to avoid doing it. I put it off till the very last minute [Wednesday afternoon] every time, then headed over to the post office to wait in the vestibule, camera in hand, and ask people if they would answer a question for the paper. What a major release of adrenaline and endorphines and spleen juice and probably some grapefruit juice flooded through my body when it was done! But the next week it was just as ominous all over again.)
My point is that now I just walk up to people and ask if I can take their picture. They like me for some reason. Must be my trustworthy, heart-shaped face (I read that somewhere once). I seem to have become someone who is good at customer service. Tell that to the Citizen-days me, and she'll not believe you. She'll kick you in the shins and run away, sure that you have traveled from the future to be tricksey with her.
My Dad just told me a few weeks ago that The Citizen has folded. Alas.
Anyway, at Reunion that night, Friday night, I also volunteered at the Glee Club and Chorus concert. I really like volunteering at this stuff. No kidding. So that long, hot day laid me flat for the rest of the weekend. Probably heat exhaustion. No kidding. It was Wednesday or Thursday before I had a normal day again.
More to come soon, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
First up was a smallish party I had (oh I guess I told you about this already. But I'm going to keep talking anyway). Took photos, but they came out crappy because it was afore I remembered the ISO setting on mon appareil de photo. You know how I get, so you know how consumed I was with the partay. (How I hate that word, and how I love to use it regardless.) Big-time thanks to Emily, Marshall and Julie for pre-party prep help; Jessica for filling the quichettes; and Melissa and Mary for their cleaning-doing. A certificate of achievement and adoration and happy long life to each of you.
Next up was Reunion weekend. You can see a bunch of photos I took here, along with those snapped by Adam and Matthew. I volunteered to take photos Friday. Friday was a very, very hot day. Florida hot. Badness hot. I don't know how people staying in the dorms did it. (Alumni have the option to stay in dorms, see.) Lots of showers? Brought their butlers? Poor butlers, all gussied up in their fancy butler suits. How they hate Reunion weekend.
(Mildly interesting: When I was fresh out of college, I worked at our local teensy, family-run newspaper, The Southtowns Citizen. I was an intern. This meant I did whatever needed doing, for free [except for delivering papers to mongers of different sorts, for which delivery day I got paid $20]. One of these whatevers was the Inquiring Photographer, which I HATED. I was so shy, I would've cut a toe off to avoid doing it. I put it off till the very last minute [Wednesday afternoon] every time, then headed over to the post office to wait in the vestibule, camera in hand, and ask people if they would answer a question for the paper. What a major release of adrenaline and endorphines and spleen juice and probably some grapefruit juice flooded through my body when it was done! But the next week it was just as ominous all over again.)
My point is that now I just walk up to people and ask if I can take their picture. They like me for some reason. Must be my trustworthy, heart-shaped face (I read that somewhere once). I seem to have become someone who is good at customer service. Tell that to the Citizen-days me, and she'll not believe you. She'll kick you in the shins and run away, sure that you have traveled from the future to be tricksey with her.
My Dad just told me a few weeks ago that The Citizen has folded. Alas.
Anyway, at Reunion that night, Friday night, I also volunteered at the Glee Club and Chorus concert. I really like volunteering at this stuff. No kidding. So that long, hot day laid me flat for the rest of the weekend. Probably heat exhaustion. No kidding. It was Wednesday or Thursday before I had a normal day again.
More to come soon, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
CONGRATULATION!
CHARLES IN CHARGE
this is going to win me big money, people. BIG MONEY
More posts in the mental works. I need some kind of "I think, it types" software. Except for all the kinds of creepy that could be.
this is going to win me big money, people. BIG MONEY
More posts in the mental works. I need some kind of "I think, it types" software. Except for all the kinds of creepy that could be.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Further revelation of my goddesshead
I had these people over Saturday night. While I was cleaning the guest bathroom earlier in the day, I discovered that the toilet was leaking. I don't just mean random puddles, either; I saw water squirting down from the underside of the thing.
By the time my guests were flushing, there was nothing.
By the time my guests were flushing, there was nothing.
My toilet self-healed.
... Or did I do it?
Monday, June 2, 2008
Dear Jenny,
Tonight I was going to give you back the container you said you didn't need back. Then I remembered I had leftover Indian food (you remember), and decided I would take it home to eat before working out. As I was dumping it into your container, I decided I'd had enough calorie-laden food for the day and would have baked beans instead.
So maybe Wednesday.
Love,
Cree
So maybe Wednesday.
Love,
Cree
In the summer you'll really know
In other news, there was a gathering of current locals at my place of habitation on a recent evening past, and it was lovely, from where I sat. Which was mostly outside on the patio. I'd show you pictures, but with the lighting they didn't come out so hot.
I have much much much beer now. Be prepared to be invited for future further estival rendez-vous.
(Not that kind, you ninny.)
(Not you, anyway.)
I have much much much beer now. Be prepared to be invited for future further estival rendez-vous.
(Not that kind, you ninny.)
(Not you, anyway.)
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Blips
I just realized something yesterday. I know 7 single people who are around my age. Of these, 3 are only children; 2 have one sibling each; 1, his sisters are older enough that when he was growing up they were more like baby-sitters than siblings; and the other, she has 2 siblings, but I don't know what their childhood situation was like.
Isn't this a little odd? Is there something about this home-based solitude during our formative years that keeps us from connecting as easily as people from larger families? Some second nature we never developed? (Some of us, anyway; obviously not all.)
Two things struck me hard in the heart recently. And I don't mean this to be a sadness post, cos I'm not exactly sad. But at the Buttercup Mansion fete the other day, someone told Mary Bean's grandmother that Mary has her ears. I thought, ears? I've got no one's anything. Not offspring; not other family. Such things have been hitting me deeper lately, but for some reason that one really knocked me for a loop.
Here's the other one. My parents were in a minor car accident the other day. They're fine, thank God. Their car was t-boned in the back passenger seat. My cousin Marc went to pick them up and help them with a few things. I subsequently imagined a situation where I was thanking Marc for doing things like that and telling him how much they love spending time with his kids and stuff, how much it means to them. Especially since [here's where I choked up] it's likely to be as close to grandkids as they're ever going to get. The kind of thing you say a lot when you're in circumstances like mine without really meaning it, but let's be realistic. I'm 39 now. As I've said to some of you, if I'm ever going to have kids, I have to get started in like 10 minutes.
And it leads me back to the same old question: Will I ever get to be the most important person in someone's life? The person he says No to others for?
Sigh.
One good thing about this: I don't really dwell on it like I used to. I realized a year or so ago what a waste of time and energy that was, and things about myself that I am working on changing. But it is still there, and it does rise to the surface every so often. And every so often I just feel fundamentally unlovable.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled delight.
Isn't this a little odd? Is there something about this home-based solitude during our formative years that keeps us from connecting as easily as people from larger families? Some second nature we never developed? (Some of us, anyway; obviously not all.)
Two things struck me hard in the heart recently. And I don't mean this to be a sadness post, cos I'm not exactly sad. But at the Buttercup Mansion fete the other day, someone told Mary Bean's grandmother that Mary has her ears. I thought, ears? I've got no one's anything. Not offspring; not other family. Such things have been hitting me deeper lately, but for some reason that one really knocked me for a loop.
Here's the other one. My parents were in a minor car accident the other day. They're fine, thank God. Their car was t-boned in the back passenger seat. My cousin Marc went to pick them up and help them with a few things. I subsequently imagined a situation where I was thanking Marc for doing things like that and telling him how much they love spending time with his kids and stuff, how much it means to them. Especially since [here's where I choked up] it's likely to be as close to grandkids as they're ever going to get. The kind of thing you say a lot when you're in circumstances like mine without really meaning it, but let's be realistic. I'm 39 now. As I've said to some of you, if I'm ever going to have kids, I have to get started in like 10 minutes.
And it leads me back to the same old question: Will I ever get to be the most important person in someone's life? The person he says No to others for?
Sigh.
One good thing about this: I don't really dwell on it like I used to. I realized a year or so ago what a waste of time and energy that was, and things about myself that I am working on changing. But it is still there, and it does rise to the surface every so often. And every so often I just feel fundamentally unlovable.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled delight.
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