Sunday, January 30, 2011

Oh, when having a hair day like today, just put on a hat before you go out. So you don't scare the horses.
I have the whole day, THE WHOLE DAY, to lounge in my bathrobe, the green long one, on the couch or in bed and drink tea out of real bone china and read the NYT, except for the sports pages and the finance section and the travel section. I don't read the travel section because I always want to go everywhere they write about, like Tuscany and Aruba and Borneo.

But.

I might go to Thailand or Burma this year. I can do health care there and visit/be in monasteries. Specifically Buddhist monasteries. I haven't been in a Buddhist-dominant culture before. I bet the people are the same. But with incense and bells.


Saturday, January 29, 2011

I just started Season II of In Treatment on HBO. The first season was so good, I would watch immediately when I got home from work. I wouldn't even take off my coat. I'd sit on the edge of the couch, chewing my nails and watch. Gabriel Byrne is brilliant, so's the the dialog and it's sick because I'm in therapy and I'm watching a show involving actors playing therapy clients and the effing sexy Gabriel is their therapist. If he were my therapist, I'd never miss a session. Even though he's a guy. He's got that cute accent and earnest lovely eyes.

My real therapist is a woman with curvy hair. She doesn't let let me get away with anything. I don't think she's the slightest bit sexy, probably an important thing. I wonder if she could fake an Irish accent. It might help me.

Nah.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Tonight I went into the dark garden and picked collards. I sauteed 'em in olive oil and hot sauce and salt. I have no need of anything more. Except for a brisk walk in the dreadful wet night. No one will bother me because I am fueled by cruciferous vegetables that survive the winter.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Today I'm taking my house apart. Old paint cans, half-used fluids and solids, a major pile of old 5K, 10K bibs (why do I have these?), random empty boxes, all the detritus that has a way of accumulating when you're looking the other way. My mother would be so proud. She threw out everything and I mean everything.

I'm gonna make a pile in the garage in anticipation of a U-haul trip to the dump (the dump!) in the near future.

I went to an open mike recently. Gawd. How could I have forgotten what they're like? I could say some very unkind things here but I am metaphorically biting my tongue. And my friend Maryann taught me to be polite and not walk out because I would want the same consideration when my turn came. Yeah, but sheesh.

I once read at Red Sky, a Paul Hunter thang on Capitol Hill, now defunct and a guy came in with a rolled up notebook. He sat at the piano and attempted to keep the notebook from falling on the floor so he could YELL and POUND on the keys in no apparent order, rhythm, etc. It was excruciating. Paul tactfully asked that he finish and no, we didn't want to hear any more. I miss that reading. There was some talent here and occasionally Paul would sing and play a harmonica.

Yes, I'm still in love, in case you were wondering. It's tiresome to have to go to work and live in different houses. I think we should work about 5 hours a week and play the rest of the time. Then I could get everything done, like writing more and painting and playing outside in the mysterious Northwest. Mysterious you say? Ha!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

I'm gonna go biking in the freezing weather. It might be good for me. I'm not sure. I do know that I went dancing last night and it was wonderful. I was dripping with sweat, I'm sure I've shortened my life as a hearing person and I drank one alcoholic beverage. One. Honest. Well, I had some sips from a friend's drink. Over three hours.

But. I jumped around like I was a young person and waved my arms in the air and the girl on the platform wiggling and wearing VERY FEW CLOTHES came and danced with me a bit. And there were people grabbing each other and smooching in corners ((((sigh))) and it reminded me of the good old days when we went out every weekend and had (well drugs and alcohol may have been involved) a party. I behaved in an unseemly fashion. Then. Now I'm pretty tame. Dancing to loud music is fantastic and I'm gonna go again.

As long as my knees hold out. Oh, and my low back. And I promise I won't go home on the back of someone's motorcycle, no matter how much I want to. Unless it belongs to my sweetie. (And I will never do drugs in the bathroom again) So not Buddhist. Besides, you feel like doo-doo the next day. Horrid doo-doo.


Friday, January 21, 2011

Cauliflower mashed poatoes

Steam a head of cauliflower. Mash in a blender with (fake) butter, salt and pepper. Voila! Mashed potatoes which are really a cruciferous vegetable so you can EAT THE WHOLE BOWL. No guilt! And sometimes you can even fool your friends because they don't know they are eating a vegetable and not potatoes. I know, potatoes are vegetables too but not in the same category.

I think I'm allergic to my cats. I sneeze and cough and blow my nose whenever I'm home. Either that or I have the dread mold. Maybe the cats have mold...

My mother always told me I am too sensitive. Whatever the hell does that mean?

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

I'm so relieved that I can still be a Pisces after all the kerfluffle about the zodiac adding a 13th planet named Okechobee or some such. And don't you dare take away my Leo rising even though pride goeth before a fall, as my mother would say. Without my Leo thang I'd be a pile of Piscean mush all wishy-washy and stoopid in the head. As of this moment, because I saw a rainbow ring around the moon, I have dedicated myself to unseen forces behind potholes and candy corn, which is not candy or corn.

Tonight while driving home after my writer's group, I contemplated the meaning of life and I have rediscovered that there is no meaning really, an argument I had some years ago with an ex-lover. I stand by it. Life=no meaning, not in the usual sense. Josh has a 10 month old baby and he says that life is bliss and effing crazy, all at once. Exactly. Babies make you insane with their incessant demands and their total control of the situation. They scramble your few remaining brains. Muttering and stuttering ensues. And we all started out the same way. A baby, drooling and pooping. Gawd. That's why babies are cute and look like us. So we don't put them in a basket on the steps of the municipal building down town. With a note.

I don't know why I'm writing this. Probably I'm avoiding talking about upsetting current events. Don't get me started about the polar bears. I'm going to listen to the Fleetwoods sing 'Mr Blue' and drift off to sleep.

Goodnight dear indigo. You know who you are.


Monday, January 17, 2011

I want you all to know. Sometimes I rite real good.
I know what I said about skiing. I don't take it back but in the Northwest it rains. A lot. So this weekend, with friends, we went to Rainier, my home mountain to ski/snowshoe/play and sing. And it rained.

A sad day while snowshoeing in a spot called "Paradise" because it is, to be rained on. Sodden women in the car back and hissing of drying clothes steaming up the windows and so forth.

I bought a blackberry pie at the famous blackberry pie restaurant. Ruby licked the plate so we all did. It helped the rain situation.

Homemade blackberry pie is surely one of the seven wonders.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011


This is where I was. I love to ski. I love everything about it, the quiet, the white, the shushing sound of my skis on the snow, the cold on my face, the taste of a peanut butter sandwich in my mitten, the ache in my muscles after I'm done. Because I wasn't an athletic kid, the discovery that I could ski into the woods by myself and fall down a dozen times and get up and continue, that it didn't matter that I wasn't any good but I was good enough and I could stay warm and bright on the coldest days in the Northeast was a benediction, a kind of blessing. I've been on Rainier by myself when I had no business being alone, I've skied down pretty big hills without falling down and no one to witness, I've been standing in the forest catching snow on my upturned face.

Maybe I'll never be too old to ski. Just strap skis on my shoes, stand me up in the snow where it's perfectly flat and give me a little push. The joy pierces my heart.

Sunday, January 09, 2011

I am teaching again, o lord, and I want to go into the classroom and insist that we play loud music, maybe Nirvana or Jimi Hendryxx and howl. Because the class is called 'Grief and Loss' and I don't want to talk about it anymore, I just don't. Because my personality is sucked into automatic grief and loss whenever I read a paper or watch the news or go outside and, lo, the sky is still gray (duh, the Northwest, I know, I know). I cry easily, the weepy overflow just waiting, always there to pounce.

What was I saying. Oh yeah. Tomorrow I'm going back to the snow by myself. It will be fine, I'm not going on any hilly trails where I might fall and break all my bones and lie there until the wolves find me. It's flat and pretty and long and groomed. So. I'll take snacks and hot tea and I'll drive carefully. I promise.

I just saw Johnny Depp in Alice in Wonderland, a real mess of a movie but he is so beautiful. ***sigh***

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Kittens and puppies. Baby animals of all kinds. Unicorns. Rainbows. Dewy morning. La-de-da.

Without a lot of vitamin D, I deteriorate into hell and madness. So as you see, my vitamin levels are okey dokey.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

I'm going to the dump today. It is the most glorious place. It truly is the maw of hell. There is a smasher truck on top of the garbage with a cage over the windows and it rolls back and forth smashing and crushing. (((shiver))) And you stand on the precipice throwing all manner of detritus in so the masher can run over it.

I once was going through a break-up and I went to the dump with several gallon glass jars. I hurled each one down where it made the most satisfying crashing explosive sound. Ah. I could have done this in my kitchen but this way, no mess to clean up.

Besides, in winter, the dump doesn't smell so, well, like a dump.

Sunday, January 02, 2011

I went skiing today in the beautiful sunny blue and diamond-y snow and many children sledding and the enormously fit stake skiing individuals. Holly decided to let me make decisions, o lord, and we skied about 94 miles. going in one direction was fine, cold and bright. Then there was the issue of coming back. We, rather I, miscalculated a bit about the distance. Coming back was fine until it wasn't. Then we were trudging, then creeping, then crawling with much silent screaming of various muscles, some of which I didn't know I had. For instance, there are muscles in the back of your neck that somehow have something to do with skiing, poling, I don't know what. Also there are these little muscles in the inner thigh which begin to twitch and slither amid howling and weeping.

When we returned to the car, I could barely walk. I made hopping steps to the bathroom after leaving my car keys on the roof of the car. Of course, we looked for the keys for twenty minutes in the cold and so forth. Then I gracefully concussed myself on the hatchback lid that was still up.

Somehow we made it back to the city. A large amount of ibuprofen and a bath have helped some. Actually, I passed out in the tub. I fear I will be crippled tomorrow. I can hardly wait.

This is the consequence of exercise.