What I learned on Facebook this week

My friends are truly, madly, deeply nerdy. I knew this in a superficial way, but didn't see quite how nerdy they were until now.

Srsly. Nerds.

repetitive

i keep dating the same guy, over and over, and he is an emotional teenager. i've given up, quit cold turkey, but i keep being reminded of that guy. the guy with the bad habits, the dark hair, the jokes he tells over and over and over again, getting huffy if people don't think they're funny the thousandth time. the guy who reads a lot, isn't ambitious, in fact lacks anything resembling a career, he likes scifi and fantasy, he's liberal and non-religious but, alas, completely unaware of his male privilege. he, like me, has working class origins although a middle-class-ish childhood. have i mentioned his bad habits and his bad jokes? his narcissistic self-doubt? i don't know who he is but i dated versions of him for almost twenty years before i learned to spot him, and now i see him, my spidey-sense tingles and ah, yes, i say, here comes trouble. there's another one. that guy. i wish he'd grow up, give up his bad habits, because he and i, we'd get along like a house afire if only... if only he was a completely different person. one without bad habits and the emotional depth of a teaspoon. yeah. then he wouldn't be that guy any more.

summer's past: gladiola

What I will be doing this holiday weekend

Visiting as many of the Prospect.1 sites in New Orleans as I can manage.

More info here:

Prospect.1


And a review in the New Yorker here:

Peter Schjeldahl

migraine again today

Outdoor kitties plus painting in progress:



That would be Polished Silver, a Valspar color, color-matched in Benjamin Moore Aura paint, which is truly amazing and wonderful stuff, on the walls. It's low-VOC so it's not stinky, covers beautifully, and goes on like buttah. Seriously, painting with a nice creamy paint really does help. I'm in the process of painting the woodwork Cloud White, also in Aura.

The larger black cat (at right) is Nigel's littermate; the other three are Mama Kitty's younger litter. Mama Kitty kind of comes and goes, but she made sure to take off for a good long time when the babies were juuuuust young enough that I felt bad about not feeding them. Well, it was either feed them, or come home to a dead bird on the deck every day. So they line up in the window for breakfast.

fall window

random

Every time I check the email in my spam filter, I feel as though I am sexually harassing myself.

I woke up to a migraine today because I turned on the flourescent lights in my office yesterday.

disarray

since Gustav and the ceiling leak, the disarray has crept through-out the house, furniture moved out of the living room into study, dining room, then crept slowly back, a sofa, a tv, a recliner, a stepstool used as coffee table. baseboards and windows need painting, but i hate painting windows, blinds need replacing from kitten destruction. am i staying or moving? i lie in bed with lists, ever never ending lists running through my mind: paint molding, measure, buy, and hang blinds, clean wax off floor, move furniture, wonder where the mystery pisser has struck in the office, dishes to do, furniture to repair, rugs clean, hang curtains, sew buttons, dry cleaning, send transcripts, choose textbooks, shit I owe j. a phone call and need to call i. as well, check facebook, check forum, balance checkbook, repaint molding and clean windows, blinds in office, blinds in bedroom, all destroyed by cat claw chaos. mystery shitter leaving piles here and there, 2 or 3 days a week, is some feline or other ill or just angry at the disorder? i just want: i want to cook a meal, and sit at a table, with a placemat, and a napkin, and a glass of iced tea, and have a quiet meal. but the disarray is on the dining table too. and the last thing i want to do when i get home is change into painting clothes and have at a thousand little window cross-bars with the cutting-in brush, then do the dishes so i can wash the brush, then clean the catboxes - again, so i check email and myspace and facebook and apartment therapy (which, maude knows, i need desperately), and put out the trash and then lie in bed again at night thinking: tomorrow I will paint, and then the next day paint, and then move everything back into the living room, and the disorder will recede, and then i will be able to sleep at night.

disappointed

"promise not to tell anyone," i said, and he did. he promised. and then he told and what's worse, forgot to tell that the thing he was telling was a secret, and so it wasn't a secret any more. i don't want to lie to my friends but if they can't keep my confidence what then? are they not friends, or friends i lie to? neither suits me. neither pleases me. i'm disappointed by him, and not for the first time.

flew

to the middle of North Carolina on two small planes, fifty-seaters, the one to Memphis just fine but the one to Greensboro bumpy. turbulence is my kryptonite, adrenaline pumps open wide the nanosecond my stomach swoops in free fall. thankfully the klonopin shuts them back down after momentary panic, without it they stay wide open and i am virtually incapacitated the rest of the flight.

people in airports, they clutch their cell phones like lifelines: to email, voicemail, family, work, a ride home. nobody puts them away in pocket or bag, me included, I'm plugged into mine, listening to wilco's lament, sunglasses on, hiding in plain sight. half the riders open up their cells the minute we land and permission is given, all saying one thing: "we've landed, we're on the ground, see you soon."

yes we did

Loving these: Arthur Wesley Dow prints

I have got a giant case of WANT:




Arthur Wesley Dow
Snowy Peak, Los Angeles, about 1912
Color linocut
3 9/16 x 5 13/16 in. [462-1]

This is one of a whole series of fantastic little woodcuts and linocuts in a current Hirschl and Adler exhibition. Inspired by Japanese Edo period woodblock prints, but simplified, at a smaller scale, more intimate. More hand-made feeling, you know? Also, I love that this is Los Angeles. I mean, really: L.A.? Used to look like that? Who knew? It wasn't even all that terribly long ago. And the shrubberies, they kind of look like centipedes, so I get this kind of visual bounce back & forth from alien-looking wormy things meandering across the landscape to these homely little chubby shrubberies.

Go, look at all of them:


Along Ipswich River: Color-prints by Arthur Wesley Dow

Go.

Vote.

For information on where to vote:

http://www.voteforchange.com/

Also:

If you or anyone you know has questions or trouble with voting, call the hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

It's a nonpartisan group of trained volunteers with access to information about voting (including the laws) in all 50 states. They are there to help people get access to the polls and to document and counteract voter suppression. They can tell you things like when the polls are open, what kind of ID you need (if any), what to do if you recently moved, etc. They can also usually check your voter registration and tell you your assigned precinct number and location.