SWINTON!

I wrote a little something over at PPP about a delicious indie I saw way back in 2006. I think you'd enjoy it. The movie, that is.

Little Help, Please

I know that there's a lot going on, a lot of scary stuff, all over the place and even our thoughts and prayers are beginning to be spread a little thin. If you could, though, spare a good thought for my friend, Teddy. He's exactly Em's age with a little more arthritis trouble than she has but in generally good health. Until last night. He's probably got a gastric ailment that's treatable with rest and antibiotics and a few other things but there's a slim possibility that it's something more serious, possibly aided and abetted by the meds that help his arthritis. I saw him tonight and he's well, doesn't look worrisome at all. Just a few minutes ago, though, I saw a sick, arthritic dog on TV and had myself a little come apart over the Tedster. I took that as a sign that it would be a good idea to ask for a little assistance. If you've got a quick thought to spare for the boy, it turns out I'm really not ready to do without him.

10 Points of Clarification

This is Jason Dohring in the middle of a difficult conversation with KBell while they are playing Logan Echolls and Veronica Mars respectively.
This is Katherine Moennig.
This is Katherine Moennig wearing some stupid-hot glasses playing Shane on The L Word.
This is Jason Dohring being the pleasant, adorable, non-evil person he is everywhere but on screen. (Or so I'm told by the internet.)
This is Jason Dohring being evil on screen.
Whoopsie, evil again, this time on the short-lived Moonlight (now available on DVD and Blu Ray [but why would you want to buy, you can get all the hot JD moments online for free]).
Shane. (Sigh.)
Logan Echolls, about to commit vandalism on a poor, defenseless Le Baron.
KM, possibly thinking about surfing. Or me. Hi Kate!
And last but not least KM with her hilarious rescued pooch. I'm hard pressed to say who draws the eye more in this photo. They look glorious together.
Does that help clear things up a little?

I Needed A Little Distraction

And I always find Shane pleasantly distracting. (Love this shirt. Feel it should be the barometer for my life.)
Then I found out that a delightful young man is celebrating his birthday today.
Can't just let that slide.
Oh yes, I'm feeling quite distracted now.
Indeed, can't concentrate, must go now.
Happy Birt........

Opportunity Knocked But I Was On The Can

So, I missed the deadline. Well, am in the process of missing it but am past the point of no return. I have many feelings about it, few of them good. Why don't you read my artist statement while I go off and stew in a corner. Someone should read it.

Aaaaaaaaand true to the form of this project I clicked over to try and open the doc with the statement in it and it won't open. Let's see if it works in the other place I think it might be saved.

Well, what do you know, the entire process isn't cursed after all.

1. ARTISTIC STATEMENT (UP TO ONE PAGE)
Please tell us who you are as an artist and articulate why you chose to apply for this space grant at this time

I have written fiction nearly all my life, generally preferring prose and ultimately finding my stride in dialogue. Trained as a mime in childhood I have a love for nonverbal storytelling as well. I spent my undergraduate years learning about narrative dance and experimental theater. I studied with Marleen Pennison while attending the Playwrights Horizons Theater School and went on to dance with her company. My original narrative dances were performed around New York City at the American Living Room and Pace University among other venues. Soon after graduation my delight in words reasserted itself and I went to London to work on the classics for a year. I attended the London Academy of Performing Arts as an acting student performing in various styles from Greek tragedy to contemporary musical theater.

Back in the states I struggled to meld these disparate courses of study in my own work. I continued to create physical work, incorporating found text and small chunks of my own writing. Eventually I returned to traditional playwriting. I’ve discovered that playwriting is the medium in which I find satisfaction, completion and success. At first I adapted the words of other writers like Shakespeare and Chekhov into historical biographical portraits then moved on to adapting fiction and am currently leaving the support of other people’s words behind so mine can stand alone.

I also come from a musical background. My parents were music educators and my predominant performing experience up through my teen years was musical My first experiences of theater were musicals and I loved the classics, like West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Music Man, before I knew they could be seen on stage or screen.

As an adult a support job has been necessary to fund my everyday life and my creative work. By a number of strokes of fortune I have been working in the financial industry for almost a decade. I have known since I accepted my first office job that I need to use the inspiration of my support job in my career. Working in an office alongside a lyricist brought up the possibility of expanding my body of work to include writing the book of a musical. Actor and lyricist Audio Girl and I have found that we work well together in both an office and a creative setting, supporting each other’s endeavors, sharing ideas and honing performances. Her partnership surprised me into realizing that I’ve been working my whole life, in one way and another, toward creating a musical. I just didn’t know it was within my grasp but now I do.

Six months ago Audio Girl and I began talking about this project in concrete terms. It turned quickly from an offhand remark on a difficult day, “That’s totally going in the musical.” to specific scenes, songs and arcs. We began to take notes, made an outline and made big promises to each other. We have, in these challenging economic times, been unable to afford rehearsal space in order to get together regularly outside of the office and do the essential work of this piece, from brain storming to plot outlines to writing scenes and lyrics for that plot. In the meantime the financial industry, from which we take our inspiration, is providing more fodder than two active, creative brains can hold. I feel strongly that the story we have to tell needs to be told now and cannot wait for our own finances to recover so I decided to apply for a BAX space grant to speed us toward completion.

Steam Engine

That's not your tea kettle, that's my brain boiling over.

As you may have heard, I misread the instructions for the grant application and my work sample is incorrectly formatted. I have worked on trying to get it formatted correctly but, save one outstanding phone call, I'm not going to be able to get it right in time to get it turned in for the deadline.

Now, I don't think that this particular project is right for this particular grant but you never know, right? It's not for me to decide, it's for the committee to decide. Not to mention how much work I've put in (and Audio Girl too, the actual smart stuff with the adult sized words is all her in this thing) this week to prep the application. So to not apply at all feels like such a huge waste and so disappointing to boot. (My head knows that the work we've put in won't go to waste and this booted us into gear but my head is not so much in charge right now.)

On the other hand, for real, I didn't read the application correctly and I didn't start to work on it until a week before deadline. There are reasons for that, most of them rooted in fear and the economy and general feelings of inadequacy but a fair enough dose of plain, old, garden variety sloth. I know that, from the outside, I'm the student everyone is complaining about. I didn't discover this problem until probably half an hour after the person who could help me left for the weekend on the last business day before the aforementioned deadline.

Sending the incorrectly formatted sample is always a possibility but as far as I'm concerned it puts me in that second category of shitty student.

Tonight my teeth are a bit grindy and my head is a bit steamy and, well it's not relevant, but my hair is kind of greasy.

Just in case you were wondering.

Decisions Decisions

So I was going to post the artist statement from my grant application because I think I might not be as bad as I once thought at such things even though I don't think we're right for the grant and, therefore, don't think we'll get it. I wanted to share the writing with someone who might care. Starting to write the post, though, I put in a line about how this might be a very bad idea, every time I started. So, you know, who am I to pass up advice from a reliable source, it might be a very bad idea, at least before I turn it in to the grant folk. So I didn't.

Then I spent like an hour and a half stalking someone on Flickr. It was like poking the painful space where you recently had a tooth and yet I could not quit. I only stopped because I broke Flickr. I must have shorted it out, all of a sudden my browser couldn't find it no matter which link I clicked but just Flickr links. I am all powerful, I busted Flickr.

I could write about my misgivings about both sides of the fight for modesty in childrens' clothing but that's a post for another day, a day when I have time to blather in writing for a very long time and think and edit and whatnot. I used up all the editing muscles on my grant application.

Did I mention that I misread said application and it turns out that my work sample isn't formatted correctly and I don't know if I'm going to be able to fix it because I don't know how to make/format/magic up DVDs? Huh. I should have mentioned that, that's important.

I could write about the 16 different kinds of bad financial news I keep hearing about people. Does anyone else feel like the bad financial things are a net or a web and someone is slowly cinching up the drawstring so it's getting closer and closer to you all the time? No? Just me? I'm actually quite surprised. Can you tell that is just the imagery that's making me a bit manic these days? Yeah, I thought so. What can I say? I wear my anxiety on my sleeve.

So I guess I just stopped in to tell you that I don't know what to write about today. That's all. Hope you're having a pleasant Friday and that all your laundry is clean.

Whahuh?

On the back of the envelope for a fancy invitation in the work mail today. It says, "Beats + Hards 3/21/09."

Speculation is, as always, welcome.

I Like Your Attitude

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Things I Might Or Not

Things I might Twitter if indeed I Twittered. Or tweeted. Or however you massage that into a verb.

"Need to get taxes done. Go to regular tax lady ($300+) or try H&R Block?"

"NYC's MTA renaming selves Voldemort, Inc." (Apparently I expect all my imagined Twitter followers to be lit geeks. I also expect them to be up on the latest mass transit shit going down [or up! fares going up up UP!] in my fair city.)

"Am trying to call snack of cucumbers and mouthful of pasta satisfying. Am not succeeding." (No room in Twitter for pronouns!)

"Poll: How many of you have a rubber band ball in your homes? How have I missed out on this craze?"

"What are you doing here, you should be following @shutupim6!" (That's no joke, you really should be following his brand new blog and his twitter.)

"Why do tongues always "duel" in smutty fanfic?" (Apparently I'm very questiony in FakeTwitter [Fwitter?]. I crave feedback and am trying to trick people into giving it I guess.)

I wouldn't Twitter this question, though. Do you Twitter? Do you love it?

Linkety Linky Loo

I feel the need to continue through my starred file sharing things. My brain is on spin cycle. I've been working on an application for a grant and the questions are really deep and difficult. The answering of them is making my heart go pitty-pat-pitty-what-the-fucking-fuck! As a result? Links. Links are soothing.

1. Orange County, CA works again to prove that California isn't all as crunchy, granola, liberal as you think it is.

2. I wanted to write a post about this Feministing article that poses the question, "Does blogging change minds?" but I cannot formulate questions much less craft answers so I think it's better to let you do the reading and maybe we can talk about our answers here. Do you think blogging can change minds? I have insufficient anecdotal evidence to support my pessimistic claims.

3. Clemo says, "I have a hope. It's wrestling with despair." Amen, brother. In this case he's talking politics but it could apply elsewhere. He also coins the term, KarlRovian. Please to click on that link to see the definition.

4. Back when I took my first women's studies course the quickest growing group of people infected with HIV/AIDS was women in the 18-24 year old demographic. Recent information indicates that not much has changed. Kids, we're fucking failing at this public health thing but in no place more garishly than in the sexual health of our young women. Of course, if these women can't be trusted to gain knowledge and make decisions for themselves then they're disposable anyway and I guess it doesn't matter if we keep them alive.

5. Here's a Dear Old Love classic.

6. You don't hear enough good pit bull stories so you better go read this one and store it up for replay as needed. It just goes to prove that these controversial dogs are, as advertised, intensely loyal & loving to their humans and much more intelligent than we tend to give them credit for.

7. Probably Staten Island gets more ribbing than it deserves. However when members of the borough's government combine the unapologetic racism of centuries past with the technology of today I feel like it deserves all the stereotyping we can muster.

8. Hey, if you want to come visit New York and you want to stay in a hotel there are price cuts happening all over. Combine that with the special deals on restaurants happening right now (and rumored to be continuing indefinitely) and you could have a fairly glamorous sojourn for fewer sheckles than you might think.

9. Does anyone know if there's an RSS Feed for the entire Women's Colony instead of doing the individual feeds for each section? I've been out of the loop, not wanting to add 4 feeds to my daily gluttony, but I miss Mrs. G.

10. I moved to New York well past the Swinging Seventies. Heck it was so far into the 80s that the bath houses had already closed. So the fact that there's a sex club in Brooklyn is really intriguing to me. Do I have the guts to check it out in person? Only time will tell.

Links Like Sausage

1. This is one in the long list of New Yorkers I love and about how I love that people are creative when trying to be kind. There's a local drycleaner offering free drycleaning to anyone unemployed and prepping for a job interview. Yes, he knows some people might scam him, he's got a good philosophy about that.

2. Feministing brings out yet another reason to love Neil Gaiman. Like I needed another reason.

3. I've been thinking a lot about the state of education in America. I'm always thinking about it. Aaryn Belfer is in California so she's getting a front row seat to the first act of the Depression and she's writing about education. Also drugs. She might be on to something.

4. If you don't know how I feel about being Pro Choice then you must be new here. (Hi! Welcome! Please comment.) Feministing recently highlighted an article by a woman who has both had an abortion and offered a child for adoption. What she has to say about the ramifications of each choice may surprise you. Then again it may not but I still think you'll be glad you read about it.

5. A bill, the REAL Act, has recently been introduced to Congress. It promotes Federally funded, comprehensive, medically accurate sex education. I think it's pretty neat. Not to fall back on jokes that are done to death but abstinence doesn't work, just as the Palins.

6. I know that Whole Foods is expensive and trendy but I like their food and up until last week really liked them. Apparently some guy got fired for setting aside a sandwich for his dinner. This was a sandwich that otherwise would have gone to a landfill. The article addresses his firing. I'd like to address the fact that a nationwide corporation that claims to be more green, more environmentally and socially conscious than any of their counterparts is throwing edibles in a landfill rather than participating in programs like City Harvest. Apparently Whole Foods is nationwide in the revered Republic of Dumbass.

7. The Queens Museum of Art wants to update its scale model of NYC and one can adopt one's dwelling! I think this is ridiculous and I totally want to adopt my apartment.

8. For all my Oklahoma folks, do you know what's going on in your fine state over a school production of The Laramie Project? Not so good.

9. I don't know how I feel about states and cities who fight prostitution by publishing the names and faces of johns. Is our justice system so perfect that we can afford to do something so irretrievable? Given the sort of ostracism these guys will fight after exposure it has all the same problems as the death penalty just without the same drugs.

10. Organized religion often gives me the heebie jeebies but even I can understand the desire for the sense of community many churches offer. I am all about community, even when I'm not all about people. So this story about some local nuns made me cry and made me want to kick the Catholic Church in the nuts.

Hair I Am

I just popped down to street level to mail some things before the 3pm pick up. On the way back up I was joined in the elevator by a young East Asian woman with great hair in a classic style.

As the doors closed she leaned her head to her left and finger combed all that hair to one side. She proceeded to comb and comb and comb her tresses with her Palmolive-worthy digits for the rest of the ride. The action isn't so weird. It's definitely something I'd do, sort of a comfort gesture, or a boredom one, if I were alone. Even if I was in a movie or something I can see the repetitive motion being really pleasantly soothing. In an elevator and not alone it struck me as a little odd.

In the mean time she has hair I can't even conjur for myself in my dreams, it's that unrealistic for me and my cowlick-fest. I couldn't stop watching her (totally fine since she was bent away from me, absorbed in her task) and finding myself both wildly jealous and a little aroused.

What's the weirdest thing you've seen today?

On a Scale of Nothing to Something

You know how sometimes someone is just so busy they can't possibly blog about it?

That isn't happening to me.

It's true, I've seen a movie, watched some TV, gone to work, lost some weight, walked the dog, read a book, planned to apply to some stuff but, for real, I just don't have any gumption to talk about any of it. It felt oddly good not to write a post this weekend, right up to the point where I remembered something. I remembered that a couple of months ago I looked at the sitemeter on one of my regular reads. It's a blog that I think is great, it's around the same age as mine and I expected to see around the same stats for it as for mine. That space is doing almost 4 times the traffic that I am. This is not something that should matter, I know, but it's put the phrase "What am I doing wrong?" in my head and I can't seem to shake it loose. True to form when I feel I'm doing something wrong (which I'm not since there's no such thing in this case, but we're going to roll with the feeling words) I tend to stop doing anything at all.

I should become a motivational speaker. My first book will be called "Just Stop Doing Stuff!" It will fly off the shelves.

So, bottom line, my brain has hijacked my mojo. It happens. I'll get over it. I'm hosting a game night at my house next weekend with a group of people I hardly even know. Things like that will shake the mojo free.

Is It Really So Simple?

I know I've heard it before but I didn't really listen to Simple as sung by k.d. lang until this week. It's caught me as one of those songs that I don't have running on a loop in my head but I want it to be so I play it over and over and over. It's got me thinking of Auntie. These lyrics in particular:

"I worship this tenacity
And the beautiful struggle were in
Love will not elude us"

Later, though, I claim these for myself:

"I am calm in oblivion
Calm, as I ever have been"

Now if I could just teach myself the "love is simple" part, I think I'd be in better shape.

Welcome Mat

So, happy spring y'all!

How come it's snowing?

Cinderella!

Senior Prom 1987. That's all I need to say, right?

I loved the dress when I bought it but was so ratcheted up in the week between buying it and the event that I had lost a lot of weight. So much weight that when I put it on it stood up by itself, about 3 inches shorter than it needed to be to avoid epic "wardrobe malfunction." As that guy rang the doorbell my mother had her arm down the back of my dress and was sewing me into it. Thank goodness my mother had a solution.

The guy*, you ask? Oh he was just the big brother of the guy I was totally in love with. He'd graduated from my school 3 years before, was in a ROTC program so his outfit was free and actually asked me to my own prom. Was he thoroughly in love with me? Oh heavens no. By being my date he could come to the all night after party on the boat. The girl he was in love with was also wrangling an invitation to that party so they could spend the night together. Which I agreed to why exactly? I do not know.

I don't remember having this picture taken. It turned up in an album on Facebook today and I thought you guys would get a charge out of it. When I showed it to Audio Girl she said, "Aw, you look pretty. It's not like you have (makes claw hand gesture on forehead), you know, hair, right?"

*Some of you may know his real name. Let's keep that out of the comments, please, don't want to be googleable.

This Dog Will Hunt

There was some question recently about a loss of hearing in my beloved pooch. Not a bad guess at all given her age. Big ears like that, they should last longer than average, shouldn't they?

The other night as I was gathering my things for bed Emily climbed up her ramp (yes, she has a ramp so she can get into the bed, I know she's spoiled, this is not news) and settled herself on the bed. She was arranged quite prettily, curled into a comma with her head upright and face precisely away from me. Oh yeah, and she was doing all that just below my pillow, right in the one tiny spot where I am (usually) allowed by my animals to sleep. Most times I'd get into the bed and shove her over with my body but I decided to use the opportunity to test the deafness theory. She was facing fully away from me and not paying attention, it was the perfect opportunity. I snapped my fingers once. This is our universal signal for sit down/shut up/get down/get up/stop doing whatever whackadoo thing you are doing that is making my brain ooze from pores.

Not only did she hear me she didn't wait for a follow up command she just got up and moved out of my space.

So not deaf just spoiled and perhaps a really heavy sleeper.

Divine Intervention

I know I complain a lot but seriously, you guys, there's usually someone looking out for me.

Last month while I was in NH poor Kath and Alex had a cage match with my door lock. Between the two of them they must have spent at least an hour wrangling that thing into submission. Now, it's needed a little bit of regular maintenance for a few years but it's never more than a few minutes. I told them my tricks and when I came home it worked fine.

Tonight was also a kind of canine divine providence situation. On my way home I stopped to buy pet food and who should walk in and goose me with his cold, wet nose but Bobby! He brought Kath with him so we headed home together with our loot to get Em. Inside, quick Girl Scout Cookie fix (you should totally get Kath to do a video demo of the "cookie straw" thing!), grab the leash and head out. Of course, wait until you're outside the building to realize that Kath doesn't have her loot with her. So I sent her up to get it and I kept the dogs and she couldn't get in! I went and tried and man, this was nothing like what has ever happened to me with that lock. It was a whole other ball park of lock fucked upness. I didn't mess with it because it was clear from the outset that no good was going to come of it.

Long walk with Kath and then with our friend N for our weight loss meeting and then came back and called the on call maintenance dude to help. He fiddled and faddled and fiddle faddled and I cajoled and convinced before I finally realized that he was trying to limp the old crappy lock along because he knew that I'd have to pay if he replaced the cylinder and he didn't want me to have to do that. Well, man, if I'd known that I would have told him to go get the freaking cylinder already! He went, he searched, there was high searching, there was low searching and he found the one last appropriate cylinder available. His supervisor, when called for the price, told him to tell me to use the top lock and they'd take care of it tomorrow. This guy, though, he didn't want to walk all the way back just to tell me that so he brought the cylinder.

Doesn't seem special enough for you? How about if I tell you that I don't have a top lock?

He didn't know it at the time, either. Amid stories of his first dog from his childhood on a small island he replaced the cylinder and gave me my reciept ($28 to be billed by the management company later) and I gave him a twenty for being so cool. And off he went.

A few minutes later he returned and made me come outside and test the lock with the key, because he wanted to be sure. Very sure.

Seriously, I know this is boring everyday shit but I feel kind of like the luckiest girl in the world and I'm telling you I've never had a lock that works so smoothly. Seems worth every penny of $48. Then again I've never bought a lock before so I have no idea what the going rate is.

I Can't Stop Watching

I love the movies and tonight's fare was another one worth sharing over at Please Pass the Popcorn.

Note to Self:

Eating garlic roasted broccoli with garlic chicken and a side of carrots and onions is a way to repel vampires not drunken St. Paddy's Day revelers.

Come here, baby, let mama give you a little kiss.

10 Things St. Padraig's Day

1. Altered flora given to me by an Irish co-worker to dress up the joint for this week.

2. The big parade happens mere blocks from my office.

3. I am armed with my camera for photo ops on the periphery.

4. I plan to stay as far away from the actual parade as possible. That shit is for the birds. (And people who like parades, which I do but not crowds so...)

5. One way to enjoy a parade but avoid a crowd is to be in the parade. I marched in the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade once. It rained. A lot.

6. The title of this post is for everyone who is so royally worked up about St. PaTTy being wrong and St. PaDDy being right. If we were actually honoring St. Padraig and not St. Guinness and St. Flatulence we would be in church, not having a parade. Might be time to get over the spelling errors.

7. I fervently hope to avoid all contact with puke, puking and the people who puke.

8. I am so out of touch with this holiday that on Sunday when my mother said, "We bought cabbage for Tuesday!" I said, "What's happening on Tuesday?" Whoops.

9. My mom's dad's birthday was St. Patrick's day. His parents both came to America on boats from the homeland. Scotland, of course, being their homeland.

10. I'm wearing no green at all. Not a speck. Perhaps I should go out and buy some green undies...or socks, probably socks would be more appropriate.

I'm Just Over There, No, THERE.

I'm tainting a perfectly good movie discussion site with my small screen ramblings again. Wanna go see what I'm saying?

Little Girl Little Girl

My life does not generally include a girl scout. Some years, though, one crosses my path and I make her a high seller. So thank you Facebook, thank you innovative mother, thank you little girl scout for making my thin mint dreams come true.

Dreamscapes

I took a huge, long nap this afternoon. I've been having weird dreams all week but I remember this one better than most. (Not so much for the squeamish.) I dreamt that, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, I required first aid and was having to staple myself back together. I went to a family member for help and was rewarded with swift and stupid-wrong treatment of a staple across my eyeball. What was this person thinking? When I stapled my eyelid I did it around the eyeball so I could still open my eye! (Dear Brain, What the fuck? Love, Kizz) So, I huffed off, had dinner and then asked another family member to help. I look down and I'm having a mad scientist sort of situation with a gash as long as my shin being taped back together quite firmly. Soon after that I woke up. I could explain away the eyeball thing pretty easily, even the dinner thing (welcome to my second full week of a return to the weight loss lifestyle) but what does it mean when your shin is sliced open like a chicken breast?

I do not know.

Preparation and Perspiration

I'm not sure how soon it happens after I leave the house but at some point Emily curls up against the front door and waits for me to come home. Most of the time she pops up before I get the lock unclicked and starts wagging and wiggling to greet me. She's pretty old now. She's at least 14 by the vet's dental reckoning. Sometimes these days she can't quite get all the way up before I start opening the door and I whack her on the butt by accident. I've taken to opening the door quite gently since the whacking, even when accidental, makes me feel guilty.

Today is an early day for me. I'm home from class and taking some time to arrange some things before I go pick up my beloved Bobster and play with him. When I got home I felt the familiar whack of an unmoved dog but I didn't hear any scrambling. I gently shoved the door again. She hadn't moved. At this point I had to swallow my own heart. It did not taste good. I shoved again gently but more firmly and could stick my head in the door to see. There she was, eyes closed, curled up in the exact corner where the door opens. To my credit I didn't freak out, I've been taught to squelch the freaking out in an emergency. I called her name. She didn't open her eyes but her ear twitched. Her ear twitched! So I booted her in the butt again and called to her. Finally she woke up, SLOWLY, and proceeded with the wagging and wiggling and I went inside and gave her a very expensive treat before I put my head between my knees so I wouldn't pass out.

Stupid dog. She's not dead but she might be deaf!

69

When I asked my mother this evening how her birthday was going she replied, "Awesome! Just awesome!"
Doesn't sound 69 years young, does she?
She's had no less than 3 cakes with an extra piece of a 4th cake for good measure or to grow on or something. Flowers, cards, e-mails, cookies, poetry and sundries, too.
I wish her a much better year than the one she's just completed. She deserves it.

PROMPT Wednesday #35

I thought if I could eke out a little break time each day and do one PROMPTuesday I might get caught up soon. Here's number 35, in which we're asked to tell a secret.

I just wrote about how I ate spoiled vegetables. On purpose! That’s the sort of thing one ought to keep secret, isn’t it? I’ve told the blogosphere about my obsession with bullfighting. Again, in the hush up category. Most if not all of you know that I’ve committed adultery. Crap on a wheat thin, why don’t I shut up about that?! I have not, to date, peed myself in public, that’s usually a goodie. But no. You already know that I blog from work and you can’t rat me out because you do too! It’s no secret at all that I have a bit of a soft spot for the snaggle toothed talent god. (Tim Roth, Denis Leary I’m looking at you. And you look good together. What are you doing on Saturday night? Both of you!) I’ve told you about some of my sex toys so telling you about another one wouldn’t be titillating, would it? Let me know if it would ‘cause I’m always looking for content. How about this: I once committed a Lewinsky-approved sex act in a public stairwell and, not to toot my own horn (insert your own joke here) but I was in form so top that the guy’s knees actually buckled. OK, it’s not a good secret if you’re bragging. I don’t think that counts and I’m close to my word limit and my time’s almost up! ACK!

I’m still afraid of the dark. Like really afraid of it. It’s not a well-kept secret but I do downplay the severity. I’ve slept with a light on for a few months now because even the ambient streetlight in my big city isn’t enough to keep the monsters at bay.

"Healthy" Eating

A local friend and I have started our own Fake Watchers meeting. It's just the two of us and we walk our German Shepherds and talk about food but it works for us. I've gained about 7 lbs over my goal and am having trouble reining myself in to keep it off so when N asked for a little support I enthusiastically agreed. Lunging toward her screeching, "Yes! That's a wonderful idea! Come to my house! I have a scale. Can you come now? How about now? Now?" is enthusiastic, right?

Tomorrow marks our the end of our first full week so I've been pretty good. Not great since I ate out twice over the weekend and didn't have any very good choices available to me but I did my best. I also enjoyed the hell out of the hollondaise, chocolate sauce and risotto. Just not all at the same time. Being out and about so much also meant I didn't have enough time to cook up proper, boring, on-program food for the week. I had some roasted cauliflower from the previous weekend's cook so I brought that for lunch Monday and Tuesday with my crock potted chicken.

Man, Monday afternoon I felt awful. Not truly barfy awful but bloaty and uncomfortable and sort of hungry but in that way where you think that eating something will settle your stomach but it doesn't. I took many different OTC remedies and rested up that night. I felt some better Tuesday morning but not great. About halfway through my lunch on Tuesday I really looked at it. It was roasted cauliflower so some of it was that roasty-toasty brown. Other parts of it were slightly black, or maybe purple. As I ate I looked and poked and checked. Yeah, you know, that cauliflower was probably not very good. And yet, there were still 3 pieces left and they were within my allotted points and I was meeting with N that night so I needed to stay on program so I just ate them.

Healthy eating Week 1 has perhaps been good for weight loss (we'll see when I weigh in tomorrow) but if I keep eating like this I might need to rename it.

Over There!

Having a bad hair day. Look at my brand spanking new ring, though! Thanks Chili and Whimsy Love.

10 Things I Did This Weekend

1. Ate at a restaurant that was slightly out of my price range. It was handicapped accessible, though, so it was the only serious choice.

2. Went to the NY Historical Society for the first time.

3. Laundry.

4. Cleaned closets. Not my own.

5. Gossiped with a good friend.

6. Watched a good game of hockey between two teams I love.

7. Sent flowers to Aunt Rena on the occasion of her 94th birthday.

8. Talked to mom and Aunt Rena then mom then Aunt Rena then mom and so on and so on and so on, as part of the birthday celebrations.

9. Left class half an hour early to manage cresting frustration levels.

10. Became too hot outside in my winter coat. Yay!

Pointing the Finger

I learned a lot over the course of the election season. I learned that nobody gives a shit what I think if they disagree with me. I learned people think Hope is overrated (so I told myself the story of Pandora's box at bedtime). I learned that I can listen to a Presidential speech, it just depends on the President.

This weekend, well beyond the election season, I learned that if I were a member of the voting public during Lincoln's time (time travel and gender re-assignment surgery required, better do those in the right order) I'd have been scared shitless by the guy. Suspending habeus corpus? Using martial law to further his social agenda? Yikes! And yet, from my perspective way over here with my vagina in the early 21st century those things turned out pretty well.

Which is all to say that I shouldn't be blogging the political at all. Given that look at what Chili did. And then after saying she didn't want to do it she did it again. Plus I just spent some time being educated in depth by this post and comment thread over at the Whatever (be sure to read the comment policy before wading in, it's reiterated in the first comment). Don't get your politics from me. Look! Over there! Something shiny!

Survival in the Urban Jungle

Today I found myself on the street having left my cell phone behind with no pay phone in sight and an urgent call to make. Even if I had found a pay phone I didn't have any change.

Only I wasn't on the street, I was in a restroom in a major sporting arena and it wasn't a phone call that was urgent. I found a..."pre-paid phone" in the bottom of my bag with a few short minutes left on it and was able to make it home without embarrassing myself but it wasn't fun.

I'd like to ask MSG why they hate women. And also I'd like to ask 7th Generation (again) what they suggest when one wants to protect an entire pair of underpants with their bullshit half-width pantiliners.

Happy 94th Birthday!

All week I've been thinking that she's about to be 95-years-old but in reality she's a spring chicken hitting a measly 94 today. Born in 1915 on a small farm in the middle of nowhere (OK, no the exact middle but you could see it from there) in Maine. She was a home ec teacher of the highest order and still gives me tips. I have not retained nearly enough of them. She's traveled the world. She is the keeper of our family genealogy and can, last I asked, recite our family tree for something like 7 generations. (I know, I can't even remember how many generations. It's shameful. Please don't rat me out.) About a decade ago, maybe more, she slipped on an area rug while line dancing in her kitchen and broke her wrist. We worried she'd have to stop living alone. Well, she finally stopped living alone about a week ago. She lives with MamaKizz now. They had a little party last night, my uncle came too. There were green sparkly party hats and green cake and corn dogs. I called today and got the full report and I know it sounds silly but I'm a little sorry that I missed it.

Knowing Aunt Rena, though, I'll be able to catch next year's party.
*Please pardon my old and and faded photos. Once I get the right cord for my scanner hopefully I'll be able to provide you with some better specimens.

Arts Are Good

I have time to either send an e-mail to Chili or to blog for the day. So, please all forgive me, I'm not going to send her an e-mail, I'll tell you all what I was going to tell her. Craig Ferguson spent an entire show talking with Archbishop Desmond Tutu the other night. I can't find a video of the whole thing but here's a link to parts of it. If anyone can find the whole deal, though, it would be worth it because Craig's monologue and intro are as interesting and worthy as the interview with Father Tutu. It's glorious, all of it, and it illustrates for me how powerful artists can be and how important it is to support the arts because they are part and parcel of the learning process that gains us social, political and personal change. Enjoy!

Love,
Kizz

A Message To Winter

Fuck you and the horse you road in on!

I am a little tired of the cold. And the layers. And the cold. And the teeth clacking. And the slip sliding. And the paper dry skin that slices open to the very bone on every available surface, like your ticket to a Broadway show, and then bleeds all over your pants, the aforementioned ticket and your sippy cup then stops bleeding but opens up the next day in the shower to bleed all over your freshly cleaned flesh and your far less clean bath towel.

Yeah, winter and I need some couples counseling because otherwise this relationship is just not going to fucking work out long term.

Sip Me

My boss was kind enough to send me and a friend, (I chose Pony Express) to see the revival of West Side Story. I am endlessly glad that I went. I could tell you about the things that made me weep with delight, I could tell you about the things that made steam incinerate my eardrums, I could tell you about that ticket there in the photo which grazed my dry-air-ravaged skin so lightly that I nearly bled out before the first curtain. You know what, though? It's almost midnight and I have to go to work tomorrow and get a lot of stuff done so we don't have time for that.

I've only got time to point out the object to the left. The sippy cup. Yup, that's the technical term. We approached the bar on our way in and acknowledged the sign that disallowed "outside beverages." Pony Express asked an usher if we might purchase a beverage at the bar, an "inside beverage" if you will, and bring that inside. The usher replied that we could indeed with one proviso.

It had to be in a sippy cup.

Not even kidding.

So tonight I sat in a seat that, purchased for charity, cost the same amount as a pair of Jimmy Choo sandals; I watched a revival of one of the great, classic American musical; and I drank champagne out of a sippy cup.

Seriously.

Life is sweet, albeit a little disturbing.

I'm Not Really From Nantucket

San Diego Momma is nothing if not a button pusher and envelope pusher and other pushy things (nice pushy things, she's really nice, you should meet her...and drink wine). She's trying to push all her PROMPTuesday Peeps to open up and write outside of their comfort zone. I'm trying very hard never to give myself a pass on any o fher prompts. Which is why with #34 she's gotten me to write a limerick. I'm so bad at writing rhyming poetry that I couldn't even make it dirty and I had to resort to the Nantucket thing just to get myself started. Feel free to shame me with fabulous limericks in the comments section (MAB, I'm looking at you in particular) 'cause I love limericks I just shouldn't sully the form by trying to write them.

There once was a poem from Nantucket
I’m trying to write and not fuck it
I bang out a rhyme
And it seems like a crime
But it’s good for my very own bucket….list.

15

I find weird things hard. PROMPTuesday #33 asks me just to write something specific about being 15 and somehow my brain can't find 15. Yeesh. Here's what I got, though:

15

I can’t remember 15. I remember a big chunk of time that was 13-16 but to put a pin in 15 is hard, like trying to spear a pea with your fork. Let me see if I can pin it down. I would have been a sophomore, at least in the fall. I turned 16 in January of my sophomore year. So spring of freshman year I was 15. I played trombone in the marching band. I had long hair. I cut off all my long hair and got contacts the summer I was 16, right? The very end of that summer. My freshman school picture involved a black one-piece pantsuit with pegged legs and shoulder pads and primary colored geometric shapes on the asymmetrical bodice. That picture was taken when I was 14, though, October of being 14. I can bet you that I was a terrible trombone player. I never practiced. It was so loud to practice and you have to practice to get better but that means you suck at first and with a trombone by god everyone can hear you suck. A lot. I was learning, though, I did OK. Not great. I played for 4 years and I never grazed great with the back of my hand. I had some fun, though. More fun than I would have in the no-glory clarinet section. I already knew all the people in that section and they were far, far better than I could ever be. 15 was probably spent thinking a lot about how I could be different since being better (the best) just never seemed possible.

Holding On

I'm urging myself to write for a minimum of 15 minutes a day. So far it's going OK. Today I did another PROMPTuesday, #32. And I may do another before I head out to dinner.

HELD

He held it over her. She held her tongue.

He held her. She held herself still.

They held the knowledge close and tight. To let it go would be disastrous. To let it go would be a dissolving of the glue that held them together.

Should they even be together?

Should she even think that?

Her body held the defiance she couldn’t, or is it wouldn’t, express. Can’t. She can’t. She is incapable. They cannot. Which, really, is only true if they are one. If he were to let go, to spin off, to release his hold on her then he could.

Yes I can.

She can’t.

She wants to.

Or does she?

She holds that knowledge far, far away from him. To tell him is unthinkable. To tell herself is only barely possible.

It is possible, though, that she simply doesn’t want to. She is not like others. She does not want to hold on to another human being at the expense of every other part of her until that being forces her to let go.

It can’t be the loss of control that bothers her. She’s letting him determine how long they hold on now. She’s always let him, all the other hims, determine her beginning, middle and end so to let another small him (or her, but probably not, definitely not, not for her) force her to hold on and insist on being let go isn’t so big a stretch.

And yet…

She can’t.

If Ten Wishes Were Horses

1. I wish to never again read a headline in the vein of "Recession Getting Deeper and No End in Sight."

2. I wish for more of that chocolate cake.

3. I wish that chocolate cake was fat and calorie free but still delicious.

4. I wish for kisses from a variety of sources.

5. I wish for highs over 35 degrees (36 doesn't count).

6. I wish for unlimited reading time.

7. I wish that I hadn't screwed up and missed recording a couple of Battlestar Galactica episodes.

8. I wish devoutly for universally affordable health care.

9. I wish that my recently unemployed friend's interview this afternoon is exactly what he wants and that he is exactly what they want.

10. I wish for more wishes.

Watch Out!

If you're sitting next to Auntie when she scrutinizes this picture you probably want to cover your head. And your ears. Maybe your eyes. Her head's gonna explode.

See that car driving down the street? See how well the back is cleared off? It's twice as clear as the front. (BOOM goes the dynamite.)

So, I put up some more photos on Flickr finally. If you feel like checking them out.

Perks

One of the perks of taking a snow day is that it won't be chore to take your dog for a long walk. If you go to work on a bad weather day it's a chore just to get home and you're liable to shorten up the walk afterward.

One of the perks of having an older dog is that while you're patting yourself on the back for giving her that fabulous walk she may take 2/3 of said it before turning around and leading you home.

Snow Day!

Hilariously enough after writing about not being able to stop sleeping I woke up no less than 4 times last night and had trouble going back to sleep. I don't even like to be told what to do by me. Truth be told, I think I was excited about the snow. It wasn't a million feet of snow but it was half a foot or more by 6am, it's cold like the arctic and windy like the tundra.

Still, it wasn't the worst day I've ever seen and I did hear plows all night. The last time I had a snow day it was in the middle of summer and it was actually a flood day. The entire subway system was shut down. Today, though, the NYC Public Schools were closed. Last time that happened? Blizzard of '96*. It was the wind that finally put this one over the edge for me. The office I work in is on the 37th floor. High rise buildings are made to bend so they don't break. Even knowing this, the endless creaking and the fact that I can actually feel the flooring moving at a different rate than the plumbing when I'm in the bathroom is like a hair trigger for my inner panic button. So, I decided that today, what with the schools closed and all, I had a valid excuse not to endure that. Not like I'm going to get another one of those any time soon.

Gonna fill my snow day with a Battlestar Galactica binge, maybe a Friday Night Lights binge and at least one hard core nap. Oh, and watching the snow continue to fall and blow out there on the city tundra.


*The local We're-All-Gonna-Die-From-Weather! weather man was criticizing the schools chancellor for closing schools today. He kept snarking over the 6-8 inches of snow today and the 20 inches of snow on the last snow day in '96. Sure, kids could have gone to school today but I contend that there are a lot of factors besides the inch count (something we'd all be smart to remember in all areas of life). I've been out there, it's actually really icy, even on the main roads. Apparently they plowed but didn't sand or salt. It's also quite windy. A lot of very young kids walk to school on their own. A lot of kids take school buses. We're not in the same place as Chicago where they're only plowing main roads due to budget constraints (I wonder if this is what the don't-want-no-government-assistance folks were thinking about when they shunned, well, government assistance) but it's going to be a while before anyone gets to the smaller streets. It's possible that the chancellor and the mayor made this decision based on some slight reduction in plowing and sanding services due to budgetary concerns. If I were a parent I'd be perfectly happy not to have my kid riding in a bus on streets thick with ice or walking on crosswalks plagued by idiots driving on an inch of ice. So, yeah, it's a questionable call, but almost every snow day is, it's not worthy of any kind of snark. Particularly by a dude who only goes on camera when everyone else calls in due to weather.

T. I. R. D.

(Not a typo, it's something my mom used to say. She probably got it from her dad.)

Is anyone else just as tired as can be? I think it's just the relentlessness of this last spurt of winter. I've been unable to keep my eyes open all last week. Long about 9pm it just seems like too much effort but I can't walk the dog so early so I close my eyes for just a moment and it's almost midnight! So I walk the dog and go to bed and sleep soundly until 6 or 6:30. On Friday night a friend came by to order Indian food and just watch some random TV. We had one small drink, ate our yummy food and both fell smack asleep on our respective couches. Resurfacing happened just before midnight and it took a full half hour to pry ourselves off the upholstery and force ourselves out into the open. I slept until almost 9 on Saturday morning.

Clearly, recounting one's sleep patterns is second only to recounting one's dreams on the list of things that no one wants to hear about. I'm just wondering, though, is it just us? Is it something to do with the light patterns up here? Or the barometric pressure? The economic meltdown? Can I blame it on my new found dieting zealotry?

So tell me, how are you sleeping these days?