spill of the day

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 -7:39 AM: Dribbled foamy toothpaste on myself while trying to get my front teeth kissably white. I wasn't sure if this qualified as a spill, but I did have to change my shirt, so I'm going with it. Maybe I'll spill something better later. Is kissably a word?

The spill of the day

Today, in a selfless attempt to foster goodwill toward all mankind and in the interest of promoting a safer, happier, lifestyle for others with my cautionary tale, I present a new forum here on my blog:

The Spill of the Day!

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 -8:45 AM: Spilled a full bottle of medication with a loose cap from the cupboard into a strategically placed cup of hot coffee (with cream, although I don't believe that contributed to the incident). My main concern was the coffee, because I'm sure the pharmacist will say "No problem. Let me replace that for you free." But seriously—the coffee did taste a little funny after that…

Learn something new every day

OK. So there I was working away on my computer with my faithful cup of coffee by my side, the cat sleeping on the desk and a little cup of Cheerios left over from breakfast. I just leave them there and grab bits. Unfortunately, reaching for another bunch of Cheerios, I stuck my hand into the coffee cup instead. Sigh…I mean who hasn't done that? I went out to the kitchen for paper towels to clean up the mess and when I came back the cat was fishing Cheerios out of the other cup with her paw and eating them with more gusto than she's ever shown for salmon treats. Who knew? Cats are sneaky.

Now I can't eat Cheerios without someone staring at me…

Fall Days and (Guilty?) Thoughts

Today I have my slippers on. It's chilly in my little victorian house and warm outside. It won't warm up until the sun hits the front of the house where I'm typing this in my office, so I'm going out soon. It's lovely to have this beautiful, perfect fall weather after the summer that never was. I watched a NOVA movie about global warming and they said the gulf stream isn't returning the cold water current back to the equator because the arctic isn't cold enough anymore. Could we all just get out there and paddle?

O.K. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. My Mother ruined my life. She wouldn't let me be a groupie, which was a perfectly valid career choice when I was twelve. Her lack of foresight condemned me to a life of having to earn a living, ride coach and watch other people be rich and famous for no reason. By the time I was eighteen there were no more openings for professional groupies and this tragedy has colored my whole existence.

I'm not even guilty about that thought.

I'm struggling with a guilty pleasure, so why not humiliate myself to the whole world and get it over with?

I have a crush on a rock star. Not "George Clooney is cute" but a crush like I used to have in high school. Where does this come from? How does it happen? I'm smart. Who am I talking to now? What purpose would fantasy serve?

As I have already said, after a certain age, any show of passion becomes an object of ridicule—even to others my own age. So there, is the guilt in my guilty pleasure. It has to be hidden at all costs. You'll notice I didn't tell you who is the object of my impossible affection.

I saw my rock star on tv. You couldn't hear him sing because of the screaming fans. I listened to them and said to myself: "What do they want?" They don't care about his singing—I mean, here's their chance to worship him and they're screaming in church. He's just cute. Do they think he'll pull them up out of the crowd to dance with him the way Bruce Springsteen did to Courtney Cox in some old commercial for I can't remember what? Is he going to notice them and fall in love? What?! I don't get it. Somebody please tell me.

Hero worship has always been a part of being human. It evolved from an unsophisticated brave hunter, admiration of the ability to overcome the fear of the unknown, superstition's spiritual leader, Greek mythology, doer of heroic deeds, worship of the dead hero, to ancestors, legends. "More than a man—less than a god."

Now…do we have romantic heros? Do we worship because our heros are better than us? Can we claim to follow their virtuous lead? JFK and Martin Luther King JR were philanderers. Do we forgive their misdeeds because they are above ordinary constraints? Whole countries can worship power. The names Napoleon and Hitler come to mind. Do we claim things beautiful or powerful as our own? Vicarious achievement? After all, we exist only as egocentric beings and I haven't had much luck vanquishing evil doers lately. I can't even lose ten pounds. Are we worshipping beauty? There's a lot of 'super' things going on today. Super heros, super rich, super star, super model, super market. No wait, scratch that last one. Is our worship the narcotic that sends them to rehab? Does the cult of culture reduce us to lemmings? Does our hero have a sandwich named after him? I have often wondered; Reuben who?

All I know is that for me, it involves suspending reality. That's what you're supposed to do at a good movie. Maybe it's a vacation from real life. I don't know. I'm going to figure it out. Then I'm going to become rich and famous due to the acclaim for my book. I've already got a really good title:

Rainy Day

Sometimes rainy days make it easier to work. Don't want to go anywhere.

I'm working on goofy stuff to put on my etsy store. Everything else in the store has been very serious and sophisticated. People will be surprised to see something silly in there.

I'm trying to teach myself how to scale down my paintings and make smaller ones. I never planned to, but the time has come to face the fact, that I have to sell them online. They're not selling in stores anymore and all the good galleries are booking one and a half to two years in advance.

I'm actually considering moving to a different part of the country. It's cheaper to live in most other states and just because I think snow is beautiful—doesn't mean I have to shovel it. Someplace on a lake. I always thought I had to be by the ocean. I used to just lay in the sun and tan, jump in the waves, go anywhere in any kind of boat and fish. Now I think of skin cancer, undertows, rip tides, rogue waves, bad winds, worms in the fish, pollution and sharks when I swim at night or in a kayak.

I was having, an admittedly weird, talk with a friend about where I would like my ashes scattered when I'm dead. I didn't feel a doubt. The only place for me was the lake where I spent my summers as a kid.

It was a big, cold, clear, spring fed lake. As clear as any water I've seen and as smooth as glass in the morning, with fog lifting off it. There were gorgeous sunsets over Mt. Washington. There was a giant old abandoned yellow hotel falling into disrepair overlooking one end of the lake. Like a ghost. The town had an orange and turquoise Howard Johnson's by the drawbridge, where you could get the all-important ice creams. A tacky gift shop. A combination grocery and liquor store with a slamming screen door, Elmer Plumber's marina, which was also the gas station and a school with a playground that had a TALL slide, REAL jungle gyms and REAL swings with chains and wooden seats. The kind that are considered deadly for today's little darlins' who are too stupid to duck.

A dairy truck came down the path to our camp and my Mother would buy milk and light cream for her ever-present cup of coffee. A Nissan truck would come too and she'd get bread, powdered donuts and cupcakes with frosting on top about an inch high.

When we wanted drinking water we'd go to a path by the side of the road and walk a little way down a rock path to an old wooden barrel buried in the ground. It was surrounded by moss and was chilly. You'd lift the top off the barrel and it was overflowing with cold spring water. There was a big metal dipper there and we HAD to drink out of the dipper before we filled our water bottles. It was magic.

We had a campfire every night or went to someone else's. My Dad's friends camped there too so the parental units were often happy and silly, which wasn't standard procedure. It was so easy to make friends there. You'd figure out somebody's name and start hanging around with them. There was a dumpy little store with white-bearded Mr Whitney sitting behind the counter, where we could take our Sunday dime and buy two candy bars. There was a dumpy wooden rec. hall with booths, a juke box and two pinball machines. I remember San Franciscan Nights, Red Rubber Ball, Light my fire, the beach boys. Baby it's You was my favorite. I can still sing it. There were always fascinating older kids in there, dancing or goofing around figuring out how to get beer. If it wasn't swimming weather, that's where I wanted to be. I couldn't figure out how the hell people got quarters for pinball machines. Sometimes this boy Michael Terrill from Aroostook County Maine would let me play the last pinball. He was my first boyfriend. He just said he was my boy friend. We held hands but we didn't even get a kiss in. A few years later when he was sixteen or so, he came back with his wife and baby.

Dad had a little Sprite sailboat. You could zip down the lake in it, but never get back without paddling, scratching your butt on the fiberglass floor and getting a sunburn. Later we got the most beautiful motor boat. Driving it was heaven and freedom. I met a boy named Christopher, when my sister and I were going under the drawbridge in that boat and he and his friend Barry were standing on old bridge pilings with their thumbs out for a ride. That is frozen in my memory forever. The sun, the breeze, the chill under the bridge, the smell of water and gas, hoping we wouldn't hit something with the outboard motor, the water lapping, the way the boat tips when someone gets in and those two cute guys. Barry was all charm and playing up to my sister from the start. Christopher and I just smiled at each other trying to make conversation. I have a lot of frozen moments, but if I ever forgot this one, I would be somebody else. One of my favorite memories. We went on some dates because my mother wouldn't let my sister go out with Barry unless they took me with them. One time we went to the first MacDonalds I had ever seen and I got french fries. Christopher and I dated a little later when I graduated from college and coincidentally ended up working with some of his friends.

I dated a another guy I met at the lake, who will remain nameless, for two years. He was 'tough' because he smoked cigarettes and drank beer and had an old white mustang and a 'gang' of friends who were funny and loud. It was so much fun and he was nicer to me than any other person has been in my whole life. I broke up with him when I started college because his dad carried a gun, one of his uncles that lived with them ran off to get away from gambling debts and his other uncle was 'disappeared' for who know what reason. He married a neighborhood girl and had kids. Hope he's happy.

I won't go back to the lake. I thought about it a few times, but I don't want to see it surrounded by rich houses, condos and the lake churning like a washing machine with hundreds of boats and jet skis. I'm sure someone has stolen the dipper in the spring, broken the barrel and filled it with garbage. There's probably an expensive restaurant by the bridge, a CVS, a Richdale and a playground with sawdust under the four foot high plastic slide—and canvas swings.

Baby pandas

I have the Pandacam on my desktop. Go see Bai Yun's  latest baby. They start out so tiny and when they get bigger the mama hugs them and plays with them.

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/index.html

Look at this picture of Zhen Zhen, the last baby girl, trying to make a run for it!

Making connections

I just found the Etsy shop for my friend Erin. It is here:

http://www.everyheartcrafts.etsy.com

It's funny. Two artists using the same studio, same clay, same kiln; yet she makes delicate little leaves and charms for her jewelry and jewelry-making classes, and I make camping trailers for birds and evil baby faces.

She's really nice, but… doesn't what she makes sound a little odd to you?

It's gotten so dark here it is like nightfall. Spooky thunderstorm. I don't feel like turning my computer off so I'll probably get smited. The gods laughed.

I am filled with creepy horror anyway. I'm living with Stuart Little. Every night I find the cat meowing and chasing a field mouse skittering all over the house. She doesn't want to catch it mind you; she's just playing. I don't know where it lives or what it is wrecking. The house is really dirty so I had been thinking it would be easier to move anyway.