In which illness is the order of the day.
Friday was St. Pat’s and I was excited to go out that night, so naturally I poisoned myself with some 4-day old soup and spent the afternoon puking. (I haven’t given myself food poisoning since I was a student at MIU about ten years ago and ate some week-old butter, and had to leave the bandstand in between songs to throw up. Talk about a hell gig!)
Saturday we had a BBQ! At our house! YAY! BoS and Truck & Amazon Blonde came out and we pigged out — I had tuna, they had steak and ribs and brats. There was salad. I made key lime bars. There was beer and bloody marys and jager bombs. Dogs ran around everywhere and crunched happily on rib bones. A good time was had by all. I tried to have a bloody mary but my tummy wasn’t into it. I ended up napping and blowing off our guests.
Saturday night I got sick, and woke up Sunday with a stuffy nose and a congested chest and that tight, icky feeling that says you’re getting a raunchy cold!
Groan.
Bread went off to Cedar Rapids this morning so I’m all alone with my chest cold. Going up to the barn to get kindling and out to the garage for firewood sucked and I had to take a nap afterward, before I could even build a fire.
Heating with wood has totally lost its freakin’ charm, people. I want central goddamned heat and that’s final.
Right now I’m listening to WNYC programs on my iPod and listening to the dogs bark their heads off outside and trying to pay some bills over dial-up. I want DSL. I think I’ll go see if there are any movies on pay-per-view and hold the couch down. Maybe the good fairy will show up and make me tea and soup.
In other news, I haven’t brushed my hair in two weeks. It’s bad. Really bad. Like, it’s gonna take hours to untangle it bad.
In which I’m wearing my new tee!
On goblinbox.com’s fifth birthday, Vuboq sent me a ThinkGeek gift certificate (because he RAWKS) and last night a package arrived containing some fun stickers and my new favorite BROWN t-shirt:
I’m so happy I could die. Brown is my favorite color of all time, and the fact that the decal is pink is even better. I’d like to assemble an entire pink and brown wardrobe. (It would certainly make getting dressed easier. Smirk.)
In which time is wasted.
Vuboq sent me this link today. Addictive. It’s fastr – a flickr game. I freakin’ love it. Don’t click on it. I’m serious. Just… don’t.
In which I didn’t get McDonald’s drive-thru!
Due to getting drunk I didn’t eat a proper dinner last night, so I’m starving this morning. I stopped and bought an Amy’s TV dinner and it’s nuking right now even though it’s not nearly lunch time yet.
In other news, thanks to all of you for the wonderful comments on yesterday’s post. I love y’all.
In which we check in with my weekend… and my marriage.
The weather was gorgeous Saturday. Bread and I went to town and visited the bank to cash his check (he’s working again!) and then we went grocery shopping. We intended to buy food for the weekend.
We spent two hundred dollars.
But OMG were the bloody marys good! Boo-yah! (Absolut Peppar? Jalapeno stuffed olives? Pickled asparagus? TOBASCO DILL PICKLES? So good. I had three.) Bo came out to let his dogs run around; he brought stuff for Jager bombs. We BBQed: marinated tuna steaks, corn on the cob, portabello mushrooms. Garlic bread. I even baked a German chocolate cake.
Naturally I had to nap all afternoon, after so much indulgence. Bread woke me up just before dusk and ravished me, then I got up and he fell asleep. Then the sun went down and the temp dropped like a stone.
I talked on the phone with my bro for an hour or so.
I texted my girlfriends to see if anything was happening. One was out of town, one was home for the evening, another was eating Oreos. So I read for awhile and went back to bed. Talk about a nightlife.
Didn’t do shit on Sunday ‘cept go to band practice. BvB was out sick, so it was just me and the guys. We played for a few hours, broke for dinner, and then spent the rest of the evening watching the telly in PjK’s very comfy living room. We probably won’t practice again until April since half the band will be travelling or working… basically, the rest of March is shot for rock ‘n’ roll.
Yesterday I stayed home and cleaned the house because I couldn’t stand it a second longer. I did six loads of laundry, vacuumed, dusted, tidied (Bread leaves shit laying around all over the place), washed five days’ worth of dishes, made a big ol’ pot of lentil stew, watched a movie about the Funk Brothers, brought a load of kindling down from the barn, and in general slaved my ass off doing menial crap.
The house looks much better. And I was able to dress in all clean clothes this morning!
~+~+~
In other news, we had something of a state of the union talk Friday night. It was brief, but the jist of it was that he wants to know what the fuck I think I want. Since I don’t actually know what the fuck I want, I’m supposed to be thinking about it.
So I am.
I’ve been in a marital funk since last September. I was hoping it was a phase I’d pass out of, but it’s been six months and hasn’t eased. I still don’t know if I want to keep playing house or not, and I seem to have developed an aversion to couplehood. While I love my man it seems I don’t want to constantly be taking another human being’s needs and desires into consideration. I don’t want to share, and I don’t want to be half of something but would rather be a complete something unto myself. I want my own space, my own schedule, my own diet, my own finances, my own autonomy. I’m tired of compromising all the time, of giving and adjusting and reconfiguring myself into shapes I don’t want to be in. He says I’m standoffish and distant. Mostly I just want to be left the hell alone.
I know all you single people think I’m a complete idiot, and I acknowledge that it’s certainly possible. It’s not like I don’t understand the perks of a long-term relationship: cuddling. Laughing. Self-inquiry. Someone who lets me put my cold feet on him! Not having to make the lattes. Companionship. A shared history. Love. Division of labor (well, sort of). All those sweet things are what make me hope I’m just having a rough spot rather than an actual realization.
I can’t help but wonder if I’m like the dogs, always wanting to be on the other side of the door: Let us out! Let us in! Let us out! No, let us in! I spent the majority of my life desperately wanting to find someone, to fall and love and get married, to make a life just like the one I’ve found. But now that I’ve got it? I have fantasies about being alone. Independent. Autonomous. I want to be selfish, I guess. I’m tired of being a mature grownup who gives and compromises.
Ah, it’s not even about compromising, precisely. It comes down to not having anything in common. While we get along well, we love each other, and we’re easy together, we just never have anything to talk about once we exhast the “how was your day” topic. We’re not interested in the same stuff, never have been. He’s not going to grok anything I say about {Internet, musicianship, geekhood, sci-fi, Hinduism, etc.} and I’m not going to grok anything he says about {construction, guns, cars, trucks, bikes, etc.}. We used to fake it, but we’ve been together long enough now that neither of us really tries any more: he starts talking and I glaze over, and vice versa. I go do things he’s interested in but I’m aloof because I really don’t care about {demo derbies/blues concerts/swap meets/gun shows/tool expos}. He tries things I’m interested in once and makes an effort to be polite, but is never willing to do them again because he really doesn’t care about {jazz concerts/book stores/seeing Amma/vegetarian restaurants}. There’s no malice, it’s just that different things make us tick. We want to live differently, eat differently, have different priorities. Just how it is.
While I don’t seem to want what I’ve got, I know it’s good and I don’t want to let go of it. I’m in emotional stasis, and it’s really not fair to him at all. I’m a fantastic roommate, but not much of a wife these days and I bet he’s totally sick of my shit.
It doesn’t escape me that I might just be an idiot, that if I close that door I’ll just want to be on the other side again immediately. Wouldn’t that just serve me right.
In which the things I want are always far away, spacially and temporally.
My brother g-talked me to say that Magnet‘s playing in PDX tomorrow night and I should fly out there. The show’s only $8!
If I wasn’t flat broke I would totally go standby to Portland and see a show with my bro. Fuck yeah. Because you know what would be funner than that?
NOTHING. Nothing would be funner than that. Not possible.
He — I’m talking about my brother still, pay attention — sent me a picture of his office. (Apparently he’s got admin access to the surveillance loop, the fucking stud.) He’s the guy with the dual monitor setup in the lower right-hand corner.
In contrast, this is my office. Yes, that’s a workstation graveyard under my work table. I need to pull and wipe the HDDs so we can donate the rest.
I don’t know what to get for lunch. The lunch hour is over and I haven’t gone anywhere to get food because I don’t want to eat any of the food I can get. Vuboq, my IM buddy, went out for Burmese food for lunch today. He lives in DC. They have restaurants there. I typed, ‘I want ginger salad!’ and he said he’d get me some. But he won’t, because I’m in Iowa. Too far. (He did, though, get me a ThinkGeek gift certificate yesterday for goblinbox’s birthday because he rawks. Yay!)
Last night after band practice — and we didn’t fucking practice at all, btw, although PjK was adorable enough it was worth the time — I met Gorgeous at the Dead Cock and we fed the Megatouch machine a bunch of dollar bills like the stripper whore it is. I had one cocktail, two glasses of water, some popcorn, and a long drive home at eleven.
I’m getting so sick of my commute. It’s 26 miles round trip, and with Bread out of town I have to drive it twice a day so I can go home and let the dogs out. Crap, how I want to live closer to the rest of my life! I actually want to ride a fucking city bus. I’m so sick of all the time wasted driving; I could be balancing my checkbook, or reading, or knitting, or anything but staring at the endless fucking Iowa blacktop as it spins out under my worn tires.
Jeep needs new tires again. Always needs new tires, I live on gravel.
Of course, spring is coming. The woods around our house are an aviary again, loud and bright with birdsong every morning. It’s an orchestra singing in the spring, calling the orchids, daffodils, lilacs up out of the earth. And when the lilac bush is in full bloom and I’ve got every window in the house open and that smell is everywhere? Maybe I won’t mind the commute so much then.
Eh. Right.
God, we need to have us a big ol’ Spring barn party in the worst way. Bread probably won’t let me, but I could really use a party. Celebrations are fucking important.
In which we celebrate a bloggiversary ’round here!
Today, goblinbox.com has been registered in my name for five years. Yay!
In this time I’ve learned HTML and CSS and graphics and even a little CGI. I’ve learned about installing applications, managing databases, search engine rankings, and foiling spammers.
I love this site. It’s my favorite hobby. I maintain four other sites, but I’ll never love any of ’em like I love the ‘box or like I love all of you who come here and make maintaining this site such a freakin’ joy for me.
So here’s an all-new button you can use to link here, if you wanna:
In other news, it’s also Truck’s birthday. But he’s much older than goblinbox.com. *wink*
In which I’m shocked and apalled.
South Dakota is now well on its way to actually outlawing abortion:
South Dakota lawmakers yesterday approved the nation’s most far-reaching ban on abortion, setting the stage for new legal challenges that its supporters say they hope lead to an overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The measure, which passed the state Senate 23 to 12, makes it a felony for doctors to perform any abortion, except to save the life of a pregnant woman. The proposal still must be signed by Gov. Mike Rounds (R), who opposes abortion.
– from this article
I absolutely cannot imagine living in a country where abortion is illegal. (I’m starting to suspect that living in a young country founded by religious extremists is not ideal for me.) Too many babies is a Very Bad Idea, period, and nothing, nothing will stop people from making babies. HAS NO ONE LOOKED AT CHINA OR INDIA LATELY?
I’m not happy about the idea of using abortion as birth control, even though I’ve done it twice myself. Of course in a perfect world people wouldn’t get pregnant until they were ready to be parents, but this? Is not a perfect world.
I’m much more unhappy about the idea of people without the appropriate emotional, financial, or social structures having kids they don’t want just because the rubber broke or they were too dumb to use one.
Abortion is not an ideal solution to fertility issues, no. But until we live in a perfect society peopled by intelligent, reflective, self-aware creatures with self-discipline and compassion, it’s a very necessary procedure.
We’ve already got an abundance of children surviving in hideously unacceptable living conditions. Let’s feed, shelter, and soothe those little human beings first, just to prove our own benevolence and compassion to ourselves. Then, once we’ve got that mess straightened out, then we can start forcing each other to bring more of them into the world, eh?
Please, visit Planned Parenthood (or the pro-choice org of your choice) and donate a few bucks for the cause, or write your rep to let them know you do not want that crap happening in your state.
In which I drop off the face of the earth for an entire goddamned day just like I used to do in college.
Nasty Little Whore made these awesome pizza things for dinner Monday night: oven roasted portabella mushrooms with pizza sauce and cheese on them. Yum. I ate nearly two of them.
We watched Jon Stewart and then the Colbert Report on TiVo, then sat on her couch under cuddly throws and talked and talked and talked. It was well past ten when I made it home.
Yesterday I took an apparently much-needed mental health day. (Entirely by accident, yo.) I woke up groggy well past noon, with all three dogs staring intently at me because they wanted to go out. Then I spent half an hour trying to get a damned fire started because the house was freezing. By then it was pushing one o’clock; I emailed work saying, “Just slept 14 hours. Day’s half over. Calling in ‘sick’.”
I did not go to Amazon Blonde’s house for bloody marys, even though she sent me a phone pic of the ingredients sitting on her counter and told me she’d be home a little before five.
I even managed to blow off band practice last night, too. Didn’t call, just dozed off on the couch scratching Bread’s back while he watched The Sopranos. (He came home last night and left again this morning for CR.)
Apparently I was tired. Or maybe I was just lame. Today I have that vague feeling of embarassed remorse one gets from blatantly flaking out on one’s responsibilities. I always thought I’d outgrow this lame streak, but apparently I’m never going to.
In other news, I slept in again this morning and didn’t have time to take a shower. I am going to make time, however, to run over to 2nd Street and get a double latte.
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Instagram has become unusable crap, so please click the icon below to see my latest pics.
4 random books from my Library!
