In which I saw dawn this morning, and hated it.
I, life-long night person, am on Brett’s schedule.
*shudder*
Last night I went to bed at 8:30, and I got up this morning at 5:30! HOW GROSS IS THAT??!??!?!?
Hopefully it won’t last.
In which I review all the big stuff. Did I mention I think I’m having a mid-life crisis?
Basically, in reviewing my life, I suddenly noticed a few trends. A couple of things popped into my head with disturbing clarity while I was talking with my friend Deb in New York, and a few more have become clear in the few weeks since then.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I feel much more fabulous than I should when I’m on vacation. Vacation should be fun, of course, but when it’s so much better that you don’t even miss your real life, you have to suspect that something’s up.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that I have no panic symptoms when I’m on vacation by myself.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that when I’m away, anything and everything feels possible. When I think about moving, getting a job, finding a place to live, getting a gig, even dealing with the farm property, it all seems like nothing more than a little work. But when I’m here, oh my God, it all feels like a fucking vortex, an albatross, an impossibly heavy ball and chain. We’ll never get the remodel done, we’ll never get through all the shit we need to do to get out of here, we’re stuck here for the next eight years.
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Finally! An all-new gallery!
Images of my September trip to NYC to record Barbara’s a cappella album are now in the gallery! Yay!
Thanks, Aimee, for the sweet pics.
Today I installed eyeOS. It’s a web-based OS. It’s really cute. It could grow up to be pretty neato someday.
Right now, I have literally no idea what to do with it.
But you can play with it by clicking here and logging in with guest / guest. There’s a text editor, an address book, a browser, a calculator, and cute wallpaper. Have fun!
In which I have cramps. (Yes, this is a gyno post.)
I liked it better when I couldn’t even tell my period was coming. Because now that I get cramps so bad they wake me up and keep me up half the night in spite of all the aspirin and yoga, I really think it sucks.
In other words, I woke up at 1:45 this morning in pain. Got an aspirin, took it. Went back to bed, couldn’t sleep. Finally slept. Woke up again at 4. Stretched, drank water, took aspirin, tried to have a good attitude, all that stupid shit, but my guts just hurt like hell anyway. I didn’t get back to sleep until dawn, which was around seven-something.
It’s nine now, and I just woke up! And guess who is actually supposed to be at work this morning?
In which I bemoan the loss of my twenty-something body… even though it’s been gone for, like, seventeen years.
God, I hate exercising. I don’t think I make the right endorphins. People are always going on about how they ‘feel so good’ after working out. It makes me sick because I feel nothing but tired and pissed off. A few years ago I took the most brilliant low-impact step aerobics class at the rec center, and even that just made me feel sweaty and agro.
I don’t mind walking twenty blocks to get somewhere, but any codified exercise activity just makes me mad.
Today for lunch, while watching a Tivo’ed episode of Sex and the City (oh Manhattan!), I ate three ounces of brie and an entire avocado in the form of a sourdough sandwich that also contained mayo and tomato.
Do you suppose these things are why I’m thirty pounds into territory that can only charitably be called ‘cuddly’?
Nah.
In which I’m stumped by a microwave boasting a function I’ve never seen on a microwave before.
Okay, sorry. I lied. None of the nuns I saw this weekend had guns. (That’s just the name of a song on an obscure album by SNL’s bandleader. Yeah. Nuns With Guns is the name of an obscure G.E. Smith song.
Oh, forget it. Never mind. Moving on.)
Tahmi picked me up Friday morning, we drove to Kansas, we went to evening praise, we ate nun food in the nun cafeteria, and that night we hung out in the basement of ‘our’ building and knitted stuff. The next morning I’d apparently decided to sleep in because I didn’t go to morning worship and stayed in bed ’til nine.
Saturday afternoon, we both got hour-long full body Swedish massages for $40 each. From a nun. How cool is that? She knew reflexology and everything. She also told me she could feel my aura, but I didn’t concern myself with it.
Saturday night we obtained a bottle of wine and again hung out in the basement with our knitting and we talked and talked and talked, as we are wont to do. It was way fun. You can’t imagine how much talking we can do.
It rained six inches Saturday night. BIG storm. Big, loud, thundering, cracking, hailing, power-outaging storm. I loved it.
All in all, a lovely retreat weekend at Mount Saint Scholastica. I enjoyed myself. I didn’t have any deeply profound spiritual experiences, but I know better than to think that they just show up because you’ve moved your body from one location to another. (I had a stunningly deep spiritual experience there once. Another time, I got drunk as hell on wine while smoking cigarettes on the lawn. The sublime, the ridiculous, it’s all part of the trip. I take whatever comes and try to be appropriately grateful when it doesn’t smell like dirty socks or sass me.)
We even ended up taking the gifts up to the priest during mass this morning, which amused me seeing as how I’m a poser heathen and all.
Oh, yeah: about the microwave. It took Tami and me – both college educated – nearly twenty minutes to figure out how to use the microwave in our building’s kitchen to make popcorn. (There was a “broil” button on the fucking microwave that had to be un-pushed. Who knew?!?)
On second thought, maybe I want this instead for my birthday: a 5th gen 20GB iPod, for only $270.
Yesterday I was thinking I wanted to buy Tahmi’s old 3rd gen 15Gb iPod, and then I started surfing eBay to see what it was worth, and then I saw all the newer ones, and then… and then… I mean, COLOR, right?!
PPC or iPod or guitar? Holy cow, this birthday shopping is killing me.
I’ve made an executive decision, and rants is back! Visit Rants 8 now! Yes, you have to register again. No, I didn’t salvage the content from Rants 7. Yes, it’ll be wonderful anway. No, I don’t care about losing all of our content again. (Actually, it’s not lost. I know right where it is.)
Oh, just go register and start ranting, will you?
In which I re-post a post I’d posted a week too early last week.
This weekend, I’m going to a Benedictine nunnery in Kansas with Tahmi, where we will go to chapel four times a day, eat cafeteria food with nuns, drink wine, sing the rosary, stay in giant old bedrooms in an historical building, browse the excellent library, gaze at icons, and gossip.
It’ll be fabulous. (Not fabulous like they mean it in Manhattan, but fabulous like you mean it when you live in rural Iowa and are going to Kansas for the weekend.) Here’s hoping for creamed eggs on toast for breakfast Saturday!
Tahmi’s picking me up at ten tomorrow morning.
P.S. Don’t tell anybody I’m Hindu. I take communion while I’m there but heathens aren’t supposed to do that, you know.
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4 random books from my Library!
