Oh, my stars and garters!

Mess

I am not nearly as pressed for time as I'd like to think, but I have been working six-day weeks and some late nights, and so I find I am letting a lot of little things go. My hair has split ends. I keep forgetting to stretch (did it at work; officemate is used to it). I eat hot dogs for breakfast (cereal with fruit and juice; much better) and often just peel off a few slices of lunchmeat in lieu of dinner (peeled off a few slices of lunchmeat and put them between a few pieces of bread to make one of those whatchamacallits...oh! a sandwich! crazy). I need to change the plates and stickers on my car (done; took five minutes, including scraping off the old adhesive with a razor), which is filthy inside and out and has started making a small thwapping noise that I hope is just something stuck to a tire; I haven't really bothered to investigate. The DVR is filling up with shows I will never, ever watch. (Delete, delete! OK! Took 10 minutes because I had to reboot the cable box.) They keep making more shows and airing them, and by now I just wouldn't know where to start.  I let my flickr Pro account lapse (renewed; took one minute and no harm done).

My back molar has been bothering me some. My glasses are scratched and stretched out and look so tired on my face. I just realized last week that my driver's license is about to expire, which means I have to get a new one a mere two months before I move again. This annoys me so much that I'm tempted to take my chances, plus I don't want to get a new picture with split ends and boring glasses, but I know that is a terrible idea.  The weeds in the backyard come up to my waist, no lie.

And on and on and on, a hundred tiny things that will eventually get taken care of and are not a big deal at all but taken together make me feel like a negligent slob if I bother to think about them for very long.

Somehow, though, I can still find the time to drink beer and whine about all this stuff. Also I have clean laundry, and I talked to my family and saw a lot of my friends this weekend. That is because I am magic.

Serenity

We're never going to find a house we like, never never never never, and even if we do, the second we settle on something we'll move all our stuff in and we won't know about the horrible plumbing problems until we flush the toilet for the first time and it explodes and flying porcelain shards blow a hole in the roof and just then a thunderstorm will move through and dump nine inches of rain onto the floor which will instantly bloom with black mold and our cries of dismay will disturb the massive swarm of termites living in the attic and they will wake up and eat through the walls to reveal a nest of king cobras in the insulation* and the cobras will bite us to death and as our strength ebbs away the last thing we will hear on this earth is the television blaring a news report that the Austin housing bubble has just popped and it turns out the floor we are writhing upon in agony isn't worth the paper we signed on for it.

This is my totally reasonable fear.

*Should we be so lucky to buy a house with insulation. My god!

Plantasm

Well, it's been about a month since I posted a picture of the morning glory, and since I don't have much else to show or tell you, we'll have a look:

Yep, still growing. No flowers, though.

Hey, let's check in on Pointy while we're at it:

Lookin' good, little buddy. Lookin' good.

Whee!

That is all.

How one becomes boring and dies inside

I think it's funny that we have a 10 percent chance of tornadoes tomorrow.

I am working a lot. Also we are still looking at houses. Why are so many houses so ugly? If you're going to go to all the trouble of building an entire house, why wouldn't you just go ahead and build one that looks good? I am baffled.

Also, I am tired of looking at the lowest-common-denominator, shortcut-to-nice shit people slap all over houses in order to sell them. Eric and I agreed that in a lot of cases, it makes little difference if a house is fixed up or still run-down, at least on the inside, because that tastefully painted beige wall would be painted over just as fast as a dingy pink one, and those faux-bronze fixtures would be ripped out just as surely as the ancient faucets from 1969.

Although it's true I'd take fake-Pergo laminate floors over peeling vinyl tile any day of the week.

Hi, everyone! I'm prattling on about flooring and fixtures!

This house-buying thing is turning me into a grade-A moron. Expect drooling by mid-June.

Backhoe (whoa-o) Rodeo

One thing I like about Lei-Leen is that when you ask her to do you a favor, she will cheerfully say, "Ok!" When you explain that favor involves her posing for a picture in which you are pretending to kick her in the face, she will nod understandingly and again say, "Ok!" You don't even need to explain why you need her to do it. It's nice.

Similarly, when you ask her if she wants to go to the backhoe rodeo in Manor with you on her one day off, she'll say, "Ok!" And Dan will also be amenable. I am not even kidding when I say that a source of great wealth in my life is having the kind of friends who like going on absurd field trips.

I hate to say it, but the backhoe rodeo was kind of a bust. I had expected cheering crowds, a display of lightning-fast reflexes, slalom courses, and rapid-fire announcements. Maybe some guy making balloon animals or something.

(photo by Eric)

Sadly, it was just a few guys on stationary backhoes grimly concentrating on their appointed tasks, all of which involved picking something up and putting it back down again. If they messed up, they would grimace, shrug good-naturedly, and cede the backhoe to the next contestant. Pick up. Put down. Pick up. Drop. Shrug. Pick up. Put down.

There was no crowd to speak of, just a handful of spouses and kids sitting listlessly under the food tent while hours-old funnel cakes petrified on a table and a man apparently unused to public speaking announced an endless stream of raffle winners. It was fine, but it just wasn't quite what I had in mind.

We also didn't expect the not-quite-hostile looks we got from several people there: What the hell are you doing here? It's true we weren't exactly in our element, but if you advertise an event on television, you shouldn't be surprised when people, you know, attend it.

Well, that was their problem; we had a pretty good time anyway. Eric and Dan got to take a million pictures of heavy equipment, with Eric homing in on the wonderfully dispassionate yet graphic stick-figure warning labels on each.

I got to marvel at this beauty, so dark and gleaming with menace.

(photo by Eric)

Best of all, once all the little kids cleared out, I got to play on the mini backhoe. The guy who showed me how to run it was very nice and also kind of hot. Fantastic.

After an hour or so, we wandered back to the car and drove back to Austin. Eric and I capped off the night with sushi, a trip to the bookstore and Goodwill, and some quiet reading over beers. It was a fine day off, and I didn't even get to kick anyone in the face.

Our Terrible Idea

SLC Punk! is on cable right now, and I was marveling at how the punks are all so very clean, just skinny fratboys with blue mohawks. Eric observed that movies have never been able to quite get the punk thing down. Gary Oldman did a fine job in Sid and Nancy, but he was still a little too clean cut to be convincing.

To remedy this, we have decided we are going to devote all our creative energies to a film called Crusties! It will probably be a musical, but it could also work as a dramedy. Whatever. The plot doesn't really matter; we're just hoping to get the costumes right for a change.

We are hoping to make at least ten whole dollars off this venture. If that makes us capitalists, then so be it.

About face

Who would have guessed? Eric thinks his cell phone is the greatest toy ever. He calls me at work. He calls me at home. He calls me from the other side of the couch.  He even figured out the text message function. My inbox is filling up with one-word messages, apropos of absolutely nothing: Yes. Hi. Ha.

Huh?

Also, our favorite game now is calling each other and pretending to be loud assholes with cell phones:

Me: Hey, where are you?!?
Him: Driving down I-35 at 80 miles an hour.
Me: Yeah?
Him: And jerking off.
Me: Oh!
Him: Yeah. It's kind of hard to steer.
Me: Well, when are you--
Him: AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! IT'S HEADING STRAIGHT FOR---
(Click.)

It's kind of life affirming.

Last man standing

I remember feeling like a bit of a holdout when I refused to get a cell phone until 2001. My stepmom thwarted me that Christmas when she gave me a brand-new Nokia. "Welcome to the 21st century," she said wryly as I opened it, and then she handed me a prepaid minutes card. I was stuck.

Eric, on the other hand, has managed to quietly outlast all his friends and loved ones who swore they would never be tied to such a stupid thing, and we have respected him for it. Sure, every few months there's some logistical problem that could be solved in 10 seconds if I could just #$%@ing get hold of him, but as far as he's concerned, he's never truly needed one.

While the rest of us were dithering about where everyone else might be, if they maybe wanted to change plans at the last minute, and blah blah blah blah blah, Eric was off blissfully taking three-hour bike rides, immune to anyone else's ideas of what he should be doing. He still drops by places unannounced. He still shows up at times and places agreed upon hours or even days before.

But last week I pointed out that while we're looking at houses, and especially since I'll be working so much while we're doing it, we should really be able to reach each other if something comes up.

I felt a little regretful during this conversation, like I was asking the last of a species of great, proud beasts to voluntarily crawl into a circus car.  But he was amenable, and today he went to one of those Cricket outlets and got the cheapest phone they have.

He swears he's not giving the number to anyone but me and the Realtor, and he says he's canceling the service and donating the phone the second we move. I don't know of a single person who's gotten rid of theirs once they finally succumbed, but if anyone will, it's Eric.

Superhappy picnic table

It is finished! I am very happy with it, and very grateful for the help I got from Eric, Dan, and all the volunteers who came by the park to help. (Also, the guy who smoked spicy sausages for everyone at lunchtime is my new personal hero.)

We are almost certainly moving out of this neighborhood after almost 10 years, and I'm a little sad about that. It feels good to be leaving something behind.

So go have a picnic on the Wilshire Boulevard side of Patterson Park before it all gets chipped away or, um, defaced. (I think we sealed it up pretty well, but you know how these things go.)  Be sure to check out the other two tables because they're really cool too. Ok!

Bad brain

Ok. I'm awake. Shit.

My schedule allows me to sleep until noon most days, so when I have to be somewhere in the single-digits part of the morning, I get so paranoid that I'll oversleep that I can't sleep at all.

While I was lying there quietly last night, worrying about not getting enough sleep, my brain decided that wasn't quite enough perversity and began belching up those kinds of thoughts I usually squelch because, well, I'd like my life to move forward: That minor decision you made a few years ago: was it really the right thing? Are you sure? Really? Really sure? How about now? Oh, and that thing you want to do, you can't possibly think you're capable of that, do you? And that thing you said, that wasn't the nicest or best thing you could have said, was it? Well? Was it?

Shut up, brain, I thought over and over, too tired to get up and do something else, but my brain apparently does not care about what I want, and so this went on until SIX-THIRTY A.M., when I finally dozed off and immediately began to have a dream about being evacuated from work due to a poisonous gas release.

This actually turned out to be a good thing, because when the alarm went off, I was more than happy to get up and away from all that.

Now I'm ready to put on some old clothes and go paint a million happy faces. I bet they all end up looking a little like they're yawning.   

Happy happy picnic table

Saturday I get to paint a picnic table in my neighborhood park as part of the city's It's My Park! Day. Terrible name, good idea; people are supposed to show up at their favorite park on Saturday and help with a few designated improvement projects.

The neighborhood association asked for design submissions to spruce up the tables, and mine was one of three* that got chosen. So I get the honor of turning this:

into (what I fervently hope will look like) this:

I've never painted anything on this scale, aside from my old bedroom's walls--which I totally hosed up, by the way--so it'll be challenging. But I'm looking forward to slopping paint around all day, and it'll be fun to take my friends there to eat lunch someday. The only thing I'm really worried about is having to be there at the ungodly hour of nine in the morning. There's nothing joyful about nine a.m., if you ask me.

*Out of six.

Target market

I was writing an e-mail to Vickie, and Gmail's annoying ad generator pointed me to the Hedgehogs by Vickie website. I thought it was too funny not to, so I bit, and crap! Now I kind of want a pet hedgehog.

I think they would not mix well with the cats, though, and I'd just as soon not raise mealworms for them to eat. And so I will continue my existence, blissfully unaware of the joys of hedgehog ownership. Too bad for me.

Bee so sad

Where the hell are all the bees going?

Actually, a lot of them are at my house, battering themselves to death against the porch light every night. Is this normal? I didn't think much beyond huh, that's weird when I first noticed it happening last fall, but now that I keep hearing about the disappearing bees, it kind of alarms me to sweep them up every morning.

I wish they'd cut it out; we kind of need them.

Let's all make a fortune!

Ok, guys, I have an awesome idea.

We'll take a relatively cute postwar house and let rain wash unimpeded down the driveway and straight into the foundation for five or ten years.

Next, we'll yank out all the appliances to reveal the scarred, buckling floors beneath. We'll also start to rip the wood paneling out of the bedrooms, at least until we're overcome by the underlying clots of black mold and give up halfway through. We'll be sure to leave the torn-up panels leaning against the walls, though, because it lends a touch of class to the place.

Finally, we'll pull the window unit out from under the burglar bars, slap a lockbox on that baby, and put it on the market for a quarter of a million dollars!

Who's in?

My nose still itches from spending all of two minutes in that place. I didn't even make it past the first bedroom.

I know, I know, in a lot of neighborhoods you're paying for the lot, not the house. (Or someone is; it's sure as hell not going to be us.) Still, if that's the case, they should really just vaporize that box o' toxic before anyone else walks through there.

Looking at houses is weird; luckily for our fragile psyches, we saw a couple of places we actually kind of liked for considerably less.

Weather Center

Roo grew impatient with my barometer plight and gave me this gorgeous weather station today. Barometer, thermometer, hygrometer, all right there on my tabletop. Plus it looks like something my grandparents would have had in their house, which pleases me. Thanks, Roone!

Also, after all the sleet we've had today, I've decided the deniers are right. Global warming is obviously a hoax dreamed up by a bunch of dour do-gooders who just don't want anyone to have any fun.

Look, it's April and it's cold. Does that sound like warming to you? Nope, I didn't think so. Case closed!

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go look into buying a couple of Humvees. Not to drive--I have enough trouble parking as it is--but to leave running in the driveway with the windows down so I can heat and cool my front yard. I figure a girl deserves to be comfortable when she's burning trash on the lawn, which I plan to start doing as soon as the ground dries out a little.

The apocalypse is nigh

It's sleeting like a motherfucker outside!

Minor spectacle

I live across the street from a guy who's in the White Ghost Shivers, a Tin Pan Alley-style band. This is good because at least once a week they have a show, and I get to see his bandmates spill out of a vehicle in all-out 1920s-style costumes to collect him. Then, my neighbor, whom I usually see working in the yard in a T-shirt and cutoffs, rushes out of the house in a porkpie hat, lugging a banjo and straightening his dress vest. It's nice. I should probably go see them play sometime.

Plans

Eric and I seem to be in the early stages of finding a house to buy. That's all I'm going to say about it for now because I'm finding this part of the process pretty dull so far.

Also, over the years I have been a passive witness to many conversations where prospective home buyers and all the recent homeowners in the group chatted enthusiastically about interest rate trends and agent fees. Meanwhile, the rest of us cast glazed desperate looks at one another and pantomimed shooting, hanging, and eviscerating ourselves before sidling off and finally breaking into an open sprint, running away, away, away to a place where people could be free to talk about art or politics or what frozen meals they were planning to microwave for lunch, god, anything but the intricacies of home buying. 

I have no doubt that people will soon be politely edging away from my own house-hunting conversations. (assuming they haven't been doing that all along--hey, where are you going? guys?), but I'd like to put that off a little longer if possible.

So! Who's going to the backhoe rodeo with me?  If it's even half as cool as the backhoe ballet, I think we're in for a treat. I just hope they have funnel cakes.

Spruce

I feel kind of boring lately. Maybe I need an affectation to create some drama and interest for myself. Like a funny hat or a cigarette holder. A fake moustache might be good too.

Oh, what am I gonna do now?