Oh, my stars and garters!

Ahh.

Just got back from sitting on our new back deck, where the roar of the freeway is replaced by crickets, frogs, and screech owls. A much better brand of white noise, if you ask me. (They haven't called to tell us it's officially ours yet, but it's the last business day of the month and they warned us there might be a delay. The point is, they handed over the keys, and that's enough for me.)

While I'm on the topic of happy news/major life decisions/things that make me blink a lot, I should also mention that about a month ago, Eric and I decided to get married. More on that later; for a long time I have not been especially interested in marriage, as an institution or a personal status, and I was more than a little surprised to realize how much I wanted to.

I am not going to make you into a kite because I am going to set you on fire.

Maybe it's because I feel like my toes are being stepped on--I prefer to scrawl the smart-ass comments on my grocery bags myself, thank you very much--but I'm getting really tired of being addressed by the products I buy. I'm especially sick of that fake cozy we're-all-funny-buddies-here tone they use to address me with.

"In your hand--yes, that hand right there--you are holding some juice. Some juice that some folks we know got together and squeezed for you. It's just juice. Not gonna save the world, but we like to think it's a start."

You know the kind of crap I'm talking about. I guess it's supposed to make you think Yes, I will be thrilled to give you four dollars for six ounces of liquified oranges, because it's so cute and clever that I totally wanna be bff with you guys! LYLAS, Odwalla!!! xoxoxoxoxo!!!!!

I hated the Dodge Neon "Hi" campaign when that came out in the early 90s, and it's only gotten so much worse since then. Hey, grocery bag/juice bottle/couscous package? We are not friends. I do not secretly wish you were a person so I could hang out with you. Your marketers are trying to get my money, and I am trying to buy something that meets my needs for the least amount of that money possible.

I am not opposed to you* making it fun to buy and use things; good design really does make everything nicer, but enough already with the studied quirkiness. I don't care how upscale the market is or how organic the chocolate bar, I don't want a monologue from my purchases. If you're serious about wanting a more personal connection with your customers, make sure your service-level employees are happy. Trust me, we can tell.

Ni Hao Awesome Joolie!
Fuck you, flickr.

There are much more important things to get spun up about right now, I know, but I think this stuff can be really insidious, in its own condescending, primary colored, hand-lettered way.

And now I will finish drinking my beer, which is refreshing because its label only wants to tell me that it was made in Germany, and also that one might have regrets if one were to drink too much of it while pregnant or driving around.

*And why am I calling you "you?" See how pervasive this is? It's ridiculous. Actually, no, I'm ridiculous. I think part of why I'm mad is because I know what's going on and on some level it still works.

Rictus

I am pretty much rigid with I-don't-know-what now that we're about 36 hours from buying this house. What would you call a combination of terror occasionally mitigated by joy? Jerror? Toy?

There may be no word for what I'm feeling right now, but there is a word for what I might do about it: vomit.

Also, it will not stop raining, and it will not stop raining really, really hard. The leaks have not worsened appreciably at the current house, but still, every time another storm moves through, my nervous little rat brain keeps picturing the roof caving in and crushing us all. So: More towels! And one more vodka drink before bed.

Left

Can you believe how nice our new house is? We got a really good deal on it for some reason.

Oh, ho ho, I'm so funny. This is actually a long-abandoned house on the I-35 frontage road not too far from our current place. It looks sad and strange and very out of place where it is, and I had been meaning to take a picture of it before we moved.

According to the tax records, it was built in 1940. Back then, I-35 was East Avenue, a largely residential thoroughfare. There is actually a fairly nice house that people still live in on the frontage road a few blocks north of this one. I can't imagine having an interstate running right through your front yard, but they're probably used to it. It would be convenient, at least.

That whole east side of the frontage road from Manor Road to Airport Boulevard is essentially condemned. If I-35 is ever expanded, everything on that side goes; the west side is home to things like a hospital and The University of Texas, and you know they're not touching those. I've heard the only reason they haven't done anything yet is that Mount Calvary Cemetery is wedged in between Dean Keeton and Manor, and they're afraid that moving the graves will cost too much in money and public ire.

In the meantime, no one wants to put any money into the buildings over here in case TxDOT comes in and takes it all away. That's why there's not much besides this house, gas stations, a handful of adult businesses, a bus depot, a kayak rental place, and a string of vacant buildings that used to house things like a bait shop and a discount casket store.

It's actually a pretty interesting stretch of road, and although I've tried, I've never photographed it to my satisfaction. Maybe I can get some more of it before we go, if the rain will ever stop.

Foo!

It seems a little silly to buy a big, heavy foosball table just weeks before we're moving--take the camper shell off the truck, wrestle it into the back, rearrange the living room, risk bashing in the TV screen with one of the legs on the way in, put the camper shell back on--only to have to drag the damn thing onto a U-Haul two weeks later. But the deal was too good to pass up, or something like that. At any rate, Eric got this crazy excited little-kid look when he found it on eBay, so I didn't even try to talk him out of it.

I don't know anything about foosball. I didn't even know until today that you aren't supposed to spin the little guys around. I thought that was half the fun, but apparently that brands you as an amateur and a total dick, and no one wants that.

Really, my favorite part about foosball is the little guys' faces. My other favorite part is that everyone, but everyone, is a total foosball champion. I had no idea there were so many of those out there, but it turns out that anyone who plays at all says they're really amazing at it and will, given half the chance, get on that foosball table and kick everyone else into a sad pile of ass pulp.

Yeah, well, we'll see about that. I picked up air hockey pretty fast, see, so I just might come up out of nowhere to smite you all. All! ALL! Foosball ALL up in your face, bitches! Ahem.

The Sunday super-happy fun club

Hooray! I have a bike posse! And a pool posse! And a hot dog and tater tot posse!

It is agreed that everyone should ride bikes to the pool and then get stuffed at Dog Almighty as often as possible this summer. They have free beer on Sunday evenings! My arms and legs are tired, but my belly is full and my mind is relaxed. For once.

Hoops

We are supposedly all done with the house-buying process and are just waiting for our CLOSING DATE, which looms impressive and frightening in our minds, even though CLOSING is nothing but the part where we sign our names six thousand times and hand over a cashier's check for ninety billion dollars and promise to remain faithfully in harness for the rest of our lives on this earth or thirty years, whichever comes first, and then we get the keys and act like the whole thing never happened and go around telling everyone how easy it was.

But it seems like we'll never be done, that the being-done part is a complete filthy lie, because every day there's something, some irritating little piece of arcane paperwork that someone just remembered and upon which the whole thing could hinge or collapse. Could you guys reprint page 7 of the contract, the amended version, and re-initial line 20 and send it to us? Hi! Just a reminder that you need to call Principessa Purdinkadinkle at the title company and read off the alphanumerical transcription of your DNA code before next week so she can get the genetic materials addendum to your contract to the lender, okay? And if it's not too much trouble, would you mind removing the left kidney of a virgin-conceived fetus--any one will do, don't worry about that part too much--and e-mail or fax it to us before close of business Tuesday? Oh, no reason!

Free hand

This took a lot longer than it should have. Still, I am now confident I will be able to draw the everloving shit out of some hands by September.

Happy delusion

As moving day approaches, Eric and I have been talking about all the cool shit we want to do at the new house. We want to plant a vegetable garden, and build a portable herb garden, and start a compost pile, and install rain barrels, and make a darkroom, and adopt a puppy and train it really well, and buy in bulk and cook all the time and he wants to sculpt and I want to write and learn to screen print and of course draw hands, and, and, and...it's all very exciting, and I'm sure we'll do some of it. But whoever these people are who would actually do all this stuff all the time, I don't know when they would have time to work. Or sit around drinking beer and endlessly looking at the internet. I'm a little annoyed with these people already, to be honest.

I mean, give me a break; I've been a slug for 32 years, and now just because I'll be paying a bank instead of a bitch every month, I'm going to turn into some magic miracle of productivity? Seems unlikely. Still, I'm excited and inspired, and if I can get around to doing half that stuff, I'll be pretty thrilled.

Drawers

Can somebody tell me why some size 10 pants fall right off my hips and others give me a scorching case of camel toe and muffin tops that would make Otis Spunkmeyer himself weep with jealousy? I currently own pants ranging from size six to 12, and all of them fit me, more or less.

I suppose it doesn't really matter what the tag says as long as my bits are covered, but the size disparity is a little confusing to me. If I had a brain in my head and any eye-hand coordination at all, I'd learn to sew my own clothes, but whenever I try to envision this, I see myself weeping, covered in blood, and dangerously close to hanging myself with a length of unspooled thread.

So I remain a slave to the fickle and inconsistent garment industry. Yet somehow I manage to soldier on, faltering but brave. Don't worry, y'all. I'll be all right. In fact, I'm wearing pants right now.

While I'm going on about silly shit like pants (don't I know there's a war on? and a climate crisis? the end of oil? the end of bees?), I'd like to add that right now one of my favorite things is the roasted corn stand in front of the Fiesta market.

I like to take an ear, put a squiggle of mayo on the foil, dust it lightly with cayenne, and twist the ear around until it's evenly coated. It's totally good. I wish I had the guts* to try the shucked corn in a cup there. The accepted practice with that seems to be to squirt mayo into the corn until the bottle wheezes for mercy, shake a tidy mound of cayenne over that, and stir until you have a bright pink corn chowder/slurry situation. People seem to really enjoy it, but all that cayenne seems imprudent to me. I stick with my gently seasoned version and am perfectly happy for as long as an ear lasts.

*Hee.

Boxeo

Photo by krotpong; scroll window up and down for hot action!

Eric, jlowe, and I went to the Texas Title Fight last night at the Erwin Center. Live boxing, even mediocre live boxing, is pretty exciting. It was interesting to watch the momentum pass back and forth between fighters in the better-matched fights, and everyone likes a good knockout. Plus the crowd watching at a fight is fantastic.

On the other hand, there's something really sleazy about boxing. It's supposedly athletic competition stripped down to its elements, but a lot about it is just kind of sad and gross. The satin, the showboating, the paternalistic rich men steering these kids in and out of the ring.

Is it really a good idea for a 17-year-old, however talented, to make his living getting punched in the head? What circumstances would lead a slump-shouldered 42-year-old man to agree to fight someone half his age? (He was literally knocked out of the ring in the first round; you could see it coming before the fight even started.) Do I really have the right to be disturbed by this stuff, especially when I paid money to watch it?

Probably not. But still, I'm a little conflicted about boxing. I guess I'm a little conflicted about all pro sports. Maybe I'll start following college diving. That seems pretty benign.

How to have fun in Plano

Right off the bat, drink a can of what I like to call "Jeff juice." Unless you or someone you know is a Jeff Gordon fan, you might not really appreciate the weirdness of this energy drink. Which, by the way, tastes like liquid shit, if liquid shit tasted like Flintstones vitamins.

Marvel at the fact that your father has allowed the word "Fuck," however faint, to remain etched in his driveway for the past 24 years. Wonder what it means that you think it's way funnier at 32 than you did when you were eight.

Be surprised that there is a giant inflatable alligator in your parents' pool when neither one of them swims. (It turns out they heard it would scare the ducks away. Their neighborhood has a bad duck problem. Drivers constantly swerve to miss them. The ducklings jump in people's pools, but they can't get back out and have to be rescued with pool skimmers. Feathers are everywhere. Sadly, the floating alligator doesn't bother the ducks one bit. But it's kind of funny, so it stays.)

Wear matching shirts with your sister for a whole afternoon. Trust me, it's totally fun and not the least bit dorky.

Speaking of shirts, guess how many shirts are in this bag? Go on, guess! Okay, how many shirts would you bring for a two-day visit home? Three? Maybe four? Because my sister brought 11. E-lev-en! For two days. I don't know why. Even she doesn't know why. It's very confusing.

After you're all jacked up on NASCAR energy drinks and weak from laughing at your sister's packing skills, drag your skeptical dad to the Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum at 15th and Custer. It's small, but great: Liberoachi? Get it?

If dead cockroaches dressed up like celebrities aren't your thing, the museum also has mounted bug specimens and a cage of Madagascar hissing cockroaches. The weird thing is, their hiss is kind of nice; a gentle sibilance coming from these horrid segmented creatures.

(Aside from sitting by the pool drinking beer and talking, I think that's about it. I think I wrung all the fun I could out of a two-day visit. Oh, and the telescope. My dad took out his telescope and we looked at Saturn again and Jupiter. For once in my life, I hope my weekend in Austin is half as fun as my weekdays in Plano.)

Creature comforts

 

Holy crap. Maybe a rubber naked mole rat doesn't exactly need a custom-sculpted gas mask, but I think it adds a lot.

Thanks to the talented Sneaky Fetus for letting me post this picture of her handiwork. It makes me really happy that there are people in the world who do things like this. 

Ha ha ha ha ha

It's really too bad we can't stay and eat the $55 rent increase our landlady would be imposing. A goddamn shame.

I am going to miss this neighborhood, though. The house is not home, but the area is. I've lived here for about 10 years, and so have a lot of my friends. It's nice. I like the mix of perfectly restored bungalows (anyone got $399,900? because you could have one, too!) and sagging duplexes ($750 a month, fix your own damn toilet). I like the snippy art yuppies and the indolent hippies and sweet old ladies and everyone else in between.

I like that tonight we walked to the beer store and then a potluck full of people we've known for what is turning out to be years, a decade even. I like that we passed another friend drinking beer in his driveway on the way home, and he called out to us and we stood around in the dark cracking each other up for fifteen minutes before we reluctantly moved on.

Well, there's really no point being a big nostalgic baby about it. The new neighborhood will be fine. Anyway, aside from the fantastically short distance to work, I don't even take advantage of living here that much anymore. Some weekends it seems like it would take an electrical fire to get me out of the house. Still, it seems a little sad to be leaving all the paths and shortcuts I've carved out over the past 10 years. 

At least there'll be a library nearby where we're going. Two libraries, in fact. For all its vaunted restaurants and postwar architecture, this neighborhood doesn't have shit for libraries.

While waiting for dinner

Eric is making huevos rancheros for dinner. I find that to be very nice of him.

We went to Houston this weekend for our friends' housewarming party. Hanging out in their new place made me excited to get into my own house and start setting it up. We're scheduled to close on the 29th, barring some horrible disaster. I don't anticipate any horrible disasters, but until we have the keys in our hands I feel like I'm going to jinx everything if I don't add that last part. To be honest, I think jinxes are stupid, but I also think a lot of the stuff I do is kind of stupid, so why not?

I watched the last episode of The Sopranos last night. I wasn't hugely invested in that show, but I liked it and thought it deserved more of an ending than a clever trick. Fuck me for finding satisfaction in narrative conventions, I guess.

Huevos are ready; ok gotta go bye.   

Personal failing

This summer I am going to learn to draw hands if it kills me.

Pshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht! Pshhht.

Oh, grown woman, why do you want to go into a bathroom stall at lunchtime and liberally spray your hair with Aqua Net? You made me want to light up a purloined Salem Light or two to complete the olfactory environment of the eighth-grade gym restroom. Aqua Net stinks, and you must know the bathroom at work has a separate, adjacent locker room constructed expressly for the purpose of engaging in less publicly acceptable behaviors such as getting undressed, picking your teeth, and using smelly aerosol products.

I rushed to get out of there before I could see your face because I don't want to see you in the halls and secretly think Aqua Net Lady. I am trying to be a nicer person, honestly trying, but it's so so hard. People are so annoying, and I am so incredibly petty, and I just want you to know that sort of behavior is not helping me in this pursuit one bit. I mean, I'm sure you're nice, and I did like your shoes (see? trying!), but I really wish you would never do that again.

On a happier note, my friends and I have decided to open up an upscale boutique candle shop called Wickity Wax.  The slogan will be Wicks'n'Sticks can Suck Our Dicks, and it will make us all incredibly wealthy, we are certain.

Spendina

I have finally had a few days off and in that time I've been hemorrhaging money all over the place. Here, local merchants and national chains! Please have some money!

Almost all of it was for stuff I needed: new tires, swimming gear, clothes, reading material, a hairstyle that does not make me look like a Manson girl. Between trying to save and working constantly the past few months, lately spending money on anything other than food, bills, and gas (okay, and cigarettes and beer) has been limited; I had a lot of deferred purchases built up.

After all that time, it felt counterintuitive. Like, do I really need this? I'm really going to spend money on this?

Yes, you bozo, your tires are bald, your hair looks like a cocker spaniel's ass, and you've been wearing the same pair of crumpled Army surplus shorts for the past I don't know how many summers. Whip out your damn wallet and take care of it.

It was a little painful at first, but I got into it again pretty quickly. You know what? Buying stuff can be really fun.

Unfortunately, I still need (want?) a million other things, but I think it's time to stop for now. Buying things is great, but it's been a while since I've had time to make and do things, too. 

Nothing of anecdotal interest happened today.

But I did get a haircut, go swimming, drink a fruity rum drink with an umbrella, and eat tater tots. So that's pretty good.

Neglect

It's nice to have free time again. For example, I kind of forgot how fun flickr is. I hadn't messed around with it in so long that I was just barely aware that you can map your photos. But you can! So you can see where this slide is! I mean, if you want to! I don't know why I'm using so many exclamation points! I mean, it's cool, but I am not really all that excited about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So yeah, flickr is still pretty fun, and now I just need to remember how fun taking pictures is. For tonight, though, I'll have to make do with the fact that I developed a bunch of badly shot and exposed pictures from a disposable camera that's been sliding around at the bottom of my beach bag for the past two years.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

(!)

Water, water, everywhere, plus more water in some other places

A bunch of friends and I went swimming in one of Barton Creek's many excellent swimming holes today, something no one has been able to do in a long time due to the neverending drought that was not so neverending after all.

In fact, after splashing around and sliding off rocks and fighting the strong current all afternoon, we wondered if the rain was finally over for the summer and how long it would take the creek to dry up again if so. A total waste of worry; we drove home into a bank of darkening storm clouds, and the sky opened up about a half an hour after we got home. We had blinding downpours, a little hail, and near-constant lightning for over an hour, and it's still raining steadily three hours later.

The crazy storm was a very nice coda to the day, although I would have enjoyed it more if I didn't have to keep changing out the towels in my bedroom to keep the leak at bay. Sometimes the ceiling leaks, sometimes it's the window frame. I don't know why one but not the other, but it's kind of exciting to guess which one will start spewing water out all over the floor. Tonight it was the window frame, which was tricky because I can't just catch the water in a bucket; I have to strategically drape towels on the ledge, the wall, and the floor below.

I called the Landlady of Awfulness about the leaks last week, and she doesn't seem overly concerned about it. I have better things to do than spend the last two months of our lease fighting her on this, so I guess to be safe I'll just leave big wads of towels all over the place until we move.

(Pop quiz: If you owned a house that was bringing in a fair amount of income, wouldn't you occasionally invest some money into making sure it remained habitable and safe by doing things like, say, fixing a badly leaking roof during a rainy season? You would? Me too! We're so sane! Let's pat ourselves on the back! Pat, pat.) 

Really, as long as the ceiling holds, I don't care what happens to the place. Although it does make me sad to see once-lovely hardwood floors stained and warping for no good reason than someone's cheap-ass negligence. That's just so stupid I can hardly stand it.