March 4, 2008 at 12:59 pm
(life)
Back from hospital, getting staples removed and the surgeon’s blessing to move freely about the cabin of my life, Aunt Lola’s funeral and concomitant ice storm, coughing fever depths of the flu. Raised the shade this morning on my office door, which is all window, and saw that a rosebush I’d cruelly pruned back two years ago not only survived and thrived, but has sent tendrils become blooming canes full of creamy pink old fashioned blossoms all up and over the ugly concrete block wall behind it. I didn’t think it would be able to reach the scrap of lattice left bolted along the top edge of that section of wall, but there you go. Life will have its way, whether I’d intended it to have its way quite right there or not. Looming in the sky above the persistent roses is an ambivalent fogbank creeping in from the ocean. It’s well draped over Playa but not quite committing to crossing Sepulveda and embracing our neighborhood… a tease for proper rain, which I’d rather have more of anyway. So there. You hear me fogbank? Pfft to you until you grace us with a with softly furred view out every window.
Gmail’s got a habit of putting potentially interesting emails into my spam folder despite my best efforts to tell it otherwise. Today two of them from the same source are titled Accepting Responsibility and Getting Out Ketchup Stains. I can’t quite decide if that’s a mixed message or two steps along the same path.
If I were writing this post on purpose, or with purpose, or in a purposeful fashion, I’d have a third random thing to comment on. But I’m not, and don’t.
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January 8, 2008 at 5:44 pm
(life)
January will be batting cleanup for 2007 with surgery tomorrow, housecleaning and sorting, and general getting it togetherness. Seems to be a theme… some folks are remodeling their wardrobe, some are remodeling their living room, some are remodeling their banishment chants, and I’m remodeling my uterus.
And ya know what the hell of it is? I have Jingle Bells stuck in my head. WTF? I’m gonna go under general anesthesia to get my innards scooped and hoovered with a cheesy Christmas song by way of accompaniment?
Pishtamabibble. Do Not Want!
Wonder if anywhere on the internets there’s an audio file of Sean Connery reading a recipe for fudge brownies with marshmallows on top? Even better, with the crash of the ocean and the Rolling Stones playing Sympathy With The Devil in the background as he tells me how he’s going to feed me those luscious, gooey, chocolately baked goods. That’s my kind of earworm, that is. Totally conducive to healing and stuffs. Practically medicinal. Even.
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October 31, 2007 at 2:58 pm
(life, rant)
I’m breaking up with you. From now on, you’re just another human being I’m related to, not my poor pitiful long-suffering mother or personal cross to bear or anything else that resembles a shadowstep in the waltz of recursive martyrdom you try and bully me into dancing with you, just because I’m your daughter.
Read the rest of this entry »
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October 23, 2007 at 9:21 am
(life)
On the plus side, we have gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. Twice a day, the fires are giving us the sort of iconic scenery the Tinsel Town-bound dream of as a backdrop for that postcard-perfect shot of their first billboard, the one they plan on mailing back to their hometown newspaper as a fuck you to the cool kids who made fun of them for getting a little too into Drama Club. The kind of sky that looks great Photoshopped behind the Hollywood sign.
On the minus side, people are being uprooted, evacuated, losing their homes and taking ash baths.
I’m lucky to be working from home today - to be able to stay inside my sealed doors and windows with my HEPA-filtered A/C running. My asthma has kicked in and I’m not even close to any of the fires. I can’t imagine how bad it is for those who are waiting to hear if they should take what they can carry and go, not only wondering if they’ll have anything to come back to, but if they’ll be able to breathe long enough to get away.
For those of us lucky enough to be safe from fire and ash, please keep your eyes open for ways to help the folks waiting to see what remains of their dreams. Most of my web searches have turned up more links to various businesses who are offering aid to victims of the wildfire - including the VCA Animal Hospitals, who are offering free boarding for evacuated pets - than anything else. But as always, the Red Cross is the agency most large and in-charge on the civilian side of things, and is currently running multiple shelters across Southern California that they’ll need donations of time and supplies to keep open. I’ve also heard rumors of posts on Craigslist offering shelter for pets or people on a first-come basis - it’s great to see people stepping up to help on a grassroots basis rather than waiting for the gummint to take care of their neighbors.
Last but most certainly not least, let’s not forget the men and women risking their lives to keep the rest of us safe - the professional and volunteer firefighters from all over California who are out there on the firelines. I’m searching for links on ways to help them out as well, and will post whatever I find.
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September 10, 2007 at 6:12 am
(life)
Number, that is. As opposed to rib, or Optimus. I’ve been blogging here for seven (7!) years. A lot of that has been utter crap, a waste of electricity and brainspace - me being nervously, self-consciously cute or perky or snarky or overwrought - but there are a few things here and there I look back on and wonder… what the fuck I was thinking? So much of what’s happened since September of 2000 has barely been mentioned here, as I’ve always been very conscious of what I’ve put out there and about whom. But scanning the posts I wrote during some fairly difficult times, I’m pretty sure I could have spent more time writing what I really was thinking without compromising anybody else’s privacy. What a fine and funky line to walk. Think I’ll be doing a lot more paring down of my old posts. Nobody really cares what color my aura was in August of 2003 - there is no posterity for which to preserve that tidbit. Pictures of my dogs, on the other hand, the world cannot live without.
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July 9, 2007 at 10:34 am
(life)
In the immortal words of Latigo Flint:
“Everything moves if you watch it long enough. And eventually becomes a fangy clown face tentacle monster. And some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by fangy clown face tentacle monsters.”
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October 12, 2006 at 7:07 am
(life)
Wow, I’ve been yammering away here for over 6 years now. Sheesh. I’d think I’d have something more interesting to say by now. Nope. All the interesting stuff is saved for real life. This is just notes to myself. Haven’t even felt ranty lately, not enough to go off about anything. Sorta angstypoof due to real life stuff, actually. My mom has cancer… she’s a week into chemo and radiation right now, and doing well so far. Another four weeks to go and then surgery for X-Mas (Happy Holidays) and I pray to the gods that all will be well and she’ll be all healed up and energetically cantankerous for many more healthy years. Oof. I had my braces put on two days before she started chemo, so I basically sat next to her and mumbled and drooled while she was getting fitted for her chemo pump, but at least she let me be with her. We haven’t always shown each other how much we care in what you might term traditional mother/daughter, warm fuzzy, or even polite ways. But we’d both kill anyone who messed with the other, without hesitation. That fucking tumor doesn’t know who it’s messing with, little bastard. There’s nothing I can kill here to make her better, nothing I can do but send white light and harass her with phone calls and maybe bake something or fuss over her a little, which she doesn’t tolerate well. Argh. Maybe she’ll get used to being fussed over while I get used to being patient. Okay, so neither of those things is gonna happen. But it was a charming moment of rose-colored glasses, don’cha think?
I’ve been angstypoof about writing as well (surprise), circling ‘twixt Scylla and Charybdis, lashed to a mast of fear in the back of my brain. There’s a scene that’s the lynchpin of all that follows, and it hurts to write. But I gotta. So I’m gonna. Even if I have to wait until NaNoWriMo starts this year to do it. But probably before then. Most everything else has been cleared from my plate - jewelry and school are both on the back burner while I concentrate on getting healthier, handling the dayjob with grace and aplomb so they keep paying me, and making space and time to write… turns out I cleared the plate just in time to be available for my mom, so that couldn’t have been better timing. Between my braces and her chemo, we’ll probably have Thanksgiving in a blender this year, which means that TGP and my stepdad will be able to bogart the pecan pie. As was probably part of their nefarious master plan all along.
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July 21, 2006 at 3:16 pm
(health, life)
Nope, nothing like slouching toward Bethlehem. I have a Quad-Helix (dental appliance fun woo! boy I’d never wanted to say that before the age of 65) cemented into my mouth to spread my upper arch further apart. Its purpose is to correct a left-side cross-bite, making room for the toofs that want to live up there before any of them break. I’m about halfway through the 6-month period my dentist said I’d need to wear it before he installs braces (which means I might be in anime schoolgirl form in time for Halloween!). Forty-eight hours ago he yanked the appliance out (okay, unbolted it from my upper molars more-or-less gently), adjusted the wires to make it more spready, and re-cemented it in place.
I am of mixed mind about the wonderfulness of said operation.
On the one hand, my upper right canine was getting pushed steadily outward by an errant wire such that the tooth had started to resemble a burgeoning or proto-fang, as if a quarter of my mouth were vamping. This tooth has already had a hard time in life - it originally grew in at an angle, as the baby tooth it was replacing refused to budge. Thus my pre-adolescent fascination with vampires. Now that the wire snafu is handled, the fang-ish tooth has moved almost all the way back to its proper angle and my lower lip is no longer snagging on it when I smile.
On the other hand, the rest of the wires are more spready… bones are moving in my head and have already moved enough that my bite is no longer what it was - all my chewing surfaces are askew. This is awkward enough in the absence of pain. But since teeth have already moved a little bit, the extra-super spreading power of the newly adjusted wires is able to take full advantage of the situation. The sockets of my teeth are not happy. I can’t chew anything, not even a little bit of squishy pasta. I can either process food by nibbling it to mush with my incisors, or squashing it against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. Or mashing it to hell and gone with my fork, then slurping up the mess. Ah, pasta and peas in garlic cream sauce. As liquid diets go, you rock.
The pain is getting better and I’m sure by the time I hit National next week I’ll be able to eat like a normal human again. If not, there’s always the Cherry version of a liquid diet - it comes in a flask and is peach vodka, Jamiesons, or brandy-flavored. Hee. Proto-fang, I salute you.
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July 13, 2006 at 9:53 am
(life)
Puppies slobbering over Frosty Paws (which I just noticed have animal stuff preserved with BHT yuck so must make some from scratch soon), school has started again (I get to study herbs and Mandarin whee!!!), hubby is typetive and writerly and hottt, I’m off to a writer’s conference in sultry Georgia in two weeks (yay Cherries!) but gotta do an overnighter for work in Denver next week (gah mile high heat), and I got myself a new toy for my birthday 2 months back (yes, I’m slow, I been busy, whadda all three a’youse readers want from me)… world, meet Sugarbutt:
She’s cute and sparkly white and sweet, thus the name. She also gets about 70-80 mpg, thus is my official commuter. To resume being ridden again after I get over this pesky headcold that has an alien in and on my face (alien + face + helmet = BAD). Woo!!! Last month I took her through the twisties in the Santa Monica Mountains for the first time, scraped the pegs on both sides, and had a glorious time. I’ve covered the Arai logo on my helmet with a glow-in-the-dark pirate monkey sticker, and have a Buff helmet liner in happy pirate print to match. Arr Sparkly Vroomm!!!
No, it has nothing to do with Cap’n Jack Sparrow being my imaginary pirate boyfriend. I’m just like this. Even though he is. Mine.
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April 25, 2006 at 11:03 am
(argh, life)
A friend of mine, Michele, has breast cancer. A bunch of her writerly friends have put together an eBay auction to help her out - her hubby’s self-employed and their insurance isn’t amazing (like $800/prescription for meds right now… yes, Eight Hundred Dollars American for ONE 30-day prescription). A bunch of writers have donated signed novels, critiques, I’m donating a bunch of my handmade jewelry, others are tossing in some other crafty stuff… very grassroots. Please help spread the word any way you can.
The main site giving information about Michele and some of the writers who have so generously donated autographed copies of their novels and manuscript critiques is located at The Michele Fund.
You can go directly to the eBay auction by clicking here, or doing a search on eBay for “CherriesTMF”, which all of the auction items are tagged with.
My attempt at hard-sell (at which I blow monkey chunks, admittedly, oh where are my scurvy minions?) is that even if none of the books or critiques appeal to your genre preferences, there will be shiny gift items up there too over the next few weeks and ongoing and Mother’s Day is coming and Michele’s a mother and everybody has a mother so don’t be a selfish bastard, go bid on something that somebody’s mother would like to receive in remembrance of her May 14th Hallmark moment.
Breast cancer sucks.
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