Birthday frosting

Yep. It's my birthday. Here's the view this morning. That's the sun peeking out in between the snowflakes, by the way. Cool, eh? Hey, if sun and rain is a sun shower, is snow and sun a sunfall?

That's my take on it and I'm sticking with it!

Here's my new favorite song. I awoke to find it playing in my head. Ignore the wierd woman in the hat.

talking too much - one sentence

Why is it that the person who most needs to realize - "Hey! I talk too much!" - is the last person to recognize that in themselves, even in the course of conversations about other people who are talking too much?

['scuse me as I creep off to consider how this is true in my own life. . . .]

time flights

The days have been flying past me. We're moving - supposedly - in something like 6 weeks.

I'm in a serious state of denial.

It all feels like make-believe that we might finally - finally! - be in our own home. The home we can expect to stay in, indefinitely. No more moves.

No more moves?

Ha! No more moves.

At least I don't think so!

I don't know how that will feel. I went to 12 different schools before I graduated high school. I was born overseas. I've never counted up all the states I've been to, but it's been a lot. (The 'missing' ones tend to be in the upper northwest part. . . . The 'missing' countries tend to be the more 'eastern' ones. . . .) Could it really be time for me to settle down?

It does feel like it.

I'm looking forward to planning and planting my garden. To going through all the boxes I've stored in my parents' attic and basement over the years, and finally either using all that 'good stuff', or else heaving it. To working in a kitchen I designed for me to work in. (If only I could find a decent countertop that didn't cost a fortune!) To maybe really getting a piano, and not just thinking: "One day. . . . ."

Other developments: Luther is now about twice the size he was when he arrived, and house-trained. He still is not to be trusted on his own, however. Squirrels have started a nest only 20 feet up in the tree right in front of our rented-house-porch, and the front yard has been transformed into a sort of flying squirrel circus tent. Almost all the plants I bought at the beginning of the planting season never made it into pots and are beginning to die. I have managed to control myself and not start taking plants to our new house - where the final grading could be expected to kill them all, or the workers to trample them to death, no matter where I put them. . . . I figured out that the chatty little gray birds we call "Ardy Doody" birds (they sound like Star Wars' R2D2) are actually Cat Birds - but I don't think they sound like cats atall. I'm reading children's books. Kate DiCamillo's Tale of Despereaux was very entertaining - and beautifully written. Imagine: a book for 9 - 12 year olds that includes the word "perfidy"! Interesting. And, I cut my hair.

I have to start packing soon. But for today, it's vacuum the sofa we're getting rid of, lunch with my mother and a 'churchlady' friend - hope she doesn't start lecturing me on why I should go to church - and resume the quest to find a reasonably-priced kitchen countertop and bathroom tile. Preferably in a natural substance.

Oh: and to stay cool. They're calling for 95 degrees. . . . . I guess I'll have to turn the AC on again. Bummer!

strange thought-fellows

Lately, my days have been taken with thoughts of design, decor, and money. Time factors in there as well, insofar as having to keep up with the construction process, and trying to balance outlay of money, ordering stuff, and considering replacement of money - i.e., namely by engaging in work-for-pay. What a concept!

It has effectively silenced much of my reflective thought, not to mention creativity. The bulk of my creativeness seems channeled these days into daydreaming about my garden and compulsive knitting. I have quite a stack of new neckwear, a gorgeous turquoise vest, and a growing pi shawl in a lace-weight Malabrigo in "Bobby Blue" [pictured].


I would have called it turquoise.

I've slowly started adding some colour back into my wardrobe. Notably, I see it still largely takes the shape of things that go about my neck or shoulders. For years, traveling as I did, I had restricted myself largely to black - adding only a silk scarf in colour - as the easiest to travel with and as calling the least amount of attention to itself. I wanted a basic well-done "uniform" that always looked nice, but didn't need to be fussed with. Black pants are black pants, after all, and occasion little comment.

Ditto: the black skirt.

The one place where style entered into the equation was in the matter of the jacket. There, you could have the short jacket, the fitted jacket, the boxy blazer, the peplum, double-breasted/single-breasted, the military cut, hacking jacket, or even a long coat. . . . Lots of choices! Not to mention textures.

Now that I'm a bit more settled, I find myself a bit more adventurous, colour-wise. Old habits die hard, though, so I still find myself edging to the black where pants, skirts and jackets are concerned. But in knitting, black is so hard to see! So I've allowed myself the luxury - there - of colour. Currently, it's turquoise. I think that looks nice with black - especially with a bit of silver.

As you see, I'm all flighty these days. Not at all what one would expect of a 'doctor of philosophy'. I expect it's reactionary. I'm feathering my nest and collecting shiny things, like any other self-respecting corvid.

I expect I'll resume my croakings soon enough.

lucky 13

I'm feeling flat. Kind of pointless.

I've been biting my cuticles again, in spite of the deal I made with myself that I would stop, and by which I justified the purchase of L'Occitane cuticle cream and Tweezerman serious cuticle pushing tool [read "these babies were expensive!"] about a month ago. . . . The fingers of choice for dental assault are the left forefinger and the right thumb.

sigh.

I don't get it.

I'd stopped for about 4 or 5 years.

So. Ok. Writing. Although I don't really need to write these days, so much as read. I'm perverse that way, though. When I should be writing, I'm reading. Reading? Right - we're writing!

But note, the writing isn't going all that smoothly just now, either. Very well then.

I think the problem is that I'm feeling like I'm missing so much. I haven't really been seeing many friends. I'm not doing what I want to do, but neither do I feel like I'm accomplishing much of anything else. I'm just generally uncomfortable.

I do have friends scheduled in now: buddy coming tomorrow afternoon; group dinner at another friend's house tomorrow evening; music friend's band playing the day after (early evening gig, which is all I'm up for these days) and 'actual best friend C' is meeting me there. In other words: I've gone overboard in the opposite direction. I'm good at that.

Today: hair cut.

It is probably not a good day to be doing this, as I might be tempted to something extreme. I think we can count on it being a bit shorter than usual. . . .

Who'd have thought a 'bob' was so difficult to achieve? I've been trying to get a kind of 20's bobbed hair cut for years, but no one seems to be able to achieve it for me. The closest I ever came was once about 4 years ago - growing out layers I'd consented to in a moment of madness - after which I took a pair of shears to my own hair rather than deal with yet another hair dresser also convinced that layers would be 'just the thing' on me. [It is not. Trust me on this one.]

Here's a photo I finally found of the style I want to emulate. Great movie, by the way. My current hairdresser's comment? "That's great, but it doesn't show me the back."

Ok. So what does she think the back looks like? How hard could this be?!

sigh.

Well - this oughta be fun. Oh - and I finished the turquoise vest - need buttons. That's always good for a laugh.

general update

Sorry - I've been sick. I can't quite tell what it is, but I spent the day zonked out yesterday. Today, the constant headache has yielded to ibuprofin, though, and I'm feeling the wonderful feeling of no pain. It really brings home the saying that the one good thing about hitting yourself in the head with a hammer is that it feels so good when you stop. . . .

So for the most part I'm feeling so good right now, just because the headache has finally stopped!

Other than that, there's not much.

We're not going to SC today for the weekend. [long story - no inclination to tell it]. I have another resume package to put "out there" today - for a position in the "justice" business. . . . There's a legal case to get started. . . . And I have a kitchen to design and a construction site to go visit and [hopefully] a new roof to see.

I will probably also be finishing up the main bits of a cabled vest I started knitting a week or so ago. . . . Normally, I would go take pictures of the same just to have a bit of visual interest to this post, but sorry. Not today. Maybe later.

I started with the viva voce reading last night. One of my author's translators has written a "Guide for the Perplexed" book on him, and I thought it would be a great overview. It has been quite interesting. For one, he talks about how Ricoeur reacts against the Cartesian and Enlightenment system of object/subject thought by insisting on unique personhood, adding the element of action and the potential of capability to the philosophical equation.

To relent, I'll close with a picture of the vest. . . . as there seem to be no more words for today!

Tuesday already

I don't know where the time goes. I really don't.

I couldn't tell you what I did yesterday. . . . well now, I guess I can, now that I stop to think about it. We started early. The king's chariot is troubled and had to go to the chariot-fixer. A new fixer of chariots, since the chariot dealer has been found wanting. Wanting way too much money and apparently incapable of fixing the problem.

The problem? The mysterious disappearance of coolant liquid.

The solution? According to the new fixer of chariots: a new radiator cap.

So that was the morning. Well, the car drop off and back home, where the king worked out of his home office.

You know what that means.

Upstairs to where I'm trying to get things done every half hour, at least.

What'cha doing?

I was trying to write. . . .

Ah. . . . well, um, when you get a minute. . . .

And so it would go. One rabbit trail involved the search for the ruler I admittedly took from his desk drawer and which then apparently fell down a rabbit hole, never to be seen again. I have looked everywhere for it, to no avail. The king decided to look in my studio for it.

You don't mind, do you?

No. Of course not.

Whereupon all mental work ceased while he stood in the middle of the room and made periodic forays to lift things up and look underneath.

What you should know to properly understand this picture is the utter futility of his hoping to find his ruler in my studio, given the current disarray of that space. There are stacks of books, papers, and Christmas wrapping paraphernalia everywhere. In the near corner you may find kitchen counter samples, supply catalogs and ripped-out pages from magazines of pictures I like of kitchens, baths, brick walls, castles, gardens - you name it!

In the far corner lives the art supplies and sewing boxes (two) and assorted to-go bags I've assembled for various projects in assorted ziplock baggies of varying sizes.

Knitting is [mostly] in the armoir, but a couple of projects have taken up residence in an overstuffed chair (along with the knitting needle case - a very cool orange Veuve Cliquot zipped carryall we got with the champagne we bought to replace the broken bottle of Dom Perignon the king brought along for our first trip to Puerto Rico together, but that's another story. Still, you can see a picture of where we went, here).

As you can see, just walking into this room is a very dangerous thing for a "creative" like me, not to mention an "excursive" like me! I get caught up by things that reach out and grab me, and get lost in knitting, or remembering, or imagining possibilities, or - like I did yesterday - in sorting through, discarding, filing, and organizing. (and trying to picture what our house-under-construction might actually look like. . .)

Then there was the try-to-get-an-actual-number out of two different kitchen suppliers - meaning an actual number for each thing, rather than one very large number for the whole project and then spend months trying to figure out just what it is that costs so much so that I can choose another option. Whenever I volunteer to give up something, though, it's always met with "Well, that's really not all that much."

Today, for example, after months of hearing how expensive the finishing package I had chosen was, I finally got the additional cost for the "distressing" I like. It is negligible. Seeded glass - on the other hand - I discovered is responsible for something like an extra $100 per pane! Clear glass they practically give away. I guess I'll learn to live without the little bubbles. . . .

But that's my job for today. An already it's after 11, and I've talked to my actual best friend who leaves tomorrow for St. Maartens (she usually comes with us to Puerto Rico, but I'm not in Puerto Rico, remember? sigh. . . .

But there's good news. I put in the application for a further research and teaching fellowship and I have been overwhelmed with the letters of recommendation I've gotten. You should see what Magda wrote! Man. I wrote her back to thank her and said that I would hire me, and I know better!

Then there's my buddy who I've known since he went to the Basic School at Quantico. He's a Lt. Colonel now and who (unbeknownst to me) is in the middle of some special operation in the middle East and took the time to do this for me. From the copy of the acknowledgment email I got, that alone spoke volumes to the person in charge of making the selection. . . .

You know what? If I don't even get an interview - I don't care. Not at this point.

minus fourteen

Two weeks. 14 days. Counting weekends. Feels like an eternity. Feels like tomorrow.

For the first time I haven't been able to find a '14' picture. I'll post my 'four butterflies' shot, instead. Imagine the plants as the missing additional 'ten' element. Nonessential Equipment posted a beautiful butterfly shot a few days ago, which somehow opened my eyes to the swarm of monarchs (monarchs? gorgeous orange butterflies whatever kind they are - with polka dots, thank you very much) all over our volunteer asters. There must have been 20 of them.

The king laughed at me yesterday evening as I chased around the aster patch, trying to capture them in a picture. They kept fluttering off and not cooperating at all.

Well - the housekeepers arrived early (has it been a week already?!) and so I'm cut loose for a few hours to (1) return library books, (2) look for a gown for a formal wedding we're attending 1st week of November (life-after-dissertation), (3) go to the college library and get some page citations for an article I found online that is helpful, and (4) maybe one other fun thing. Like pick up more Wintergreen Altoids. I fear I'm addicted.

This afternoon? Back to Hope and Meaning. Hoo buoy. . . . .

minus 16 - going a bit faster now

It's after midnight - so technically into day 16-days-to-go. I took a break from agonizing over just how it is that liberal democracies have increasingly become convinced that the religious voice really ought to be quiet, even if they have a constitutional right to speak, and even if there is no way to force them to be quiet if they don't do it voluntarily. Break time was used to find a numeral picture. Then I decided I'd go ahead and post that now, even if I don't write much else.

I'm still in a dither with ever so much to cover still.

I'll work a couple more hours - get good and tired - and then crash.

I get up about 7:30 or 8 every morning - to the king's coffee. We sit on the porch and watch the community awaken. And talk. It's a time I don't like to give up, even if I didn't get much sleep. And this isn't like me, ms. sleep-all-the-hours-you-can-and-certainly-till-noon!

Marriage has changed me.

I wonder what the doctorate will do?

day 3 - minus 21

Ok. So I'm freaking.

This morning, I wonder whether I should have started with the higher number and counted down, rather than the lower one and counting up. Which conveys more stress, do you think?

The worst bit of it is that I don't actually have 31 days. I only have 27 days, (now 25 - oops, 24) minus however long it will take me to get the thing copied and "soft-bound", whatever that means.

OK. so - 22 days? 21? I think we'll have to do the backwards count, cause I'll never get the full picture otherwise.

One good thing: I was cleaning up some text I wrote a year or so ago, and really found it pretty easy to cut all the over-the-top bits and advocacy for a certain point of view. I've been a lawyer so long, I am just always usually picking a side and arguing for it. I'm supposed to be "objective" on this, though. . . . Anyway, it wasn't so hard to cut out all the arguments I'd peppered the text with a year ago.

Poor Magda. She's had to deal with this for years now!

After knitting 5 or 6 inches day before yesterday, yesterday I knit one row. The king was giving me a bit of a hard time about focusing on anything other than my dissertation. . . . He's probably right. But I don't have to like it!

For today, I'll try and remember to take it with me. I have a doctor's appointment. There I was, last week, trying to cancel a diagnostic test I had unwisely scheduled for later this month, and here I am this week, going not for the test, but for a doctor's visit before the test, because they're "concerned".

I'm concerned that they'll just tell me it's stress and I'll have disrupted my afternoon for them to reach this major diagnostic insight. sigh.

Coupla things: Google translate is not bad! Granted, you probably need to speak the other language somewhat in order to make complete sense of the translation (from the German, anyway, perhaps other languages are different, but we all know how amazingly ridiculous the German sentence structure is! If you want proof, all you need do is read Mark Twain's That Awful German Language which I find laugh-out-loud funny! But then I mostly speak German, too. Scroll up to the top, by the way, if you get dumped into the middle of Twain's article, which a link test kept doing to me. Sorry!)

I got to cook yesterday - for some reason the king was not insistent that I not have to take the time away from work. I like to cook, so this was a good thing. We have very little food in the house (as the king is in charge of food shopping, which he hates) so this was a challenging thing. The potatoes weren't too fuzzy, though, and there was half an onion, plenty of garlic, a bounty of herbs outside and an almost-full carton of eggs: Tortilla de pappas was in order. Spanish frittata-type thing a friend of mine who now lives in Spain turned me on to. You serve it with a garlic mayonnaise and, ideally, a green salad.

No salad. Frozen broccoli, though! That'll do. Defrost, saute in olive oil with onion. Just a bit of caramelizing and you're all done! And, of course, half a baguette from the freezer (that's the one food chore the king does like: Saturday stop at the artisanal shop for fresh french bread - best I've had outside of Paris - and cheese. And maybe a run into the wine store).

Well, the day is getting away from me already, and I can't afford it today! I have a pre-deadline deadline, insofar as if I don't get Magda the last chapter - and the intro - by Friday, she won't have time to do any revisions before I have to turn in. New term is starting and she's swamped. So these next few days are crucial.

And the housekeepers arrive today. OK. Eat your heart out: I don't have to clean house. The king had a housekeeper before he married me and I advised him - even when we left his former big house - that I really would prefer to keep the housekeeper as housekeeping is not exactly my forte. . . . and, bless him, he did. Now I clean before the housekeepers get here. The things I don't want them to clean, anyway. Like certain wine glasses, my wooden kitchen stuff and anything silver or other polishable metal. . . . So I have to do that before they get here and then hopefully get out before they get here or I'll be talking for an hour. I'm glad they like me. But when we talk for an hour, the kitchen floor is sticky after they leave. I think they figure the hour's talking is the equivalent of an hour's work. And, granted, I'm sure they don't like me that much! But they do seem to like talking to me. Best just not to be here when they get here.

One day I'm sure I will be glad I recorded this minutia. Off I go, then!

current circumstance summary

Having gotten the 'religious bit' out of my hair regarding the proper view of circumstances (see WARNING: explicit religious content) my current circumstances stack up as follows:

I love my king. He's just brought me tortilla chips & black bean/corn salsa AND a cheesey dip that I don't even like to think about what it might do to my arteries. . . . . this, to make up for the fact that I have to stay upstairs and work and not be downstairs with him and Emancipated Son #1 and wife of same, watching football and drinking beer.

Block party last night was great fun - although I spent the entire time talking about the dissertation. (People kept asking!) I also got two offers of help re: the 'next-step' I have in mind, A.D. (after-dissertation).

I read all I could about writing an introduction - including several examples I happen to have on hand - but have yet to actually write the first word of MY introduction. . . .

hold on a sec. . . .

No. That didn't work. I thought I might be able to knock off the first sentence (just to get it over with), so I went over to the word.doc that's supposed to be my Introduction and stared at it for about 10 minutes while I finished off my chips and the cheesey stuff. Which leads to the next current circumstance: I've gained 4 pounds.

No - really. I've gained 4 pounds. A reliable 4 pounds heavier on average for a week now. Gotta stop with the tortilla chips.

My brother is back from an undisclosed mountainous region in a time zone 9 and a half(?!!) hours different from Washington D.C. time, and it was really good to talk to him. I feel bad because I don't really understand his wife - or maybe it's that she doesn't understand me (but anyway there's not a whole lot of understanding going on) - and I know he wishes we were better friends. Me and his wife, that is. He and I are famous friends. Anyway, I know he wishes I talked more to her while he's gone, but we just don't. . . .

And now I have work to do. The king is doing the laundry (and he does this well) and is preparing food for the day and will be in charge of the meet/greet when the emancipated offspring arrive.

All I have to do is. sit. here. and. write. the. first. sentence.

How hard could that be? And how does how I get through it fit me for either heaven or hell? And does 'hell' - now - fit me for 'heaven' later?

I have so many questions. . . . .


funny. . . . I thought of the Supertramp song that asks so many questions, but searched under 'Question Song' rather than 'Logical Song' and came up with another old one from Moody Blues which is pretty damn appropriate, under the circumstances. . . .