i really should have vacuumed this weekend

When a girl has dust bunnies that could deliver full-sized, hard-boiled easter eggs, it goes without saying that she should have vacuumed this weekend.

I didn’t.

Instead, I let my dust bunnies grow into dust Harveys. We hold conversations. We drink tea together. We baked a pumpkin cake today.

I think my Harveys may even have an eating disorder, as they seem to consume nothing but hair.

I think it’s a good thing the Harveys are eating the hair, and not my pumpkin cake. (And by that I mean I’m glad the Harveys are eating the hair, and that the pumpkin cake is not.)

I REALLY need to go to bed.

if i am not your hero, i should be

If I am not your hero, I should be, for

I have liberated the funk from the pantry refrigerator!

Wondering what it was? A half sandwich from the Oyster Bar. All I’ll say about the encounter is this: one of us went down swingin’.

Speaking of going down...

(No, no NO! You filthy birds! My mother reads this blog! Would I write about that here??)

(Mom, they were talking about firefighters and their firepoles.)

(I mean, um... what?)

Ahem.

So I work at the Chrysler Building and one of the really cool features we have in our lovely, retro building is a mail chute. I don’t think anyone really uses it anymore, and, truth be told, I have no idea if it works or not. But the other day I dropped a postcard down the chute. And I listened in the little mail opening until I heard it quietly plunk onto the pile at the bottom.

(Or at least what I thought was the pile at the bottom. Could have been the trash can at the bottom. Or the paper shredder at the bottom. Or the very quiet fire-breathing dragon at the bottom.)

But the best part about it is that the mail chute is transparent, and I could see the postcard on its travels. I just hope someone on another floor saw it too and it tickled them as much as it tickled me.

(Not likely. I was pretty tickled.)

Unrelatedly (except that it happened at work, and this is a jobs/work/career post)... I made oatmeal the other morning and stirred it with a plastic spoon. Apparently it was a little bit on the flaming-hot side, as when I pulled the spoon out for a bite, it had melted into more of a hoe shape than a spoon shape. Needless to say, I did not get a new spoon: I hoed oatmeal into my mouth that morning, just for the challenge.

Ah, work-related nonsense. You are a sad, sad category in my life.

today’s oddities

I’ve had one of those weird days today, where the universe has seen fit to show me that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Everything I’ve read today has been about pushing out of your comfort zone -- three different books, and my horriblescope! And that effort is something that’s been smack in the middle of my radar, as I’m feeling a bit stymied with my life, and am willing to start pushing my boundaries a bit.

My mom and I had a fascinating conversation over the weekend, in which she threw out a number of activities for me to consider, and I listened to myself give one excuse after another.

"Work on a political campaign."
"I hate politics. And the race always ends."

"Join a hiking club."
"They’ve all hiked Mt. Everest. I’ve only ever climbed Mt. Holyoke."

"Take a cooking class."
"It’ll just make me fat."

After twenty minutes of hearing myself come up with one lame excuse after another, I realized I was stuck. So now I’m willing to make some inroads into doing something new.

Perhaps karate...

Also, I read a cool quote from Mark Twain: "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."

Also, I gave a class today, and saw my boss taking copious notes during it. Convinced she was going to tell me how horrible the presentation was (it was a little discombobulated, I’ll admit), I dreaded getting her feedback. But as soon as I realized that she’s doing her job by helping me do my job better... well, then it was like she was giving me extra money! Especially because her notes were very positive -- and even the "creative criticisms" were phrased productively. I wrote down her thoughts and really took them in. Because I want to do my job as well as I can. And while she and I have completely different teaching styles, she’s clearly doing something right. She covers the bases that I don’t even remember to consider.

Also, she was on Jeopardy. So clearly she knows a LOT of stuff I don’t.

(However, I’m way hotter. That evens the scales a bit.)

Also, there are some really cool things I want to check out (like Grupo Corpo at BAM this weekend) and having something to pursue always makes me feel more alive.

AND... I didn’t eat any candy today. (My system is in shock.)

eastery goodness

Easter in my family means food. (Lots of food.) And Peeps. (Lots of peeps.) I put one in my coffee this morning and it was kind of gory. First the skin melted off, so I had a naked white duck floating sideways in my steamy coffee. Then its eye melted off, which was pretty gross. And then it just sort of dissolved into the coffee itself. I took the last spoonful of marshmallowy goodness and popped it into my mouth. Peeptastic!


(On my second cup, mom ran out of milk so I put ice cream in instead! Gooood morning!)
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My father and I cleaned out the attic today and I finally got rid of the two boxes of fabric that he’s been pestering me about for the last seven years. (I was a bit of a quilter many years ago and these were the last remnants (literally) of that time of my life.) The first box was full of plastic bags of big swaths of fabrics, which wasn’t even exciting to me, really. But the second box?


Awesome.


So, years ago, my sister worked at Dunkin Donuts. And that Christmas, she brought home tons of donut boxes, which we used as gift boxes for years afterwards. When I opened the second fabric box, it was full of inside-out donut boxes, each labeled with a color. And inside each box were perfectly organized scraps of fabric that I had, at some point in my life, enough time to anally arrange like this.


It was astonishing, the amount of care and precision I had put into that hobby. I imagined some other quilter or crafter coming across this box at a white elephant sale somewhere and falling in love and gratitude with me. Because that’s what I would have done, years ago, if I had come across something like this.


Godspeed, fabric!
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I’ve discovered yet another unusual habit of mine -- answering the phone as if I’m not me. When I know who’s calling, I’ll say, "Joe’s Pizza" in a really low voice and see if I can throw the caller. It used to confuse my boss to no end.


Also, I’ll call someone and pretend to be someone else. Often I’m an association. Like the Association of People Who Call Their Friends in California While Walking Home Late at Night or the Association of People Who Have Eaten Too Many Peeps Today. And then I’ll ask the person I’ve called if they know anyone who would be considered for membership.
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My sister emailed me the other day and said, "What does it mean when you lose your teeth in a dream?"


I responded, "It means you feel out of control."


"I hate it when my dreams are right."


"So," I replied, "what does it mean when you dream that you are Jack Nicholson and you get pinned in the back seat of a Chevette in your high school parking lot by two other movie stars who threaten to skin your face, but end up cutting your foot instead?"


I’m still waiting for her response.
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This awesome photo is of my neighbor’s crazy front yard. I call it "Noah’s Yark."


Please note Godzilla and the strange green space man on the right. Missing from the picture is the porcelain statuette of the woman with two children. They’re in the upper right hand corner, watching as all the animals are drawn to the meager plant-like thing in the center.


I love my neighbors!

my unusual habit

I was asked the other day what my most unusual habit was. (I said, "the paisley one -- all the other nuns are jealous!") But when I actually sat down to come up with one, I drew a blank.

I mean, sure, I do a variety of odd things on a daily basis (not the least unusual of which is pouring out my innermost thoughts to throngs of online strangers), but my most unusual one?
Isn’t a habit by definition something that you do so often that you forget to look at its oddity?

So I asked Fernando (my officemate). In the blink of an eye, he said, "playing with your necklace." Now, I know I do this a lot. Especially on dates. But I had no idea I did it in the office.

"You do it when you read, and sometimes when you talk." (So I guess I do it All The Time.)

Eventually I replied to the questioner with some phony, half-assed necklace-related answer, with a familiar k8 caveat that something may or may not be true. (Is this an unusual habit? Not usually.) But this morning, I realized what my unusual habit truly is.*

I make up voices for inanimate objects. A lot. And they can occasionally be contentious... with one another. Which means I’m often having a high-pitched, occasionally Mexican-accented conversation with myself.

And that may, in fact, be unusual.


*I realized this because Fernando put on his spiderman mask (a spidey bandana) and started talking to me in his bizarrely high, semi-South-American Spiderman voice.

Funny how life’s full of mirrors, ain’t it?

awesomest photo of the season (so far)

So Awesome.

So awesome, in fact, that I couldn’t decide whether this should go under "Art and Photography," "Food and Restaurants" or "Parties and Nightlife."

It’s aptly titled: Peep Show

Happy Pending Easter, everyone!

a severe dearth of news

Let’s be honest: my blog is almost never about anything important. (And I’m totally ok with that.) However, I am suffering from such an enormous dearth of anything to say, I almost feel like posting at all is cheating. It’s luring you in here to read semi-organized ramblings from the inner reaches of my brain.

That said, fasten your seatbelts, because I’ve got a lot more stuff to add.

First, I am eternally grateful to St. Christopher (he’s the patron saint of travelers, right?) for protecting me from Ye Olde Dreaded Subway Barf last night on St. Patrick’s Day. I thought if it happened, maybe it would give me something interesting to write about, but really it was too gross to wish upon anyone, let alone a barf-o-phobe like me.

Second, in the barf theme, I was walking to the library over lunch today and I saw what could only have been called a Dessert Dissaster. Someone had dropped a plate of cookies on the ground. And not just those shitty taste-like-wallpaper-paste-with-some-sugar-thrown-in cookies that you get at the grocery store (you know the ones -- inevitably one of them’s green and sixteen of them have sprinkles). These were really good looking cookies. Which, of course, made me think that someone sabotaged the delivery guy and forced him to toss his cookies!

(This would have been so much better with the pictures, because there were three separate piles of cookies, but by the time I got back from the library, they had already been cleaned up. Sigh.)

Third, I had a dating realization recently. I’ve done all this soul-searching and deep, intense pondering -- you know, to become a better person and just generally rock the house -- and recently, I met a guy I really liked. You’d think that with all the work I’ve been doing, I would be fearless, courageous, and think nothing but positive thoughts.

Um, no.

Instantaneously, the old I’m-not-good-enough thoughts kicked in (see this post... context will now make it slightly more understandable). But the key thing was that I handled them completely differently.

And that’s my parting wisdom for you. Growing up doesn’t mean you don’t have the same kinds of thoughts; it just means you don’t act on them the same way.

Not news, exactly, but it’ll have to pass for it today.