Category Archives: these are the days of my lives

February 28, 2010 · 3:12 pm

upgrades

David woke up yesterday and decided that it was time for some shopping and that it was high time we got a new mattress and that he had himself a wii.

We’ve been sleeping on my mattress, the one that Jessica and I bought 10 years ago when we’d just moved to California.  There was a plan for getting beds:
1.  Sleep on the floor, with mats and blankets.  Save up!
2.  Buy one mattress and sleep together.  Continue with the saving.
3.  Buy a second mattress.
4.  Get box springs and frames.
After 3 nights of sleeping on the floor in our new apartment, we caved  and abandoned the plan completely.  We went into Oakland Chinatown and bought the cheapest mattresses we could find.  They were an atrocious turquoise floral pattern and generally about as crappy as they come at $100 each.  But that’s the bed I had, and I never got around to having a spare gabillion dollars to have a new one.

It’s been 10 years and as bad as the bed is, it’s my favorite place.  I don’t think there’s anything finer than waking up on a weekend morning and just lingering in this warm place with a drowsy boy, to talk and be close to one another.

It’s the same bedroom and the same headboard.  It’s just a new mattress.  But this one is our mattress.  It’s an investment in our nest of together.  As much as I’m looking forward to some better nights’ sleep, I’m more glad to be a part of this relationship and all of the new things we’ll do together.  This is the bed I made, and I can’t wait to sleep in it.

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February 26, 2010 · 12:29 pm

twenty months

photograph by virginia kuo

Twenty months ago today, I met my David, and I can’t believe that it’s still a relationship that I can measure in months.  It feels like he’s been my person for my whole life.

It also feels like I won the lottery, so it doesn’t much matter if that happened 20 months ago, or 20 years ago, or yesterday.  I seriously got the best one.

But just so you don’t get jealous, he does gurgle a lot.

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February 25, 2010 · 3:27 pm

This post will not have any accompanying photograph

While airport security is definitely a pain in the tuchis, I usually get through it without much hassle.  I take care to remove any jacket or sweater before it’s my turn to put stuff in those plastic bins.  I don’t wear shoes that have to be tied.  I pay attention.  And mostly I try to behave like I’ve got an iota of sense in my noggin.  Thus, it is fine.

But once.

I set off the beeper.  I have no idea why.  The lady upon whom the honor of waving a sensor wand thing about my person was bestowed said that sometimes the underwire of “big girls” can set them off.  Never happened before, but fine.  I will concede the huge knockers point.

Then she made me sit down and she used her hands to feel the pant legs around my ankles and all over my feet.

All suspicious eyes she says “Whatcha got in your socks there?”

“In my socks where?  Just feet!  That’s all I have in there.”

“No, what’s on the bottom of your feet?”

“Oh” I say, and to hide my shame I make a joke.  “Those are just my cloven hoofs.”

“WHAT?!”

Ok fine.  Make me admit it.  Out loud.  While David is sniggering at me.

“Those are my gross foot callouses.”  Sigh.  “Sorry.”

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February 23, 2010 · 2:13 pm

how i became a paparazzi

red headed guy

On the way home from work yesterday, I spied a guy with the most wonderful shade of red hair.  His trousers were a little too snug in the hip and thigh area, and it seemed from my vantage that his eyeglasses were unrecommended.  I quickly tucked away judgment of his doofus hipster persona into my pocket of hidden snark, because Hark! Fantastic fiery hair.

This is the hair color I would love to have!

If only my stylist would stop making my hair magenta!  THEN!  Then I could be gorgeous and content and all the little puppies would follow me around, but never pee on my rugs.

There is churning and the grinding of gears in my noggin.  A brilliant idea surfaces.

I shall take his picture!  With my camera phone!  It will be perfect!  I will have this picture of the best color red safely tucked away in my phone and I can show it to my stylist!  Never again will I have to go searching through magazines to find my holy grail of example color.  Oh, my, the cleverness of me.

So I skittered up quickly until I was walking just behind Mr Red Head.  And I foolishly darted after him across the street, against a red light, whipping out my phone.  I got the phone feature turned on and was right behind him ready to snag the shot, when I hit the button and

CUH-CLICK!

My phone makes this horrible, loud picture taking noise, right in the nape of this guy’s neck.  The other dude he’s talking to probably saw what I was up to and is just telling Mr Red Head that he has a stalker.  I wouldn’t know, because I totally ran away.

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February 12, 2010 · 2:18 pm

The opposite of Stuart Smalley

This bit of a post from Chicken & Cheese just flew out from my computer screen and bit me.  Right on the nose.

But you know what? I’m going to channel my inner Stuart Smalley and tell you that yes,
goddamnit, I am good enough. I have stories inside me — otherwise why would you keep
coming here?

That lady’s validation for being good enough, for having stories is that people go to her blog and they read it.  People like me.

But nobody comes to my blog.  Not even my actual real life friends, let alone imaginary internet ether friends.  Which means that I’m not good enough. My stories aren’t that interesting.  Or that my writing is kind of crap.  Or maybe that I don’t sit down to craft a small parable of charm and sage insight.  Rather, I ramble away to the tune of loon and leave it at that.

As I struggle to figure out who I’m supposed to be and where I’m supposed to go…  take away the “supposed to” even.  So not “what am I supposed to be doing?”  I can’t even answer “what do I want to do?”  Part of that, certainly, is to do with the belief that I’m not good enough.  I can’t be a writer.  I’m not good enough.  Or, I can’t be a writer.  I’m too lazy.  Coincidentally, that’s also why I couldn’t be a jewelry maker or a photographer or a baker.

I try to take deep calming breaths and accept that some people are ordinary.  Not everyone can have an amazing career.  Lazy people, in particular, are not likely to be exceptional.  But I am still harboring hopes that a magic drop of miracle juice will fall on me, so that I can be amazing, too.

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February 5, 2010 · 1:30 pm

Grumpy love

MH Jeeves - Grumpy Love

I feel a bit like this… can’t focus on the wonderful thing I have around me, because I’m surrounding myself with a field of grump.  So thankful for my wonderful David, and sorry that I can’t get myself to snap out of the funk.  I do know that it’s there, though… I can see those floating hearts all around.

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January 30, 2010 · 10:13 pm

Maple Leaves

Maple died on Friday.  On Thursday night, I walked into the kitchen and saw her sprawled out by her food bowl.  Typically, she’d scamper right out of the kitchen if we happened to come in while she was in there, because eating and drinking is very special private time in Maple Land.  Or something.  But she just lay there.  I picked her up and put her by the radiator in the dining room, which is her typical hang out spot.  As soon as I put her on the floor, she just flopped down, exactly where gravity put her.

Around 4:30 in the morning, she started mewing, loudly.  Sometimes caterwauling.  I got up and held her on my lap, sitting on the couch for a while.  On Friday morning, I went to work.  I had an interview in the afternoon.  When I got home again in the evening, she was dead, and probably had been for quite some time.  She was in the same spot that she had been when we left in the morning.  I cried a lot.  David cried a bit.  We put her in a box.  Then we went out for dinner and drank a lot.

The local vet wouldn’t take her body, since I’d never actually taken her to the vet and she wasn’t “a client.”  So in the afternoon, we took her to the Humane Society.  I couldn’t go in.  I sat in the car while David did it.

She was only 8 years old.  I have no idea what was wrong.

And I feel very sad.  She was rather ridiculous, but she was my cat.  My pet.  The non-human creature who shared my home.  She would lick our hands, if they were exposed from under the covers in bed on a Saturday morning.  She’d thud herself against me to lean on when we went to sleep, and end up at the foot of the bed in the night.  When she was happy, she’d do a somersault of sorts, with her ass in the air and her head down between her legs, curled up and looking up at you from in between her hind legs.

She would holler and meow like crazy when we came home.  And I think she recognized the sound of my car; she seemed like she always knew when I was coming in.  She sat like a gargoyle protector on the arm of the couch, next to me, while I sat there.  She liked to head butt.  She loved coming in to the bathroom after I got out of the shower, rubbing around my wet legs.  She had a funny white spot on her nose, that extended on to the pebbled texture pink part of her nose.  Her whiskers curled up, not down.

I can’t describe what it is that feels so sad right now.  It doesn’t feel like missing, or regret.  I couldn’t claim that it was a tremendous cat love, or that I was ever a good cat lady.  But still.
There is a huge unfathomable sorrow.

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January 2, 2010 · 9:38 pm

winter in California

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December 30, 2009 · 6:26 pm

all the pretty presents

I don’t count New Year’s Eve for much of a holiday and thus feel I can safely say that the holidays are over.  It’s kind of a Yay! to have all the chaos finished, but also rather ho-hum to be faced with 31 days in the month of January, festivity-free.

There’s lots that I love about Christmas, and none of it’s to do with the baby Jesus.  Like any good five year old, what I love is the presents.  And not because I’m some kind of saint or anything, but I love the buying and picking out of presents more than I like getting them.  It’s because I consider myself to be a present buying master.  Although maybe ask the guy who doesn’t shave his head and for whom I bought this about that…

While it’s still fresh on my mind, I’d like to jot down some notes about my favorite gifts of the year, just in case I need to remember for later.

I got David a samurai sword handled umbrella from ThinkGeek.com.  It has a strap to wear across your chest so that the handle is sticking up over your shoulder and it pains-slash-amuses me to admit it, it its pretty bad ass ninja.

The Zander gave me measuring cups made from Russian nesting dolls.  They’re so charming, and I totally had some successful measuring with them last night!

I got this letterpress poster from 4505 Meats for the pork lover in my life:  

I took the cue from my workplace and made a gift with my own photographs, and sent my parents a calendar of Flowers, Leaves and Berries.  This present is really only super if you happen to think I’m super.

Dooce posted this gorgeous printed wall art photograph of a hedgehog in one of her fabulous gift guides.  I love it.  Want it.  Ever so much.  But the cheapest, smallest one is $250!  Tragically more than I can pay for a poster of a hedgehog, even with me being me.
But lo!  The artist has also published a book and with that, you can have ALL of the pictures in one handy little package.  Rad.

And speaking of hedgehogs, how about a boot brush?
This went to David’s parents who I think were puzzled by incessant search for rogue hedgehogs while in England.  (I was unsuccessful.)  The dad says that the bristles are quite stiff.  I believe that in dad speak that roughly translates to “I like it!”

Despite a handful of flubs, I felt pretty successful, and a bit inspired to try to be a better more thoughtful gift giver consistently throughout the year.

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September 24, 2009 · 7:06 pm

Exactly half

I turn 32 years old today, which is how old my mother was when she had me.

Turning 31 was a little scary, because it was the first year of just settling in to the *thirties.*
So I’ve settled now.  A bunch of days passed.  I turned 32.

I would like 32 to be the year that I make some good headway at being a grown-up.
It’s time to find a new job.  One that I love.  One that inspires me to work hard again.
I’d like to get a handle on my finances.  I won’t be able to clear it up in a year.  But I would like to be able to say in a year’s time that I’m in a better place that I’m in today.  Laughable as it may be, I’d like to have a thousand dollars in my special savings account nicknamed “house savings – do NOT withdraw!”
I hope to be a good, reliable partner.  I have such welling for the David.  I need to learn to have patience and care for this person who can not read my mind and isn’t here just to agree with me.

I could keep listing the things that I want to do, want to improve upon.  But I also don’t want to set up the expectation that is the year of self help.  Because I rather like the self I have.

thirty second birthday

thirty second birthday

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