A Bender

I was given a gift card today, one of those cards you use as a credit card but it only has a set amount on it. So after work I went to Borders and I bought some stationary, then a calendar - not just any calendar however, a Dirty Dancing calendar. With that score I was gaining momentum and I browsed the literature aisles and picked up Middlemarch and Dostoevsky's The Idiot. I put them down among some romance novels when I realized I needed something modern and not quite so dense. 'Sides I'm already reading Nabakov, too much Russian back to back then. I have to parcel that stuff out. So I picked up two Murakami books. A little dip East and South of Russia. There was a girl reading in the corner right in front of the Murakami books. She didn't move as my glove dangled out of my big orange parka and created shadows on her book. Now I wonder if she was dead. I could be one of those people other people yell at, "well how could THEY not notice she wasn't moving in a crowded downtown borders?!" oh the humanity! I think she was a painfully unhappy teenager who's mother abandoned her in a corner and she was reading and marking time before she could run away to Sweden where her online boyfriend is.

Anyhoo I love Murakami and I figured I could leave them for my mother when I was done. I don't like to collect books physically, just on a list in the internetness. I cleared out my books when I moved to a small apartment in Brooklyn and it felt freeing. Then I saw another book, a memoir by Gore Vidal. He's a naughty clever kitten so I picked that up and immediately thought of a friend who would like it too. Murakami and Vidal will be my cozy train mates as I go home. With that settled, I now have 13ish dollars on the gift card that I'll wait until I have to pay for something almost exactly that amount so I feel like I beat the MasterCard gift card system. I felt rich, I felt like other people must feel when they shop. It felt nice, but like most drugs, I can't afford the high.

Part 2 of my bender took place at Walgreens where I picked up a box of macaroni & cheese, chocolate/peanut butter, and a Dr Pepper. If I wasn't a Diva Cup girl there would be a box of OB in with that assembly.

Now my belly is sooo full and somehow the powdered electric orange cheese hasn't inhibited my ability to type.

The End.

cookies!

I just discovered some lovely new music to get depressing with or bake cookies with.

whichever

http://www.myspace.com/singingsirens

Art and Snow

Saw the Jenny Holzer exhibit at the MCA last night.

Wow.

It was intense and wonderful. An assault on the senses that distilled violence, fear, power, yearning, loneliness. I love her work so much. I usually turn away from art that's about this kind of heavy stuff, but not in her case. She makes it relatable to me.

I'm so glad I went even though it was windy and snowing hard and the Michigan ave bus was packed and cranky and barely moving. I would have been better off plowing through the snow in my sneakers then smelling a mystery fart and reading a Vogue the woman sitting close to me was reading.

Also nice about going on a weather watch day was the MCA was not packed but sprinkled with dewy young art students even though it was Free day. I wanted to gather up some skinny bespectacled, bearded art students and hold them close and smell the dust in their hair and the hope and pomposity that clings to them with hints of coffee and marijuana. It would be an enjoyable high I know, but like wildlife in the park, I should leave them alone so the next person with an unrelated to semi-related job and a BFA can enjoy them too. That's just being responsible.

Lighting my way

This weekend I finally made my way to Home Depot and bought a replacement light cover for my bathroom. Not as cool as the fugly cover shaped like a clam shell, but what can you do?

Shell cover RIP

I also bought some energy-saving light bulbs for the kitchen. I had 2, 40 watt bulbs in the fixture as a temporary fix and it was too dark for a kitchen. I like a kitchen to be bright and cheerful. A seemingly simple purchase. Well I bought bright sunlight blue lights and that was a mistake. It is the worst florescent harshness possible for a kitchen and it make my pasty skin the pastiest ever. I'm afraid to find out what this lighting does to brocolli. My basket of apples looks like a dead purple color. It is cold and morgue like. No good! I hated it immediately, but the thought of getting on 2 buses in the cold and going back to Le Depot for light bulbs is unappealing. So I decided the solution was paint my kitchen light cover the first acrylic red I found in my laytex paint box. This looked as terrible as one would think. So I then cleaned (most) of it off. I guess I need this process to accept the fact that a cold bus transfer for some stinking bulbs is in my future. I had to go through a rash form of denial. I hate shopping for this kind of crap. I like to leave my house for work, socialness and exercise. Other than that I wish I had a drop box for all my worldly goods. I do however enjoy going to a hardware store when I have an excuse to buy hardware or tools. Gazing at the shelves of options becomes a beautiful communion of possibilities. Tool time is what I want Home Depot for, not light bulb mistakes.

soapbox climb #499

I always roll my eyes when a woman brags that she was a tomboy when she was a girl. If I don't actually roll my eyes I hold it in like a repressed sneeze. I think it hurts my brain or something. We all know Jo was the coolest Facts of Life girl, though Tootie was a close second, but come on. To me "Well I was a tom boy" is really code for "I'm cool because I'm not dumb like all the other girls are" It's stepping on the rest of us vagina holders to make the Tom Boy feel superior and join the boy team. Which is not nice is it?

Surprisingly, it comes up a lot and I'd like to condescendingly pat them on the head and drain the smugness out of their face and hand them a pink lolipop as I lean in and tell them "big fucking deal"

Anyways most little girls I've known are a combo of both with uncombed tangled hair with a grotesquely elaborate barrette on top.

The End. I read a "well I was a tomboy" comment today and it set me off.

cold, smells and spills.

It's cold in Chicago so it was inevitable that'd I'd see a frozen spilled coffee drink on the sidewalk. I find this brown sight gross, but fascinating. It looks so violent and dirty. It's a mini-wreck to divert attention away from the frigid wind whipping around the corner.

One of the buildings on my way to the train has been smelling all week. Like a whole lotta poop. There sewer system must be broken. I think they got it fixed because I didn't make an automatic squinchy face as I walked by this morning. I've been avoiding this frozen brown mound in the parking lot by this building. I usually cut right through it. Because of the smell it made me think it might be a big mound of poop. Maybe that was where the smell was coming from. Today I realized it was a pile of leaves.

I remember last week when it was fall and not sudden deep winter.

Most naked

This morning before work I was at my desk and I hear a crash in the kitchen or bathroom. I look around and don't see anything. I think it must have been my neighbors. A few minutes later I have to go number 2 and I sit on the toilet and there are shards of glass on the rim. ouch. no skin broken. I look over in the sink and the sink light fixture remains is mostly in the sink but also on floor and obviously toilet sink. Great. The place I'm most naked is now a broken glass clean-up site. I think I got it all, but not something I wanted to do on a Monday morning.