strangely adorable or adorably strange?

I love this video of Desert by Emilie Simon



One could fall in love with that adorable sprinkling of freckles on her nose, couldn't one?

Très très cute!

Here's the English version:

a break from a task to reflect upon well-being and a bright outlook

I don't go in much for hoo-doo mysticism. I know what I like and I recognize that we naturally notice things we find appealing when they crop up. I don't think that things always work out for the best, and rarer still the way we would like them to (heaven preserve us from what we truly desire), but I do think things work out how they work out and very often, the outcome-- if properly regarded-- is even better than we might have imagined for ourselves. Even through the horrid crap, hopefully we come away with an experience from which we learn and grow.

This weekend has been a wave of hypermania for me, and I've put in some incredible hours to try and render my abode slightly more inviting for guests. Himself has been most gracious and accommodating and has reached all the bits too high for me to swab with a paintbrush, and he's helped in many other ways. As he left here tonight he sweetly offered "what would you like me to do for you first when I get here in the morning." Ah, what might I do with such an offer?? *big grin here*

I finally started listening to music on Pandora on my iPhone, after yonks of urging from my sister.

Anyway, after he left, I was painting the area behind the fridge, up on a stepladder and I was thinking that very much like shooting, painting is such a Zen practice. As if in response to that, Pandora queued up the following track from Sigur Ros, which my yoga instructor has frequently played during cool-down at the end of session. Lovely.

Things work out. One way or another. And there is always beauty and music.

Memorial Day 2011

Here Sometimes

I love the most recent release from Blonde Redhead. This track is lovely:




I want my yoga teacher to put this in the mix.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: guess which is my favorite pair???

I moved my favorite velvet goosedown chair into the bedroom for a snuggly reading nook and the puppies fell in love with that perch. :)



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110 bloody degrees

I'm scared of how hot it will be when summer gets here. Sheesh.


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If eyes are the windows to your soul...

...then are windows the eyes of your house?

I've been talking about the home improvement thingie. Making lots of progress by taking baby steps daily, mean little nibbles on the elephant.

Thursday a man came out to measure the windows, as I mentioned, and Friday I ordered the replacement for 6 of the 14 windows of the house. Yeah, I could have charged the lot, but I couldn't bear the thought of the cumulative weeks' salary that would have cost, so I decided to bite off a little chunk of them in the form of the broken window and its neighbor, the kitchen window that is super-leaky and its neighbor, the bathroom window and the window to the second bedroom. That will leave the remaining 8 to be done either in two groups or in one swell foop when I feel recovered from the expense of the first lot.

I know there will be more than a perceived benefit in the house not leaking like a sieve-- it was 106 degrees here on Friday, even with a wind. Stepping out the front door was like stepping into a hair dryer.

Friday night I finished sealing up the gap between baseboard and floor in my bedroom with expanding foam-- a project begun last winter when icy winds curled up around my ankles when climbing into bed. I'm watching a bump expanding on my left index finger, fearful I've been spider bit-- but surely I'm just being paranoid? I never saw any creepy-crawlies, and I was wearing nitrile gloves most of the time. Well, actually, when I was laying painter's tape along the gap, I could feel the cold air rushing from the room, whooshing past my fingers and under the house. Baby steps, I'm reminding myself.

Now remind me why it's called a money pit?

Mom got her stitches and staples out yesterday

*happy dance*

Yesterday was Mom's first checkup with the surgeon since she left the hospital, and he was very pleased with her progress.

I'm so proud of her. It was incredibly bold and brave of her to do both knees at once. I'd heard horror stories about the surgery, and I was very afraid of anything that would endanger her general health or overtax her system, and about 6 months ago I told her my concern, and dropped that subject. When she made her decsion to do both knees, I was at work, it was about 6:45, and she called me and told me she wanted me to know she'd scheduled the surgery, and I very much got the feeling that if I'd told her I was too afraid, she would have done just the one knee. The emotional part of me-- the part that will always be the little girl who cried on her lap after a bad day at school-- was terrified of such a big double-procedure. But in that instant when she told me she wanted to do them both and was asking how I felt about that, something clicked and I realized that it's her body and her call, and she knows what she's willing to go through, and I need to support her in that. I was struck by the realization that when I do something difficult and challenging, my folks will express reservations if they have them, but they support me, and they buoy me in the important and unconditional ways that are so rare in this world. I'm glad I didn't let my initial reservations foster a fear in her. I'm glad she trusted her instincts, because I see again and again that she knows her own business. It's amazing how you are never too old to learn from your parents.

Here's to grace under pressure. :) Here's to my Mom.
*********************

Work continues apace on the house. There is so much to be done. I am going to bite the bullet and go ahead and have 4 of my 14 windows replaced(I'd seriously go into hock if I did the whole lot, so baby steps for now). The ones I'll do first are A) the one I broke out to get back in when I'd locked myself out(yes, it was too embarrasing to blog about), and the one right next to that one, and then the two winders in the kitchen. [yes, talking to Himself on Thursday I slipped into Arkansan and said winders*( for windows)]. I had someone come out Thursday to measure them, and was not at all surprised to find that nary a one of the winders was stock measurement.

I have the scaffold up in the living room, awaiting the final wave of beadboard on the ceiling. The bathroom is in a sad, primed-but-not-painted state, and there are cans of paint and tubes of caulk all over the place. Then there's the loveseat hidden under a pile of unfolded laundry. I apologized to the window guy, saying I'm living in a construction zone. He said this was immaculate compared to one he saw yesterday. This was wonderful, because he seemed like a very country guy like you see around here, sort of old-school, and the he whipped out his smart phone and started me showing pictures of a house in full-on tumult mode. It looked like someone had a bunch of crap in a house, and shook the house up like a snowdome. Just toys and clothes and empty food containers and all kinds of stuff, everywhere, in a tumble. I said "wow. that looks like it stinks." He said "you have NO idea" and went on to recount that the woman there had 5 pit bulls and there were feces all over the house and she had little kids living around that, too, so no, my house is in fact, very very clean by comparison.

THAT is scary, but I'll take the ego boost. :P
*******************
Did I mention how frelling glad I am that it is Friday???

*rhymes with fenders

Jared Lee Loughner gives wacky yard art a bad name

People love categorizing other people because this enables them to compartmentalize things nicely. The idea of how random other people truly are is a disturbing one, so having some common thread with which to sew things up into a more tidy package helps people tuck that idea away for consideration another time (or not at all).

Being of a slightly off-beat bent, I take umbrage, therefore, at the description of the "shrine" that was an ill-conceived collection of crap in the yard of Jared Lee Loughner.

A sinister skull sitting atop a pot filled with shriveled oranges reveals a chilling occult dimension in the mind of the deranged gunman, Jared Lee Loughner...

Ooh, skulls are sinister, aren't they? Skull imagery is everywhere from rock and roll to high fashion. It's almost goofy how skulls are all over the place. Of course, any healthy person wouldn't be caught dead with one. We'd not be found living without one, either, oddly enough.

Shriveled oranges? Well, mine tend not to get past the fruit fly stage, but I've had some lemons go positively rigid-- coincidence? *shrug* I've also seen dessicated oranges in bags of potpourri at Hobby Lobby. Super-creepy! See also the disused containers in which flowers and herbs are sold. Is that in some way symbolic? Satan's oven-mitts, are those flower pots!

A row of ceremonial candles and a bag of potting soil lay nearby, photos reveal.

Who are you going to believe-- me or your lying eyes? Thanks for that riveting description of what may clearly be observed in the photo.

Okay, I have a bin of potting soil. Ceremonial candles? I see these candles more often in Catholic churches. Why were they not described as liturgical candles? Because "ceremonial" reeks of the eerie stripe of hoodoo mysticism that buttresses the authors' point that the gunman was clearly deranged because of the shrine in the back yard. Of course, the same person would probably argue that these are redundancies, because clearly no sane person would ever have a gun to begin with.

I say this is just some random crap that ended up thrown together in the back yard in a THC-fueled freakout. I say this has exactly nothing to do with him being a nasty person who willingly killed a bunch of people. I think if he were truly obsessive and were enacting some sort of ritual-- demonic or otherwise-- he would have removed the UPC barcodes from the candles.

Then again, they are the mark of the beast, right?

Creepy? Spooky?

Not so much. I'd say murderous asshole who deserves to be held accountable for his crimes.

a busy little bee...

Lots going on this week. I've got a lot to do to the house before company comes, and miles to go before I sleep.

Ever more crashing waves of realization break on the shore as I work on this house. It's a cute house. Its core was well-done. The funny thing-- considering I've had a major renovation house project previously-- is that I naively thought this wasn't THAT big a reno when I bought it. Goodness me, but if I re-do everything here in the way I really think it should be done, this house will be essentially built again, and at a cost of materials no one would ever see back out of the place. Therefore am I led down the primrose path of justifying ethnically engineering the shit out of the place. I'll just try to make less of a pig's ear of the job than the previous owner.

I could recount for you here the myriad ghetto-assed touches which spring forward upon closer inspection like mushrooms after a rainstorm, but that would perhaps try your patience.

There's a lot of paneling here.
In this region of Texas, drywall is bad to crack as houses shift with varying degrees of moisture in the ground due to rainfall or the lack thereof. At first I thought the painted-over paneling was beastly, but I have come to genuinely appreciate that I can paint the ever-lovin' dickens out of it, and it won't crack. In fact, I rather like the painted surface. Is the redneck rubbing off on me?

The paneling in the bathroom was thin plywood paneling with an ever-so-lifelike photocopy of actual wood effect, never having been painted. Quelle horreur. I have a lot of other stuff to accomplish, but I concluded Tuesday that I could bear it no longer, and I whipped out the Zinsser and commenced to cover this offense, with intent to paint over that at the soonest possible moment.

The Zinsser's fumes are foul, but it covers paneling and wood surfaces well. My being vertically challenged, Himself will have to get some of the upper-most bits, but suffice to say I have about put the kibosh on the lion's share of photocopied woodwork in the house, glory be.
*****
Tuesday, my phone line crapped out, that being the phone line I jabber on 40 hours a week for money. Into the office I had to go, because the phone company told me they couldn't send a technician. A couple hours after I arrive at the office, I get word that a technician was at the house and-- lo-and-behold!-- more ethnic engineering had struck again-- someone had lopped off a phone line from the box to the house and it all went wonky in a windstorm Monday night, apparently. They got it all squared away, but I stayed at the office in town, though, because some people begged me to. I'll be there Wednesday, too. Someone came by the veal cube of a vacationing person to talk to me, but I was on the phone and she went away. She came back two hours later to tell me to disinfect the cube. Knowing she actively detests the vacationing regular occupant of that cube, I chuckled. She said "no. seriously. That person has staph. You better disinfect the hell out of this thing."

Remind me again why I wanted to start working from home?
****

Like I said, miles to go before I sleep.

Fairy lights

Got my lights up on the tree house, finally. This tree house deck thingie is under (and around) one of two enormous pecan trees in me back yard. It's really nice, but it's needed a little extra oomph all along, and apparently that oomph was light.

He did the hard work and I gave artistic direction. Got lovely white lights with round frosted bulbs-- I love that look. Sat on the back step late Monday night with Himself, admiring his handyman skills. :) I'm imagining a lot of nice friends here, too, and very soon.

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Bonus pups

Praline is lounging on the scaffold, and Chuy is wallowing in his bed on a dead cricket, and all is well.





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...in which we all were Left Behind™

Apparently, May 21 came and went, and we remain unraptured.


I really hate assholes who make up crap to scare people into giving them their money.

Again, I have to quote my sister who said the Mayan 2012 calendar spook thing had a lot more creedence. A year or two ago she told me "the world probably WILL end in 2012, because that's when the truck will be paid off." No auto-payment = the end of the world as we know it.

And I feel fine.

KISS' Gene Simmons: Obama "Has No F***ing Idea What The World Is Like"

KISS' Gene Simmons: Obama "Has No F***ing Idea What The World Is Like"


Haw Haw Haw!

At the same time, there's something a little annoying about the people who voted him in finally having the scales fall away from their eyes. Too little, too late.

Thanks, Gene.