Oy with the Poodles Already.

August 26th, 2010

Since we moved in 3 weeks ago, the neighbors or someone has been putting their recycling cart in our yard and driveway. I have not met or seen this person who lives next door, all I know this that they have a tiny and loud dog. It happens about three times a week. I have been patiently and perplexedly moving it back. It seems they think we are very stupid, because they keep moving it in closer and closer until today…

Someone knocked on my door a few minutes ago, which I could not answer, because I was on the phone with Seattle Public Schools, but when I opened the door to see if there was a package, there was the neighbor’s bin, right on my doorstep. What kind of wacky sitcom-like misunderstanding is this? I walked back over and knocked on their door: no answer, only yap dog.

I had to resort to The Note.

“Hello, We are your new neighbors. We thought you should know someone keeps moving your recycling bin with your address on it into our yard. This is becoming a nuisance, so could you make sure your bin stays out of our yard? Thanks.”

Update! 8/27: The note seems to have done it. The recycling bin is now over on the other other side of their gate, about as far as it can get from our yard. Let’s see if it stays there. I cannot believe I had to explain to my neighbor that it was their bin. So now they will either hate us or hide from us forever, I reckon. Good times.

When I’m Alone I Count Myself

August 26th, 2010

Whoa ho ho last night a person who I will not name to protect their innocence and their reputation took me to see Rufus Wainwright. Do you know who that is? I did not. What I heard was, “Evening out with fun friend, ok.” Holy shit. It became much, much, much more than that, unfortunately.

At the door there was a sign that said something to the effect of “Rufus Wainwright asks that you do not clap during the first act.” We were told again at the door by some poor ticket-scanning man who had to keep a straight face. “Mr. Rufus asks…” Okay, I don’t think he called him Mr. Rufus, but I like the way that sounds.

When it was time for Mr. Rufus to start, the auditorium went dark. An employee of the theater took to the stage to remind us to STFU for the third time, “Including as Mr. Rufus enters and leaves the stage, as that is part of the song cycle.” We were told that there would be some art happening behind Mr. Rufus as he played, which was part of the show.

Mr. Rufus ENTERED, stage left. What was this, two heads? No, some kind of elaborate ruffle-goiter thing behind his head and a…was that a cape? flowing behind? All the stage needed now was a candelabra and some bats to count. Was the cape still going on? Did it even enter the stage fully? The cape was so frilly and wow, it was kind of like Edward and Bella fused into one body or something. A couple of small spots were dramatically trained on Mr. Rufus as he sat at the piano and began.

The screen started up behind him, with his playing. It was eyeballs. Actually, it was one eyeball, a grey eye that opened and closed slowly and was gobbed with makeup. Sometimes there were lots, sometimes just one, just like Whack-a-Mole. After the first song people began wooting and clapping, and then stopped abruptly. Mr. Rufus asks that you refrain from making any noise, ok.

The lyrics–I dunno, I tried to follow them, I really did. Sometimes they seemed to not be in English, or in any other language really. Mr. Rufus didn’t seem to have much of a range, he just kept droning on and on very soulfully about something. At one point when things got especially cacophonous, I felt little headaches develop and kind of crackle around across the front of my forehead, which has never ever happened before. An actual music-induced headache.

Finally after an hour or four, he stopped playing. Whack-an-Eye stopped. He rose DRAMATICALLY and begin lurching out the way he came, like Nosferatu, possibly treading on his neverending cape. Finally, once he left the stage, people began whooping and clapping wildly.

“Are people buying this?” I asked my friend.

We fled and I offered to buy drinks, since I put the kibosh on things. As we left there was a man leaving whose front was completely covered in vomit. We took a picture of the sign on the way out.

“Are You a Killer?” “I Don’t Like Labels.”

August 24th, 2010

Sooo, the honeymoon is over here with this new house. I am not sure there was ever really a honeymoon in the first place. Moving into the 80s split level is like marrying a person you find really plain and who has kind of a boring sense of humor and spends a lot of time agreeing with you.

HOWEVER you can take his metaphor to its tragic conclusion and split your boring spouse like a tauntaun and decorate their innards with GLITTER!!

Let’s make a LIST LIKE NERDS, after which will will argue about how we organize our books, ok??

Pros:

Everything is BIGGER. House, yard, storage space, even the dishwasher is bigger. I cannot think of one thing in this house that is smaller. Nietzsche looks smaller in it, but that is an illusion, I suppose.

No neighbors! Our duplex neighbors weren’t bad, in fact, they were very nice, but we always worried about noise. Let me tell you my girls spent 17 minutes singing selected duets from the beautiful modern operetta “NO U” and I did not shoosh them once.

Cons:

There’s a couple of things going on here. We will not mention the complete lack of hot water, which is temporary, of course.

The fridge is kind of a menace. It’s one of those modern side-by-sides with the glass shelves. You would think glass shelves might be a good thing, but using it is kind of like the experience of driving a PT Cruiser.

You don’t have the top down/angle view of the food like you do in the traditional fridge. This has lead me to conclude that I am just not finding things because it is hiding behind the melon or something. I spent ten minutes looking for the leftover chicken the other day.

P. came home as I was rootling.

“Whatcha doin?” he said.

“Looking for the chicken I cannot find fucking anything in the fridge EVER.”

“Ah…I ate it,” he said.

“AHA!” I said. “I CANNOT SEE IT BECAUSE YOU ARE OPAQUE.”

Otherwise the kitchen has a lot of storage and though the stove is electric like the last one, but it works a LOT better than the one at the old place, which was one of those flat top Star Trek bullshit ones where only half the burner got warm sometimes.

Also, something bad happened in this house with animals. Now that the initial carpet-cleaning goodness is wearing off, the small of animal urine is being revealed. I am taking steps with Febreze and whatnot. Now I know what probably everyone else in the universe knows. When an ad says “No Large Animals” this may be a sign that the owner has had a bad experience with large animals.

As a renter, and as the owner of a place where some past dog let it go on the wooden floor whenever and wherever it felt like, and it was often apparently allowed to completely dry in situ, creating giant blackened lakes that are probably great if you think your dog is like the second coming of Helen Frankenthaler or something. And to this point, Nietzsche has not ever once ever gone potty in the corner ANYWHERE. She is being a complete champ here in this medium-stinky house as well, and goes outside or uses the litterbox every single time, so at least there is a finite end to the smells.

One of my favorite things about my room, besides the fact that it adjoins the loo, keeps Imelda and the Bandito together, overlooks the pear tree in the front yard, and has a giant porny closet door mirror, is my SURPRISE VIRGIN!!! hiding behind my two doors in my room.

You GUYS YOU GUYS

August 23rd, 2010

Okay, I am freezing. I just took an ice-cold shower. I left for Portland on Friday, and when I came back yesterday, my hot water was 100% vamoosed. The heater is dead, dead, dead. A call to the landlord mysteriously revealed that his voicemail box is…full?

I sent a letter to him today to get the ball rolling. Once I am sure the letter got there, I get to wait longer! And then if there is still nothing, I get to buy a comparable water heater and have it installed.

In the meantime, cold showers. Portland was nice. I have NOTHING but chattering teeth. Also I will be updating more on The Queen’s Scullery, nice if you care about obscure food genre. I will try to think of something to say when my brain thaws. I want to cook like a Victorian, not bathe like one.

Note to Self

August 13th, 2010

A very short post to say that sometimes I find notes I have made to myself about things that pop into my head when I am too busy/tired/overwrought to  write.

1. Mother Returns

Kind of forgot about the Father!

L. continues to visit father’s lab for monitoring, testing, and catches idea that his father is still alive (HOW WHY)

They go on the news to ask if anyone’s seen their father??

Wow, just give me the Pulitzer now, dudes. I am kind of afraid to even open that file after this.

2.Flavorofhubris: Kanye

???

3. Normal lady activites

such as

childbirth

flensing +

cheating on one’s taxes

A mental person has apparently commandeered my notebook, I don’t remember any of this.

Note to self about notes to self: Add context and instructions next time.

Suck It Clement Greenberg

August 10th, 2010

A bookshelf was left behind by the previous tenants, who were apparently some disreputable characters. There is evidence of either untended or very determined children all over this house in the forms of scribbles on many unpaintable surfaces, and last night as I was planting lavender bushes the neighbor was telling us about previous escapee dogs from our backyard, about drug deals, and about children appearing and being taken away again. Apparently the owner did not even want to rent to people with children again, which is a double-edged sword because if you refuse to rent a five-bedroom in an ungentrified neighborhood to a family, then you are going to get a batch of college students. He liked us on sight, though, which was nice.

Since the bookshelf was abandoned, I decided to take advantage of it, rather than letting it gather dust in the garage. I think it will hold all my cookbooks, plus my Hall & Oates records, WOO. It looked like it had been built-in somewhere previously, since the sides were unpainted and drippy and there were loose screws in its back. Where it had been built into was a mystery, since there is no place for a built-in shelf here.

P. came out to supervise.

“You should leave the edges blank so we can paint those the purple you got to break up all the gold,” he said.

“CHUH,” I replied. “I have TRAINING in COLOR THEORY OK. When I need some math done, I will call you, Mr. Math Degree, oh wait no I will not because I can do calculations in my head faster than you can.”

“Oh no you did not. I just think…”

“THIS IS ART, THIS IS INTERIOR DECORATING.”

“Spray painting everything you own gold is not ‘interior decorating.”

BLASPHEMY!

I live for these arguments.

Before!

Umm…During!

It’s kind of streaky. Two cans did not cover everything, I now see in the light of day. I was so high I missed a whole panel last night and did not even realize it. WOO FUMES. That was a fun five minutes, then the headache, oh god the headache.

I always spend all this time at the hardware store staring at all the metallic spray paint and I come home with the exact same shade of Rustoleum gold EVERY TIME. I think I have a soft spot for this color because A. it is awesome and B. it is the very first color I tagged with as a juvenile delinquent. I was eight years old and I had the nozzle turned backwards and it went RIGHT INTO MY RIGHT EYE. However, I did not cry because, don’t let the spike hair fool you, like, I’m not a bitch.

TODAY I HAVE GOLD BOOGERS. THE END.

Presh to Death

August 5th, 2010

Ananka and I were out at Greenlake doing our usual thing, walkity walk, bitchity bitch. She was kind enough to come see the new house and give it the stamp of approval. The general consensus seems to be that the new house will be good for parties, like snobby wine kind.

We decided there was too much blood in our caffeine stream, so we made a pit stop to refuel. I was catching Ananka up on various dramz in line when this woman who had been waiting behind us interrupted.

“Excuse me,” she said. I was in my own bubble, as usual, and thought we were blocking the pathway or something. I turned. “I’m sorry to interrupt your conversation, but my daughter wants to say something to you.”

What, where, who the fuck was this. I put on my neutral face. Was this woman familiar? She was not. I looked down at her little daughter who was in a stroller and was nibbling on her finger. Did I know her from my Strudel’s preschool? No.

The child paused for a long moment, looking up at me. She held her hand out. “HI,” she finally managed. This is the thing she wanted to say to me?

“She is interested in your hair,” her mother said. “I do my hair red sometimes but she wants me to put pink in.”

Ahh…ok.

As we were leaving, I asked Ananka if she thought the exchange was…a little weird?

“Yes, totally,” she said.

“How rude,” I said.

“I think it was less about the kid and more about how she wanted to let you know she dyes her hair sometimes.”

“Good call,” I said. I need a shirt that says “I AM NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS OK.”

Beware I Lived

July 31st, 2010

Hi! Move happened. We had a new guy who was dropping stuff, and this sounds crazy, but it was funny. All my stuff is funky boho flea market crap pile anyhow, so MEH, what’s a few more scratches. Less Crate & Barrel, more Waterlogged Cardboard Box & Dumpster. Does it make you crazy when bloggers show off their homes and it looks like there should be an “A. $599.99, color shown: Hunter” in the corner? Maybe I am just a snot.

Here comes the moving truck!

Look at these tough guys moving my chickenhaus.

Anyway, here are my sad sticks in my new split level. Today I think we do the final furniture shifting.

If I had to guess I would say this thing was built in the early 80s. I spent time growing up in split levels and I had my older daughter in one (blood + white berber=thank god for midwives and their bag of tricks) so I am quite fond of them. Other than the fact that this one is a five-bedroom, it’s mostly the same as all the others. The lack of a basement/storage motivated me to send a lot of stuff off to charity, which, I needed that kick in the pants. I don’t think I had done a proper cleanout since everything went cattywampus at the old place in 2008.

Also, I finally have internets today. The technician came out after customer service spent a while dicking me around on the phone, but he was really good. Apparently my signal strength here is very weak, which is worrying since I am working from home now, but I have a backup plan involving laptops and local cafes, if necessary.

I am tired but happy! More later. As I was moving, I discovered what someone did to Rosie the Riveter. :’( I suspect it was Not Me, who is usually responsible for things like this in my house.

WHY DO YOU HATE FEMINISM, OK?

P.S. Heh, Franny walked by and saw the picture of Rosie as I was uploading it and said I DID NOT DO THAT and I didn’t even say anything. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

P.P.S. Someone asked me if I boxed up P. and took him with. A: Yes. Useful babbydaddies are hard to come by. We are getting along like a house afire, ngl.

And the Bunny Queen is Janet

July 27th, 2010

Okay! It is 24 hours until our massive move, which is a whole 40 BLOCKS, WOW. There is nothing left but my room. My closet is not really a proper disaster, but it is sort of an odd shape and I cannot see everything that is in it. I am kind of wondering what I will find. Sex toy receipts? Shirts from 2004 that were kind of a bad idea then, and have only got worse with age, surely? There is a black lace thing that looked really boho and cool in the store with a camisole under it, but when I came home it morphed into something Prince’s keytar player would wear in, like, 1991. How does that happen?

My room was supposed to be done by now, but I was sabotaged by packing the girls’ room yesterday. They gave it a “thorough” cleaning last weekend, and I was so busy with other things I took a look and it looked good, but I was probably in such a hurry that it was good in like a “El Camino in a sandstorm” way. If I saw one in a sandstorm, I might think for a minute it was a real car.

I had my moving crates and the objective of paring down their bookshelf by half. Their shelves are a mix of really great classics and comics, as well as the DARK SIDE which is things like those Candy Fairy and Rainbow Fairy books, childrens’ literature that is written through what I imagine is a combination of algorithms, phrase-generation software, and depression in a giant hospital-green room where other similar childrens’ series are being cranked out for a fraction of a cent per word. It is like these things just grow on your shelves like a fungus. “At least they are reading” is only an acceptable defense of these types of books when every other piece of age-appropriate literature has been burned. I am convinced that a diet consisting only of these books will certainly result in a batch of Thunderdome plane crash nitwit children talking about tomorrow-morrow land, a happy place where you can always find the next book in the series.

So, ahem, these types of books were siphoned out for the thrift store. I had my trash bag for broken toys and a bag for recycling all the four million pictures and origami swans and birthday cards from three years ago children enjoy hoarding. Then I started encountering the little bombs here and there. At the top of the bookshelf there was a tomato pincushion that Franny had found in the street on the way home from school, and it was surrounded by dozens of rusty pins (the tomato was wet when she had brought it home, and I kind of pretended none of it was happening, really. Soggy street pin tomato, ugh.) Of course I stuck my hand into the pile of pins when I reached up, and they rained rusty pinny death down on me. Was this an ancient temple or a kid’s room? What next, floor spikes?

Seriously, though, other than that it was not too bad. There was a huge amount of broken stuff, which always amazes me. I think my last contract sapped my energy so much I was not doing regular toy sorts like I used to, so things had built up a bit. One thing that always gets me is the drifts of kid crud that can happen behind dressers. They build up little worlds on the edge of shelves with small dollies and scraps of paper and wee tea sets and animals and a table that is the thingie from the middle of the pizza box and the shelf gets bumped later or there is a fight and it all goes flying into the beyond, to be found and swept up later by me. It always looks the same, too, and seems to be composed of the same stuffs: glitter, loose hot pink boa feathers, plastic play coins, doll leg, 7 Legos, doll house teapot (sans lid), paper scraps, Kleenex with blood (?) on, funky tattoo bandaid, quarter machine rings, googly eye. I think there is some pink fake-fur covered planet somewhere that has this girl crud as a planetary ring.

Wish me luck. Pictures soon. It is a sweet house.

Following Orders

July 23rd, 2010

Sometimes I ask Franny if I can post things, like her hula hoop video. Now that she is 9, I am very mindful of the fact that soon other little cretins friends will be on the internet, looking for evidence that their classmates are mortal and fallible. Of course I will not tell you the naughty things she does and says. She is always perfect, casual, talented, and good-looking.

So she’s not embarrassed yet.

FRANNY: “MOM TAKE A PICTURE OF US AND PUT IT ON THE INTERNET AND TELL EVERYONE WE ARE JUST HEADS AND THAT WE ARE YOUR PET HEADS OK.”

Okay.

Strudel, however, is still young enough to make a couple of mistakes.