Category Archives: Uncategorized

And the Bunny Queen is Janet

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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.

Cooking for Geeks

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Zaphod: I had a thought this morning.
I wondered if the library here has Beeton’s and if I could find something relatively uncomplicated to try.
Because on this weekend’s shopping list is cooking implements, specifically a good knife and maybe something/anything else that grabs
my eye
11:47 AM Or if you have any recommendations as to what my kitchen needs.
me: I would not know where to begin
My advice is to start with what you have
11:48 AM You know how you are doing something techy and you realize you are kludging things over and over
Until you go, Oh, I bet there is an app for this?
Zaphod: Oh yes
me: I would approach it like that :)
Zaphod: I like this analogy
me: I thought you might

What’s Crackalackin

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OMG I HAVE A BLOG. Hello. I did not see you there.

Okay so my new favorite favorite favorite thing in the whole world is This Bitch. My dream is that she will sneak up on me and take a picture of my tragic ankles. SRSLY, best parody of a fashion blog I have seen in a long time. Slow clap!

What am I up to? Not much. I was just out of town for Memorial Day, and I think part of me is still recovering from that, in a way. I know, I know, sack up. I am trying to get back onto my Victorian horse as well. Woot. How you doing? I’m still alive.

18 Minutes Ago Having Just Woken Up

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Me: Who was that on the phone?

P: Oh, my sister. She’s on her way.

Me: From San Francisco?

P: No, she just got off the 5. She’s about five minutes from here.

Me: !!!!! GIRLS GET YOUR CLOTHES ON YOUR AUNT’S HERE APPARENTLY.

Girls: *Heads cock simultaneously*

Me, to P: WOW do you owe me one now.

Twenty minutes later, after I get out of the shower:

P: Uhh…so I realized I did not tell you at ALL that my sister was coming today.

Me: Yeah.

P: I am SO SO SO SORRY.

(He even made sad pleading hands.)

Me: You realize that Mother’s Day is going to be EPIC right?

P: Umm

Me: Like a parade of elephants? Like the blood of ocelots running down our street just for my amusement?

P, walking off: Note to self, ocelots.

In Which I Attend the Auction for the Last Time

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There I was at the auction again, with not much to report on the matter. I hardly see those people at all anymore, which in most cases is heartening. Of course I had to go with Ruby as her date, and that was fun. My nemesis recycled a dress that was not good the first time around, and I conspired to find out her auction number so I could write it on anything in the silent that vaguely resembled a turnip twaddler.

I have a funny exchange I have to tell you about. When I was taking a break from blogging last spring while I was considering a meatspace career change, I attended the auction and won a place at a book club dinner party, hosted by Ruby. The picture in the corner is of me during clean up. SJ: Bottle Snuggler. The topic was Julie & Julia, which, zzzz for the most part. I confess I skimmed it.

There was a good deal of time allotted to slagging blogging during the party, and who do those people think they are that they feel they must put their know it all trite trite-isms on the internet, those attention whores. After about forty-five minutes of this I made some point by starting with “Well, I have been writing a blog for eight years, and…” GASP. Dropped fork. Awkward. I live for moments like that.

Jump to last night, when I saw a mom there whom I have not seen since the book club.

“Oh are you still writing that mysterious blog of yours,” she said, by way of drunken conversation.

“Yes,” I said, “and I started a new one at the beginning of the new year on Victorian culture.”

“Are you…like…really bored?” she said, perplexed.

“No, I’m a writer,” I said.

“Ohhh.”

Oh well.


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“The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.”

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Lately I am all about work work work. With this new blog project on the horizon I am excited that my second job is ending pretty shortly after the holidays. At first I was berating myself for being so freaking tired all the time, but I realized there is a difference between last year at this time and this year. This year I am working forty hours doing techy stuff and creative-ish writing (well, original, anyway. Until it is poems about unicorns and corndogs I feel I will not have achieved my dreams), plus I am working 10-15 hours a week doing sales. Last year I was cobbling together forty or so hours a week working this same holiday job, coffee, and doing a little writing on the side. My schedule was odd then–I often wasn’t expected in until eleven or later, so I could run after getting the girls off to school in the morning. I miss that. Now I leave in the dark and get home in the dark, sometimes eleven or later.

Someone asked me recently why I was doing this and I wonder. I replied it was because I need a steady exposure to degenerates and weirdos or else I feel like my brain is stagnating. Yet with all this work I barely have time or energy to write about the degenerates and weirdos, so I tell myself I am going through one of those phases where I am collecting ideas, people, and stories again. I also tell myself I am making a little extra holiday money, and getting a discount on products I like and things my friends like. This is partly true.

There is another little slice, though. I have this nagging voice in the back of my head that chimes in with “lazy, lazy, lazy” when I am only working one job at a max of forty hours. I was raised by a workaholic with a job and a side business who worked sixty hours a week without complaint (we were the ones who complained since this schedule made him borderline psychotic). Is he happy now? Does he sit on his pile of money and celebrate? No, apparently he is miserably unhappy and in terrible, foolish debt. My stepfather is not the most self-analytical person I have ever met, to say the least, so I wonder what he was thinking. His father did it too, and was also miserable. Why live like this? I get tastes of this life and ask myself that. Pride. The illusion of getting ahead, though life is just as short if you take weekends off or not. Ultimately, what else is there to do with yourself, if not stay busy? Why is it so hard for me to be happy when I’m happy?

I am thinking about this today because I am transitioning out of my current temporary job, though I don’t know when, exactly. On Monday my replacement came on and now I am back to looking for work in case they decide to cut me abruptly, because you never know.

P. and I were talking resumes. He is an excellent second person to look at mine most of the time. He brought up the fact that he usually drops the “library” from his “library and information science” degree on his resume now. We argued about this one a bit. I felt as if he was implying I should drop it too. Some people say leaving the l-word on hurts your chances of getting employed in a tech capacity. Others say that people recognize that librarians receive a considerable amount of tech training anyway, and the field is attracting people who have the skills and interest coming in.

It stung a little, and I wasn’t sure why. I am always careful to tell people that while I am a librarian by training, I have never worked as one. Why is it so easy for him to drop it, and not me? I offended him back by saying I was not ready to let go of the idea that I had a professional degree, which lead to more discussion about what IS an information scientist, and could you tell that to people and they would just get it? No. People have a picture of what a librarian is. The profession is almost as old as books. There are professional organizations and guilds for librarians, OK, I countered. He rattled off a bunch of organizations that are specifically for IS folks.

We did not come to any real conclusions except to say that librarianship is gold leaf you can lay over your tech skills, I guess, and some people hate that Rococo shit. Where is librarianship? Is it stuck in a crack in Plato’s cave somewhere?

In Which We Present One Way to Get Rid of Lice Without Using Pesticides

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Hello. It has come to my attention that some of you are interested in how I get rid of lice. Will I tell you? Yes. Will I cite my sources? No. Can you post your own remedies in the comments? As if I could stop you. Please, be my guest.

Anyway, I am going to tell you that you can kick lice without going into lockdown and sterilizing your whole house, but focusing on what lice need, which is your head, and not worrying so much about the rest of your house.

Step One: Don’t get lice. I managed this for 31 years. Goooo Team Assmittens.

Step Two: Get Lice. Fuck Salt. (Optional step.)

You needa:

1. “Original” Listerine. Amber color. Off-brand is fine. The issue with the other flavors is that they can get sticky, I hear.
2. Plasticky drug store shower caps.
3. Fingernails or comb. I prefer fingernails, whereas my friend V. swears by this comb.
4. Beauty supply-type squirt bottle for Listerine. Again, optional, but I think it helps.

Out Out Damned Spot

Good news for you, the afflicted: lice are crawlers, not leapers, hoppers, or flyers, so they won’t get terribly far. Thing two is that they cannot live long off one’s head.

You are going for a two-pronged attack here.

Prong one is getting rid of the nits (eggs). These live between 1-3 inches from the scalp, on individual strands of hair. People say they look like little oil drops or tiny sesame seeds. They cling to the shaft of the hair with ass glue or something, I dunno.

I grab them with my fingernails and drop them into the sink when I find them, to keep them contained. I look through every bit of hair in a pretty unscientific way–I just sort through an inch or so at a time. I do this for about a week and then do a glance every day for about a week after that, and then periodic checks throughout the year. If you get rid of the eggs, then, duh, no more hatching, and you end the cycle. A serious infestation may take an hour or more to pull, or as little as 15 minutes if you are checking weekly or so. Don’t shit bricks if you need to take a break or you do not get them all at once on the first night. Persistence is the key here. Give it a few days and you will get them all.

Prong two is the bugs themselves. YUK. If they get big enough to see and pull out (St. Jude pray for us) then just rinse them down the drain or drop them in the toilet. The little ones will have to be poisoned with delishus delishus Listerine.

I spray this liberally all over the head with the squirty bottle. Avoid the eyes, as it will burn like a bitch. Do not drink, unless you are a hobo. Well, are you a hobo? Get the hair pretty wet to the ends so there is nowhere to run, and then cover with a showercap for a half hour or so. Imagine tiny screaming holocaust all over your head, and feel smug. You may be drippy, so grab a hand towel for your neck. Rinse and shampoo as normal, knowing that you have destroyed lives. I do the Listerine cycle for about a week as well. I hear the Listerine smell repels reinfestation as well, but if it is between death and your delicious head blood, I bet they will hold their noses.

Optional stuff:

1. Change sheets. Why not? I hear they can live a day or so off the head, so why not have a fresh start the first night?

2. Vacuum. I bet your house could use it, right? Well, mine could. Unless you have lice on the floor and your kids are rubbing their heads on the floor, this won’t matter too much.

3. Coats, couches, other pillows, etc. I wouldn’t go crazy. Think about it: if you are killing whatever clings on that day every evening, and they can only live off the head 24 hours or so, and you are breaking the laying cycle, then you do not need to sterilize your house.

DO make sure you check everyone in your house, though–why pass it around over and over? When I get paranoid I give myself a few squirts as well.

DO NOT buy that overpriced bullshit from the drug store with the shitty plastic comb. This operation should not cost you much more than $10 for the whole family, and you keep the shower caps and squirty bottle for next time. Generic Listerine is like three bone.

DO NOT panic. This is rather simple and their advantage is that they are TINY, not that they are terrifically pernicious.

Good luck.