sad sad songs

Once again, I’ve found myself taking a brief respite from the blog world. I, again, have felt as though I’ve nothing to say. I haven’t been inspired to share anything with anyone. There hasn’t been much time to sit down and write either. I miss writing.
It’s surprising to me how inarticulate I am. I’m a relatively well educated young woman, I read a lot, I know a lot of words, and yet my ability to express my self is shockingly poor. Especially when I’m talking to people, my mind moves more quickly than my mouth and my words end up in a jumbled tangled mess. Or they combine themselves into new and exciting words or phrases which, more often than not, make no sense whatsoever.
I’m sitting in Powell’s right now, having decided to give up on being productive and am seeking solace in the air conditioning. I’m not really sure what made us (my roommates and I) decide to move during the hottest month of the year, but here we are, in the middle of a heat wave attempting to move all of our stuff into a loft apartment in a 100 year old house. However, I did find some strapping young men willing to move all of my books for me. All eight boxes. Thanks so much Barber twins! Plus I got to spend the day with them, which always makes for an interesting and laugh filled day.



I’m tired, Interweb, I’m so tired. I don’t know if it is the heat, the move, the insomnia or everything else. I don’t even know. A dear friend’s mother passed on Saturday after battling breast cancer for years and I just feel so helpless. I can’t even explain it. I’m usually a pretty astute empathizer, but I just can’t imagine how awful it would be to lose a parent. It seems like it would be a paradigm shift, no matter what your parents are always there, and then in an instant one is gone forever? But not really an instant with a disease like breast cancer. Instead you are forced to watch their slow and painful descent into death.
It was bad enough watching the affect Parkinson’s had on my grandfather. My grandfather whom I always felt the purest degree of love, who taught me life could be made tolerable and joyous by saying the right words, who taught me the subtle ways of wit and sarcasm, who had such life shining out of his eyes. It was awful to see him fall into the state of being wherein the least amount of life was left in his body for it’s maintenance, to see that once luminous, generous personality cruelly inverted to a confused, lost doppleganger who didn’t even recognize me.
But to lose your mother? How do you cope with that?

I'm having one of those days. One of those days where I'm all anxious about moving, all anxious about life, all anxious about everything. So I'm remarkably spacey. What have I done today? Why don't I list it for you:

1. dropped my iPod off the treadmill while i was running

2. fallen off the treadmill while attempting to pick my iPod up off the floor

3. managed to lock my keys into the mailbox

4. spilled an entire mug of coffee all over the white slipcover on the couch

5. stubbed my toe on the spout in the bathtub

6. flashed the kids outside while changing after my shower

7. flashed the maintenance man while changing after my shower

And it's only 2:30. But the day will get better. Oh yes it will.

chasing pavements

Interweb, I have listened to this song for about an hour straight now.

but it's a national holiday!

Blargh.

This is how I feel.  Between negotiating rental applications, and hope hope hoping that we get this (super! amazing! wonderful! perfect!) apartment, attempting to figure out a possible moving timeline in an already very busy month, and doing my best not to drown in a pool of sweat, I feel like blargh.

Well, the weather is lending me a hand today, as it's only 65. And everyone has been very helpful and cooperative when negotiating between our current rental management and (possible) future landlord.

How was everyone's 4th? Mine was lovely. A little warm, but lovely.  The weekend started out with a bang on the 3rd.  We went to see "The Empire Strikes Back" at the Baghdad, a midnight show.  Oh man do I love Star Wars. Wait, scratch that, I love the original Star Wars. But holy smokes Interweb, you should have seen the costumes people were wearing.  Quite impressive. And I was informed by Dan that the lightsabers they were all carrying were the "good" models and cost upwards of $100. So they were dedicated fans.  Oh and let me tell you, if you want to hear some interesting movie talk, go to Star Wars with two men whose lives and livelihoods essentially revolve around film.  I think there was a stretch of 45 minutes where I couldn't add anything to the conversation because I had no idea what the heck they were talking about.  But it was interesting.

I kept quoting Empire on the 4th, most likely to to consternation of Kasi.  But she put up with me, and we went to a BBQ out in deep SE PDX, and sat in the shade in a wonderful backyard and had a nice little time.  Then we came back to the apt and proceeded to lie on the couches and pretended to be Jordan and Daisy.   We had no Tom or Nick (or Jay) to fan us or cater to our everyneed, but it was still fantastic.  

Evening festivities comprised of mojitos and fireworks.  The mojitos were tasty and refreshing.  The fireworks were amazing.  Fireworks always make me feel like a little kid.  They're just so amazing and wonderful.  And the view from Mt. Tabor offered breathtaking views of so many different shows across the metro area.  It was great.  After the fireworks Chris and I went back to have more mojitos.  Possibly a mistake.  Three mojitos, as it turns out, is far too many.  Like 2 to many.  Oh well, lesson learned.  My 22 year old self is ashamed of my 26 year old self though.  Meh. And to think of all those years when I boasted of never getting hangovers.  Karma is a bitch my friends.  

And here is a "patriotic" poem by Sharon Olds: 

Topography

by Sharon Olds

After we flew across the country we

got into bed, laid our bodies

delicately together, like maps laid

face to face, East to West, my

San Francisco against your New York, your

Fire Island against my Sonoma, my 

New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho

bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas

burning against your Kansas your Kansas

burning against my Kansas, your Eastern

Standard Time pressing into my

Pacific Time, my Mountain Time

beating against your Central Time, your

sun rising swiftly from the right my

sun rising swiftly from the left your

moon rising slowly from the left my

moon rising slowly from the right until

all four bodies of the sky

burn above us, sealing us together,

all our cities twin cities,

all our states united, one

nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Free to good home. Can make pie.

It's a beautiful beautiful beautiful day here in Portlandia. I didn't have to work, and I'm listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They're amazing.  It's making for quite the relaxing early evening.  

I made a strawberry-apple pie yesterday. I'd never had one before, but always thought the idea sounded 

super tasty.  And boy is it!  Yum! It even looked pretty when fresh from the oven. (The lighting looks funny in this picture because, well the lighting in our kitchen is wack. No lie.) Also, it only looks like it magically was more cooked in the middle than the edges because of the cinnamon-sugar topping (what a brilliant idea!) not because I am some crazy non-adept cook.  If there is one thing in life that I can do well it is make a pie.  True story.  I used to make pie all the time.  My parents have a pie cherry tree in their back yard and every summer I'd make cherry pies for all sorts of occasions. They were tasty-good, and it seemed I had a magic hand with the pie crust.  Wish I could tell you my "secret" but I don't have one, except maybe to make sure the water you use in the crust is ice cold.  I always put ice cubes in to chill the water before mixing it all together.  But I didn't make this crust, I bought it from the store. Am super lazy about cooking now, and I don't have a food processor, which is an essential part of making pie crust.  It doesn't taste as good, but whatev.  It tastes better than the last kind of pie crust I bought from the store, for the strawberry-rhubarb pie I made over Memorial Day Weekend.  My parents were in town and I made them a pie.  They said the pie was tasty, and that they'd find me a husband yet.  My dad said he'd make a sign or put an ad in the paper: "Free to good home. Can make pie." 

And then Chris threw away my favorite pie tin. 

Favorite pie tin. Who knew I'd become so domestic?  In other news on the domesticity front, I believe I may have found us all a new place to live. I'm super excited for it so I'm not going to jinx it by talking too much.  But yay!

Also, I've been (slowly) working away at the projects that are stacked in my crocheting basket.  There's Momma's Market Bag, Erin's Boston Blanket, and Dawn's Nugget Snuggler.  The "nugget snuggler" is not, sadly, another man thong, but a baby blanket.  It's the baby blanket who's cute a button granny squares are right next to this paragraph.  The baby is a girl, obviously. I'm enjoying the craftiness, and the soothing thinking that it allows.  Well, for most of it.  For these granny squares I'm using a nobbly cotton thread and a teeny-tiny (size D) hook.  It takes quite a bit of concentration.  But no fear, I have 19 out of 54 done.  Sigh.  Good thing I have several road trips planned back to Moscow, and I find crocheting makes time in the car go by quite quickly.  And you feel productive.  And I like feeling productive.  I always get a little antsy if I'm not doing something.  It doesn't have to be anything important, just something with my hands or mind or whatever. Thus plane rides and car trips and days spent doing nothing but lying in bed tend to kill me. 

But that's not necessarily true.  Sometimes a day spent in bed is exactly what you need. Take, for example, this past Mother's Day.  We didn't get out of bed until almost 2 o'clock in the afternoon.  It was wonderful.  And then we went to a crazy movie.  But I don't know what I was expecting, Roman Polanski directed it.  

So this has been a long and rambly post about nothing.  Gee interweb, it's almost like we sat down and had a mojito.