JKR Documentary

I know, I know. But it's my blog, so you have to put up with my obsessions. :)

Here's a link to the JKR Documentary that aired in England yesterday.

Year's End

New Years Meme-age

Where did you begin 2007?
Singing Driving Down Highway 40 with a bunch of drunken revelers in my living room. I was also menaced by an o'possum.

What was your status by Valentine's Day?
What does this mean? Married for almost 2 years.

Were you in school (anytime this year)?
No

Did you have to go to the hospital?
No, thank God.

Did you have any encounters with the police?
Nope.

Where did you go on vacation?
No vacation this year. :(

What did you purchase that was over $500?
Yikes. I only spend that much on computers and cars, so nothing.

Did you know anybody who got married?
Several! Congratulations Becki and Jacob, Kim and Sam, Kirby and Erica, and Kim and Ben.

Did you know anybody who passed away?
No.

Did you move anywhere?
No. My moving days are thankfully over for a while.

What sporting events did you attend?
Blech....sports.

What concerts/shows did you go to?
WE Fest.

Describe your birthday.
I turned 30. Togaliciousness ensued.

What's the one thing you thought you would not do but did in 2007?
Wrote my first novel. Never dreamed I'd do that.

What has been your favorite moment(s)?
It's hard to name a favorite moment. Finishing Deathly Hallows, finishing the novel, celebrating my birthday, poetry readings on the porch...

Any new additions to your family?
Oscar Peterson, the yellow-bellied slider.

What was your best month?
October was pretty good. The drama of the summer had ended, I was writing, we celebrated Halloween in style...

What music will you remember 2007 by?
Depeche Mode and the Smiths ruled my iPod, with honorable mentions by these songs:
Stolen by Dashboard Confessional
Alone by Heart
Save Me by Aimee Mann
Crash by Dave Matthews

Made new friends?
Always. I thrive on friends.

Favorite night out?
Discovering THE Chocolate Cake at Circa with Thomas.

Overall, how would you rate this year?
A very spiky year. Lots of peaks and valleys.

Other than home, where did you spend most of your time?
At work, of course, with Lula's in a distant 3rd.

Change your hairstyle?
Ha. That only happens once every 3-4 years. This was not one of those years. It's maybe a little redder than usual.

How old did you turn this year?
30. Finally starting to freak about that, a little.

Do you have a New Year's resolution?
My resolution is always to have no resolutions. Whatever happens, happens.

Do anything embarrassing?
Please. This is me were talking about. I do 10 embarrassing things every day.

Buy anything new from eBay?
I love eBay. Every once in a while we have to have an intervention. This year, I mostly bought CDs for the iPod. I remember buying Cloudcuckooland by the Lightning Seeds, God Bless Satan by Mephiskapheles, Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants...

Get married or divorced?
No.

Get arrested?
Of course not.

Be honest - did you watch American Idol?
I adore American Idol. I didn't miss an episode.

Did you get sick this year?
Inevitable when one is an elementary school teacher. But the immune system gets stronger every year.

Been snowboarding?
I don't do snow or sports.

Are you happy to see 2007 go?
Well, I'm looking forward to 2008. 8 is my lucky number.



Additional things:
My parents just left us, so we've finally completed the Christmas season. Everything went really well, and it was great to see them. Here is an update on Christmas loot:

Please check out this amazing bracelet that Thomas bought for me:


Book Lust:
For Christmas, I recieved:
Run by Ann Patchett
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
also working on my new Early Reviewer book: Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb

Happy New Year to everyone. Celebrate fully and safely and best wishes for the year to come.

Talented People Love Me

Thomas saved my life by giving me a wonderful, huge, flat-screen monitor, which could not have come at a better time, as my monitor gave out on Christmas Eve day, and we all know what happens to me when I cannot connect to the internet. Thank God that was averted.

Thomas also gave me the Harry Potter movies box set, which came in a little trunk that I can take with me when I finally get my Hogwarts letter.

Thank you, Thomas.

Two of my favorite gifts were things that people made for me.
Michelle made me the most amazing tablecloth:




My little sister-in-law Jessica made me the Potter Puppet Pals:



I'm humbled to know such giving and talented ladies.

Merry Christmas!

Do I believe my site meter that only one person has visited today? Surely not, as despite the holiday, I've spent the better part of 4 hours online. Yes, I'm sick on Christmas again this year, and consoling myself by spending quality time with the internet.

We had a nice visit with Thomas's family and are home now, presents opened, preparing to launch again into the fray tomorrow, to prepare for my parent's arrival on Thursday.

No matter what, I'm still glad it's Christmas.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Counting Down

So, I finished the wrapping today and did some last minute baking for a Christmas party tonight...I think I'm actually going to finish everything in time, so that's good.

Last night, Thomas and I went down to Lula's and hung out with some friends. Thomas was asking, "Who would win in a fight, Little Orphan Annie or Dick Tracy?" (Who would win in a fight is one of our favorite games.) I told him that when I was little, I was always embarrassed to sing "(The Sun Will Come Out) Tomorrow" because it had the word "bottom" in it (as in, "bet your bottom dollar that tomor-rooooo...") so I was convinced that it was dirty.

As we cackled over my childhood obsession with Annie and my apparent fear of the word bottom, Thomas pointed out that I'd been singing a weird song around the house lately.

I should note that I spend 99% of my time (while not at work) singing. I sing in the shower; I sing while I cook and clean; I sing in the car. I'm mostly singing whatever played last on my iPod, but lately I've been singing a lot of Christmas songs. I really miss caroling.

Anyway, he was like, "Yeah, it was something really odd, like Radar Love." I looked at him with disdain and announced that I would never sing Radar Love. Then I thought about it for a while and realized that I had been singing Hot Blooded the other day while baking, and Thomas confirmed that he was, in fact, remembering Hot Blooded.

"Why were you singing Hot Blooded?" he asked.

"I don't know. It was hot in the kitchen from the oven."

Apparently now I just choose songs by free association.

In other news, I'm pretty seriously considering attending Portus this year. Ashley, want to meet me in Dallas?

On Break

So, it's my first day of Christmas vacation, and the dogs woke me up at 5:50. Which is fine, I guess. It was at least 20 minutes after I would have usually gotten up. For once, I did not go out and get obliterated on my first night off, so today I'm reasonably prepared to do the 8,000 things still on my to do list. This will be one of the least restful breaks I've ever had--there are at least 2 major things to take care of on every single day of the 12 days I have off, but I'm still happy to be in my pajamas right now.

Last night I watched the movie Once. It was as wistful and lovely as everyone said it would be. Then I read the rest of Olive Kitteridge and felt wrapped in the comforting arms of art. A good book came in the mail yesterday. And I scored another Early Reviewer book for December, so I'm feeling that at least my intake of other worlds is high right now. I'm having trouble writing, but I think that has, for once, to do with my breakneck schedule, and not my terrible procrastination. I've been dabbling in several projects, but I have one that seems to be about to supercede the rest. I'm going to try to wait until January to begin it, though. The holidays are going to be hard enough.

Today's list includes:
Shopping for Christmas dinner
Wrapping all the presents
Taking a good friend to the airport
and...hopefully? A beer or 4.

Deck the Halls with Gasoline...Fa La La La La!

Last year's Christmas post makes me ashamed. Yes, I am still baking 10 batches of cookies for an ever-growing list of people which, I am sad to say, does not include our waitress at Golden Corral this year, but does now include our Fed Ex Delivery Guy, and would include the mailman if he were not prohibited by law from taking my cookies. That sounded dirty.

Yes, I am mostly done shopping, and the tree is up...but I have no Christmas spirit whatsoever. What I have is a migraine, and a terrible dread of the days to come. Days in which I will bitch and moan and snap at my family, even though I love them and can't wait to see them. Blarg.

The week before Christmas with 6 year olds is trying, and I feel very tried. Tried and found weak and lacking. My feet hurt. My eyes hurt. WAAAAAAAHHHHH!

In good news, I am finally reviewing a book for LibraryThing's Early Reviewers Program that is AWE-SOME. Awesome. It is called Olive Kitteridge, by Elisabeth Strout, and I am loving it. Which is really nice, because so far the count had been:
Nay: 4.5 Yay: .5

When the Cows Come Home

The Cow Is BACK! And she's dressed for Christmas!



I nearly drove off the road, I was so excited to see her. Thomas kindly took me to the cow to photograph her today. I think we'll do our Christmas picture with the cow this year.

In further returns, the OPOSSUM is BACK! Thomas spotted it tonight. Pictures to follow if we can get any. *Shudder*

Also, it is Poem Sunday.

1989 by Ron Koertge

Because AIDS was slaughtering people left and right,
I went to a lot of memorial services that year.
There were so many, I'd pencil them in between
a movie or a sale at Macy's. The other thing that
made them tolerable was the funny stories people
got up and told about the deceased: the time he
hurled a mushroom frittata across a crowded room,
those green huaraches he refused to throw away,
the joke about the flight attendant and the banana
that cracked him up every time.

But this funeral was for a blind friend of my wife's
who merely died. And the interesting thing
about it was the guide dogs; with all the harness
and the sniffing around, the vestibule of the church
looked like the starting line of the Iditarod. But
nobody got up to talk. We just sat there
and the pastor read the King James version. Then he
said someday we would see Robert and he us.

Throughout the service, the dogs slumped beside their
masters. But when the soloist stood and launched
into a screechy rendition of "Abide with Me," they sank
into the carpet. A few put their paws over their ears.
Someone whispered to one of the blind guys; he told
another, and the laughter started to spread. People
in the back looked around, startled and embarassed,
until they spotted all those chunky Labradors
flattened out like animals in a cartoon about
steamrollers. Then they started, too.

That was more like it. That was what I was used to--
a roomful of people laughing and crying, taking off
their sunglasses to blot their inconsolable eyes.

Criminal

I had a friend named David when I was in graduate school, a very smart and very talented friend, who told me once that it is impossible to write an unlikable narrator in the first person.

The readers will identify with him, he said, no matter how terrible you try to make him. They will see themselves in him and they will love him.

I just finished the last season of the Sopranos.

All I have to say is: I am the mobster, and the mobster is me.

T4: Back For More

I almost missed poem Sunday, due to putting the Christmas tree up today. I'm too tired to post pictures, so I'll do that tomorrow. But I do want to give a special Thank You to Velocibadgergirl for naming our Christmas tree this year.


What Would Freud Say?
by Bob Hicok


Wasn't on purpose that I drilled
through my finger or the nurse
laughed. She apologized
three times and gave me a shot
of something that was a lusher
apology. The person
who drove me home
said my smile was a smeared
totem that followed
his body that night as it arced
over a cliff in a dream.
He's always flying
in his dreams and lands
on cruise ships or hovers
over Atlanta with an erection.
He put me to bed and the drugs
wore off and I woke
to cannibals at my extremities.
I woke with a sense
of what nails in the palms
might do to a spirit
temporarily confined to flesh.
That too was an accident
if you believe Judas
merely wanted to be loved.
To be loved by God,
Urban the 8th
had heads cut off
that were inadequately
bowed by dogma. To be loved
by Blondie, Dagwood
gets nothing right
except the hallucinogenic
architecture of sandwiches.
He would have drilled
through a finger too
while making a case for books
on home repair and health.
Drilling through my finger's
not the dumbest thing
I've done. Second place
was approaching
a frozen gas-cap with lighter
in hand while thinking
heat melts ice and not
explosion kills asshole. First
place was passing
through a bedroom door
and removing silk that did not
belong to my wife.
Making a bookcase is not
the extent of my apology.
I've also been beaten up
in a bar for saying huevos
rancheros in a way
insulting to the patrons'
ethnicity. I've also lost
my job because lying
face down on the couch
didn't jibe with my employer's
definition of home
office. I wanted her to come
through the door on Sunday
and see the bookcase
she'd asked me to build
for a year and be impressed
that it didn't lean
or wobble even though
I've only leaned and often
wobbled. Now it's half
done but certainly
a better gift with its map
of my unfaithful blood.

Scar Tissue

Tonight I was talking to my sister who recently took a bad tumble with her bike. She was telling me that the bruising took some days to reach the surface, as a really bad bruise will.

I reminded her of the time I fell down and skinned my knee on my way to my first day of a new job ("Hi, I'm the new girl, and I'm bleeding, so I have to go now...")

and the time I slipped while dancing, landed on a box and got a hematoma in my butt, necessitating a donut pillow. Classy.

I said, "Did you know that sometimes when you bruise yourself that badly, you get a little knot of scar tissue deep inside you?"

"Yes," she said, and reminded me that that's sometimes a beginning problem in breast cancer.

It reminded me of a long ago time in which my mom, Ali and I were walking along Water Street downtown. It was pouring rain, and we were making for high ground, heading up the hill to Front Street. My mom turned and marveled at how fast the water was rising and I turned to look---

and ran full-tilt-boogie into a parking meter. With my boob.

Oh, god, the pain. It was brilliant, shining pain.

And my mom said, "You'll want to remember that later, if you get breast cancer."

Thanks, Mom.

I Like Turtles, Too.

Hey! I Had My Tonsils Out!

Tonight I was talking to Thomas when I suddenly realized that it's December 4th, and on December 4th, 1988, I had my tonsils out.

I said, "Hey! I had my tonsils out--" and then I paused (for probably longer than an elementary school teacher should have to) to figure out how many years it had been.

Thomas looked at me with amusement and repeated, "Hey! I had my tonsils out!" And I realized it sounded to him as if I were relating some startling revelation.

I've been giggling ever since.

For those who have been kind enough to comment, I'm working on the gray in the background. Hopefully by the end of the week it will be kinder to the eyes, or else I'll give up in disgust and we'll all go blind. Whoot!

I was generally disappointed in the Heroes finale last night, for many of the same lazy, sloppy reasons I've been complaining about. I mean, come on now. Why couldn't Peter have just read Adam's mind? And he had like, 8 different ways to get through that door at the end, not the least of which would have been to phase through it, as he and Adam did to get out of the prison.

Because I am such a Potter-head, I kept thinking, "But Peter is a superb Legilimens!"

Dork, dork, dorkitude.

Megs in Blue

I loved the peach, but after a year, I was ready for a change.

There went Sunday night. :)

It's poem Sunday again, but I'm tired, so it's going to be a little one.

Tired Sex by Chana Bloch

We're trying to strike a match in a matchbook
that has lain all winter under the woodpile:
damp sulphur
on sodden cardboard.
I catch myself yawning. Through the window
I watch that sparrow the cat
keeps batting around.

Like turning the pages of a book the teacher assigned --

You ought to read it, she said.
It's great literature.

Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Came home from work in full panic mode today--my student teacher quit rather unceremoniously this morning and it threw off my whole day. Am I a terrible teacher? Am I mean? What?

Fortunately, good sense won out and I called Michelle who made me laugh until it felt like Friday again. There's nothing like having a conversation in which you discuss the terrible and the mundane, reassure one another, have a horrible realization, and end it all in hysterics.

Random questions of the day: Why are people who sell cheese and fish called "-mongers" but no one else is? And what makes some fish sashimi grade?

P.S. NaBloPoMo is over. My forced Bataan Death March of blogging, as my friend Bernie so wittily called it, has come to an end. I did it! Again.

Energy, Money, Time, Beer

Time is going by too quickly.

Lately I've been so exhausted by going to work that I haven't been able to convince myself to get anything done besides walking in the afternoons--which makes time feel even more short as I watch all my various chores pile up around me. Is tomorrow really the last day of November? But I haven't gone through all of last year's posts to catalogue 50 more weird things about me!

Tonight I am cooking dinner for the first time in ages. Our grill broke, and so the Thomas-is-cooking streak of the last 3 years is temporarily ended. Don't get me wrong, I still cook for major occasions, but this is my first just-because meal in some time. It's kind of nice. And the oven heats our house up to the point where I'm not freezing, for once.

Things I want: energy, money, time, beer.
Things I need: energy, money, time.

Meme-Tastic

So, I'm stealing this meme from Gina because I like this meme and dammit I want to meme.

8 Random Things About My Wedding



1. Although Thomas and I are not beach people, and have never been to the beach together excepting the 3 times we took the dogs to the beach to cackle over how they try to dig to China, we got married on the sound at Wrightsville Beach. We rented two side-by-side beach houses and illegally had our wedding there. I freaked out the entire time that the police were going to come. No, officer. This is not my wedding. This is the family reunion we claimed on the rental forms. I would never have a wedding in a rental, particularly when I signed a special part of the lease that said I would not have a wedding here. Why am I wearing this big white dress? Because it's March! Doesn't everyone wear a big white dress in March?

2. I bought my dress on ebay. Several months before Thomas even proposed to me, I thought it might be nice to look at wedding dresses on ebay because, hey, you never know, and plus I am totally an insane stalker type who insists that you marry me immediately. I saw my dress and it was exactly the dress in my mind and only cost 200 dollars. I agonized for several days about whether I should just buy the dress and keep it in a box in the closet just in case. Then sanity won out and I stopped obessessing over the perfect dress for my imaginary wedding. But the day he proposed? Yeah, I bought that bitch.

3. My friend Michelle, who is awesome, and who arranged all 300 of the gerber daisies that I bought online, brought a fishing pole and some squid so that she could fish off the pier the day before our wedding. When she was done, she wrapped up the remaining squid and stored it under the railing of the deck where we all forgot about it until two days later when we tracked that horrible smell to its source.



4. I had my bride-zilla moment when my mother in law tried to have the cake delivery guy set up the cake on a table that was not the motherfucking cake table. Because I had a motherfucking cake table and that was NOT it. Still embarrassed. Sorry, Linda. And thank you to Kasey who listened to me seethe and never once pointed out that it was totally ridiculous.

5. My best friend Kasey flew in from Maine to be in our wedding, and her husband Andrew pressed the buttons for our music, because Thomas had done so for their wedding 6 months earlier, even though she didn't know him at all then. But I guess that's more about her wedding than mine. Kasey was a godsend, of course. She always is. But she helped me string the gazebo with 8 hundred thousand pieces of ribbon that barely show in the pictures.

6. We walked down the aisle to Depeche Mode's "Somebody." We walked back up the aisle to Tony Bennet's "The Best is Yet to Come." This is totally indicative of Thomas's and my completely different taste in music, and yet, it was lovely.



7. My friend Mary married us, which was very cool. We had our ceremony in a gazebo at the end of a tiny pier, so all our guests were on land and could barely hear us. Mary was having trouble projecting, so I whispered to her to just talk like we were at the bar on a Saturday night. When she upped the volume, her voice got very flat and she delivered some very lovely sentiments about Thomas and me in a very loud and affectless voice that made me giggle until I nearly cried. I giggled through our entire ceremony. Mary did a wonderful job. I'd ask her to do it again in a second.

8. Our wedding favors were fake mustaches. Thomas and I collect them. We really wanted a vintage photo booth with a box of costumes that people could put on, but that would have cost more than our entire wedding, so we went with a polaroid and fake mustaches. I was peeling them off every available surface for days. My friend Jennifer put one between the legs of a very fancy ballerina sculpture. Yeah, I had to peel that off in front of my dad.




Bonus:
For our honeymoon, Thomas and I just stayed on in the house we'd rented for the wedding. It was very convenient because then he could still drive into town for order day at the store, and we could invite tons of people over all week to hang at the beach and help us eat all the food. The day after our wedding, after we'd finally gotten everyone to leave, we sat down to watch VH1, because we have no cable at home and were feeling sadly behind on I love the 80s. We snuggled up together on the couch and settled in when suddenly the power went out. Thomas got up to look out the window and see if the other houses on the street had power, which they did. Suddenly we heard the elevator (the house had an elevator) coming up. We both panicked like no two people have ever panicked before. Thomas ordered me to get a knife, but I couldn't find one in the dark. I'd heard horror stories about the sites of weddings getting robbed for the presents and I was seriously in a condition.

There was no one in the elevator, of course. It just returned to its home floor when the power went out. A call to the power company confirmed that the whole street was out--what we were seeing were the houses across the sound. We still laugh at ourselves about that.

Thanks to Gina for the help with getting through NaBloPoMo--check out her side project at Teeny Manolo.

If I'm Dead Tomorrow, You'll Know Why

I know double posting during NaBloPoMo is a cardinal sin punishable by death, but DUDE.

The weirdest thing just happened.

Thomas and I were working with the TV on and he asked me what that noise was. I said I thought it was sirens and he turned off the TV so we could hear better.

It was CATS.

Multiple, multiple cats. All yowling and screaching and moaning and groaning and I have never, ever heard anything like it. If you listened closely, some sounded like babies crying. Some sounded like demons. Thomas said (and once I heard it, I couldn't stop hearing it) that one sounded like it was saying, "Help! Help!" over and over again.

If I'd had any way to record it, it would be on this blog right now.

Honestly, I got really scared in the middle of it. We went over to the window to get a better listen, and our dog started to cry, as if to say, Don't you see this is what they want you to do? And I started to imagine that at any moment the window was going to burst in and there would be a monster with its claws in my face.

Thomas went out onto the porch to hear and I wanted to scream, "NO! Don't do it!"

Then the (brave) neighbor came out and clapped his hands and cats scattered everywhere. Maybe they were witches. But the thought I kept having was...vampires.

Into the Home Stretch

There are some hard truths for NaBloPoMoers at Schnozzfest. And those hard truths made me laugh very hard this morning before going to work. And look, now you know what I did this morning before going to work--so I'm already ahead of this blogging game. Watch me go!

Today was my last day (I hope) of teaching the middle school and the elementary school simultaneously. By this afternoon, my feet hurt badly and I was most short tempered. At one point, I looked up at a kid who thought he was talking behind my back and while grinning, I said, through my teeth, "I've taught 2 full classrooms simultaneously for 5 days now. Could you cut me some slack?" He went back to work, God bless him.

Writing continues in dribs and drabs, though I feel lucky to be writing at all. Where does my time go, oh sucking internet box? And why is my computer screen flickering lately as if in a portent of death?

Thomas's store's 15 year anniversary celebration is this weekend, so I'd like to take time out to say that I'm so proud of Thomas. He opened a business before I could drive a car and it's still here and going strong. My husband rules. Fanboy rules.

Resistance is Futile--Woo Child

I'm brain dead today, so please accept these pictures of me at awkward ages, for your enjoyment. My dad brought them with him to show my school kids, so now they know what I looked like with braces, mini-boobs and bad hair. Yes!



I am 11 in this picture, and the rabbit with me is 3 ft tall. I won it in a raffle at the grocery store. I would also like to note that the strange green "numbers" sweater I am wearing was my absolute favorite and I wore it with green stonewashed jeans. And although I look stoned in this picture, really I've probably just eaten all of the rabbit's tail and am sugared out. Also, nice bangs.




I am 9 in this picture, rocking the bra-less look. (Lest anyone think I was kidding about my tales of young-boob-horror.) In addition, that is my string of fish. We cut the head off the biggest one and nailed it to the telephone pole outside our house. I don't know why! My dad told me to! Perhaps to intimidate the neighbors?