i don't know when that road turned into the road i'm on

A series of largely unrelated points:

-Here is a picture of the purse I made for Mom.



It came out pretty well.

-How do I know it's New Year's? Every year on December 31st, Other explains to me that Dick Clark is the devil because he turned state's evidence in the payola scandals.

-The package of my hot dog buns wants me to know that it uses no artifical colors. My hot dog buns are naturally hot-dog-bun colored.

-May your 2007 be filled with hot dog buns that come by their hot-dog-bun colors honestly. And shit tons of money, or whatever else floats that boat of yours.

I like the "ordie" part

Our holiday was good - we played Derivation, a game that my friend told me about several years ago but I wasn't able to track down until now. We're a game family when we have games that we aren't sick of playing, and we are most certainly not a family that actually cheers the name of the game when the die lands a certain way, but felt compelled to do so with this particular one. Although it takes a couple rounds to learn, it is highly fun and I recommend it.

We also watched "Reefer Madness," the original one, from the 1930s. Hilarious. This is not a normal Christmas tradition, although we're planning to move up to "Cocaine Fiends" next year. Tell your children.

robin laid an egg

You know, I've known that song for years and just now got that?

Or maybe I did know that and the profundity of remembering it after not thinking about it for so long and additionally being completely exhausted just kind of teamed up and bowled me over.

It's a Christmas mystery.

Anyhow, I've spent most of the last few days crafting my cute little ass off and am very much looking forward to the big old rest everyone will take tomorrow.

Whatever form your big old rest takes, I hope it's merry and safe.

hungry como el lobo

I was off using the google the other day and on about the third page of results, clicked without really thinking about it on what turned out to be KnittingStuff. And then I read it, feeling like I was seeing myself from the outside. And it was weird. And creepy.

I Go to the Mall and Do Not Shoot Anyone, Run Over Anyone in my Car, or Even Take Any Hostages, Even for Just a Few Minutes: A Christmas Story

This is, generally speaking, how I handle Christmas: denial denial denial, knit knit, denial denial denial, frantic shopping and mental self-flagellation, denial, relief.

So, yesterday evening found me getting off work a bit early, all the better to hit rush hour traffic on my way to the big, clean, rich-people, scary mall. As opposed to the closer mall.

And I must say, when I pulled into the parking lot of the BCR-PSM, I was taken aback at the sheer number of cars and then faced with that good old-fashioned American rage. ME SMASH CARS, GET OUT OF WAY, I thought. But then I thought, perhaps I will try being patient. And I did. And it was good.

In case you were looking for a way to "get through" the holidays, I hereby recommend a half-assed understanding of Zen Buddhism. It seems to fit, doesn't it?

Oh, and you should also get rid of as many friends as possible. Really cuts down on the shopping.

So, I smiled serenely at frazzled salespeople and didn't crash into a single member of the ravening hordes and plunked down money and got stuff for people I love. And people I am related to.

At one point I walked out of a department store into the main mall area and my steps actually slowed down as I looked up to take it all in. I noticed that, and wondered if it was purely a performative act, or if I really was momentarily overwhelmed with everything, like an immigrant stepping into NYC for the first time. I honestly don't know. That was weird.

But immediately thereafter I recognized a store front. I've been here before, I thought. Indeed, a few years ago my friend and I were Christmas shopping and she had bought a gigantic, gleaming butcher knife for her new husband there. This comforted me.

Then there was this thing with me getting to my cell phone, which I'd left in the car, calling my mom as quickly as possible and realizing I had just duplicated a gift for one of my brothers but pulling out of my parking spot anyway because certainly one of the four congregated cars would certainly have killed me, taken my keys, and rolled my car towards the nearest ditch if I wasn't going to give up my space.

But, hell, that's probably what I have two brothers for.

Okay, you win the award for most times the word "chastised" is repeated in a song.

I don't know about you, but this unseasonably warm weather is leaving me tapping feet and glancing at my watch and drumming my fingers. Despite the knowledge of time passing, it is much more convincing that I am not cold and therefore do not need to be thinking seriously about gifts and plans to go here and there on this day or that day or baking.

It had better snow, and soon.

be glad that most of my posts are not subtitled "a one-act play:" a one-act play

An imagined dramatization of the meetings between the Bush White House and Various Advisors based solely on his comments today about them

Well-appointed conference room in the White House. About a dozen graying men in decent suits sit around a long wooden table. Some have coffee, and there are muffin wrappers scattered about.

Bush: Well, I guess we better get down to business. You all- uh- know why we're here, so, what have you got for us?

Advisor #1: Mr. President, thanks for having us here today. Now, I'm just gonna cut right to the chase here, and say that I believe I speak for both myself and Rich --

[Advisor #1 looks to man to his right, who gives him a nod]

Advisor #1: -- when I say that, after taking all the facts into consideration, our best option is to... leave before the job is done.

Bush [smirking]: Dangit, I said I wasn't gonna do that. Just, no. Not gonna happen. Alright, what else you got?

Advisor #2: Well, sir, I was thinking...

Bush: Go on. I want to hear your ideas.

Advisor #2: Okay. I just think maybe it would be best to not help the Iraqi government take the necessary and hard steps to be able to do its job.

Bush: Dangit, NO! [in his explain-y, kind of staccato voice] We must stay until the job is done. Who else has an idea?

[silence, embarrased avoidance of eye contact]

Bush [getting agitated]: Y'all got- what- how many degrees, and this is the best ideas you can come up with?

[more silence, until a tentative hand goes up in the back of the room]

Bush: Alright, you. What's your idea?

Advisor #3: I was thinking maybe we could negotiate with terrorists.

[Bush jumps up, knocking over chair. Other men stand up in alarm.]

Bush [screaming]: Get out! Get outta here!

[Advisor #3 cringes as water glass shatters against the door frame as he flees]

you're gonna love it in an instant

wherefore art thou, desire to write?

Looking for a good cry?

Then go here and give your condolences to Miss Doxie, who lost a dog yesterday.

But what about *Santa's* needs, huh? You ever thought about that?

I read Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man this week, and I enjoyed it very much. It was quite different from both White Teeth (her first) and On Beauty (her third), but not in a bad way. I'd heard on "Writer's Almanac" that it got bad reviews, but part of me thinks that anything she had written would have. Because that's how the story goes - you splash onto the scene with a wonderful first novel, then your second one is a disappointment. Works for record albums, works for sports seasons, works for seasons of TV shows. The Autograph Man is a different story told in a different way than White Teeth, but it doesn't have to be judged on exactly the same merits. The things she does to words in order to make sentences in this book are lovely. This is the kind of book that supports the arguments for reading contemporary literature -- good writing lets you look around at the world and appreciate it in the same way that you normally do, only it's a little bit deeper or from a slightly different angle.

And, for me personally, there have been moments in reading these novels (on the first page of White Teeth, for example) where something she's said or even a word she's used has just resonated.

I've grown accustomed to your [inter]face

Uhhh, soooo, I've kind of forgotten how to blog in a non-compulsory way. If you pointed a gun at me and ordered me to produce a post-able post in 10 minutes or less, I could do it. But now, now that I did not even let the idea of "Holidalies" seep into my consciousness so that it seemed on par with becoming a nun or going skydiving tomorrow morning in terms of its possible-ness, now I don't know how to do it anymore.

Yesterday was a freebie, but there are only so many accidental 256-pound blocks of ice in the world and more specifically on my back porch. So, here are two observations about which I cannot assess their blog-worthiness.

1) You know what I really like? The moon. The moon is awesome. I'm glad it's there, in the sky.

2) You know what else I really like? Watching birds flock. Watching birds flock is very very interesting.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say... Jesus.

If you looked at that picture and thought to yourself, "What in the hell is that?" you're lucky, because I am going to tell you. That is a gigantic (256 pound) block of ice shaped like our trash can.

The "before" picture would have looked a whole lot like a 32-gallon trash can filled to the brim with water*, if I had taken it, but I did not. Because a 32-gallon trash can filled to the brim with water is not exactly an everyday thing, but it's nothing to blog about.

A gigantic block of ice shaped like our trash can, though. Well.


*water that had run off our roof in the course of about eight hours and that would currently be hanging out in our vents - the vents beneath our house that are there, ideally, to carry warm air around to the other parts of the house - had someone (it was me) not stuck it under where the water was overflowing the gutter

(the ecology)

"Not feeling well" is different than "not doing well."

Below is one of my first attempts at gane.

blue + brown = sky + trees

The pharmacy where I work has an electronic system for recording signatures for the insurance company. Awhile ago, the little pad keeled over, so we got a new one, and instead of customers hitting "Done" when they're done, it now says "Accept." It also, like the old pad, says "Clear," "Cancel," and "Back." And about 10% of the time, the people canot understand that "Accept" means "Done." Even with the sticker that we wrote "Done" on, with an arrow pointing at the "Accept" button. They think instead that "Clear" means "I am done signing, please save my signature." So at least twice a day a person will hit "Clear" (which, as you might've guessed, clears their signature and waits for them to sign again) and then wander off before we've notice that they've in effect refused to sign for their medication.

Perhaps this is an unfair complaint coming from a person who, despite multiple attempts, cannot understand how to use her bank's depository and has probably generated a total of 15 minutes of unintentionallly comical surveillance camera footage of her trying to figure out how to use her bank's depository ("Why is that solid?! Where is the hole?"), but sweet Jesus, people, why is it so hard to figure out that "Accept" means "I'm done signing, please save my signature"?

Probably not really strong enough to be your man.

I'm going to miss getting a new post every day from all the blogs I read that were doing NaBloPoMo. Meep.

Did you know cars could really blow gaskets? I didn't, but then Other's car did, and a gasket costs $26 and a transmission costs some unimaginable $ and so phew.

I'm going to post an About section really soon. Really. And 100 Things. A short and a long about. Soon.