comfort and joy
things that comfort me and bring me joy (a comfortable sort of joyousness) (sparked by the fish):

lists

husbands

husbands feeding (other people's) babies

other people’s babies

the smell of burts bee's sensitive skin baby toiletries on grown-ups, especially me

pumpkin

baking

baking at 11pm

baking at 11pm while husbands clean the dishes as you dirty them

baking at 11pm while husbands clean the dishes as you dirty them and elliott smith sings on the stereo… "never gonna know you now, but i'm gonna love you anyhow"

november

lucas from empire records

suddenly realizing (while baking at 11pm) that i mentally process simple fractions (i.e. single number denominators... a quarter of a teaspoon) using musical meters and eighth notes and sixteenth notes and 3:4 time and 6:8 time etc., etc...

learning to read music before learning fractions or simple division

a $5 piece of vanilla bean

the majestic yellow kitchenaid that will be delivered tomorrow

days off

wedding pictures

lattes

ginger, either pickled with cucumber rolls or baked into cookies

song #9 on basically every CD we own

tuesdays that feel like fridays (just don’t mention wednesday)

sentimental drunk people (“i love you guys!”)

not being taken for granted

whole foods market the sunday before thanksgiving (no, seriously. it's beautiful)

saying grace together on the couch with our dinner on tv trays and the smallville theme music playing in the background

the pregnant barista at the coffee shop with the scottish husband

clean, new, fluffy, dryer-sheet scented towels

you

fragments
there's something to be said about people around you finding happiness and being completely happy for them plus a little tinge of "damn it, i wish that were happening to me." i suppose that doesn't make me "completely happy" then. ah, so is life. speaking of happy, the coffee bean and tea leaf's new winter dream tea latte or whatever it's called is amazing, but for the love of god, get it with half the sweet flavor powder or risk a root canal. before the tea last night, we broke fast with the biggest meal we've ever created, all of comfort foods: salad, spinach, zucchinni, tomato, and tofu crustless quiche, and creamy tomato soup turned into alphabet soup, nay, sludge, with my new vegetable pasta alphabets. i felt guilty. the hungry children don't get to choose when they stop being hungry by eating tomato alphabet soup. i think that's the beauty of why we fast - to feel that connection, even if that connection feels an awful lot like guilt. i loved ER last night and the susan-chuck stuff. i love them. they're my new abby-carter, except neither of them are annoying or bogged down with stupid family shit (anymore). and my husband told me that as a child, he hated "the cat in the hat." apparently, he started this anal-ness at a very young age. "he kept messing everything up! how could anyone like that??" and have i told you about the color-coded folded rainbow of laundered panties yet? speaking of color, we ordered our "majestic yellow" kitchenaid artisan stand mixer last week. (i'll probably post pictures, don't worry.) i'm really excited to bake shit. if anyone wants any cookies or cakes baked for them, you know where to find me. when torn between the sensible, hip matte grey and the fabulous, slightly retro creamy yellow, erik finally said, "but the grey one isn't very cheerful." yes. we now have a cheerfulness requirement in small kitchen appliances. excellent. if it wouldn't leave me with shiny burn-victim-like scars, i'd want the skin from the cool inner side of my upper arm transplanted all over my body. it's my favorite patch of skin.

i have a rapid stream of consciousness. i really do think in bullets, but my mind doesn't have the luxury of a simple HTML tag to visually organize everything for me. so, lucky you: today you're getting the raw bullet-less bullets. a snapshot of my flickering and evasive thoughts. this is the kind of blog entry that, if i were reading it on someone else's blog, i couldn't scan it; i'd have to force myself to carefully read each word in order, not letting my wandering eyes fall victim to the distracting pretty colors in the sidebar or the pretty big word with the letter z in it three lines down. i might not even read it at all.

i could easily spin my stream gallop of consciousness for a publisher, that my writing is a jackson pollock painting, i am a child blowing dabs of paint through a plastic straw, i am a beautiful mess of wit and depth and intelligence. but really, i'm just a disorganized mess of insecurity and what will they think of me and most of the paint missed the canvas anyway.

update
i can't type straight.

hungry
today, i'm participating in Ofxam's Fast For a World Harvest campaign. on an individual or family level, it can be as easy as skipping a meal, or the day's meals, or eating only staple items. i'm fasting for 24 hours. the idea is that money not spent on food that day would be donated to their world harvest campaign. donations to the campaign give sustainable types of aid to the hungry - rather than just hand-outs. for example, they provide wells or farming education.

more information about Fast For a World Harvest can be found here.
oxfam has tossed together some Hunger Facts here. (pdf)

the fast is always the thursday before thanksgiving.

840 million people suffer from hunger worldwide. 30,000 children die from hunger each day - that's 20 in the minute it took to read my email. i think i can go hungry for one short day (without complaining, believe it or not..!) in order to stand up for this cause. 12 hours down, 12 more to go.



also, i did the 30,000 children die each day = 20 per minute math myself, which is very impressive of me and most likely miscalculated.

this post was NOT written at 11am on a workday.
this blogger "policy" makes me want to be a better person.

i think it's really cute that the lovely folks at blogger are making up all these "official stances." i.e. the mom policy.

but there's something about the "How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog" text that just makes me want to stick it to the man and change the way everyone thinks about this stuff... the way we tag blogs as silly little diaries for insecure attention whores, or, worse yet, total wastes of time. the way employers tag employee internet usage as laziness and idleness. not so! well, an exception being starting at the season 1, episode 1 televisionwithoutpity.com recaps of alias trying to understand the bizarre relationship between sydney, jack, and sloan. (at work.) i digress.

however, until there's a change in the corporate mentality, you sure as hell won't see much of my last name (though even i'm not sure what it is these days) or any workplace information on this puny little blog.

soundtrack
the morning we left for the honeymoon, erik picked out six CDs on our way out the door. it was a "just in case" sort of thing, since we were assuming the rental wouldn't have a CD player.

well, it did. we lucked out: a six-disc changer. i really couldn't tell you how many times we listened through all six CDs. we spiced it up with some Wyoming Public Radio whenever we could get reception. (they play a lot of bluegrass.)

our honeymoon was a lovely, melodic, chill, beautiful, and mellow time. and here's why:

eastmountainsouth - eastmountainsouth.
"hard times," and "too soon" are two of my new favorite songs. the lyrics, the voices, the fiddle... all haunting and beautiful and ethereal. and kick ass.



kings of convenience - quiet is the new loud.
we judged this book by its cover in a way. we fell in love with the album title and had to hear it. we listened to maybe 5 seconds of it in borders and bought it right away. these guys rock, in a quiet groovy sort of way. quiet is the new loud indeed.



mojave 3 - out of tune.
i could love this CD for "who do you love?" alone, but the whole thing is so beautiful and wrenching and guitar-strummy. perfect for windy wyoming roads.



neil halstead - sleeping on roads.
an amazing solo album by the lead singer of mojave 3. his voice is soothing and edgy at the same time. very fabulous.



over the rhine - good dog bad dog.
buy this CD. take me north south east or west... i'm gonna leave it up to you.



the innocence mission - glow.
karen peris has the most intriguing voice i've ever heard. "keeping awake" is a favorite song, too. erik gave me a stack of innocence mission CDs after our first date "to inspire" me. and how. i had heard "bright as yellow" before, but nothing else. i fell in love. with the band, with erik. also, read the lucky bastard jason's article about their latest album here.

due to the redundant nature of only having six CDs on a 10-day driving-heavy trip, we pretty much came home and hid those CDs away for a long while. it wasn't until this weekend that we finally dusted them off again.

we listened to eastmountainsouth on the way home from palm springs sunday night, and i realized that for the rest of my life, these songs will send me back to the most beautiful place in america and the most beautiful time in my life.

this new house.
something tells me i've written a post with this very same title before. but oh well. my creativity is pretty limited.

erik and i live in a condo. it's very beautiful. ...a 1998 white exterior, spanish tile roof sort of beauty. we spent a lot of time carefully chosing neutral-but-colorful-and-fabulous wall colors and window coverings. we ripped up the token beige carpets and installed bamboo and dark maple flooring. we gave it character, but to me, it just seems like we gave it forced character.

when erik and i began dating, we had many things in common. you know, the music, the faith, the mutual dislike of peanut butter... but one of the coolest things was our love for old houses. namely, arts and crafts-era architecture. we'd go to arts & craft home tours and conventions. we spent a lot of time driving around hip old neighborhoods in san diego lusting after those super expensive $300,000 craftsman bungalows in north park. well, now those cute bungalows are $500,000, and i doubt we'll ever forgive ourselves for passing that up.

the twists of fate-ish-type-things that led us to our smart-growth business-park condo complex in the north-central area of the city are pretty elusive. i'm not even sure what happened and how we ended up there. but all of a sudden, my years of built up indie street cred are shattered. i spent a year in a fabulous old cottage with questionable neighbors and police chases in my backyard. i spent another year in a post-WWI apartment with all my furniture at least six inches away from the paper-thin walls, lest the constant layer of condensation ruin my bedding. i spent years listening to homeless people rummage through the recycle bins in the alleys at 4 in the morning. and now we have a two car garage, tennis courts, and 3 hot tubs scattered around the complex.

yup. we sold out.

but, as soon as it is financially feasible, we're going to do everything we can find that next fabulous old house in that fabulous up-and-coming old neighborhood (i.e. not ridiculously overpriced yet). there'll be old trees and ratty streets and creaky pipes. the living room walls will have built-in bookshelves and we'll use the old ice-box cavity as a cookbook holder. the toilet will probably back up a lot.

and we'll love it.

dress code
last night, erik dressed up as gene kelly for the murder mystery party. (which i won, by the way. go georgia.) basically, this meant he wore a white shirt, wool pants, satin-y black tie, and a trench coat, all while carrying around an umbrella. it was the best we could do.

however, i have a new revellation. i'm a big fan of erik in a tie. even if he did look a little like a private investigator (i called him "private dic" all night). very very delicious.

my husband is hot.

perhaps it's just because i'm trapped in the world of male engineer attire. monday-through-thursday's polo shirt and khakis combo is replaced by a polo shirt and jeans combo on fridays around here. seeing a man dressed nicely for work is an anomaly. i love it.

so, if anyone has any leads for jobs that would require erik to wear suits or at least ties, pass them along. mmm.

vaginas, PDF files, etc.

tonight, i'm "playing" georgia o'keefe at a murder mystery dinner party.

i really have no idea what to wear. i don't really have any spare cattle skulls lying around the house, nor do i have anything that remotely resembles her signature boxy black hat. i think i'll just wear all black. and i'm going to take a sketch book and draw a little something. a little something that looks like a cross between flower petals and a vagina.

at lunch, i drove all the way to the doctor's office to pee in a cup. for them to tell me, like i already knew, that I'M NOT PREGNANT. even though i insisted to myself that i already knew this, it was very good news to hear. well, i have to admit that i was getting used to the idea of a little julia-let or erik-let. and shopping for cute maternity clothes. but i think the tiny millisecond-long pang of disappointment really stemmed from this being the very first time in my life a pregnancy scare was socially acceptable.

mother, if you're reading this, that last sentence in no way implies that your sweet, innocent daughter was anything less than sweet and innocent in college.

last night i was a student in mr. kerber/vincent schiavelli's trigonometry class in Better Off Dead. except we were learning about getting the most out of our PDF files from a lady named sharon. really, it was totally fascinating. unlike vincent schiavelli, sharon is a good looking 6 foot tall hip woman who is ridiculously funny and relentlessly, perfectly sarcastic. my coworker jackie and i were instantly in love. with PDF files, with her, with PNG file formats, you name it. we laughed, we cried, we optimized our press-ready graphics output...

if anyone knows why there's been a javascript error at the bottom of the page for the last month, i'll happily explain the difference between optimizing and downsampling with your PDF files. for FREE.

i'm eating yogurt with a knife. we really are in a recession. at least in my office. we don't even have a water cooler. or spoons, apparently.

a sunburned package
i received a fabulous package from the fabulous jenn last night. she rocks. like pop rocks.

i thought i was just going to be getting a copy of her australia zine, but NO. i don't even know if i can remember all the package ingredients to list them, but a few highlights are: random and beautiful notecards and stationery (is this a hint? to write back?), stamps, stamps, stamps, a wonder woman notecard, and fun little stickers.

OH, and poprocks. POPROCKS! i have never actually had poprocks before. i hear they're good with coke.

thank you so much, you beautiful, intelligent, bono-obsessed, witty-as-hell woman.

landmark day
today, i wrote the first ever post i didn't publish. it really sucked, in a trying-too-hard sort of way.

it's definitely a dry feeling.

i'm having a worthless day, and i can't even blog about it. even my blogging is worthless today. and to top it off, i'm spending the evening with well-read computer geeks. after some fun tech writer networking time, we're going to learn about "getting the most out of PDF files." my employer is making me go.

they're also paying for my asian tofu stirfry, so not all is lost.



i'm kicking myself for not bringing the digital camera to document such an "interesting" and forsaken demographic.

alright, i'd best be getting back to my worthless day.

confession
tonight, i am going to the gap instead of to a worship service.

my personal hell is shaped like a shopping mall.

chin up, little camper
i think i'm gaining weight. only in my chin. this is definitely a sign of age, no?

really, i was all prepared for the post-wedding weight gain, but so far i'm doing well. except for the aforementioned chin. soon-to-be chins.

picture me sitting at my desk opening and closing my mouth. you know, chin cardio.

julia makes good on her promises.
well, just this one.

presenting.... me, as Ann Coulter. (and friend as Uniform Violation Catholic School Girl.) sorry about my lousy posture.

halloween 2003

it's important to note that i wore a "George W. Bush: President 2000" pin for about 6 or 7 hours total. i shudder to think of all the liberal angels who lost their wings at my expense that weekend.

a bulleted weekend.

be jealous. we saw Dick Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine on friday night. fucking good times!

i had my photo taken with the leopard-print-jacket-clad dick cheese.

i also had my photo taken holding the "People Who Want To Have Sex With Dick Cheese" email list.

no, i didn't sign up. however, my friend did sign up his girlfriend. using her work email address.

saturday, we spent about $30 watching movies. Love, Actually, and Kill Bill. two very different genres for a very diverse saturday. i loved them both. except for the uneccesary chubby jokes in L, A.

i cannot wait two weeks until the next new alias! whatever!

i tried to describe to erik the que sera sera temporary splash screen (pictures of her tu-tu christmas present) (no longer there). i failed. he didn't even chuckle. perhaps he was just alarmed that we were discussing bloggers at the dinner table.

i'm still waiting on pictures of my halloween costume. i promise i will post one as soon as i get them! i may also post the dick cheese pictures...

i've decided that i need to work for a non-profit religious organization. preferably one in a hip arts & crafts era historic registry mansion in a fabulous part of town. i understand that in the 13 months of this blog's existence, i've announced about 5 or 6 new "life plans." but this is it, i promise.

god bless wyoming and keep it wild
i read that quote on the back of a tour book - i remember the speaker was a 14 year old girl, killed in a horseback riding accident. i don't remember much more about her, but i can't shake the words, "keep it wild."

the day before the wedding, i had a small moment of regret that erik and i decided upon the honeymoon we had planned. i mourned for 10 days of sitting on a chaise lounge with my toes buried in the warm tropical sand and a mojito in my hand. but the second we crested the hills into wyoming, i realized we wouldn't have had it any other way.

now, after just getting my film back, i'm torn between happy lovely memories and sadness for the fact that i'm not there right now. i miss it. i miss being surrounded by a painting 24-7. i miss just gazing off into the distance, not realizing i've been holding my breath. i miss the uncanny connection you feel to the earth. i miss the wild.



yellowstone and grand teton national parks, september 2003

overheard
"does it bother you that our knees are touching?" -- one male coworker to another male coworker crammed in the backseat of a car at lunchtime today.

i may not love my job, but i most definitely love the people. good times.

burnt
the cool rain yesterday filled the air with a halfway autumnal, halfway rank fragrance. the scents of the first rainfail on the dry asphalt mingled with the activated ash and charred soil around me.

i'm thankful that god provided rain and earth and air and fire. i know that the earth will heal itself around us, the people hurt will heal themselves, and we'll all move on until there's another fire.

for our honeymoon, erik and i toured yellowstone and grand teton national parks. in 1988, yellowstone was almost entirely consumed by a gigantic wildfire. i had no idea. when i first read the first ranger station exhibit about the fire, it brought tears to my eyes. trees, animals, and landscapes were killed by the flames. the ash and changing landscape surface affected the bodies of water and the unfathomable geothermal features - geysers, pools, bacterial mats, etc. but the more i read, the more amazing it all became. everyone was okay with this fire. people who were hurt, rangers and naturalists who lost their life's work, everyone just sort of chin up-ed and looked ahead. if there's one thing i learned from the honeymoon (not counting that little thing about checking the rear view mirror before backing up), it's that fire is a pivotal and vital part of the ecosystem. it was actually quite life-changing and beautiful, et al.


mammoth hot springs, yellowstone national park. september, 2003.
fire damage at the terraces.

yellowstone is all about the ecosystems. everything is in balance. everything is constantly changing. for the better. for example, the fire burnt down the massive lodgepole pines, allowing the sunlight to reach the tiny, delicate aspen saplings sprouting up through the charred forest ground. eventually, the lodgepole pines will grow tall again, fed by the fertile aspens, and then another fire will come along. we'll all start over again.

but when i look outside my office and see bulldozed and blasted hillsides once ripened for developement now blackened by last week's fire, i have a hard time seeing that an ecosystem was there in the first place. when i drive through the hardest-hit neighborhoods, i have a hard time seeing that any of the newly homeless or newly neighborless see ecosystems as a priority right now.
we're all ready to move on and rebuild, but i have a sinking feeling that we'll do so at the expense of any semblence of delicate ecological balance still left in the suburbs.