About the Weather

We've got yet another week of Sco/!/ish weather; no sun 'til Wednesday is the estimate. All my neighbors went either to New Hampshire, Maine or the Cape for the weekend, so I'm watching all their houses. It's nice to visit someone else's place for a change, but quite frankly, I wish that they were home. For one thing - having that glass of wine in the enclosed porch is much nicer when I can share the bottle with my cohabitants. Also, it's kind of creepy being all alone in a six-bedroom victorian.

Will probably brave the rain (strong and steady, comme une vache pisse) to rummage around at the Salvation Army. I see that denim skirts are in and I want one, but I can't really justify the asking prices, so figured I might find something useable there. If not, well, I can always split the legs on an old pair of jeans to make a retro style skirt. I have lots of calico fabric (leftover from last year's Christmas presents - made big scented pillows - stuffed calico with pine needles. Really lovely.) that I could line the hems and the pocket edgings with. Saw a picture of something similar in both the Marie Claire french edition and on the Anthropologie site. I've already "frogged" two tops I was knitting - don't know what the hell I want to make.

Need a new pair of walking shoes. I used to buy from an outlet near work - Saucony is the last American-Made athletic shoe company, I believe...unfortunately, their quality seems to be suffering. Don't know if I should still patronize them or if I should put my money out to better the lives of more deserving Asians at this point.

Would watch some of the world cup, but I'm so mentally tired that I don't feel like listening to the commentary in Spanish. (The Anglo coverage is on ESPN2 - I don't have cable. Network only has Spanish coverage.)

I hate rotten mood days like this.

Oh - went up to Salem to visit AnnaMaria - we were to hike the Ipswich River reservation, but the weather was so bad that we ended up just wandering around the city, eating bad food, then watching a movie. (Cars. Absolutely wonderful. Pixar's stuff runs the gamut quality-wise, but this one made us remember how magic the movies could be. Haven't been this happy over a film since "Master and Commander." Actually, Mario van Peebles's "Badassss" was pretty exciting, too, come to think of it.)

Maybe the exercise will make me feel better. Onward.

(From Grimpen Mire)

We've got yet another week of Sco/!/ish weather; no sun 'til Wednesday is the estimate. All my neighbors went either to New Hampshire, Maine or the Cape for the weekend, so I'm watching all their houses. It's nice to visit someone else's place for a change, but quite frankly, I wish that they were home. For one thing - having that glass of wine in the enclosed porch is much nicer when I can share the bottle with my cohabitants. Also, it's kind of creepy being all alone in a six-bedroom victorian.

Will probably brave the rain (strong and steady, comme une vache pisse) to rummage around at the Salvation Army. I see that denim skirts are in and I want one, but I can't really justify the asking prices, so figured I might find something useable there. If not, well, I can always split the legs on an old pair of jeans to make a retro style skirt. I have lots of calico fabric (leftover from last year's Christmas presents - made big scented pillows - stuffed calico with pine needles. Really lovely.) that I could line the hems and the pocket edgings with. Saw a picture of something similar in both the Marie Claire french edition and on the Anthropologie site.

Need a new pair of walking shoes. I used to buy from an outlet near work - Saucony is the last American-Made athletic shoe company, I believe...unfortunately, their quality seems to be suffering. Don't know if I should still patronize them or if I should put my money out to better the lives of more deserving Asians at this point.

Would watch some of the world cup, but I'm so mentally tired that I don't feel like listening to the commentary in Spanish. (The Anglo coverage is on ESPN2 - I don't have cable. Network only has Spanish coverage.)

I hate rotten mood days like this.

Oh - went up to Salem to visit AnnaMaria - we were to hike the Ipswich River reservation, but the weather was so bad that we ended up just wandering around the city, eating bad food, then watching a movie. (Cars. Absolutely wonderful. Pixar's stuff runs the gamut quality-wise, but this one made us remember how magic the movies could be. Haven't been this happy over a film since "Master and Commander." Actually, Mario van Peebles's "Badassss" was pretty exciting, too, come to think of it.)

Maybe the exercise will make me feel better. Onward.

How happy to wake up to my favorite of Satie's waltzes playing in my head this morning. It transformed my morning commute down Prospect Hill into a wander through Monmartre and put me into such a romantic mood:

Je te veux

J'ai compris ta détresse,
Cher amoureux,
Et je cède à tes voeux,
Fais de moi ta maîtresse.
Loin de nous la sagesse,
Plus de tristesse,
J'aspire à l'instant précieux
Où nous serons heureux;
Je te veux.

Je n'ai pas de regrets
Et je n'ai qu'une envie:
Près de toi, là, tout près,
Vivre toute ma vie,
Que mon coeur soit le tien
Et ta lèvre la mienne,
Que ton corps soit le mien,
Et que toute ma chair soit tienne.

J'ai compris ta détresse,
Cher amoureux,
Et je cède à tes voeux,
Fais de moi ta maîtresse.
Loin de nous la sagesse,
Plus de tristesse,
J'aspire à l'instant précieux
Où nous serons heureux;
Je te veux.

Oui, je vois dans tes yeux
La divine promesse
Que ton coeur amoureux
Vient chercher ma caresse.
Enlancés pour toujours,
Brûlés des mêmes flammes,
Dans des rêves d'amours
Nous échangerons nos deux âmes.

J'ai compris ta détresse,
Cher amoureux,
Et je cède à tes voeux,
Fais de moi ta maîtresse.
Loin de nous la sagesse,
Plus de tristesse,
J'aspire à l'instant précieux
Où nous serons heureux;
Je te veux.

-Henry Pacory

Half-jokingly he asked, as all women do have their prices, what hers was.

"Do you like jewelry? Pretty new clothes? What moves your heart?"

Laughing as she normally does when she is dead serious she answered, "Actually, I think I kind of priced myself out of the market: I only want your heart in exchange."

She quickly added after noting his surprised silence that a new set of Le Creuset might almost be worth marrying for.

If I had a convertible...or better yet, if I knew someone who had a convertible and would be willing to chauffeur me around, I'd have called in sick today.

Anyone care to venture a guess as to what this might be? (As in style of stitchery. I already know that it's a pair of dancers.)

Hint: It's something one does not find tremendously much of in New England, making it kind of fun to search out.

The therapist asked me if he was abusive. No, just neglectful and very, very clumsy. Touch deaf (like tone deaf), actually: Attempts at caresses were horribly awkward. Sometimes I'd end up with a knee in my groin or an elbow in my breast. Requests to not touch me in certain ways were ignored. My hands, when I attempted to guide him, were pushed away. Also disturbing were the jerky, sudden movements which frightened me and his flinching when I would tickle him or try to run my fingers through his hair.

I know what happened to me when I was a child; believe me, I'm dealing with it to this day. I did wonder if he went through something similar. Asked, but he refused to talk about it. Cut me off. Became increasingly insistent on touching me in ways that I hated, then getting offended when I told him to stop. "But you always liked that," he would huff.

No I didn't, I'd counter. I'd told him many times before, first gently, then less diplomatically, that I disliked something he'd do. Sometimes he'd stop for the time being. Other times, no. Then I would fall back on an old device I used to save my sanity from the man using my body in my mother's house: separating my mind from my body. I'd think about a piece of music I was learning, I'd conjugate verbs. I'd dream of travelling, of places I'd always wanted to visit. I'd write shopping lists in my head and think of what I wanted for dinner. I'd get myself the hell out of the room.

It's amazing what the mind will do to protect itself; always with a price, though. The problem with this mechanism is, much like drinking or smoking or binge eating it's very difficult to stop once started. It took years of therapy to coax the soul back into the body after being driven out of it. Then I had to start it all up again.

Why did I stay for so long? Maybe because I wanted to rescue him, to save him. Maybe because I was looking so hard at the potential that I was blinded to the actual. Sometimes I really hate him. Most of the time I want to kick myself for being so stupid, so willfully blind to my reality.

***
What should I do next? Dye my hair red?

Looked in the mirror in the office restroom today and found the dreaded moustache hairs that afflicts all of us panis in the mid 30s. My panicked mind started racing: What should I do? Pluck them? Shave them? Let them be?

I don't have handlebars like my dad does. I was also (relatively) lucky in the genetic crapshoot to end up with very light hair. Still, this is a milestone that I was not looking forward to.

*Stereotypical tendencies among older Slavic ladies where I come from: moustaches and hair dyed dark red after un certain age. For me, finding those first developed facial hairs was kind of like finding that first gray hair for some people.

(From Grimpen Mire)

Disclaimer: I actually prefer men's company to women's in most cases. I find a lot of women, particularly in my age group and in this area, to be too skilled in back-stabbing for my comfort. Friendship with men is much easier, unless one crosses the line between friend and lover. I generally try to avoid this, as it's, for me anyway, a lame tradeoff to go from friend/confidante/equal/human to possession over a bit of sex.

Also: I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, as I'm mildly allergic. That is, I don't mind the taste, but it gives me awful headaches and stomach aches. If I'm going to indulge in chocolate, it's going to only be a little bit, and of really high quality (think Teuscher, Schober or Leonidas). Actually, I much prefer marzipan to chocolate.

***

Recently took a walk through the North End with a friend and, after dinner, stopped by Mike's Pastry. (We weren't in the mood for indulging, otherwise we'd have gone to Modern - much better.) Since only the pastry and gelato counters were crowded, we got a chance to see the latest works of marzipan art: fruits, veggies, fungus, even fried eggs. How lovely! How nostalgic! How poetic!

Misandry's like chocolate to me: a little bit every now and then as a guilty pleasure isn't terrible, but too much will make me very very sick.

Today, I'm craving a bit, so, what the heck:

The World's Shortest Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, a girl asked a guy, "Will you marry me?"
The guy said "No" and the girl lived happily ever after and
went shopping, drank martinis, always had a clean house, never
had to cook, stayed skinny, and was never farted on.

The End

(HA! Thanks one of my other 'bitter,' over 30, spinster girlfriends!)

“You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good..."

Zarqawi is dead. Good.

Am thinking of keeping a bucket of water balloons next to my desk so that I can have a quick, standard response to people popping their heads around my half wall to either tell me that my lunch smells good or to ask where anyone else in my department is.

It felt like it was time again, so I made an appointment to see the shrink.
If I'm depressed, and I honestly believe myself to be, it wouldn't be without reason. While telling her what'd happened since I'd last seen her, I noted her eyes bugging a bit. When the session was through, I don't know if I felt better for having gotten everything off my chest, or worse for having given voice to all the really messed up stuff in my life up to this point.

I'd really like to feel better. To pull myself back together again and get myself moving forward. Really, I would. It all just feels so damned overwhelming right now and I don't even know where to start.

Sick, tired, weak.

It was tough getting up yesterday morning; thank heavens it was a day off. Didn't get much of consequence accomplished before a ferocious migraine managed to knock me out of commission for a good chunk of the day. When I was able to move, I found that I was so weak that there wasn't much I could do except putter around the house a bit, then lie back down.

Would not have gone into the office today if it weren't for the appointment in the neighborhood I had to keep. Have been fighting nodding off all day.

Isn't it funny the way some women's bodies try to tell them that it's time to go forth, be fruitful, multiply and have dominion over the earth?

It felt like it was time again, so I made an appointment to see the shrink.

If I'm depressed, and I honestly believe myself to be, it wouldn't be without reason. While telling her what'd happened since I'd last seen her, I noted her eyes bugging a bit. When the session was through, I don't know if I felt better for having gotten everything off my chest, or worse for having given voice to all the really messed up stuff in my life up to this point.

I'd really like to feel better. To pull myself back together again and get myself moving forward. Really, I would. It all just feels so damned overwhelming right now and I don't even know where to start.

(from Grimpen Mire)

Yesterday my walk in was scented with honey locusts and beach roses.

Today? Trashcan trees and garbage pickup.

The commute was a labored one; a hot, sticky, ominous-feeling one. Co-commuters seemed crankier than usual, too.

Wouldn't mind at all being home, safe, curled up under my sheets, hiding from the impending storm. There is air conditioner in the office, however. It's quiet, too.

Since it was hotter than all get-out at Southwick's Zoo last Sunday, how appropriate that the theme for the day seemed to be "Mad Dogs and Englishmen." I don't know which category we fell under, but it seemed that we were the only ones not undercover, cranky or napping:



An angry, threatened male ostrich. He made an aggressive noise similar to what turkeys make when they're defending their territory.



Baby brahma cattle relaxing in the shade.



I particularly loved the sprawled out guys in the background.



Water Buffalo



A tortoise from Madagasgar taking it easy after paying probably over a century's worth of dues.



Didn't quite know how to take the lion: bored out of his skull? Unhappy? Just tired? The leopard and the white bengal tiger seemed a lot less put-upon than he.



Cute when asleep.



Somnambulating prairie dog?

My Man in the Field tells me that, at a pub last night in Crouch End, he saw absolutely nobody doing "the Crouch." He is checking with a friend in Burnham-on-Crouch to see if any spontaneous macarena-like manifestations were noted there.

He said that he couldn't be friends because I was the Love of His Life. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

The more I think about this, the less likely I am to think kindly on him.

No wonder I felt like I was being strangled for so long.

Saw my first bumpersticker from the ITMFA campaign yesterday - on a Forrester in my neighborhood, natch.

I'm sure they think they're clever. All that really comes to my mind is, oh boy, there goes another parody on wheels.

***

Oh yes, and South of the Charles (and I thought that North of the Charles had cornered the market on this sort of foolishness), some individuals decided to hijack the Brookline town meeting for a vote on something that really has no point being debated at a town meeting. Thinking globally while acting locally or just delusions of grandeur? I'm going to opt for the latter on this one.