a brief fling with disorientation
Where I live, it is inhabited by savages.
Where I am going, it is full of innuendo. Can you believe that in August we are going to rent a vacation home in a place called Woods Hole? Every time I say that name my Tourette's brain* starts this low mutter, morning wood stickitinyourhole hyuk hyuk hyuk. Even though we will only be there for a week, I like to pretend I am a Kennedy and airily say that we will be “summering” on the Cape. And now I know why truly rich people get killed in private-plane crashes: because this place, however charming and beachy and idyllic, is hell for commoners like us to get to. Land at Logan, pick up rental car, drive about 90 minutes to the curvy part of Mass. Ms. Nora is a lovely and experienced air traveler but will be much less enthused about the car portion, and I can't say that I blame her. Break out the emergency candy stash and the iPod audio books!
*Or word-salad brain, or the lack of brakes on my free association, or whatever my problem is. I have this problem LIKE YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE. For instance, we painted our kitchen,** finally, and got most of the paint and painting supplies from this local store named Thybony. Whenever I see their sign I think “Thy bony” and then I naturally (naturally!) follow that with “arse,” and then my brain starts declaiming faux-Shakespearian verses at me: “Thy bony arse, all silver'd o'er with spandex, bare ruined choirs of Pilates studios” and so forth. And whenever I see the sign for TCF Bank it resolves in my mind to either WTF Bank or Total ClusterFuck Bank, so strongly and persistently that I now refer to TCF in my head as simply “Fuck Bank” or sometimes just “Fuck.” Someone should hire me as an official coiner of Cockney rhyming slang, that is clearly the next logical step.
**We painted it ORANGE! Not really orange-orange, more like a light orange/pumpkin spice color. I have always been “mehhhh” about my kitchen, and spent many hours contemplating the logistical/financial horror of ripping everything out and starting over, but then I realized that the things I hated the most were the white walls and the crappy lighting and hey! Paint + light fixtures are very much cheaper than cabinets/countertops/appliances! LT did most of the work over Memorial Day weekend while I spent all day, every day with Nora at the park. The girl is in full summer mode—this is the last day of school, which has me weirdly excited although it affects me not at all, I just go to work every damn day like normal. But it makes me smile to think of summer Nora, tearing around the playground with her skinny, scratched-up (from scooter spills and tree-climbing) legs sticking out of her jean shorts.
CUCKOO FOR LINKS
Very depressing article. Some environmental reading gets you fired up, and you bike to work and recycle your recyclables and actually remember to bring along your canvas grocery sacks. Other kinds make you moan out loud, curl up in a ball, and decide never to eat anything other than organic raisins and filtered water. This is the latter sort, so you have been warned.
The ideal baseball article for someone who doesn't really care about baseball. Like me.
I found Instructables while looking for homemade playdough recipes and want to remember its existence, so here it is. Diaryland-as-scrapbook.
People are ridiculous. The margarine-related one on page 2 is my favorite by a wide marg(ar)in(e). “You left evidence”!
HAVE TWINS, WILL TRAVEL
The cafeteria in my office building has these paper bags on offer, presumably for toting away your high-fat lunch items for private, shame-based, closed-door office gnawing. Printed on the bottom of each bag is the phrase “16 LBS.” I am assuming that 16 lbs is the amount of weight each (not-very-big) paper bag can hold. Every time I walk by the paper-bag station and see that, I think that theoretically it would be possible to stuff two newborn babies in each sack. Every time. I am getting a little tired of my brain and its kneejerk (my brain has knees, apparently) paper-sack-full-of-screaming-newborns imagery. It is similar to the way I have to think about Lauren Bacall every time I put on eye makeup (but I don't think about eye makeup when I think about Lauren Bacall), or the way I think about drinking urine when I think about David Bowie (but I don't think about David Bowie while I…wait, never mind).
Speaking of David Bowie, it is alternately annoying and charming-in-its-irony that “Let's Dance” is not a very danceable song. Let's dance! Well, not just now. Next song, maybe.
—mimi smartypants put on her red shoes.