July 27, 2007

Friday Shuffle - The Same, But Different Edition

I had this pipe dream when we moved. I'd thought that maybe, the massive increase in my panic attacks over the past seven years was in direct correlation to life in the crapshack in the Redneck Jungle, and that once removed, they'd magically disappear.

They haven't.

That said, they're better. When I'm anxious or, on the rare occasion, panicked, my first instinct isn't to run away from home, but rather to stay there. I've always been thankful that my particular version of agoraphobia got me out of the house instead of imprisoning me in it.

I had my first big attack since the move today. Not that it surprised me. It's the time of the month that leads to the attacks. My schedule was thrown off, thanks to everyone sleeping far too late this morning, which always puts me on edge. I woke up with a start at 10:27, terrified because Clara Jane hadn't woken me up She was fine. Just snoozing in after not taking a much-needed nap yesterday. Then Chloe, the Basset hound, had some issues walking up the steps, which sent me over the edge into sweaty, heart-racing fear.

She's fine. She just needs her butt popped again. Anal gland problems. They were full when my pal Jen the Groomer drained them on Tuesday. When they get overfull like that, the fill up again within a few days. It takes a few butt-poppings to get her back on track. Regardless, it's enough to throw me into a spin, especially when the time of the month is wrong, my schedule's off, and I've been over-busy.

We had some errands to run today, anyway, and I was thankful. I know I would have been okay at home, but I was relieved to have an excuse to not be there. We ran our errands and now we're at Cooperella for lunch. I thought we had arrived late enough to miss the bulk of the noisy crowd, but I was wrong. Apparently, today there's a meeting of St. Louis Shriekers Anonymous. I'm just glad that my kid is snuggled up beside me, quietly eating her turkey and swiss sandwich. Oh, and look who just walked in. The dad who, last time I blogged at Cooperella, blew a gasket because his son cast a sidelong, interested glance at a pink tutu. NO! Not for boys! NO! He's been here five minutes and he's already managed to lose the boy, who's probably in the boutique, trying on party dresses. I hope.

It's a good thing one of those errands I ran earlier today was to get my panic and anxiety drugs. Give me enough today to make me able to do little more than shuffle around, staring at my feet in oblivious bliss until the next few days pass.

1. The End of Medicine - The New Pornographers
2. Van Lear Rose - Loretta Lynn
3. Wang Dang Doodle - Koko Taylor
4. Wipe the Clock - Uncle Tupelo (who I've been listening to all day)
5. Something to Brag About - George Jones and Tammy Wynette
6. Take the Skinheads Bowling - Camper Van Beethoven
7. Mama Said - The Shirelles
8. Happy When it Rains - Jesus and Mary Chain
9. Novocaine for the Soul - The Eels
10. All He Wants to Do is Fish - The Replacements

Posted by Robin at 01:07 PM | Comments (8)

July 20, 2007

Friday Shuffle - Subterranean Homebound Blues Edition

I love people. I do. If I didn't, I wouldn't have thrown that big auction last weekend, right? Right now, though, I'm a bit peopled out. I've only had one day this week where I didn't spend time with at least one friend (Tuesday, when Clara Jane and the unholy beast that had morphed from the piles of unwashed laundry begged me to stay home). And that's good. I can say in all honesty that I have the best friends now that I've had in my entire life. I love that my life is such that I can spend a lot of time with my friends. I'm lucky that this shirt applies greatly to my life, and that I get to do the coffee-drinking and slacking with good people.

I think the past few months have officially caught up to me, because this week, when not out having a hoot, I've wanted to do nothing but sequester myself in the basement's rumpus room. Don't you dare come down here, either. I've got a fridge full of Vitamin Water and beer, nine hours of History Channel shows about doomsday, the antichrist, and Hell on the DVR, half a box of shortbread Girl Scout Cookies, and knitting to do. That's a lethal combination, my friends. Lethal to whoever makes the bad decision to attempt interaction with me while I'm rumpusing.

I've done some knitting, which I have barely done since we moved:

Pretty, but methinks trouble lies ahead:

My yarnball is puking knots, which I'm undoing as I knit. If you interrupt me while I'm doing this, so help me, I'm taking you down with those wee little needles.

I used up all my nice with the auction last week. Julie, however, has so much nice that she'll never run out. This week she gave me a copy of the photo I so wanted to buy at the auction. And I would have, too, had Count Sassy not outbid me by $100. Instead I bought a purse and the notecards in the upper left corner. Yeah, you feel pity on me for having to settle for a gorgeous, hand-made one-of-a-kind purse and notecards so pretty I'm considering gluing them to a wall in the rumpus room so I'll have something to stare at while rumpusing and eschewing humanity.

I feel a little guilty about Julie's gift, as I made quite a display of whining and moaning and threatening to send large Minnesotans (I know a few) to Count Sassy's door to collect what I felt was rightfully mine.

I whine when I don't get what I want. Therefore, I have grounded myself to the basement to wrestle with yarn puke-knots. Seems fair enough.

(Julie also took some beautiful photos of the quilt she bought at the auction, made by Granny Viv. They're awesome, of course.)

Next break in History Channel's Satan Week marathon, I'll shuffle over to the bar for cookies and beer. No, you can't have any. I'm not sharing today.

1. The Hardest Button to Button - White Stripes(Yes! For I, too, have a brain that feels like pancake batter.)
2. Maybe Sparrow - Neko Case
3. The Consort - Rufus Wainwright
4. Get Up - REM
5. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - Flaming Lips
6. Twilight - U2
7. The Swimmer - Sleater-Kinney
8. Head On - Jesus & Mary Chain
9. The Whole World - Outkast
10. Saturn - Stevie Wonder

Posted by Robin at 07:30 PM | Comments (8)

July 06, 2007

Friday Shuffle - Now Actually on Friday Edition!

Not that there's much to say, since all the action's over at Boob-Ha-Ha. Donations keep rolling in. I keep being astounded. Can't post them fast enough. You know the drill. It's a pretty awesome drill, all told.

How did I live before I got my MacBook? This auction would be really, really hard.

Clara Jane and I had a lovely, normal day. We went to the market and the coffeehouse up the street. I'm still blissed about how errand-running can be done in less than an hour now. Clara Jane's been a bit of a terror this week, and having a low-key day with some extra attention did us both some good. We made a Splenda birthday cake for my diabetic dad, which she decorated with lots of non-diabetic nonpariels. We don't know how it tastes yet, but it's definitely pretty. This is what she told me while we were making cream cheese frosting: "When we give Grandpa his cake, I'm going to lick frosting off of it and get it on my face. Then everyone will laugh and call me Frosting Face. Huh huh huh ... It'll be so funny!" Yep, she's definitely inherited our sense of humor.

Tonight, I'll be leaving the house when the hours are in the double-digits to babysit. I can't remember the last time I left the house after, oh, 7 PM. If all goes well, the babysitee will be asleep and I'll have a peaceful night of Boob-Ha-Ha stuff, knitting, and such. I took a nap. I'm ready.

I wish I could shuffle from my MacBook, but with the busyness, there isnt' one single song on this machine yet. Can you believe that? So off we shuffle to Beatrice, the elder Apple product of the household.

1. Good-Hearted Woman - Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson
2. Ride Along - John Hiatt
3. The River - Bruce Springsteen
4. Only in Dreams - Weezer
5. Hell Yes - Beck
6. Underneath the Bunker - REM
7. Tennessee Homesick Blues - Dolly Parton
8. There is an End - The Greenhornes (which is, like, the third time I've heard them today)
9. When Something is Wrong with My Baby - Sam & Dave
10. Get It Get It - Scissor Sisters

Posted by Robin at 07:23 PM | Comments (7)

June 30, 2007

Friday(ish) Shuffle - The Again with the Ish Business Edition

My blog mojo is seriously lacking these days. Fact is, there's really not much to write about right now. You can only read, "Omigod! I love my house! I love Prettytown!" so many times before you start lobbing dirt bike wheels at me.

You also don't want to read more about Murphy, who's been the crux of this week. In addition to Tuesday's escape, she had a bout of diarrhea, which christened one of the rooms in the house on Thursday. She's fine. I have a feeling she ate a monkey ball from one of our sweetgum trees. I'm not sure of this, but I wouldn't put it past her.

Last night Murphy made another blatant escape, this one while B. was letting her in the house. She had to investigate what is the new slightly irritating, unusual vehicle in our new neighborhood - a coach bus idling in the parking lot across the street. Actually, she chased the bus' driver, who lives two houses down from us. He's been on the road since before our move.

"When I heard her howl, I thought, 'Oh, she's beautiful! She sounds just like Nutmeg!'"

Not only have we moved to a quiet, pretty, friendly, easy-going neighborhood, it's also a neighborhood where every single person we meet adores Murphy, hound dog howl and all. This has several possible answers: 1) I live in a neighborhood of polite liars, 2) I live in a neighborhood of people with odd taste in dogs, or 3) I live in paradise which, contrary to the belief of some Missouri-side St. Louis Metro area, does not house dragons. Well, only friendly ones that'll give you a hand if you need a flame for s'more-making.

My knit mojo has returned. I'm sure you're thrilled.

I had my first guests yesterday who weren't immediately put to work. My friend Jill and her daughters, one who's a day younger than Clara Jane, came over for pizza, corn dogs, conversation, and the patented kind of noise that can only be created by three little girls having a good time.

There's still a lot of unpacking. Fuck.

I moved to a town that has a wing joint with over 50 varieties of flavors. Last night I had garlic parmesan wings, horseradish wings, and my first bottle of Stag, which I think means I'm an official Bellevillian now.

I'm about to unveil one of the things that's kept me away from my blog. It's big. Or will be, if I get a chance to get rolling on it this weekend. It's something to raise money for boobs. It's so big it requires its own domain name, much like my own boobs. Prepare yourself, and start putting away your pennies. You're going to want to part with them very soon.

Since I'm such a slack-ass, here's a bit of a musical bonus in addition to the shuffle. Devil Baby Freakshow, the band co-fronted by my pal Beqi, made their live radio debut yesterday afternoon, which had me dancing around my kitchen with a mop. No joke. That really happened. Because I've obviously moved to Pleasantville, as everyone keeps telling me. Anyway, you can listen to their set, along with the two-hour entirity of Dangerous Curves by clicking the "stream" button for the June 29th show. They're about 45 minutes into the program, but listen to the whole thing. Where else are you going to hear Wanda Jackson and a Shangri-Las record other than "Leader of the Pack"? It'll make your kitchen sparkle, I swear.

These songs, in comparison to "Dangerous Curves", will probably just make you shuffle around, staring at your shoes, wondering if anyone's peed in them lately.

1. Selfless, Cold and Composed - Ben Folds Five
2. Land of Caanan - Indigo Girls
3. We'll Meet Again - Johnny Cash
4. Holiday in Harlem - Ella Fitzgerald
5. You Don't Know How it Feels - Tom Petty
6. Friday I'm in Love - The Cure
7. River Knows Your Name - John Hiatt
8. Ana Ng - They Might be Giants
9. The Show Must Go On - The Real Tuesday Weld
10. Too Much - Elvis Presley

Posted by Robin at 09:17 AM | Comments (1)

June 23, 2007

Friday(ish) Shuffle - The Dots That Keep Me From Posting Edition

You know this is a busy time, right? Here's how much so:

• My new modem's crap. I don't think I've ever signed up for internet service and gotten a good modem the first time 'round. B. and I have spent a lot of time on the phone with our ISP, who have actually been nice and easy to deal with. New modem's on its way. In the meantime, the internet, she comes and she goes.
• Can't stop listening to Icky Thump long enough to form coherent sentences.
• When not listening to Icky Thump, life has been taken over by Little Steven's Underground Garage, which plays 24/7 on our satellite system. This show gave me that moment even mother dreams of: the moment when she walks into the living room to find her daughter, naked from the waist down, pogoing and screaming along to "High School" by the MC5.
• Speaking of naked from the waist-down, Clara Jane's feeling right at home in Prettytown. Comfortable enough to stand in the front window of a local coffee and ice cream establishment, bend over, and drop trou. You can take the girl out of the Redneck Jungle ...
• There are two - two!! - competing farmer's markets in this town. This morning I bought all my favorite veggies: broccoli picked this morning, zukes, sweet corn, green tomatoes, gooseberry pie, and strawberry jelly roll.
• I'm far too busy buying used furniture in East St. Louis to post.
• All that motherfucking unpacking.
• Planning a fundraiser-gone-amok for The Cuz that might lead to one of us sporting bright pink hair and the other sporting no hair at all, if all goes well.
• Wasting my time "auditioning" for a job with a large internet company called clusterfuck.com. Not their real name, but it's just about appropriate, all things considered. When you want to quit the job before you've landed the job, that's not a good sign.

  Would you like to see some photos of the new house in its current horrible state?

  
  
  I bought this to house all those vintage cocktail glasses I bought a few weeks ago. The Styrofoam under the leg will be replaced with a caster just as soon as we get time, around Clara Jane's junior year of college.

  
  This is the one organized area in my house.

  
  I just want to sit here and knit. But not until the unpacking's done. And not until the chains are fixed so I don't face-plant into the brick wall every time I sit down.

  
  At least we don't have piles of our personal belongings in the front yard anymore, thanks to one of our nice neighbors.

  
  Again, the important parts of the house are in order.

  
  "Hey B.? Did you remember to unpack Clara Jane? I can't find a damn thing in her room."

  
  B. can't find his heel cream (it's in that plastic box right there, but he has no problem finding the 3-year-old bag of masdoor dal on his dresser. Again, priorities.

  
  Oh good. She's unpacked and lounging in the formal living room. You can tell it's formal because there are only eight boxes in it instead of the 156 each of our casual rooms contain.

  
  See that bag of potato chips on the dining room table? Until today's farmer's market run, that was the most nutritious thing any of us had eaten in over a week.

  But this is pretty:
  

  And so is this:
  
  PKB gave me that turquoise cake safe. She found it at a yard sale nearly seven years ago while driving to work. I'm required by law to tell people that. Seriously. She somehow had a law passed that my ass goes to the slammer if I don't tell people she's responsible for that cake safe, and that it's my favorite.

  
  You know what happens when you unearth a St. Joe who's been buried for six months? You find yourself with a St. Joe full of dead earthworms. Had I known that when I took this photo, I would have cried. He lives on my kitchen window ledge, along with an illegal German Elvis and the naked lady vase, where they shuffle the day away in Prettytown delight.
  

  1. Coal to Diamonds - The Gossip
  2. I Can't Feel You Anymore - Loretta Lynn
  3. Bird on a Wire - Johnny Cash
  4. English Civil War - The Clash
  5. Crazy Love - Van Morrison
  6. Breakdown - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
  7. Dumb Blonde - Dolly Parton
  8. I Can Love You Better - Dixie Chicks
  9. 10 A.M. Automatic - Black Keys
  10. Holiday in Cambodia - Dead Kennedys

  Posted by Robin at 09:30 PM | Comments (8)

  June 08, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The Move to Stupidville, Population Me, Edition

  Less than one week until we move.

  Panic hasn't set in. Yet. Sentimentality hasn't set it. Yet. I'm not expecting it to. I've never been so unsentimental about a move in my entire life. And I get a little misty whenever I drive past every single place I've ever lived. Even the four-plex that was 3/4 crack addicts and 1/4 me.

  The nearest "restaurant" - Sonic - was giving away free root beer floats last night. B. and Clara Jane made the trip up the block, but I passed in favor of getting a few more boxes packed.

  That's right. I skipped one last opportunity to see my redneck neighbors, flocking for free crap, because I wanted to pack the bathroom. If I were an advertiser on this blog, I'd pull my ad in protest, especially in light of the number of braless women who were there. My sweet tight-panted neighbor at least stopped by while we were sitting on the stoop, eating our free crap. I can, at least, report that she was wearing a white spaghetti-strapped jumpsuit emblazened with brightly-colored rhombuses and other uncommon geometric shapes. She's nice. I'll miss her. A little. I'll definitely miss her outfits.

  B. informed me that there were a lot of women, shaped similarly to me, at free root beer float night. Of course. Women shaped like me don't pass up free ice cream and root beer. He suggested that, even though free root beer float night is a rather informal affair, perhaps some of the full-bodied sisters might have at least considered putting on bras for the occasion.

  I didn't bother to put on a bra while we sat on the stoop with our free crap. Let the floppy neighbors see me flop. For the only time in eight years, we fit in!

  We have rarely sat on our stoop. That only happens if I'm throwing a party. The smokers migrate to the stoop, and pretty soon everyone else follows to see what kind of fun they're missing. I'm not sure why we sat out there last night. I got chewed to bits by mosquitos. But we did get to watch some hot dune buggy action. Not that I bothered to give the mosquitos a break long enough to go inside and get my camera. Sorry.

  I've realized something, which is a big deal, considering what I realized: something about this move has turned me completely stupid. I don't know what kind of asbestos/lead paint/mold cocktail I've been inhaling while working in the basement, but it's having a negative affect. How else can you explain me, blindly turning down so many neighbor-mocking opportunities in one night?

  There are other things, too. Like the root beer floats. B. only got the freebies for himself and me. Clara Jane had a little ice cream cone, because I'm militant about not giving this child soda.

  But somehow, root beer with ice cream in it doesn't count. Because it has calcium. Yeah. And high fructose corn syrup. That sounds ... vegetably. Sure, she can have a slug of my float. And by "slug" I mean, "slurp down half the whole mess in one gulp".

  Did I mention that Sonic uses the one brand of root beer that contains caffeine? It was a long night.

  Yes, I've accidentally let my kid have caffeine twice this week. Stupid. I've gone completely, utterly stupid in a way that's caused me to forget my own self-imposed rules and regulations. It's also caused me to forget where, exactly, I live, and my phone number of the past five years.

  Yesterday morning I sent an email to a bunch of friends, passing along the information regarding our move, including the new address and house phone number. I included a note that my cell phone number - the one I've had since 2002, when my phone played a MIDI of Weezer's "Hashpipe" every time it rang - would remain the same for a bit longer.

  Within minutes I got an email from PKB that said, "Sister, that ain't your cell number!"

  I'd given my home number instead.

  It was a few hours later that I realized the new address I'd given was for a house a block away from my new one.

  I no longer know how to feed my child. I no longer know my correct phone number. I certainly don't know where I live. I don't even know a prime blog fodder opportunity when it falls at my feet like so much melted root beer-flavored soft serve, flung about by a hyped-up three-year-old. I'm going to shuffle through this world, brain damaged and dull, with my hyper little root beer-addled child chained to my wrist.

  We're going to fit in great in the new neighborhood! Wherever the hell it is. I forget.

  1. Take it Easy (Love Nothing) - Bright Eyes
  2. Pop a Top - Alan Jackson
  3. Rockin' in the Free World (Fahrenheit 9/11 Mix) - Neil Young (which, had I not gone stupid, would have been the perfect song to blast during our stoop-sitting last night, as the dune buggy people do like our president a lot.)
  4. Good Day - Paul Westerberg
  5. A String to Your Heart - Jimmy Reed
  6. Grand Illusion - Joan Osbourne
  7. Sons & Daughters - The Decmberists
  8. To Make Me Who I Am - Aaron Neville
  9. Thursday - Morphine
  10. Fire - Red Hot Chili Peppers

  Posted by Robin at 08:20 AM | Comments (127)

  June 01, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The Panic! Pie! Edition

  This has nothing to do with the rest of the entry, but I thought I should tell you about this, since tales of my neighborhood will soon be a thing of the past. I had a moment today where, had I not been driving, I wouldn't have known which direction to aim my camera. On one side of the street, a cop had pulled over a school bus. On the other was a local tattoo shop, where a little red truck is often parked. Across the truck's back window is a URL - www.eroticnightdreams.com. I'm not linking to it directly, because I'm a chicken, but feel free to visit them. But probably not if you're at work, unless you work at a place that doesn't have a problem with really unerotic erotic photography. At least now I know where my neighborhood dungeon is located.

  Anyway, I've seen this truck many times in my years of living in this neighborhood. I'm pretty sure I've even mentioned it here awhile back. Well, today, while the cop was pulling over the school bus, I got to see what I'm assuming is the unerotic nightmare photographer. He was maybe 60 years old. Or he was 30 and has been nursing a methamphetamine habit for a few years. It's hard to tell around here. Dressed in a faded gray muscle t-shirt, arms covered with faded tattoos, and sporting what is, without question, the most horrifically fabulous hairdo I've ever seen in this neighborhood. And that's saying something, because I live down the street from '80s Lady. Bleached, possibly with Clorox, it would have made a lovely substitute for raffia in, say, a Thanksgiving centerpiece. Not that you'd want this guy's hair on your table. Or in your house. Bangs, much like mine, the rest of his yellow, yellow, yellow as the sun hair reached halfway down his back.

  I'm not sure, but I think I recognize him from a Ronnie James Dio video.

  Anyway, pie. This is about pie. Specifically, my new recipe, which I've named Panic! Pie!

  Why all the exclaimation points? Because I made the pie in a panic, that's why. If you've been reading for any length of time, you know that I have some serious Martha Stewart-style mental problems. Like last week, when I fretted about my recent lack of cooking.

  Since we have less than two weeks left in the crapshack, I figured I wouldn't be doing much baking. On Wednesday, I packed my pie plates.

  On Thursday, Beqi invited us to Friday night dinner. I bought two pounds of strawberries and a pint of whipping cream. I'll make strawberry pie! With shortbread crust!

  Two things happened on Thursday night that led to the mild panic. 1) I spent four hours on the phone, chatting with an old friend of mine, totally forgetting that I was going to make shortbread crust, and 2) I remembered that I'd packed my pie plates.

  Panic!

  I told you, I have mental problems. Bear with me. It's not like Beqi even asked me to bring dessert. I took that upon myself. Why? Mental problems.

  I could have bought a crust, and I intended to, but I spent the entire day at the coffeehouse with Beqi and Raquel and didn't have time. Panic!

  We got home, threw Clara Jane down for a brief nap, while I went to work at concocting a pie without a pie plate or crust of any form, with an hour to spare.

  First, calm the hell down. It's just pie! Put it on a damn plate.

  Second, I've made crumb crusts out of just about anything that I can crumble. Even though I'm in the process of unstocking our pantry, I did manage to find the dregs of a stale box of Annie's Chocolate Chip Bunny Grahams and a tiny box of dollar-store Teddy Graham knock-offs. I dumped it all in a plastic bag, beat the hell out of it with a wine bottle (I was frustrated), and mixed in some butter. A lot of butter.

  

  Next, the strawberries. Too sour to just throw onto the crust. I dumped some sugar on them. Too sweet! Gritty! Panic! Wait - the dregs of a bottle of balsamic vinegar! Yes, vinegar. Shut up. Did you go to culinary school? I didn't think so. Balsamic vinegar and strawberries are made for each other. Besides, I was panicky and it felt good to macerate.

  

  The next part was easy. Homemade whipped cream makes everything good.

  But then ... more panic! The macerated berries, while delicious, were soggy. Putting them on my butter-with-crumbs crust? It would soak right through. But I have extra strawberries! I'll make a maceration barrier!

  

  In the background of the photo, you'll notice discarded possible crust ingredients: old panko, whole wheat white hamburger buns leftover from last night's dinner, and half a bag of stale Jay's Sweet n' Sour potato chips.

  Next, dump the macerated berries onto the berry barrier in a panic:

  

  Throw on the whipped cream, and add the one strawberry you forgot about to the top, so it looks like you put some thought into this whole crackerjack operation. Hmmm ... Cracker Jacks might make a good crust ...

  

  Finally, transport your pie across town in Friday's waning rush hour traffic, through road construction, in a thunderstorm. Wait panickedly for entire pie to slide off the unprotected side of the plate and onto spouse's lap. Catastrophe doesn't happen. Worry that perhaps some crushed Klonopin would have been an appropriate garnish. Consider going back home to add it.

  Arrive at host's home with child who is sleeping in the car seat, wearing nothing but a Pull-Up, because you were too busy making Panic! Pie! to properly wake her from a nap and, you know, put clothes on her. That's okay. Children can get away with near-nudity at a dinner party. And if a child happens to flick a booger the size of a rotini noodle at a dinner guest, well, that's just good entertainment.

  Enjoy the pie, along with three hogs' worth of ribs and some damn fine company. Relax, finally, knowing that you can shuffle through the world bearing the ability to make a pie under any circumstances with anything you have on hand. Because you rule.

  1. A Call to Apathy - The Shins
  2. Starman - Seu Jorge
  3. Picture Book - The Kinks
  4. How Do You Keep Love Alive - Ryan Adams
  5. I've Been Lonely (For So Long) - Frederick Knight
  6. Take a Picture - Filter
  7. Talk to Me of Mendocino - Kate & Anna McGarrigle
  8. Wild Cat Blues - Clarence Williams' Blue Five
  9. Abra Cadaver - The Hives
  10. Got a Lot on My Head - The Cars

  Posted by Robin at 09:52 PM | Comments (8)

  May 26, 2007

  Friday(ish) Shuffle - It's Saturday, So This Must Be Sedalia Edition

  On Thursday, after not going to her last day of daycare because flies! Flies eat babies!, Clara Jane and I hopped a train for my hometown. We had a pair of tickets from three weeks ago, when our train was cancelled due to flooding. I was told that there was a $3.60 price difference, which I could give to the conductor on the train. Nice fellow that he was, the conductor told me to keep my money.

  I bet he was wishing he'd taken my $3.60 when, four hours later, I alerted him to the puddle of urine Clara Jane had left on her train seat. Let's just say that when one has a Pull-Up wedgie, the Pull-Up ceases to be absorbant. She put at least $3.45-worth of cracker crumbs on the floor, and I'm sure the pee puddle was worth way more than $0.15.

  Before I had kids, they annoyed me, as did their parents. Then I became a parent and took offense at people who had no patience for small children and their adult hostages. After three years, though, I'm back to empathizing with those who get annoyed because honestly, us parents with small children can be rather deplorable. Just ask our Thursday night train conductor.

  I'll be making the trip home on Sunday night, sans the Peemiester 2004, if she will let me. My independent child is still clingy and easily spooked from all the moving and craziness. Yesterday she told me on three occasions, "We need to go home. Fast." Today's been better. Hopefully by tomorrow she'll be sick to death of me and will be happy to see me go.

  I feel a bit guilty, not being at home helping B. rebuild our house from the ground up, per the municipality's inspection. He assured me that I am a huge hinderance and would be much more helpful on the other side of the state. He's currently reinstalling our water heater, which frightens me to no end.

  At least he started working on it in the morning. The last time he installed this water heater, he began at 7:30 PM. Oh, and we were leaving for Michigan 11.5 hours later. Perfect time to work with water pipes and natural gas! We'd been married six weeks. At 2:30 AM, I informed him that unless he gave up right that minute, I had no qualms about leaving his ass because nowhere in our vows did it say that installing major gas appliances in the middle of the night before leaving town would be tolerated.

  Now, whenever either of us has pushed beyond the limits of good sense and is stubbornly pursuing an activity that might lead to 1) explosion, 2) flooding, 3) a stress-induced cardiovascular mishap, or 4) one of us moving to Nevada for a quickie divorce, all the other has to do is utter two words: "Water heater." It's as good as any legal Cease & Dissist Order.

  Now do you see why he sent me away for the weekend?

  Even though I'm not there, I'm doing my part to help with the moving process. You see, my hometown is home to umpteen bazillion discount/discontinued/fell-off-the-truck-and-found-in-a-ditch furniture retailers. The giant red Pottery Barn-esque chair often seen in photos of my living room? $180 at one of the stores in my hometown.

  I don't ask where the stuff comes from. I just buy it. Like today. I bought a wood and suede lovecouch (smaller than a couch, bigger than a loveseat) and a brocade armchair for the new front room, all for the low, low price of $407. I also got a pair of black patent leather peeptoe wedge heels, a beaded necklace that matches the socks I'm knitting, and three chunky beaded bracelets for a whopping $9.

  I love that I'm such a tightwad. I really do. I think it's one of my more redeeming qualities.

  I think I wrote awhile back about how I always expect to see people I know when I visit my hometown, and I finally realized that, since I haven't lived here since 1991, the chances of that happening are slim to none. Even if I would run into someone I once knew, chances are I wouldn't recognize her, or I wouldn't be recognized.

  After my cheap furniture bonanza, I was searching the store for my mom and child (who I feared I might have accidentally bartered in my transaction). I didn't find them, but I did find my high school creative writing teacher. Thank God she was wearing a name tag, which saved me from having to go to the next aisle, yell, "Nedra!", and then innocently wandering by to see if she was looking for the person who yelled her name.

  Now really. If I'm going to run into an old teacher, which one do you think I'd most want to see? A math teacher? I don't even remember their names. Of course I'd want to see my creative writing teacher!

  I loved being able to say, "Hey. Guess what I do for a living? I write," to her. I hope I remembered to thank her. I meant to. I've thought about doing that many times over the past 16 years. I had three teachers along the way who encouraged my writing and told me I had talent: my third grade teacher, my sixth grade teacher, and Mrs. Z. in high school.

  I gave her my URL, so if you're reading Mrs. Z. and if I forgot to say it today, thank you for the push every 17-year-old needs. I apologize in advance for all the profanities you might read while you shuffle through my writing.

  1. Just Because - Nikka Costa
  2. If Yesterday Could Only be Tomorrow - Tony Bennett
  3. Song for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age
  4. Our Secret - Beat Happening
  5. Exodus - Edith Piaf
  6. Don't Fail Me Now - Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
  7. Garageland - The Clash
  8. Love Will Come to You - Indigo Girls
  9. That's What Love Will Make You Do - Little Milton
  10. A Better Future - David Bowie

  (What's the shuffle? Every Friday(ish), I put Beatrice, my iPod, on shuffle and post the first ten songs she plays. Why? I have no idea. Habit, perhaps.)

  Posted by Robin at 04:19 PM | Comments (2)

  May 18, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - Did We All Get Sick and Keel Over Edition

  My goodness. Develop one nasty bronchial infection and everyone disappears. Not that I blame you. Mildly ill blogging's pretty damn dull.

  I'm better.

  Quick story from Thursday: Clara Jane missed her next-to-last day of daycare. Not because she was sick, although she's already figured out that being sick will get her out of going to school. No, she didn't go because last week, she saw a fly on the playground and it terrorized her. I knew about this, and I thought she was over it, but apparently not. When I started getting her dressed for daycare yesterday, she broke down in the screaming, sobbing, heaving meemees that lasted for 45 minutes. I was sure either puking, passing out, or both would occur. So, being the good parent I am, I kept her home and taught her about agoraphobia.

  Mental illness: share it with your children!

  Anyway. I need to get our family's names off of the junk mail lists. With the move to the new house, I'm making efforts to live even more green. Stopping the flow of useless trash into my home just makes good sense. Save trees. Save landfill space. Save the cost of transporting tons and tons of junk across the country.

  But if I do that, I'll miss the entertainment of junk like these two recent gems we've received in the mail.

  First, a bit of background. A week before our house sold, it was shown by a real estate agent - not ours - who left a scathing review. She said our house was cluttered, dirty, dated, and would never, ever bring the asking price. It was bad. So bad that our agent said it was unduely harsh, false, and we should flat-out disregard it. None of the other feedback matched hers, but still, this knocked me flat for a few days. All the work we'd done on our house, only to have it called such mean things. Nevermind what it did to my morale.

  Oh, but it gets interesting. While she was showing our house, she visited with our neighbors, who were preparing to list their house for sale. Guess who was at their house that night, passing out business cards? That's right - Mean Agent. Our neighbors have listed with her.

  In other words, she trashed our house to her clients in hopes of selling the neighbors' house to them. Which she hasn't. In the three weeks the neighbors' house has been on the market, how many times has Mean Agent shown it? Once. Maybe. Our neighbor told us that they had a possible appointment last night.

  Needless to say, B. and I have been chuckling under our breath about this terrible, awful agent.

  Oh! But it gets better! This is what we got in today's mail:

  
  What's so funny, you say? Why, this is the house next door to ours! Listed by Mean Agent! Would we like to buy the house next door to the one we just sold? Sure! It's a smidge closer to all that dune buggy and dirt bike action! Here's my $80,000! Sign me up for 300 square-feet less space than what I just ditched!

  But! But! But! It gets even better, if you can believe it:
  
  Thinking about buying or selling, you say? You want to sell my house, you dumb bitch? The one that you described in words worse than my beloved "crapshack"? Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!

  No, I'm not thinking about buying or selling. I've bought. I've sold. But I am thinking about sending her junk mail back to her with the URL of this post, as I can't be bothered to write a mean letter to her. And if I do happen to do such a thing, I have a message for you, Mean Agent: you're dated, your brain is obviously cluttered, you're lazy, and I'll just bet your underpants are dirty.

  Speaking of being old and dried-up, we got another piece of junk mail that has B.'s (clean) underpants in a twist. You see, B. turned 37 six months ago and for the first time, he's having some age anxiety. "Do you know how close 37 is to 40?" he's asked over and over since November. To which I have to say, "Three years. You're an engineer; I'm surprised you couldn't figure that out all by yourself."

  This anxiety wasn't helped one bit when a brochure - not a coupon or a flyer, but an actual tri-fold brochure - arrived in his name from the makers of Just for Men Haircolor:
  

  If anything arrives in the mail involving weenie dysfunction or injecting poisons into ones face, I'm afraid it might kill him, old and gray and frail as he's become.

  This brochure, I must say, is a piece of marketing brilliance. Beauty ad campaigns have been making women feel shitty for years. It's high time men parted with their money and did things to their bodies in the name of low self-esteem!
  
  It should be noted that, in another part of the brochure, there's a small (too small to be effectively photographed with my camera, sadly) illustration on how this product only dyes the gray hair and leaves the virile, manly, natural hair alone. Because coloring hair that isn't gray makes you gay.

  
  It's romantic. Translation: no lay if you're gray!

  You know, B. does have a fair amount of gray hair. Maybe that's why only fat chicks will do him.

  
  Your dad was a geezer with gray hair, dried-up nads, and he never got any sweet, sweet lovin' after the age of 32.

  Speaking of nads, I wonder what kind of warning this product has regarding the coloring of down-there-hair. I know that hair color products marketed to women contain a small warning about not using the product there. But think about this: if there are men as insecure about gray hair on their heads as this brochure indicates, the idea of other gray hair likely contributes to at least 37% of the stress-related cardiovascular disease in the male population. I'm estimating, of course. But if the degree of insecurity is so high, the desperation to do away with that gray hair has got to be strong enough to merit a warning like this:

  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DUDE, DO NOT PUT THIS ANYWHERE NEAR YOUR PUBES!!! ARE YOU AN IDIOT? YOU'LL BURN THE WHOLE WORKS OFF!!!

  So that's where we are. Clara Jane's afraid to leave the house because the flies are going to kill her. I'm raging at a real estate agent I've never met. B.'s huddled in the corner with a pair of tweezers, plucking grays from every square inch of his body. We're shuffling emotional basketcases.

  1. Merry Go Round - The Replacements
  2. The Well and the Light - Arcade Fire
  3. Way Down - Tori Amos
  4. Hot Cha - They Might Be Giants
  5. Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus
  6. Time to Get Ill - Beastie Boys
  7. Steal the Crumbs - Uncle Tupelo
  8. Be Real - Bottle Rockets
  9. Stairway to Heaven - Dolly Parton
  10. Doin' My Time - Johnny Cash

  Posted by Robin at 05:39 PM | Comments (11)

  May 12, 2007

  Friday(ish) Shuffle - Like I Ever Post on Fridays From My Hometown Edition

  And like I can form coherent paragraphs this week. Here's the short version.

  Drive to hometown Friday night. Sucked. No air conditioning. Truck. Two adults, one child, two hot, stinky dogs. We usually make the drive without stops, but we were so hot we stopped halfway for 20 minutes of fresh air and convenience store air conditioning. In a stroke of pure luck, had we not stopped we would have been smack-dab in the middle of a huge, ugly wreck at the turn-off to my parents' road.

  I finally made it to the local yarn shop. The owner is pretty nuts, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I bought four skeins of Brown Sheep sock yarn and two skeins of Brown Sheep worsted weight wool, and spent less than $20.

  Since I didn't get my mom's ugly orthopedic Crocs for Mother's Day, I got her a gorgeous chocolate cake at the new fancy-pants local bakery that I love. We're going to eat it for breakfast tomorrow. Just the moms.

  We went for a family horse-drawn surrey ride this morning. I wasn't ready, as I was still braless and in pajamas. A word to the wise - braless surrey rides hurt.

  But the horses love me. I think one of them wanted to make sweet love to me, even. Let's just say I had horse slobber down my back and leave it at that.

  It just wouldn't be Mother's Day if my dogs didn't escape from my parents' yard and go adventuring. At least it happened while I was cake and yarn-shopping and I didn't find out until after the fact, as the annual Mother's Day Weekend Hound Escape! tends to bring on massive panic attacks and family feuds.

  Clara Jane got a giant swing set for the new house for Mother's Day. I'm not sure how she managed the $200 gift, considering how little birth she's given. But that's cool.

  She also got a t-shirt from The Cuz - black with an old-school tattoo-style heart that says "Mom". But when you ask Clara Jane what it says, she replies, "It says Bob." Hi. I'm Bob.

  Speaking of tattoo-style shirts, my 76-year-old great-aunt Helen showed up tonight wearing a similar shirt to Clara Jane's. Except instead of Mom or Bob, it said "Hot Stuff". I'll bet you wish I wasn't so lazy right now and would upload the pictures of it. Because there's just something about a 76-year-old great-aunt in a shirt that says "Hot Stuff".

  Great-Aunt Helen told a story tonight about how she's been getting calls from some guy who claims he saw her add on Modern Mature Lady dot com. My great-aunt, hot stuff she may be, but she doesn't own a computer. This guy also claimed that her imaginary ad claimed that she's "a full-bodied woman". Apparently, he's just randomly calling women in the phone book in hopes of finding an old, fat, single chick. Granny Viv says that this is a good reason for single ladies to have their phone listings with just their first initial. I argue that, if that happens, how are guys ever going to meet old, fat, single chicks?

  I'm so tired I can barely shuffle.

  1. Pocket Knife - PJ Harvey
  2. Bonzo Goes to Bitburg - Ramones
  3. Gun - Uncle Tupelo
  4. Prodigal Son - Rolling Stones
  5. Tennessee Homesick Blues - Dolly Parton
  6. Do Right Woman - The Flying Burrito Brothers
  7. Raining Blood - Tori Amos
  8. Take the Fifth - Spoon
  9. Let's Not Belong Together - Paul Westerberg
  10. The Crane Wife 3 - The Decemberists

  Posted by Robin at 10:34 PM | Comments (6)

  May 04, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The Neglectful Edition

  Like I'd get my Friday post up anytime early in the day this week. You're lucky I'm making it at all.

  The housing update: The sale on our house is written in blood. All that's left are the occupancy inspections and closing. We've got a signed contract in our hands and a "Sold" sign in the yard.

  We've made an offer on The House of Which I Shall Not Speak. I'm a little paranoid, considering all the melodrama I inflicted over the house we didn't get. We'll know by 8 PM Saturday night if our offer's accepted. After that, I'll spill more details about the house.

  Now, on to other things that don't revolve around buying and selling houses. Well, not quite as much, at least.

  To say B. and I have been distracted this week? Understatement doesn't even begin to cover it. The whole family's suffering because of it. We haven't eaten a decent meal in ages. Tonight, we brought home a variety of chicken wings from one of the local grocery store delis. Upon bringing in all the groceries, B. asked, "Where are the wings?"

  "How should I know? I've been sitting on my ass for 15 minutes, talking on the phone while you haul in our sleeping child and a week's worth of food."

  We lost the chicken wings.

  Not that it was hard to find them. They were in the truck, exactly where the the rest of the groceries had been five minutes earlier.

  Night before last, we ate chicken kebobs for dinner. Not homemade ones, of course, but ones that were skewered, injected with marinade, cooked, frozen, sold to me by Target, and thrown in a pan by B. They were served alongside frozen Alexia oven fries and some bagged broccoli a few days past its prime.

  I think it goes without saying that we shouldn't have given the three-year-old a pointy meat-filled stick. But we did, and then we didn't pay attention until she screamed, "Murphy! No! Give it back!" and I looked to find the pointy meat-filled stick not in my child's hand or mouth, but gouged down my stupid little dog's gullet as she tried to swallow the whole thing, snake-style.

  I paid the utmost attention when I reached my hand down the dog's mouth and extracted the stick.

  Don't worry, Murphy's fine. As fine as she ever was, anyway. So's our cat, Romi, who we didn't miss a bit during the 24-48 hours she was locked in the back room of our basement. She must have gotten in there when our house-buyers were here Monday night. B. released her sometime Wednesday. I didn't even question why this cat I've lived with since 1999 was suddenly gone, and then suddenly clinging to me like she was being persued by the spectre of dark death.

  Today, I was so distracted by umpteen bazillion phone calls that I didn't realize Clara Jane had decided to de-neutralize our Sugar Wafer dining room:
  

  That green stuff on the dining room floor that sort of doesn't technically belong to us anymore? That's paint. Applied by my child, who also did this:
  
  I let her keep the body art because, you know, it's pretty cool and stuff, but I did hold her responsible for the condition of the floor:
  

  Shuffle along with that cleaning rag, Clara Jane. Stay out of trouble while I sit here and worry, okay?

  1. Hickory Wind - Gram Parsons
  2. Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out - The Replacements (which never fails to make me laugh my ass off)
  3. Turn You Inside-Out - REM
  4. Badger Song - Dead Milkmen (which also never fails to make me laugh my ass off)
  5. Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song) - Johnny Cash
  6. Suicide Blonde - INXS
  7. Slip Slidin' Away - Paul Simon
  8. Mean Woman Blues - Elvis
  9. The Needle Has Landed - Neko Case
  10. Gone - U2

  Posted by Robin at 09:29 PM | Comments (7)

  April 27, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The Sort of Tired, Sort of Sick, and Totally Sick & Tired Edition

  I haven't said anything about this, because I hate it when people complain about low-grade maladies and I try to avoid such behavior, because I really hate it when I complain about low-grade maladies, but I'm a little sick. Last Saturday night I felt a throat tickle coming on. A little tickle, a little congestion, a little coughing ... never getting full-blown sick. Just sick enough to be in a constant state of mild discomfort.

  That gets really tiring after a few days. And that's all I have to say about that.

  As for being sick and tired, yes, that pertains to real estate.

  Here was the plan for tonight:

  5:00-5:30: Return home from coffeehouse.
  5:30-6:00: Prepare simple dinner.
  6:00-6:30: Eat simple dinner.
  6:30-7:00: Play.
  7:00-7:30: Bath and bed preparations for Clara Jane.
  7:30-8:15: Play.
  8:15: Put Clara Jane to bed. Sit on couch and knit until falling asleep.
  8:30: Fall asleep.

  This is what happened instead:
  5:00-5:30: Return home from coffeehouse.
  5:30: Enter house, listen to phone message from real estate scheduling company. An agent wants to show from 6:30-7:30
  5:31: Freak out because scheduling company is supposed to call my damn cell phone. Cuss.
  5:31-6:00: Commence frantic house-cleaning. Realize White Trash Dirt Bike Hoe-Down is happening in the front yard catty-corner from us. There are shirtless children everywhere. Cuss.
  6:01: Why is Clara Jane drawing on the hardwood floor with a green dry erase marker? She's never done that before. Cuss.
  6:02-6:18: More frantic cleaning.
  6:18-6:21: World comes to hault so that Clara Jane, who's refusing clean undergarments, can sit in time out.
  6:21-6:28: Boot angry husband out of the house. Dress angry child. Cuss.
  6:28-6:30: Leave house. Notice that, in addition to White Trash Dirt Bike Hoe-Down, the dune buggy guy's got junker cars all over the street while he works on one in his driveway. Cuss.
  6:30-7:25: Eat dinner at mediocre local buffet, since it's close and we're starving. You know what's depressing? People-watching at a buffet on a Friday night.

  Did I mention that I spent $40 on interior paint and $20 on ferns today, all in an attempt to make my house sell? I did. I spent dinner hoping that my $60 had been wasted and a contract was being drawn up while Clara Jane gnawed on her over-boiled corn on the cob.

  7:25: Scheduling agency calls to inform us that real estate agent has cancelled showing. B.'s livid. B. rarely gets angry. This is twice in one hour. Commence worrying about his coronary condition, as two angry moments + mountain of buffet fried chicken = potential heart incident. "Why call and cancel five minutes before the appointment's due to end? Why not just let us believe they showed it so we don't get pissed off?" Some questions will remain mysteries of the universe, Dear.
  7:26: Try not to think that real estate agent and lookers drove down our street, saw the White Trash-o-Rama two-part event, and bailed. Try not to break steering wheel in frustration while driving home.
  7:26-present: Shuffle around hated house, listening to hated dirt bike, muttering under my breath that throwing $40 worth of paint and $20 worth of ferns at rednecks won't fix anything.

  1. Pandora's Aquarium - Tori Amos (Beatrice the iPod must know I'm IMing with a Toriphile friend while shuffling. Beatrice is smart.)
  2. Lonely Old Lies - Neko Case & Her Boyfriends
  3. ELT - Wilco
  4. One Line - PJ Harvey
  5. Answering Machine - The Replacements
  6. I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow - The Soggy Bottom Boys
  7. Jettison - Neko Case & Her Boyfriends
  8. C'mere - Interpol
  9. Bigmouth Strikes Again - The Smiths
  10. Under Pressure - David Bowie and Queen

  I swear, Beatrice the iPod is human and knows just how to calm and comfort me.

  Posted by Robin at 08:56 PM | Comments (4)

  April 20, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The Cannonball Edition

  I'm tired of complaining. I'm tired, period. I'm tired of cleaning my house and packing, only to have people who look at my house call it "cluttered". Well, life is cluttered, you stupid fuckers.

  I'm tired of bad news.

  I'm tired of constant loud buzzing motors, be they from the illegal dirt bike one neighbor keeps running up and down our street late at night, or the teensy-tiny chainsaw another neighbor's using to remove a very large tree. This is the same neighbor who drunkenly careened into his trash can Sunday night. Drunk driving + illegal dirt bike + chain saw + helmetless rider = Darwinian solution to both problems, you'd think. And I'm tired of thinking like that. It's mean to mock the stupid people.

  I'm tired of my three-year-old not being potty trained. Today, I was more tired of it than I have ever been. We were at the coffeehouse, and as always happens at the coffeehouse, Clara Jane pooped. I don't know why she always poops at the coffeehouse, but she does. I'm not giving her coffee, so that can be what's causing it.

  Anyway, as usual, she pooped at the coffeehouse. I took her to the bathroom, laid her on the changing table, and removed the poopy Pull-Up. While I was dumping the Pull-Up's contents in the toilet (after I fished the Pull-Up out of the trash - I mentally blanked, as I often do these days, and accidentally threw the poop away and felt guilty), I watched in abject horror as my child's ass turned into a poop-shooting cannon.

  The first ball landed by my foot, and I screamed like Jamie Lee Curtis, circa 1976. I took some toilet paper and while I was picking it up, the second ball landed in front of me, on top of the floor drain. As I removed that ball, the third only traveled a few inches, from my child's butt to the end of the table. I guess a kid can only maintain such a high velocity for so many poop bombs before they fizzle.

  I'm too tired to make a shuffle-related pun.

  1. That's All Right - Elvis
  2. Train in Vain - The Clash
  3. Fast Cars - U2
  4. After the Fire is Gone - Loretta Lynn
  5. Cherish - Madonna
  6. Getting to Me - Kelly Willis
  7. Electron Blue - REM
  8. Heartbreaker - Dolly Parton
  9. Company in My Back - Wilco
  10. I Get a Kick Out of You - Frank Sinatra

  Obviously, Beatrice the iPod adores me and would never, ever shoot poop bombs across the room.

  Posted by Robin at 05:41 PM | Comments (14)

  April 13, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The Lazy Writer/Mediocre Photo Blogger Who Crafts Edition

  This is bothering me a little. Not enough to make me stop, but bothering me nonetheless. I've always fancied myself a writer. I've been paid to write. These days, my blog is my primary form of writing, which is fine with me. Problem is, I'm getting so lazy, thanks to my camera.

  Take yesterday. I could have described the pretty pink roses the Trader Joe's wine manager dumped into my shopping back. Instead, I took a half-assed, poorly-lit photo of it and effectively said, "I don't feel like coming up with a cool way to tell you how the pink fades into creamy white. Here. Just look at the damn picture. I've got an ass to sit on and a brain to rot."

  Since I spent four hours in the car with B. and Clara Jane today, thus nearly completing my brain-rotting process, I'm going to burden you with more pictures and less description.

  Tempe complained about my lack of knitting content, despite the fact that I've never claimed to be a knitting blog, but I'm also going to satisfy my knitting requirements.

  In the past few months I've alluded to a super-secret knitting project. The project's finally in the hands of its rightful owner, so I can post about it.

  I did a variation on Wild Stripes for Sal's new son. It combines knitting and quilting and gave me panic attacks.

  

  I finished my first Tropicana sock last night. Even though it's pretty, I'm not happy with it.
  

  I tried to increase the top to fit my chubby calf, but I'm not skilled enough to know when and how to decrease it to fit my rather normal-sized ankles. The result: pretty sock that gives me cankles. I think I'll be redoing it after I read Sensational Knitted Socks.

  In more competant crafting news, I've scored another super-cool quilt made by my granny and great-granny. The backstory: My great-grandma died in 1980. Her daughter, Granny Viv, never throws anything away. I'm not certain, but I think she recently hit a stash of Great-Granny Velma's unfinished quilt tops in her attic, and she's been finishing them. I stole one of these creations from my mom a few months ago. Not that I deserved my own quilt, thief that I am, but Granny Viv gave me another of her beyond-the-grave quilt collaborations:
  

  You know that line in Peggy Lee's "I'm a Woman" that goes, "I can make a dress out of a feedsack and I can make a man out of you?" Well, I don't know how many men my granny and great-granny made, nor do I ever, ever, ever want to know such a thing, but they sure can make pretty things out of feedsacks. That's where the fabrics in this quilt came from. You know the story behind gals making things out of feedsacks, right? You should.

  And finally, some disturbing crafty news. Remember a few days ago when I mentioned that Clara Jane was going to take a yoga class? She did, and it was fun. Well, I thought it was fun. She was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing. At the end of the class, the teacher, who - I kid you not - is a licensed joyologist - brought out the fingerpaints and asked the kids to paint their yoga experience. Clara Jane bypassed the multiple neon shades and this is what she painted:
  

  Then she told me that she wasn't feeling very Zen, and could she, please, go home, sit in her closet, and listen to her Morrissey CDs?

  As we were leaving, the joyologist asked me if Clara Jane is always so "cerebral". Yes. Yes, she is. Except when she shuffles to the barbeque joint without her pants:
  

  1. I'm Going Upside Your Head - Jimmy Reed
  2. Green Green Rocky Road - Kate & Anna McGarrigle
  3. Dream Baby - Roy Orbison
  4. Orange Blossom Special - Johnny Cash
  5. Monday - Wilco
  6. Things Get Better - Eddie Floyd
  7. Shadow in the Way - Tift Merritt
  8. You Know I'm No Good - Amy Winehouse
  9. Parakeet - REM
  10. I'm so Lonesome I Could Cry - Hank Williams

  Posted by Robin at 08:45 PM | Comments (9)

  April 07, 2007

  Friday(ish) Shuffle - The Good Friday Sausage on the Dashboard Edition

  Of course I'm a day late. I'm always a day late with the shuffle when I'm in the hometown. It didn't help that I kept thinking yesterday was Saturday. Holidays confuse me. Especially this one.

  Our travel plan didn't involve trains this time because 1) we had to bring our dogs with us, and 2) while in my hometown we were going to take advantage of cheap auto repair. The air conditioner in my truck recently croaked. Yes, I'm aware that many people in much warmer climates live without the luxury of air conditioning for their entire lives. I'm also aware of the dangers of Freon and the environment. But I'm also in constant danger of overheating and keeling over, something I'd prefer to not do while behind the wheel. I'm also lazy and spoiled.

  Repairing the air conditioner in St. Louis? $800. We didn't spend that much to overhaul the air conditioner in our house last summer. Luckily, I come from one of those towns where just about every man knows how to rebuild a car from scratch. We bought the necessary parts and made an appointment with Bob, the 65-year-old, four-toothed race car driver who fixes cars for cheap. In this case, many hundreds of dollars less than we were going to pay at home. We had to be here by noon on Friday, though, because Bob's a busy man.

  The original plan: Clara Jane would go to daycare on Thursday, as she always does. I'd spend the day spiffying the house for any weekend house-showings (in other words, cleaning fruitlessly) and packing. Around dinnertime, we'd drug Murphy with Dramamine, the drug recommended by her vet for the manic pants she gets when she travels, and then we'd hit the road. We'd arrive in my hometime in time for a decent bedtime, sleep in a bit on Friday morning before taking our truck to Bob and proceeding with our day.

  What actually happened: Clara Jane woke up crying and covered in snot on Thursday morning, too listless to walk from her room to the living room. This child, who would go to daycare even if she had a finger dangling by a tendon, told me she didn't feel well enough to go to school. So I kept her home, which made the cleaning and packing difficult, especially when the diarrhea bombs hit. We opted to stay home, leaving early Friday morning, assuming nothing explosive was happening with our child by then.

  Luckily, Clara Jane was much better Friday morning, thanks to a cough syrup-induced night of sleep. Yes, I resorted to drugging my child, since she hadn't had a decent night or nap in days because of her cough. I also resorted to drugging my dog, Murphy, as I mentioned before.

  You know, I've always fallen a bit on the hippy all-natural school of thought when it comes to health care. But you know what? People used to get a lot sicker and die a lot faster back in the old days. Sometimes, you've gotta pull out the big guns. We celebrated Good Friday by living better through chemistry. Cough syrup for Clara Jane, Dramamine for Murphy, and my usual cocktail of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. It was a lovely drive. I think my entire family should stay lightly medicated at all times.

  Of course, there are drawbacks. Like, several hours after dropping the truck with Bob, I remembered the sausage biscuit that we'd left on the dashboard of the truck. We were sitting at the local Greek restaurant with my parents when I realized this. Since Bob had warned us that it would probably be several days before he could fix it, I thought we should go get the meat biscuit.

  "That's okay," my mom said. "Bob's probably eaten it by now. He's not picky."

  As my dad tossed us his truck keys so we could go to Bob's and remove the sausage biscuit before being pegged as responsible for a large, four-toothed, 65-year-old race car driver's death from food-borne bacteria, Dad said, "Just be careful that you don't let Chiggar out."

  No. Oh no.
  

  Sure enough, while walking to my dad's truck, I saw the silhouette in the passenger seat, with those unmistakable pointy jackel-style ears.

  I'm trapped in a truck with a dingo.

  Riding around town with Chiggar's not quite as bad as I'd expected. For one thing, he had a tennis ball to keep him occupied. While throwing a ball for a wild dingo in a moving truck probably isn't that safe, it's certainly safer than having an unoccupied dingo trying to gnaw the driver's ear off. Lesser of two driving evils.

  We probably shouldn't have taken him to the coffeehouse drive-thru for a double espresso, though. In hindsight, that was dumb. But we didn't feed him the sausage biscuit when we got it from our truck. Nor did B., the biscuit retriever, bother to throw it away. Hours later, I found it lying on my mom's kitchen counter.

  I've heard of meals repeating on you, but this is ridiculous. I threw the damn thing away a good twelve hours after it was purchased.

  My family's a bunch of blasphemers. Except for my granny, who was recently put in charge of her church's business affairs after the surprise departure of their preacher. They've been holding auditions for a new preacher, a sideshow I like to call Pentecostal Idol, which means my seat in Hell will have a busted seat warmer that will toast my skin for all eternity, much like my mom's heating pad that I unwillingly sat on for an hour last night before wondering why my back and ass were on fire.

  Anyway, blasphemers. Our Easter celebration's today because we like to sleep in on Sundays. Soon I'll be making glittery eggs with my kid. Tonight, lots of people are coming over to stand outside in the freezing cold around a totally Pagan bonfire, upon which we will cook the speared, cured, tubular spiced flesh of pigs and Peeps, which will no doubt shuffle our innards as badly as Bob's, had he eaten the dashboard sausage.

  1. Fairytale in the Supermarket - The Raincoats
  2. It's Five o'Clock Somewhere - Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett (Because my iPod knows it's in my mother's house.)
  3. Horn Intro - Modest Mouse
  4. The Wanderer - Johnny Cash and U2 (Because God loves me even if I am a blasphemous sinner.)
  5. Sabotage - Beastie Boys
  6. Keep Your Head Up - Eagles of Death Metal
  7. Pledging My Love - Aaron Neville
  8. The Junky Jews - Clem Snide (Because my iPod has a weird sense of humor.)
  9. Sangria Wine - Robert Earl Keen
  10. Situation - Yaz (which is perfect for the naked Pagan dance I'm going to do either around the bonfire or for the next installment of Pentecostal Idol).

  Posted by Robin at 10:20 AM | Comments (6)

  March 30, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The She's Crafty Edition

  1. My back still hurts, but it's better. I think I might have misspoke yesterday when I said I was down in the back. I'm not actually sure what constitutes "down". This happens several times a year. I have a permanent knot of muscles in the middle of my back that grow progressively tighter and tighter during times of stress, or if I'm wearing a bra that doesn't fit correctly. I'm doing a little of both these days, so the knot has reached critical mass, thus throwing out the rest of my back. I'm pretty sure that if this knot ever completely unkinks, all of my limbs will fall off because this knot is obviously holding my entire world together. Massages help. So does Mineral Ice, even though it makes me scream like I'm being lit afire.

  2. Remember how angelic Clara Jane looked last night? She spent the entirity of today making up for it. I've requested that Jeff Pudding come over with his dump truck to haul away toys.

  3. We're grounded tomorrow. Our vehicle is spending the day in the shop. I hate being grounded. Even if I don't want to go anywhere, the idea that I can't makes me nuts.

  4. In good news, today's Kristina's birthday! Go wish her a happy one. Why? Because she's the awesomest. So awesome that once, while we were rocking out hardcore to No Sleep Till Brooklyn, she suggested that we might have fun attending a Beastie Boys concert together, someday. She also suggested that such a concert might be enhanced by being viewed from the front row while wearing gorilla costumes.

  Speaking of the Beastie Boys always makes me think of She's Crafty, which I tend to get stuck in my head while working on craft projects, even though that's totally not what the song's about, but right now it's making me think of crafty stuff.

  I finished my Jaywalker socks a week ago:

  
  It was appropriate to pose with Murphy, seeing how earlier in the evening, Murphy somehow managed to get the yarn attatched to the unfinished sock twisted around her body multiple times. She drug it around the house, trying to outrun it. Note how fearful she looks of the sock. Or of my foot, even though she's never once been kicked in all the years she's lived here. Dumb dog.

  I'm making quick progress on my Tropicana sock in Colinette Jitterbug in Marble:
  

  And speaking of other crafy gals, I met a bunch of them last week at the Chilicraft show. Since I love indie crafters, I'm going to give them all some free publicity. Go buy from them.

  There's Allison, who makes awesome quilty-type housewares. But you know that. She organized the show, and she's my quilting pal.

  And my pal Beqi. Have I told you how I met Beqi? She was at the coffeehouse, sewing and chasing her little son, and I knew she looked familiar. After staring at her for an hour, I finally realized why: I recognized the pinup girl tattoo on her arm. A few days earlier I'd been snooping around my friends' pages on MySpace. Allison is friends with Beqi. Beqi has a picture of her tattoo on her MySpace page. So I accosted her at the coffee bar and asked if she knew Allison. I admitted to recognizing her from MySpace and yet, she still hangs out with me, sometimes by choice. Amazing.

  Anyway, Beqi makes fab clothes and accessories. Take a peek at the semi-sloshed photos on my Flickr badge from last weekend, and you'll notice the lovely Beqi-made necklace I'm wearing. Crafted from vintage pink rose beds. Actually, in one of the photos, I'm kind of wearing Beqi. She's not for sale, though.

  I met Autumn from String Theory and her compadre Raquel. Autumn and Raquel both live near what I hope will soon be my new stomping grounds, which brings me no end of joy. Clara Jane will soon be sporting a snazzy t-shirt graced with one of Autumn's cool iron-on patches. It'll look great in reform school, at the rate that kid's going.

  Speaking of that kid, she scored a sweet Pongo from Super Chick Studio, which I'm sure will get stolen by a far worse-behaved child at reform school. I've chosen to spare the Pongo from the Jeff Pudding Dump Truck Toy Hauling Service, just because I like it. In fact, I like it too much to send it to reform school with her. Let her take that damn Cabbage Patch Kid she's been hauling around all week.

  Yes, tonight's entry is lame, just like my spinal muscles. Time to shuffle off to the couch to be as crafty as the combo of Alieve, chardonnay, and excessive amounts of brie will allow.

  1. I Came as a Rat - Modest Mouse
  2. Stupidly Happy - XTC
  3. If You Wear that Velvet Dress - U2
  4. Never Gonna Change - Drive-By Truckers
  5. Lebanese Blonde - Thievery Corporation
  6. Mint Car - The Cure
  7. Ashes of American Flags - Wilco
  8. Change of Heart - Tom Petty
  9. Eisler on the Go - Billy Bragg and Wilco
  10. High Water - Uncle Tupelo

  Beatrice the iPod obviously loves Kristina and is aware of her birthday. Two Wilco, one U2, a Thievery Corp. song I got from one of her mixes, The Cure, and Uncle Tupelo. I don't care how much Beatrice loves you, Bitch. I'm not sending her to you. Happy birthday, anyway,

  Posted by Robin at 09:21 PM | Comments (5)

  March 23, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The I Like People Edition

  I tend to have misanthropic tendancies, but not today, Busters. No sir. For some reason, and I really have no idea why, today I am completely ate up with love of my fellow human beings.

  I think I might have accidentally taken two Prozacs today.

  The day didn't start out as such. In fact, I started by day by really, really disliking people. Specifically, I wasn't crazy about my own body, which required early-morning fasting bloodwork, which might be the cruelest medical act committed on healthy people.

  You mean you want me to get up, shower, brush my teeth, dress, and come in to a lab so you can drain me of my blood, all without the benefit of coffee? Fuck you. Fuck you hard.

  So I hauled my sorry, caffeineless carcass to LabCorp, which sounds like the kind of place that might possibly have a kidney-harvesting business operating from the back door. They were just about as friendly, too.

  You know what I love? I love having a strange woman who has only glared at me in the 15 minutes of our acquaintance demand urine from me. I'll fully admit I've got a bad case of bashful bladder. Bullying doesn't make it any better.

  No coffee + pee pop quiz + not nice nurse = no pee. I thought the staff might possible flog me until I provided the specimen they desired.

  I was able to produce the three vials of blood Vampira and Nosferatta required, praying the whole time that I wouldn't pass out cold like I did last time I had to produce three vials of blood. Granted, I was pregnant then, and it was in the days when my doctor would allow bloodlettings in her office instead of shipping patients off to The Lair of the Dark Lord.

  When I came to, I found I'd been carried to a comfy exam room to sleep it off. This time, I feared that if I lost consciousness, I'd wake up in a naked heap in the parking lot. And it was raining. And it's across the street from the library where we go to storytime, so of course I'd never be able to take Clara Jane to storytime again after having all my blood drained and being naked in the rain.

  You know what I enjoy? Making the angry phone call to corporate headquarters while sitting in the comfort of my vehicle outside the offending business. That's one of the great advances mobile communication has afforded our society - the ability to chew some ass without getting punched in the face. The people at corporate were nice, especially since I wasn't being particularly articulate due to lack of blood, caffiene, food, and lingering pee fright. I think I said, "Nurses ... meeeeeeeeeean! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"

  Just look what they did to me!
  
  Okay, that's really not too bad, especially by my standards. I'm a tough stick.

  Regardless of my injuries, I really like people today. Here's why:

  • That cute guy at Trader Joe's yesterday, who helped me pick out lots of wine. I think he might have been trying to look down my shirt, but he certainly knows his California Zinfandels.
  • My old pal Robert, who used to comment profusely on my blog. He's been MIA for awhile, and I got a delightful surprise phone call from him this afternoon. It's really cool when someone you like and respect tells you that you're missed and thought about daily.
  • Rolling Stone columnist Rob Sheffield makes me happy, even when he makes me so sad that my bones unhinge from my muscles, so strong is the pain. When I get my new issue of RS, the first thing I read is his column, which never fails to crack me up. But now, he's published a memoir, Love is a Mix Tape. I finished it last night and, oh boy. It's sad. Sad, but so hopeful, smart, loving, and honest. I just want to give Rob a big hug, despite the fact that I was a bit spooked by the similaries between myself and his deceased wife, Renee Crist. Don't worry - I didn't just spoil the book for you; he tells you in the first pages of Crist's unexpected death in 1997. But yes, Sheffield's book makes me want to make mixes for everyone I love, which I've sort of been doing lately, anyway.
  • I love that there are people who, when they saw the ugly fish vase we selected for our wedding gift registry, actually purchased it for us, thus making us the owners of The Ugliest Portugese Fish Vase, Ever: I washed the fish vase today in preparation to pack it for display at the new house. Someday. IfWhen our crapshack charming bungalow in the town with the ticket-writing manic diligent police force finally sells.
  • There will be a gathering of women at my house tomorrow night. Perhaps it will be like that book I mentioned awhile back, we'll be moved by our collective femininity to walk! Just get up and walk and change the world! Or maybe we'll just sit on our asses, drink wine, and eat fast food fries out of a 13-gallon garbage bag. Personally, I'm hoping for the latter option.
  • The existance of Tyler Florence makes me terribly blissful. The fact that he finally has a webpage, and the start-up music is "Steady As She Goes" by the Raconteurs? Makes me love every single human being in the world, just like his recipe for curried chickpeas and cauliflower makes me a better human being.
  • I'm going to go buy lots of cool crafy stuff at Chilicraft tomorrow. I might cause a shuffle at the craft show by hugging everyone. I might also show up in nothing but my underwear.

  1. Don't Waste your Heart - Dixie Chicks
  2. You're Stronger Than Me - Patsy Cline
  3. Orange Crush - REM
  4. Build Me Up Buttercup - The Foundations
  5. Shoplifters of the World Unite - The Smiths
  6. Get Him Back - Fiona Apple
  7. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Johnny Cash
  8. Bad Reputation - Freedy Johnston
  9. Unemployable - Pearl Jam
  10. Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes - George Jones

  Posted by Robin at 05:37 PM | Comments (5)

  March 18, 2007

  Friday(ish) Shuffle - The Gone Hobo Edition

  I love trains, I've decided.

  Yes, there are problems with America's passenger train system, mainly because of a lack of funds to maintain equipment and a law that gives freight trains the right-of-way, causing much in the way of delays. Apparently, that's not the case in other countries. Sometimes cows die on the tracks and trains have to be stopped to remove them. But for a $15 ticket, what do you expect?

  I've come to realize that, if I can help it, I prefer to not be that person who's always rushing, always on a schedule, always connected. Being on a train, I can turn off the phone and just stop. Stop while going. How great is that?

  Friday, Clara Jane and I hopped a train for my hometown, which is 180 miles away and normally takes three hours of driving, if we don't stop, but how often does that happen? Last trip to the hometown involved a one-hour yarn shopping extravaganza, plus close to thirty minutes for refueling, dog-walking, and snack selection.

  Do you know how much I paid for Clara Jane and I to take the train on a Friday afternoon that coincided with spring break? $29. I couldn't have driven out of the St. Louis metro area for that amount of money. I packed my lovely insulated picnic bag with our dinner, hauled a bag with Clara Jane's monkey blanket, a huge pile of books, a sketchpad, and a bag of washable markers, and we were set to go adventuring.

  
  This was taken about halfway through the trip, and I can promise you we wouldn't have looked this content and relaxed halfway through the trip if the two of us had went by road.

  This is the second time Clara Jane and I have made the trip to my hometown on the train. We made the same trip two years ago. About all I remember from the previous trip was tiny 13-month-old Clara Jane, completely exhausted, finally falling asleep on my chest with a blanket over her head for the last bit of the trip. Now that she's such a big girl, I figured there'd be no napping and definitely no snuggling. I'm not allowed to snuggle with her, she claims. So be it. We'd still have fun.

  And we did. We read, drew pictures, made several trips to the cafe cafe to snack and people-watch. We looked at the beautiful Missouri River and its bluffs from the windows. We visited with fellow passengers. Train people are friendly like that. They've got time to stop and talk.

  And let me tell you, we weren't the only mom n' kid unit. I was surprised at just how many moms were traveling with their kids, most of them doing the same thing we were - going to visit grandparents on the opposite side of the state. Keep that in mind, moms who are reading. We were all extolling the virtues of train travel with kids. If nothing else it gives you time to slow down and simple be with your kids. One mom, a farmwife from rural northwest Kansas, was returning from a week-long spring break trip to Chicago with her three teens. They were the happiest, most content teenagers I think I've ever seen. Sure, the whole family was exhausted, but it was so obvious how good the trip had been.

  As we started into Hour Four of the trip, Clara Jane started asking for her naptime rituals - her blanket, a binky (shut up), her stuffed frog. And then to my shock, she asked me to hold her. I spent the last hour of the train ride with my little girl's head on my chest, peacefully snoozing in my arms. I know those days are numbered, so being able to have that nap on the train, with no interruptions and nothing else to do, was just about the best thing in the world, ever.

  Saturday, my mom, Clara Jane and I went to Brick Front Grill, a recently-opened restaurant I've been wanting to try for two reasons: 1)I love Mediterranean food more than I love just about anything, and 2) it's co-owned by a childhood friend of mine. Despite years of not wanting anything to do with anyone from my days in the hometown, except family, the past two years have included many good encounters with childhood friends and some rekindled friendships. I think I'm officially over my gunshyness regarding people who knew me way back when.

  Sure enough, my old friend was working at the counter when we got in line, and she recognized me right off the bat. That always amazes me, because I'm a lot bigger than I was in high school. Perhaps it was because my unwashed, windblown hair looked a lot like the perms I sported in the late '80s when she last saw me. I recognized her immediately, too, but I was looking for her. She looks exactly the same, only much more confident and pregnant.

  After the lunch rush calmed, she came to our table to visit. We had a laugh over how funny it was that we both wound up in the food biz and commiserated on how hard it is to be in the kitchen while pregnant. It was good. Not just the company, but the food. One of the best gyros I've ever had, and hummus to die for. Good vegetarian options in the heart of cattle country! And gelato. Black licorice gelato. I'm so going back.

  After a visit to my grandparents' house, where Clara Jane was stuffed full of marshmallows to undo all the good of the hummus she ate for lunch, we returned to my parents' house. I got Clara Jane down for a nap, spending a bit longer holding her after she fell asleep than was necessary, since I planned to leave before she woke up. She's had lots of visits to her grandparents' without me, but on Saturday she did something she's never done. When my departure was mentioned she looked at me and said, "I'm going home with you, Mommy." So far she's done just fine - out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. But that threw me for a loop, so I snuck in as much extra snuggle time as I could.

  That's something parenthood has taught me that I didn't expect. I used to think that quality time with anyone required conversation and activity. What's "quality" about just being in the same room together? A lot, it turns out.

  Anyway, once I put her down, I went outside for some horse time. Baby Cash is no longer a baby; he'll turn one on Thursday. During the train ride, Clara Jane informed me that she's going to make him a birthday cake, and I'm sorry I'll miss seeing that. Cash and I had our own little birthday party, though. I was petting him and letting him nuzzle me. When I stopped, he decided he wasn't finished, clamped the cuff of my jacket sleeve in his mouth, and put my hand back on his nose. Cute. Our cat does the same obnoxious trick.

  What my cat doesn't do is this: she's never grabbed my breast pocket in her mouth and physically pulled my body back to her when I started backing away. Baby Cash is a smidge bit pushy, but I'm rather smitten nonetheless.

  I didn't take any pictures of the horses yesterday, since I wanted to focus on playing with them. I took a ton of photos last time I was there. I did take dog pictures, though.

  

  You're familiar with Chiggar the Dingo, if you've read for any length of time. You know exactly what he's thinking in this picture, too: "THE CHIG RULEZ!". I don't mention my parents' other dog much, mainly because she usually stays with my grandparents when we visit, as she's delicate and can't handle Chiggar and my dogs. Her name's Rhonda, and she's, as previously noted, delicate. Very delicate.

  Rhonda originally came from a local Amish farm. When my parents got her at age two, she'd spent her entire life in a concrete-floor pen with other Labs. All of their incisors had been clipped to prevent the dogs from tearing each other to bits in fights. When Rhonda failed to produce puppies, they got rid of her.

  She's skittish, timid, and easily startled, but never angry. Shortly before I got my camera from my bag yesterday, she was giving Clara Jane little kisses on her forehead.

  When I arrived at the train station with my dad at 6:30, I can't say I was thrilled to see a crowd, waiting for the same trian. My hometown's pretty small and I fully expected to be the only pick-up. These folks - I have no idea where they came from or what they were doing, but they were going to St. Louis. And they were happy. I think some of them had gotten happy, St. Pat's style. They also had about half a dozen oxygen tanks for the eldest member of the group, which clanked and banged together and made me more than a little nervous.

  The train was a double-decker, and we were all herded up the stairs. The conductor told us to all stay in the same car.

  But ... but ... I don't wanna! I just want to sit on the train, rest my head against the cool window, knit my sock, listen to my iPod, and perhaps venture to the club car for a beverage.

  You can imagine my relief when the conductor asked if there was anyone not a part of "the group". My hand shot up and I yelled, yes yelled, "Me!" Turns out the group was going all the way to St. Louis, while I was leaving at the Kirkwood station that services suburban St. Louis. Basically, the conductor informed me that the group was going to be sequestered in this car. Only he didn't say it like that. He just said that they were all staying together so that the conductor wouldn't have to open that particular car at every stop, so would I mind moving to another car?

  As I grabbed my bags and ran down the aisle, the male-heavy group collectively groaned, "Aw! You're leaving us?"

  "Hey. Not my fault. The conductor's kicking me out of your car. Have fun!" Because blaming Amtrak is, apparently, a part of the fun of riding the train. Oh, you get to bitch when the train has to stop to give another train the right-of-way, which can take up to half an hour. I used that time to listen to a very British pop mix on my iPod, made by my dear Sally. Nothing like listening to a little Lily Allen while looking at the landscape of my childhood:

  

  I didn't hear much of the complaints during the 5-hour trip, as I stayed plugged into my music pretty much the whole time. The woman sitting a few rows ahead of me was fit to be tied, though. I could tell that even without hearing her. She ducked out for a smoke break during an extended stop at the Jefferson City station, and I'm pretty sure that had a lot more to do with her angst than the fact that her husband was waiting for her in Kirkwood.

  Unfortunately, I had to listen to her as we waited to depart the train. "I'll never do this again. I'll drive," she complained. Not me, I said. "I liked having the extra time to be alone with my thoughts."

  "Well, I don't like that," she snapped.

  Coulda knocked me over with a Virginia Slim. This woman? She's not train people. She can just shuffle down the interstate next time while I lumber across the state in my lovely little Amtrak coccoon.

  1. Runnin' - Heartless Bastards
  2. Beautiful Sorta - Ryan Adams
  3. Electrical Storm - U2
  4. Comfortably Numb - Scissor Sisters
  5. Red Red Apple - Fiona Apple
  6. London Calling - The Clash
  7. Blackbird - The Beatles
  8. Bamboo (Interlude) - OutKast
  9. The Man Who Couldn't Cry - Johnny Cash
  10. Bliss - Tori Amos

  Posted by Robin at 03:13 PM | Comments (8)

  March 09, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The Nature vs. Nurture: Gender Roles Edition

  The timing's excellent, what with yesterday being International Women's Day. I celebrated by ... um, having a vagina. That's about all I did. Clara Jane, though, acted like a total girl.

  Her daycare class is girl-heavy. I think there's eight girls and four boys, but I'm not sure. They're all moving so quickly when I see them that it makes them hard to count. That, and the fact that I tend to lead Clara Jane into the room, sign her in, briefly chat with her teachers, kiss her goodbye, and run run run for sweet, child-free freedom as fast as my chubby legs will carry me.

  Anyway, we arrived yesterday at a rare point in time: Clara Jane was the last girl to arrive, but none of the boys were there yet. The girls were circled around a table, and I swear to God, they were all talking at the same time. The terms "magpies" and "hen party" immediately came to mind. I think Clara Jane started chattering before she was all the way in the room.

  As she took her spot at the table, her little gal pal Lucy came running to her, arms outstretched, palms facing the floor, squealing, "Clara Jane! Clara Jane! Look at my pink fingernails!"

  "Oh, your pink fingernails are sooooooooooo beautiful for you!" Clara Jane cooed, holding Lucy's hand to examine her smundged little manicure up close as two other girls started a shoving match over a toy.

  The first boy arrived as I was fleeing the scene. I couldn't help it. I looked at the poor kid, who looked terrified, and said, "You're outnumbered. I'm so sorry."

  The whole scene flat-out bewildered me. I've tried to be as gender-neutral as possible with Clara Jane. If she wants to be girly, fine. If she wants to be a tomboy, fine. If she, like most women, falls somewhere in the middle of the continuum, great. I just don't want to foist femininity onto her, at least not without having some masculine balance.

  When I was pregnant, I even went through a "no pink" phase. Unfortunately, "no pink" translates to "boy's clothes" or "naked baby" because guess what. Non-pink girls clothes are hard to come by. So I erased that line and drew a new one: pink's fine, but nothing with princesses, Barbie, Bratz, slogans extolling the virtues of negative behavior and for God's sakes, no ruffles! I want my kid to be comfortable and able to play, so we haven't done much in the way of frilly dresses.

  I'm not getting her ears pierced. Not until she's old enough to make the decision herself and understand what it involves regarding pain, possible infection, and post-piercing maintenance. I've got enough to do right now without having to turn earrings and clean them with alcohol ten times a damn day, so she's not getting them pierced until she's old enough to be responsible for her own ears. I also want her to be old enough that we can make it a rite of passge. If you want to pierce your daughters' ears, I have no problem with that. I just don't want to pierce my daughters' ears right now, mainly for the same reasons why I don't want to get her a kitten right now: I have enough work to do, and I want to save some things until she's old enough to appreciate the experience.

  Anyway, despite this mostly gender-neutral environment, I'm constantly amazed to see the girly things that appeal to Clara Jane. She discovered nail polish before she turned two. I had given myself a rare manicure before I went to Vegas. While bidding adieu to Clara Jane, she noticed my blood-red nails (because if I'm going to do go to the trouble to paint my nails, I'm going to make sure everyone can tell). "Pretty. Pretty. Pretty." That's all the kid could say. You would have thought she was looking at a rare van Gogh.

  Shortly after that, my mom started painting Clara Jane's toenails, which she loves more than anything in the whole world. To mark her third birthday and official passage into big girlhood, I relented on the fingernail painting, even letting her pick out a bottle of nail polish. I'm pleased that it's clear with purple and silver glitter, instead of my preferred whore red.

  She took a liking to tutus while having her two-year portraits taken, a blow that was softened by the fact that she wore the tutu with her green frog rainboots.

  But there's boy stuff, too. She told me the other day that she wants to be a rock star, which is still a bit of a boy's club. Unfortunately, when she plays her guitar, she usually tells me that she's a boy, which means I'm not exposing her to nearly enough Bikini Kill or Sleater Kinney. She's crazy about all sports and has to play baseball several times a day.

  Oh! Let me tell you this. She got a little baseball glove with a cushy baseball from my aunt for her birthday. She loves it, of course. Someone at the party, though, said, "Oh, that'll be fun! Your daddy can teach you to play baseball now!"

  Excuse me?

  Ahem. Her father maintains a constant state of fear-based flop sweats for three days prior to his department's annual picnic/softball game. It's her mother who played softball for the better part of a decade. It was also her mother who once took a bat in the face, and on another occasion, caught a pop fly under her chin for the most spectacular out ever made by a nine-year-old. Let's leave the baseball lessons to Ma, shall we?

  I think we've struck a good balance, all told. While she loves those tutus and nail polish, she really loves bugs and playing ball. A few days ago she handed me one of her neglected baby dolls and said, "Get rid of this. It goes in the trash." That concerns me a smidge. Not the lack of interest in dolls, but the idea of where babies should go.

  Today, Beqi and her darling 19-month-old son came over for lunch and child free-for-all time. Beqi and I have had the discussion about how, pre-baby, we were both certain in our feminist minds that gender roles are dictated by society. Ha! Ha hahahahahahahahahaha! Naive! Certainly, society and the images and mores we see daily do have an effect, but in seeing tiny kids falling into these roles when they've had little exposure, one has to wonder how much really is encoded into our DNA. Especially when Beqi's son is doing his best Bam-Bam (just like nearly every 19-month-old boy I've encountered) while my daughter is doing this:

  

  That's right. She's head-to-toe pink (at least her shirt has a girl drummer), singing at the top of her lungs (granted, she was singing Grover's "Fuzzy and Blue", not anything by the Pussycat Dolls), flinging her new pink feather boa about like she's being raised in a burlesque hall.

  Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. I never would have guessed that feather boa-flinging and snakey dancing code might be encoded into the XX chromosome pair. Just like I never would have guessed a little 19-month-old boy could push a heavy chair with my 35-pound dancing girl back and forth, shuffling her up to the table and back.
  

  1. Synchronicity II - The Police
  2. I Can't Turn You Lose - Sam & Dave
  3. Zip City - Drive-By Truckers
  4. All I Can Do - Dolly Parton
  5. If God Will Send His Angels - U2*
  6. One of You - Bottle Rockets
  7. I Can't Turn You Lose - Otis Redding
  8. Company in My Back (live) - Wilco
  9. 16 Days - Whiskeytown
  10. Outro with Bees - Neko Case

  *I was hoping for some U2 in the shuffle, but I was really hoping for something from my all-time favorite album, "The Joshua Tree", which was released 20 years ago today. When I heard this on VH1 Classic today, I had to pause and catch my breath. No joke. It knocked the wind out of me. I had one of those pure, blissful music geek moments when I realize that 20 years ago today, something that would be such an integral part of my life was sent into the world. I seriously considered making today's entry about the album, and the impact each song has had on me, but that's way too music geeky. I'll just say this: Where The Streets Have No Name will forever remind me of the moment when I was pregnant and my child became real to me. It's a story I've told on the blog before, so I won't repeat. Next time you hear that song, from that album that turned 20 today, you're truly listening to a piece of my heart and soul, which is draped in pink feathers and pretending to be a praying mantis.

  Posted by Robin at 09:31 PM | Comments (7)

  March 02, 2007

  Friday Shuffle - The Dotty Edition

  You knew this was bound to happen sooner or later. Dots and a shuffle. I'm just that uninspired.

  • Why why why did I allow Clara Jane to watch The Wonder Pets? She's obsessed, and I'm going to ram stalks of celery into my ears until I hit gray matter if I get that goddamn, "What's gonna work? Teamwork!" song stuck in my head one more time.
  • I just love it when my real estate agent calls as I'm putting Clara Jane down for a nap to tell me someone wants to look at the house in an hour or two. Brief nap, frantic house-cleaning, fleeing the house, only to return in time to see the showing agent (not our agent) and the potential buyers drive up, stop, drive to the end of the street, confer, and leave, never to return. They probably couldn't find the house due to the massive brush pile that, we learned today, won't be picked up for another two or three weeks, even though we were told it would be picked up this past week. I'm going to hurt someone badly, and soon.
  • The people scheduled to view the house tomorrow better at least get out of their fucking car.
  • How am I liking the thrice-daily blood sugar testing? Not even a little, that's how much. The good news, though, is that in two days of testing, my levels have been damn near perfect. I even tested it last night by having a total crap dinner that included white rice in fried form, something I never eat. That was my highest blood sugar reading, and it was still within a perfectly normal, healthy range.
  • Yeah, cranky. That's me. But this will be a good weekend. It will. B. and the neighbors are going to do stupid yard tricks with a woodchipper. In order to prevent me from going all Fargo and shoving my neighbor - who I'm pretty sure has the hots for B. - into the chipper, Clara Jane and I will be joining Beqi in a fabric-shopping frenzy near my soon-to-be stomping grounds. I won't be getting anything fancy, thanks to my yarn binge yesterday; just some ribbon and plain lining fabric to turn some of my t-shirts into tote bags. I think the Johnny Cash t-shirt I wore when I was pregnant will make a lovely knitting bag, or perhaps an earth-friendly grocery bag.
  • Sunday, we get to pay a visit to our future house. I plan to take a bunch of pictures, so prepare yourselves.
  • Clara Jane has reached the time in her life where she questions everything. As in, she must ask a question every 20 seconds or she'll die!!! The nature of the questions? "What are you doing? What's that? Why? What are you doing? Where are we? Why are we here? What color are God's eyes?" Okay, those last few are a little untrue.
  • She's also discovered lying. When I tossed a package of baby portabella mushrooms into our cart today, she said, "I can't eat mushrooms. They make me sick." Child has never in her entire life gotten sick from a mushroom. Still, I can respect her intentions. I hated mushrooms with a fervor usually reserved for things like Fascism and Neil Diamond. Something happened when I was pregnant, and now I like them. Go figure. Before, though, I often thought that it would be much easier to tell people I'm allergic to mushrooms, instead of having to defend my distaste. At least my kid's got the guts to do what I considered doing for most of my life.
  • Yeah, I'm going to shuffle, but I'm too tired and lazy to come up with a snappy pun.

    1. Bring the Family - John Hiatt
    2. The Wurlitzer Prize - Waylon Jennings
    3. UFOs, Big Rigs, and BBQ - Mojo Nixon
    4. Free Fallin' - Tom Petty
    5. This Old Heart of Mine - The Isley Brothers
    6. Stupidly Happy - XTC
    7. Broken Ship - Immaculate Machine
    8. Radiation Vibe - Fountains of Wayne
    9. The Stairs - INXS
    10. Fall on Me - REM

    Posted by Robin at 08:12 PM | Comments (8)

    February 23, 2007

    Friday Shuffle - The Good Housewife Edition

    I'm pleased to report that today has been a good day.

    It's been awhile since we've had one of those. Seems like as soon as Clara Jane turned three, a cosmic switch was flipped and she went from being sweet, patient, and polite to being, well, Devil Toddler. I know, I know. It's because I cursed her with the name Devil Baby. We only use it when she makes this face, I swear. It's not like we address her as Devil Baby. Well, not unless she demands that we do so.

    But considering the sudden change in my child's personality that started the very day she turned three (which, I don't have to remind you, is the root of 6, which is the basis of That Number Of Which We Shall Not Speak, Lest We Get Eaten By Cloven-Hooved Beasts), I'm starting to think that last weekend's helpful commenter who informed me that I was leading the devil to my child when I call her Devil Baby may be on to something.

    Or maybe it's just because the kid had an exciting week filled with very little sleep and very a lot of cake and frosting. Add a nagging cold on top of it, along with a prolonged visit to her grandparents', and of course she's going to be a smidge on the beastly side.

    But today's been good. I knew it was going to be good when I hadn't issued any time-outs within the first hour of being awake. That's an improvement over every single day she's been home since turning three. In fact, here we are at nearly 4 PM, totally time-out-free. The little angel's napping peacefully. Or quietly sacrificing goats. I'm not sure, and I don't really care because right now it's Mommy Time. What the kid does behind her closed door during Mommy Time is her business.

    Right. Good parenting. I'm all about it.

    I got a preview of the kind of behavior that's occuring at the Pudding house today when Clara Jane looked me in the eye and said, "I don't love you," and then laughed. We were having lunch at the time, and it was rather embarrassing to have my adhesioned C-section incision burst open all over the restaurant like it did, what with being told that the person I birthed for over 32 hours isn't much fond of me. While I gathered my entrails from the floor and tried to blot up the mess with brown paper napkins, Clara Jane proceeded to sing the praises of "my friend Dad", as she's started referring to B. That is, when she's not referring to him as "Our Father", like he's Jesus.

    Motherhood = Martyrdom. I'm starting to understand that notion.

    Shortly after being told that I'm not loved, the one who supposedly doesn't love me crawled from her chair onto my lap, and spent the next 30 minutes slowly grazing on her turkey and cheese sandwich and yogurt with her non-mama-lovin' head planted on my chest, letting me smooch her warm little blonde head as much as I wanted while I squeezed her tight.

    How sickeningly darling was this display? No less than four patrons and two employees had to stop by our table and tell us how cute we were, all snuggled up and covered with yogurt and chicken noodle soup. It's hard to eat soup with 35 pounds of snuggly, non-mama-lovin' child on your lap and chest, just so you know. But she did eventually retract her statement about having no love for me.

    Man, I needed that. I've been sick all week and have slacked off in every department of my life, except the sock-knitting and sleeping departments. Our house is on the market, and we're getting a bit desperate to sell and yet, I haven't had the gumption to keep it presentable. The dogs are tracking mountains of mud through the house several times a day, and all along I've just wanted to crumple into a heap in the basement and knit while everything domestic falls apart above my head. I've given into that urge twice so far. Basically, I've questioned my abilities in just about every aspect of my life.

    But today. Clara Jane and I both had decent sleep last night. Our colds are better. We had time to just sit on the couch and read. We ate well (let's not mention the organic faux Oreo pile in front of me and the half-empty Cherry Coke Zero bottle next to it). I've done mountains of laundry, including one basket that I later realized was already clean. Now it's extra-clean!

    We made a Trader Joe's run and bought stuff we needed, not just organic faux Oreos and reduced-fat cheese curls. Clara Jane visited the sample station and partook in lemon-ginger-echinacea juice and southwestern salmon on croustini. For a kid who's demanded a diet of nothing but cake, goldfish crackers, and chips for a week, that amazed me.

    I even made the bed.

    
    Yes, I succumbed to the lure of the $7.50 clearanced sock monkey flannel sheets at Target yesterday. How could I not? I know, because I'm 34 years old, that's why.

    Let me redeem myself with that quilt at the foot of the bed. No, it's not one of mine. It was on the spare bed at my parents' house last weekend, and I threatened theft before I even knew the story behind it.

    The quilt top was made by my great-grandma, who died in 1980. Granny Viv recently whipped it into a quicky quilt and gave it to my mom, telling her to do with it whatever she wanted.

    "You wanna give it to me, right? Because I'm just going to steal it anyway," I told her. She told me to go ahead and take it.

    If you look at the close-up of the quilt, you'll notice the chocolate brown corduroy, olive and cream twill, and bright turquoise trim (which is the same as the backing). I think one of the reasons I love it so much is because who knew that Great-Granny Velma could predict the styles Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel would be selling for hundreds of dollars 27 years after her death.

    My house is somewhat clean and updated. My child doesn't not love me. She's sleeping. I haven't heard any goat-sacrificing noises. For the first time since she turned three, we're not completely shuffled.

    1. Cooling - Tori Amos
    2. We Stand a Chance - Tom Petty
    3. Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals
    4. Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA - Devo
    5. What Goes On - The Beatles
    6. I Fought the Law - Bobby Fuller Four
    7. Bullet the Blue Sky - U2
    8. Dyslexic Heart - Paul Westerberg
    9. Hot Boxin' - The Donnas
    10. Way Down - Elvis

    Posted by Robin at 03:38 PM | Comments (8)

    February 17, 2007

    Friday Shuffle - The Briefly Updated, Somewhat Late with Dots Edition

    • We're in my hometown for the annual February birthday shindig.
    • We had to drive through a blowing snowstorm last night to get here. I think from now on, this family should only celebrate birthdays in May, so we don't die on the way to the parties.
    • I called my mom during the miserable commute (I was in the passenger seat; no way would I have been yapping on the phone had I been driving through that shit) and told her, "I need to talk to your friend, the doctor," which is code for "break out the Dr. McGilicutty's booze because I need a drink." My 59-year-old mom hides her booze so that her tee-totalling 81-year-old mom won't bust her. Problem is, when you're 59 years old and you hide your booze, there's a good chance you'll forget where you hid it. After I made her go on a booze hunt, I was too tired to even do so much as a shot when we got here.
    • Three-year-olds should not be presented with brand-new tricycles at 11 PM if ther