A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm!

Thirty-one Posts Hath December?

Yes, I'm still thinking about my commitment to writing every day.  Oh, and by the way, happy December, everyone!  Can you believe that 2008 has pretty much passed us by?  I never can.  I always make it to December a little startled and in disbelief, as if all other eleven months were somehow just a dress rehearsal and, oh boy, here comes December to mess with our heads and knock us off center.

And then, there is never a performance, but we get to do another eleven dress rehearsals all over again.

I blame the mad adrenaline rush on the mostly-Sagittarian energy whizzing by like will-o'-the-wisp and making us hallucinate about this being in any way a productive time of year.  But this is not to say that I personally dislike it, though I have in the past.  I think that the dizzying speed with which we're supposed to close up the year and start writing a new date is partly to blame for people's crankiness, along with the consumerist evils (of which we all partake whilst kicking and screaming, naturally), and the cold in the Northern Hemisphere.

But yes.  November is done, and so I put up my nifty little badge and marvel in its monochrome simplicity.  And yet, I am still tying to pin down this itching I cannot seem to scratch. 
Maybe it's because I failed at the novel.

Maybe it's that will-o'-the-wisp and those restless spirits that flit about this time of year, whispering in my ear and asking me what I want to do with my writing, and what I want to do with my life.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's just gas and I should let it pass.

Once again, happy December, lovely blogland.  May this season not ruffle your feathers too much.

The Blogging Equivalent of a Hairshirt

Okay, so today is the last day of NaBloPoMo (and NaNoWriMo as well, but I kind of already gave up on my project back around November eighth), but I don't feel ready to give up the daily blogging.

Yes, you read that right:  I am not ready to give up the daily blogging.  As a matter of fact, I rather like it --dry spells and all.  I like having the quasi-religious discipline to commit even a small something to virtual paper on a regular basis.  I like both the x365 idea of writing a certain number of words about three hundred and sixty five people you may have met in your life, and, more recently,I like Schmutzie's 365 days of grace.

There is some comfort in having a daily prompt or a theme-- it makes the entries a little less lost in the vast prairie of writing and it makes the writing flow a little more.

But.

You know, with me there is always a "but".  These days, there is a big, fat, lardly "but" with an extra "t" as well, but yes.  But.

There is this weird fetish I have for some minor torture or just for feeling like I am not doing it right unless I feel like I should be flying by the seat of my pants every day.  Maybe it's not like a cilice or hairshirt because I feel nothing I should be atoning for.  However, there is that feeling that if I want to take my writing seriously someday --any day, today, every day-- I should be doing daily exercises, instead of doing small sprints and then collapsing on the floor other weeks, too weak to hold myself up.

So.  I might join a yearly experiment down the road, but for now I am still in a NaBloPoMo of my own making.

And I'm a little touched in the head as well.

Mederma Still Can't Help Me

Ladies and gents: I am feeling very whaleish and in pain today.  I leave you with a post from exactly a year ago.  I hope you like it.

A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm!: Mederma Can't Help This

Good night and more tomorrow!

Twelve/Thirty

There is nothing worse than seeing your child sick.

Will not blog anything else now, but I'll try later.

In Which I Skate by With Four Dismembered Thoughts

To do list:

1. Try Tim Hortons doughnuts.  I have a bone to pick, Canada: why must you have created doughnuts that are hailed as superior so that I am placed in the irritating position of figuring out how to get said doughnuts into my gullet, knowing full well that when I do I will be hooked and I won't just be able to walk down a couple of blocks to get them and MADNESS WILL ENSUE?!  Tsk, tsk, Great White North.  TSK.
2. Explore more NARS makeup.  How is it possible that I've gone SO MANY YEARS in this good earth without knowing that there was a product called The Multiple and in a color called "Orgasm"?!?!  HOW?!
3. Admit that I like kids' television.  I actually do.  Enjoy it, that is.  Nay, I love it.  I watch side by side with my kid and laugh at all the really lame jokes and sing along.  This is something I used to do way before I had kids-- for instance, I LOVED playing "Blue's Clues" when it first came out.  And right now I can't get enough of Max and Ruby (Canada?  I'm coming to get you.  Again.) and Pinky Dinky Doo and I am a deep, full admirer of Chica on Sprout (okay, I love love LOVE Chica in a totally irrational way).  Go ahead.  You know you want to roll those eyes.
4. Tell you I'm very tired and this is all I'm offering up for today.  There will be more tomorrow, honey bunsies.  In the meantime, won't you look at and comment on my other posts please?  That would make me very happy.  And thank you to those who leave me comments-- I appreciate and enjoy what each and every one of you has to say!

Have a good Monday and don't forget to check the temperature.  It's been some weird up and down stuff going  on these days!  Toodles!

November Fourth Can't Be Here Soon Enough

This morning as I was enjoying a decaf cappuccino, there was some guy who just couldn't keep things to himself.

He was beating away at his computer and ardently talking to a friend about politics, providing facts and statistics and complex-sounding factoids and just being LOUD.  No two ways about it: the man's voice reverberated throughout the space like a ping pong ball-- zipping along and hitting every ear in the room.

I kept on trying to enjoy myself, but I just found his obstreperousness, his general lack of civility, his complete and total solipsism, rude.

First off, I was offended that he hadn't noticed just how loudly he was talking.  Now, we all have our quirks and our foibles because we're human; however, surely he could notice that his voice was loud enough to dominate the din of AN ENTIRE RESTAURANT?  At the very least, if he was aware, then he was pleased he was hijacking our ears, and that makes him even more rude.

But the fact that irritated me more than his obnoxious nasally jangle was the fact that he was spouting off political rhetoric like the wonkiest political wonk that ever wonked.

Look buddy: I may not be Miss Manners, but I can tell you that it's still considered RUDE to talk politics in mixed company, let alone vociferate your political opinions LOUDLY and in a public place while people are simply trying to get some breakfast.  It's a matter of etiquette, my dear man.

Read: NOT INTERESTED. 

Yes, I know, someone approached you and told you just how "passionate" you are about your political views and I'm sure you were ever so chuffed but let me break this one to you: she was politely telling you you were one OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD INDIVIDUAL.  See? 

Passionate = loud, braying person = total ass.

I'm sure you and your mommy are very proud that you seem to have a keener grasp of the electoral process than most; although WE ARE IN WASHINGTON D.C., the mecca for political wonky-nerdiliciousness, so the fact that you're not sitting at an office or running around regaling a more puissant and politically-inclined audience than a few stay-at-home mothers, student-looking people and assorted retirees with your decibel-challenged rhetoric only tells me that you're a pathetic wannabe who should go home and write all your eloquence down on your blog (oooh, the irony here is killing me.... wait.. okay I'm better now) and link up to dailykos or something so that people can give you the feedback you so desperately want.

In other words: shut. up.

Not Much Hallow'd about 'Ween

The festivities started early for some..., originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Yes. That's a puddle of vomit in that picture.

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Halloween is a funny holiday. As we are all aware by now, it's not just a holiday in which kids dress up and ask for candy and people decorate their homes with spooky themes in some vague reminiscence of a Druid New Year Festival.

Oh no.

It's also

1. an opportunity for adult women to tap into their inner Raging Sluts and make even the most subdued outfit choice (garbage bag?

2. an opportunity for all parents to see their kids at their very worst --with a raging sugar high and in a mob mentality-- in one of their cutest phases (young, adorably decked, fawned over by others), all at the same time.

3. an occasion to encourage raging Evangelical Christians to decry the horror and devil worship and debauchery that is Halloween. (I'm thinking they don't like candy corn)

4. an opportunity to see which of your neighbors are the fun ones, and which ones are just no fun at all. (Raging fun?)

5. and finally, an opportunity to see vomit upon a city sidewalk. The raging part is optional here, I think.

I realize that people throw up on sidewalks with some frequency. I still remember a girl I used to know in high school, who was complaining that her stomach hurt and she felt woozy all during the ride to school. As soon as the buses arrived and we started going up the hill, she turned a violent shade of green and a few seconds later, we were treated to seeing her projectile vomit onto the corner of a building in an apotheosis of retroperistaltic power.

I can close my eyes and see her vomiting prowess, fifteen years later.

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But vomit is sometimes all that remains, isn't it?

All those 75% off decorations and must-sell signs and half-opened polyester wonders bear a stark resemblance to vomit, just as much as this candy-overload picture does.

Vomit: it's what remains.

Wasting Another Month, Perhaps

I normally don't listen to music while I write.

I have seriously wondered about this minor but ultimately important component of my creative (or not) process, but I think it's more just a very pedestrian manner of preference.  I bring it up because it's one of those things that NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for those of you keeping score at home) has as this kind of getting-to-know you bit and it's always intimidated me.  I initially just filled it in as, " I don't listen to music while I write."

Also, I sometimes get so much into a song that I forget what else it is that I'm doing.  For instance, I 'm playing right now some old R.E.M. songs at random (thanks to the wonder and confusion of the new iTunes, I couldn't even tell you exactly how it decided to jump from the middle of "Reckoning" and launch straight into "Murmur" but okay) and my mind starts to play weird tricks.

I can't really write linearly.

I start remembering things and start getting pissed off at Michael Stipe (typo corrected: "Spite" for "Stipe"-- Freudian) for mumbling and whining.  And then I start to wonder why the arrangement is like that;  okay I like it but I dunno.... bongos for this song?  Weird.  And then I wonder about just how many people think that R.E.M. suck and are judging me based on my music tastes and how I'm a bit of a music snob myself but how some people are just EXHAUSTING with that holier-than-thou, I-knew-of-them-first shit.  It's like music is only good enough for listening if it goes through the precious sieve of their discerning ears and how dare we mere mortals have any damn taste whatsoever because seriously?  You like Top 40?  Are you insane?

And then there are the emotional reactions.  For instance, I still have not figured out exactly why "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" makes me bawl every time.  I mean, there are a million beggy, pleading, please-don't-go songs out there, and few of them (okay, none!) make me enter some sort of mentally feeble crise de foi state where I wonder just HOW HORRIBLE Rockville is. 

(It isn't)

But yes.  It's too much going through my mind to write.  On the other hand, I guess that's the thing: the song occupies so much of my available synapses that if I write, I can only seem to write about me and the song, thereby creating this solipsistic spiral of action and reaction where I cannot seem to talk about anything other than how that revealed lyric or that chord or that jangly guitar makes ME feel.  Not you.  Me.

("house in order"?  WHY?!)

Anyway.  Here is day one.  Since there is no theme for the month and like a freak I'm also doing NaNoWriMo, I think I'll make my own theme.  It shall be "MIND DUMP".

Read and enjoy.  I hope.

Oh and say hello if you're a lurker or if you're coming from NaBloPoMo, will you? 

Beware the Overachieving Monster

Although I'm not one for shout-outs --and, truth be told, no shout-outs are generally bad for the popularity business around these here Internet parts-- I would like to point out that Mary and Heather of MomsTown have been sending something very cool to their email subscribers.  It's a mini pep talk a day, for 21 days, which is reportedly how long it takes to break a habit or start a new one.

I've been loving the newsletters-- short and to the point and not much else.  Today's was especially poignant to me and so I'm sharing it with you faithful few whose eyeballs and synapses I hold in high esteem:

Let go of the idea that you have to be a great
multi-tasker. Multitasking is, in our opinion, a
big fat lie that we all tell each other.

It is true that as mothers we must often do
more than one thing at a time... but that doesn't
mean we are that great at it. Truth is, mom or
not, we all do something better when we do one
thing at a time. Don't let anyone pressure you
into trying to be fabulous at everything at once.

I find this advice true and conciliatory-- it speaks of being kind to yourself and to realizing that with our limited time and resources, sometimes it's best to do one thing at a time and do it well.

Which brings me to November.

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You may have heard of the collective insanities that are NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo.  And you may even have heard of NoBloShoeMo on Flickr as well.

And you stop to think about how November is a crazy month of Thanksgiving.

And then you remember you had your first-born in November and that means a birthday celebration of some sort.

And you start to factor in the whole "getting ready for Christmas" bit, and the whole pregnancy thing --which yes, apparently does not affect one's ability to write at one's little computer but still is kind of a distraction-- and the whole "living with people" thing and the whole "and also a toddler" bit and things start to get funny.

Funny-looking in just a general kind of way, if you should ask.

But you cannot help yourself: you saw a weird couple the other day at a local place and started thinking about them and their convoluted backstory and you heard that one annoying song from Caddyshack this morning and it stuck in your head and then you started involving yourself in your own story because doesn't every story need a character who's woefully aware of her own neuroses and is addicted to tea?

So there's a beginning for NaNoWriMo.  And NaBloPoMo is just sentimental stuff-- November IS Blog Posting Month too, because suddenly posting once a day doesn't sound nerve-wracking and annoying.

And then there's the shoes.  I may pass on the shoes (and yes, I switched persons during the course of this explanation), just because I don't own thirty pair anymore and it would just depress me a little to do it with fewer pairs. 

That last sentence was shameful.  Please pardon me for that hideous bit of excess.  I will not go to Zappos after I am done with this blog entry.

But so yes: point taken, Mary and Heather. I obviously need to work on this whole overachieving thing.

As soon as I start a document on character development, that is.

And, Really, YOU Are Always Glad You Came

Thirty-one days (or well, okay, thirty) days of food come to an end.  I must say, like I've repeated before, that so many days of blogging about food turned out to be a little overwhelming and tiresome, despite the inherent variety of the theme.

And now it's July thirty-first and I am so giddy to be done with this month of food blogging that I can't even think of what to blog.  Do I talk about celebratory food?  But, I already blogged about champagne a couple of days ago!  ARGH!

Um...okay.  Well, one of the best traditions, I think, ever, is to have a restaurant you know and love and where you feel comfortable to go when you need to celebrate or to be cheered up.  I'm not sure if that sounds stuck up or not-- lately, in the Meowhold our celebratory restaurant de rigueur seems to be the Olive Garden, so I wouldn't say that's super snooty.

But I guess as with one of the most beloved and longest-running sitcoms ever --that would be "Cheers"-- most people long for a place where everybody knows your name: a place where you're a regular and where, even if you don't actually know everyone, there is still that feeling that you know the room and the menu and when everything else seems to be going a mile a minute for better or for worse, you can get a meal you like and a break from the grind.

One of my favorite places to go here in DC, for instance, happens to be Las Placitas-- a place we've come to know and love thanks to a very good friend (hi C!).  When Herr Meow first started playgroup and I faced the sheer painful horror pleasure of taking my turn for duty, Las Placitas was there with a supportive round of margaritas and delicious chips for my frayed nerves, followed by the Puerco al Horno to lift up my spirits.   I don't exactly remember if I cried while eating, but let's just say that once my lips stopped feeling numb and my heart thawed, I breathed a sigh of relief and was at peace. 

Also, golden trumpets rang in the distance.

Sometimes you just don't feel like cooking*, so it's nice to count on a place to do the cooking and the nurturing for you.  Amen for the place where you feel at home: it's a gift you give yourself.

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*I realize that if you don't like to cook, you give yourself this gift every night.  And I'm so jealous.