I'm plumb out of foodness inspiration for today. Of course I did eat but my culinary experiences weren't earth-shattering (though the pasta was cooked al dente and the sauce was nice, and the bean and corn salad came out good, too-- and yes, those flavors do go together).
I guess something is eating at me (see how cleverly I'm changing the subject here?).
For some reason, I don't seem to be getting as much traffic as I have been and this fact has me a little --more than a little, really-- puzzled. I like the attention. Even if you guys don't say hello, which I understand because blogging doesn't have to be an ongoing dialogue of, "Oh really, you, too? Me, too! And you, too!" I like knowing that you guys stop by and read what I have to say. Except that for the second part of this week things have been sluggish. Is it me? Do I smell? Have I been blackballed by some alpha blogger and no one is telling me? (I have, but shh... don't tell 'em I know, ok?)
I guess some weeks are slower than others. Sometimes I feel like maybe blogging isn't as fun as it used to be. Sometimes I feel like not even doing a monthly assignment stirs things up. And sometimes it's a little frustrating to be a very small fish in a pond whose tributary is the equivalent of Niagara Falls.
Don't mind me. I just sometimes feel like being eye-rollingly curmodgeonly. Oh, and it's BlogHer conference time, too. What's a not-really-fitting-in-anywhere-oh-so-seriously gamma girl to do?
Who said nothing? DING! DING! DING! _____________
Wanna know if you're an alpha, beta or gamma girl? Of course you do, even if you're a guy clawing at your mouse to get you the hell away from this page.
A day like this-- these are the days that make poets swoon and lovers take it off and go at it like randy little bunnies.
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Aside-- has anyone ever wondered why rabbits hump and breed so much? I mean, it seems anathema to their overall cuteness, you know? I can't really picture these furry little genitalia --nothing offensive, nothing obscene, no throbbing veiny pulsating bunnyhood throbbing trying to pierce some hungry bunnyhead, and certainly NO PUBES-- creating some sort of NC-17 or even XXX-rated action where the performers moan on cue and act both horrified and lustily hungry and where the seeds are planted (so to speak) and then some time elapses and voilà! Bunnies!
But how are you supposed to think of bunnies as procreative when all you can think to describe their particular act of mating --wherein the word "bunny", which is possibly one of the cutest words ever, is used over and over-- is, to say that it is well.... cute?
Then again, it doesn't seem to have stopped generations upon generations of cute animals. I mean, there is no dearth of bunnies and kittens and puppies in this world. (Although? Dogs humping are really kinda gross. And cats are pretty much a domestic abuse scenario unfolding. Two words: barbed penis.)
Bunnies --rabbits, even, are cute. Sex is not cute-- words to describe the act range from "hot" to "disgusting" and detouring briefly at <inaudible moan>. But boy, has it been romanticized. Not cutified, really, but romanticized to the point where in the movies it's barely recognizable, for instance, except for the NC-17 or even XXX-rated action where the performers....
... well, you get my point, I think.
And so, back to this day because it's an absolutely gorgeous day-- crystalline and healthful and with enough crispness to recall an apple, or better yet, a pear.
Pears may be squishy when overripe, but in the crispness department they are better than apples because of their acidity. I could be making this up, too.
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Seasons are amazing.
Readers who live in an area with what you might call, with some degree of self-satisfaction and (dare I say it?) smugness, "REAL" winters, can piss off at this point. I mean that in a loving way, of course.
I do mean it though: I am a tropics-born California girl at heart whose last address was Hawaii, and so this Washington winter with its infrequent snow and weird little frosts is the coldest I've ever been; and this particular cycle of seasons-- from schizophrenic spring through wet-blanket canicular summer, cascading into fabulous autumn and spiraling maniacally into black-ice winter-- is the most marked change of seasons my body has ever experienced.
And it is, really, quite an amazing display--the whole cycle. Sometimes when it's been particularly bitter-cold I try hard to picture what this place looks like when you can actually reach out and touch that southern humid heat that covers the city like a thick blanket and I just can't.
How can you recreate that inviting and repellent wet heaviness (um... yikes!) that lingers saturated with the scent of gardenias and honeysuckle when the wind is trying to rip your face apart and the dryness in the air pulls your skin taut, making it hurt?
Conversely, how can you invoke the scent of wood-burning stoves in winter when all you can smell in those dog-days are the melting asphalt and your own sweat?
And so, after being cold and chapped and wind-whipped, suddenly the buds start turning fuzzy and unfurling slowly and the temperature stops dropping at night. That, people, is magic of an order that is hard to explain with words.
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It's simply amazing-- amazing like this morning and its jolt of happiness as the little tots of this part of the world flock to the park and smile and grow and someday will become adults who may or may not produce their own snot-riddled offspring
Much how the act of sex ending anywhere near a pregnancy, one that created those tots vying for playground space (or even the sex for the plain satisfaction of it all), is an amazing and puzzling act-- one that takes you and uses you, and not the other way around.
Even more amazing, the fact that bunnies do it too. They hump. Bunnies hump. A lot.
Heh. I said hump.
Um, here: have a song. I've regressed to age 13 and must giggle.
4. I earned a Bronze medal over at MamaBlogga's Blog Olympics! If you're a mother who blogs (I *refuse* to use the term "mommyblogger" as it is the semiotic equivalent of Velveeta), you need to pay her a visit.
7. The title is awkward and would benefit from better editing, but Violent Acres's piece on women who hide behind the SAHM label and its companion piece on women's wasted potential are excellent and hit close to home (see item #4). She always manages to rattle the monkey cage in just the right way, for maximum poop explosion.
8. I want this book, because this book was pretty awesome. Want-want-want-want.
9. Alright! It looks like today's high will be 89 and the low lingered around the high 60s early this morning. It's going to be another loooooovely high-humidity day but hey! The high pressure shouldn't be too too bad as it seems to have been rising, right? Clouds, clouds go away! (does anyone know how I can exorcise my inner weatherperson?)
Have a lovely Tuesday and don't linger too long in public bathrooms, loveys!
I remember reading "L'Etranger" for the first time when I was in 10th grade. I remember straining to think of the heat and the glare of the sun that would be cruel enough to drive a man to kill as I sat atop the monkey bars of a nearby playground, enveloped in fog, with the Pacific ocean unfurling below the skirt of a steep hill.
"Heat like that cannot exist, and this book sucks." I must have thought that more than once.
Heat like that does exist. And the book? I'm still not sure about it.
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"One hundred and two degrees Fahrenheit," declared the (possibly) very austere and scientifically calibrated little gauge sitting over at Reagan National Airport at 12:05 pm yesterday.
"One hundred and five degrees," exaggerated Smedley, the Land Rover, as Herr Meow and I made our way home from our friends' house past three o'clock.
"One hundred and five degrees, "agreed our home weather station, even after clouds came to the rescue and shielded us from the ire of the sun sometime around three-thirty.
"One hundred and eleven degrees," grumbles the grey print on the back of the Metro section this morning, wanting to point out that the apparent temperature of yesterday was even worse than we all thought.
Any way you look at it, it was the kind of stale and solid heat that threatens our very essence and humanness; and specifically it's the kind of unrelenting humid heat that can drive people to rage, to insanity, and to the depths of despair. It's the kind of heat that could drive you to kill a man-- and, once dead, it could drive you to put four more bullets in the lifeless body, just because.
Hmm... perhaps not, but you get my drift.
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For some reason, when I read this morning's cover story on the record-breaking heat on the Post, I started to cry.
It was a combination of the sad beauty of the hazy photograph; the accounts of the things that happened during the last record-breaking heat wave in 1930; the fear that this particular record-breaking heat could mean that The End is Near; and that yesterday had parts that not were very pleasant and it was a day where you could see the heat conspiring to make things hard and uncomfortable.
In a way, picking up the newspaper this morning and seeing that picture of a city being strangled by the atmosphere was a signal-- a green light from the universe to mourn and to feel deeply. It was a confirmation that no matter how good your intentions may be, some days the deck is stacked and even if you try to pull on your most convincing poker face you will still lose, and it's okay to feel sad and defrauded and powerless because you are.
One hundred and two degrees is another way of saying that while life is always beyond our control, some days it likes to make sure we know it from the start.
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