For a Good Cry: Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Last night I finished reading the novel Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. (The first image is the UK cover, which I think is more beautiful and expresses better what's inside the cover than the US cover, below.) Toward the last few pages, I cried and cried. The premise of this novel (and it's a work of adolescent lit, a genre I love) is that a young woman is killed by a hit and run driver and she ends up in the afterlife, called "Elsewhere". There, people age backward, dead artists, like Picasso, are working on new paintings, and Liz, the main character, changes and matures through the novel in ways that are funny and sad. It's such a bittersweet story.

I really am the worst at describing novels, so check it out here.

The Big Duds of Winter

It's officially spring and time to reflect on my closet and all the things I stupidly spent money on and never wore last winter. (This exercise is not to beat oneself up, but rather to learn something about one's own taste, fashion sense, preferences and future expenditures.)

I actually did remarkably well; most of these are small items:

1.) Lush Charity Pot body lotion.
I was told by someone who works at one of the shops that the lotion smells like a less-strong version of their Honey I Washed the Kids soap. which smells like honey. It does not. It smells yucky and flowery and kind of like Jergens. It's like Essence of H'ospital, or eau de Nursing Home. Lush stuff is nice, though, and somewhat pricey, and coveted by some people, so I urged DD, "Take it to your work and put it in the bathroom or kitchen." He refused, saying he didn't want to smell it on anyone. I haven't taken it to my work either. (there's a shared refrigerator and a small grubby kitchen at my work, and any food that anyone brings to share, from stale doughnuts to an aging two liter of flat Coke to an unmarked brick of smelly cheese will be gobbled up quickly, but as for highly-fragranced smelly luxury lotion, I don't think anyone will want it)

2. a Harajuku Lovers Angel Kitty purse
I don't know what I was thinking. It felt cheap and plastic-like. It looked cheap and plastic-like. It was small and couldn't really hold any stuff.

3. a pair of Hue brand mustard yellow opaque tights
I don't even remember what I planned to wear these tights with, but they're so ugly, and mustard yellow is such a bad color on me, even far away from my face down there on my legs and feet! They're still in their package.

4. a pink lucite cube choker necklace
Chokers never look good on me. I have a very short neck, and chokers only bisect the neck, cutting it into two even shorter halves. It's like my head is sitting right on top of the choker necklace. I already know this, and yet-- Behold, the pink lucite choker!

6. Do bad makeup purchases even count? That's a whole 'nother can of whoop ass. There's a whole category of my bad makeup purchases, a category called "Lipsticks which are Paler than my Own Lips and which make Me Look Like the Walking Dead." This category includes MAC lipstick colors Snob, Pink Plaid, Craving, Pervette, and Creme de La Femme, among others.

Towels, wineglasses, and... a hacksaw?

My cousin is getting married. I received an invitation, and it was nice of her to invite me, considering we don't know each other. (We have met probably two times, most recently when she was eight years old or so, and I was a teenager.) I don't think I can go to the wedding (and I've been absolved by my dad, who says I needn't go), but I did peruse the "bridal registry" at the three stores the engaged young couple is registered at in the hopes of finding an appropriate gift in my price range. (My price range = $100.) The bridal registry information was conveniently tucked in the invitation. It seems more and more people are doing this now. Some people think it's tacky, but I think it can be helpful to know what china pattern, flatware and stemware they are collecting.

I was soon startled and baffled by this bridal registry, which included 1) a utility knife 2) a 12 inch hacksaw 3) a 14 inch pipe wrench 4) a 50 foot orange extension cord 5) a 100 foot orange extension cord, and the piece de resistance-- a 1000 watt tripod light with portable stand! These are just a few of the many electrical/tool-ish items listed. Well, perhaps the groom-to-be is planning to build the bride-to-be a cottage in the woods for them to live in! That has to be the explanation.

I don't understand how any of these items are even remotely related to a wedding. Needless to say, I will be sending a Visa gift card so that the young couple can pick out their own power tools!

The Banana Container vs. Sex Toy game

This afternoon, our part-time receptionist at work came upstairs to say goodbye to me. She only works on Fridays. Most of the rest of the time she goes to school (she's 19) or church (she's Christian and very active in her church) or she's studying or helping care for her nephew, who is a toddler. She's very busy. She's adorable, unaffected, and impossible not to like.

Today she matter of factly told me she wants a banana container and has been shopping for them online. "WHAT?" I said, trying to wrap my slow-moving, late-afternoon mind around the concept of a banana container. She then explained that her banana got smushed in her schoolbag and she had a spiral notebook, and--. At this part of the story she shuddered, letting me imagine the mess. (I haven't thought about carrying food around for a really long time-- it's been a long time since I've made a lunch and carried it to some all-day thing where the food offerings suck and there's no refrigerator or my own desk where I might park my lunch.)

As soon as I got it I caught the fever and got very excited and happy for her (as for me, I don't need a banana container, because we have bananas at my work and there are usually some available to eat), so she started telling me which websites to look at. There are some options, it's not like just one company makes a banana container. The first one we looked at was pretty cool. Then we looked at one that looked like colored condoms or cheapie jelly rubber vibrators, the kind that are less than $20. Suddenly, the banana container became sort of embarrassing to me, but not to her, because I really don't think she saw what I saw. So then it got even worse when she showed me some that looked like double-ended dildos or like toys designed to stimulate the G-spot, curved like a boomerang. It's really not like I think about sex toys anytime I'm at work and having a perfectly nice conversation with a co-worker, but I worked at a sex toy company for two years, and sex toys are just part of my regular frame of reference now.

Uglies, Pretties and Specials by Scott Westerfeld

I recently finished reading this trilogy of novels by author Scott Westerfeld. It starts with Uglies, next is Pretties, and finally Specials, all featuring teenage heroine Tally Youngblood, who lives in the future, in a self-contained city where everyone is linked into the city interface, people travel on hoverboards, and everyone has massive cosmetic surgery on their sixteenth birthday. Everyone is beautiful, and there's a commission who defines the parameters of acceptable beauty.

(God, I really am terrible at summarizing novels. I start getting very confused and scattered, like when you wake from a dream and start trying to explain it to someone and then you just peter out because you realize what you are saying makes no sense.)

Anyhow, it's a very exciting trilogy, and the novels raise interesting issues: what defines "cosmetic" surgery, socialized medicine, technology and society, cultural concepts of beauty, genetics, etc.

Personally, I would love to have Lasik eye surgery and I would love for it to be paid for by my health insurance, but it's considered an elective procedure. My vision is -4 and something in one eye and -5 in the other, which my eye doctor says is very common and right at the top of "the bell curve", but to me it means I can't see a friggin' thing without contact lenses or glasses! It would be amazing to be able to swim, run, etc. without needing lenses. I really think orthodontia should be covered by insurance, too. Universal health care... socialized medicine... okay, another discussion for another day and for people who are much more knowledgeable about the issues than I am.

The novels are fantastic; if you get one, get all three, because each one is such a quick read. There's a fourth novel, Extras, which is somehow related yet doesn't involve the same characters. I haven't read it yet, but I will soon!

The picture is the cover of the UK version of Pretties. Visit the author's site to learn more.

Little Lipgloss cell phone thing

I was browsing my local Sephora today, needing a new mascara since I dropped mine on the floor, and strangely enough, the impact of falling from my towering height of four foot eleven inches broke the plastic tube off at the neck, resulting in a waterproof black blobby mess every time I pull the wand out of the tube and the neck of the tube kind of gapes like a loose tooth. Anyhow, I decapitated my Diorshow waterproof black mascara and needed a new one, and was in Sephora walking around and waiting for my lips to plump up after having applied a ton of Lipfusion XL night treatment stuff. The stuff is $49 a tube so I wanted to see if it really works. Anyhow, I saw these little tiny lipgloss cell phone charms by Bourjois and thought they were very cute! It doesn't have to be all pink and femme-y either; they have clear (mint) that looks blue in the tube and could go on your black cell phone. It's $9.

I haven't reached a verdict on the Lipfusion XL night treatment. It definitely tingles and feels pretty weird...

Monthly. Bimonthly. NOT THE SAME THING!

Last year at around this same time, I went to a new eye doctor. I went to someone new because I moved (not far, but across a high-traffic bridge; it's not terrible to cross it, just inconvenient.) My old eye doctor was okay. She was neither warm nor friendly nor personable. She was just... fine.
The new eye doctor wowed me with a higher level of attention and a more comfortable contact lens. I didn't like her staff, who called me about four times to confirm my appointment or the person who examined my eyes, not the correction part, but the peripheral vision thing and the glaucoma thing. He had a very flat personality and seemed kind of snotty and bored. Snotty and Bored is not the sort of person I want shooting a puff of air at my eyeball as I trustingly "hold still" and "look riiiight at the hot air balloon". But after all was said and done, I was happy with my new contacts, which the doctor told me are to be changed bimonthly.

This year, a few days ago, she changed my contact lenses yet again. "These are monthly, like your old ones," she said, casually. "My old ones are once every two weeks," I replied. "They're once a month," she said. "You only have to change them once a month. These are the same."

She told me last year that I was supposed to throw the lenses away once every two weeks, so I did. Contact lenses = money. Contact lenses thrown away two weeks too early for an entire year = SHOES, HANDBAGS, MAKEUP, hell, quite possibly even mini vacations. I hate her. Sure, it's nothing to her. She's a doctor, this is the United States, what's a difference of three hundred dollars to her?

As I was leaving the office, one of the oh-so-delightful staff tells me, "That'll be... $165 blah blah and how would you like to pay for that blah blah?"
"I would like my insurance to pay for it, except for my $25 deductible, which I will pay with my credit card," I replied cheerfully.

She corrects me. Apparently my insurance covers the EXAM. But not the "contact lens fitting assessment". Which I assume was the part where the doctor said, "How do they feel?" and I replied, "Fine."

I love it! I will be looking for a new optometrist, or return to the un-exciting optometrist across the Bay who includes "How do they feel?" in the price of the exam!

The Great Table Search Begynneth

Ha ha. I just wanted to try some creative spelling there... applying some Gwyneth-esque y-th stuff.

I decided in December to sell my dining table and chairs and get different stuff.
It was a beautiful, solid table that felt warm and comfortable. The problem was never the way it felt, or its quality, but that it was round and had curvy legs and curvy chairs and was kind of traditional. My taste is currently very modern.

I wonder how many times or how frequently in life, on average, one's taste changes radically. I haven't really lived long enough to have seen many people age significantly; only my parents. My Dad has always been the exact same! I don't really know what his taste in art is like; he owns one piece of art; it's a Salvador Dali lithograph called Lincoln in Dalivision and he likes Japanese design and has worn the same style of clothing my entire life (hates jeans, wears flat-front khakis, comfortable walking/hik-ey shoes and solid colored shirts and a practical jacket, and when I was young he had longish hair and a full beard but as his hair thinned and went gray he kept it shorter and shorter, so he's not a hairstylin' kind of person. My mom went through one major shift, as far as I can tell. She used to wear a lot of colors, like teal, purple and red, and had flowy long hair and red lip gloss, and then she got a bob hairstyle and started only wearing very tailored clothes in only brown, black, gray and navy. This happened gradually.
Also, she used to like modern art and mid-century modern furniture, and she shifted to contemporary art (but she doesn't actually buy art; she's the kind of person who will decorate with pre-framed art you buy from the Crate and Barrel catalog) and traditional furniture. Now that I think about it, it's possible modern was never really her thing, but what she happened to fall into because her parents were modern, and then as she got older she started to be her real design self. I benefitted from this change heart; she decided that a mid-century modern sculpture that belonged to my grandparents didn't "fit her house", and I ecstatically took it.

As for me, my tastes in my early 20's were shaped by my love of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, my love of Betsey Johnson, and probably the fact that I was an English major. English majors always fall in love with Queen Elizabeth and Christopher Marlowe and the Victorian era before they go into their more specific area of concentration (which, in my case, was American lit). I liked everything curly and ornate and leopard print and white lilies in a wrought iron vase... I loved the paintings Pinky and the Blue Boy. Well, I still do. And I still have that love of frills and lace and old-fashioned things but it's more in the realm of clothing, paper and objects than decor. I started to like things more and more modern in the past three years.

A family bought the dining table in January, but I stored it for them till yesterday. They were having their home remodeled and didn't have anywhere to put it while the contractors lagged behind schedule. It's finally gone, and now I can evaluate the empty dining nook and think about what kind of table I really want!

Mrs. Meyer's Rhubarb

MRS. MEYER'S RHUBARB? Hey, hey, Mrs. Meyer's Rhubarb indeed!

I have to smell this stuff right away! I loved Mrs. Meyer's Gingerbread cleaning products from Christmas. The dishwashing liquid actually makes me like washing my dishes. I can't wait to see if I like the Rhubarb!

Fuck you; I hate you, Downstairs Neighbor

When we first moved into our apartment, couple A lived downstairs. They had a little yippy dog and the woman was unemployed and never left the house and the dog never went out, it would just bark to be let out. They had a massive TV and would watch it all the time. We have hardwood floors and that appears to be all that separates our apartment from theirs-- these thin plankettes of wood. The TV noise was crazy. The vibrations shook the walls. Their walking and running through the apartment more than once made my heart freeze in fear, thinking we were having an earthquake. But I didn't really hate them till they hit the door of my then-new car with their SUV door, tried to wipe the scratch away, and didn't bother to tell me. I went apoplectic; they apologized; we exchanged bottles of wine; they eventually moved out.

#2 moved in and she was a little better because she was single. Of course, she moved in with a whole crew of movers at midnight one lovely mid-week worknight and I was forced to go downstairs and scream at her smug white SUV driving pink-faced father about being inconsiderate while she kept peeping around him and trying to look at me as he basically kept telling me it wasn't their fault that the movers were late. I don't remember much else. I know I was in a blind fury and their startled faces just made me want to kick in teeth, so DD had to take me out for a two hour walk. That was a bad start. She wasn't too bad, though, but she had an equally enormous television, which was always on, and she never left the apartment either, and she would go to Costco at the same time every week, but the same cases of the same stuff (bottled water, Marie Callender's potpies, microwaveable popcorn) and eat at the same time every day, slamming every cabinet in the kitchen. "Jamie's hungry," DD and I would remark.

She moved out. Neighbor #3 moved in. Her name is Trish. She is a friend of Neighbor #2. Again, the massive television...a dinky little couch facing it... no other furniture. Unlike the first two sets of downstairs neighbors, she was small and non-white (a Pacific Islander. Yes, I was initially happy to see an API person move in. Why should I be the only API person in the building?). I was just glad a single gal was moving in, instead of, say, a gaggle of late-twenties ex-frat boys. She then got a roommate, who moved in with a giant teddy bear. The bear was something like six feet tall and its head was about four feet in diameter. He lived in the living room and I called him "Wendy's boyfriend". Wendy has since moved out, and Trish's boyfriend or some other person has moved in, and someone down there gets hungry at the same time every evening and slams every kitchen cabinet over and over, presumably hunting for food. Once I tried to count the number of ingredients she was using in her meal by counting the slams, but I gave up at sixteen. I really hope she gets pregnant (perhaps by Wendy's boyfriend) and has to put little baby locks on all the cabinets, which would preclude her from slamming. I would rather hear the cries of an infant child/teddy bear than all that slamming. Sometimes I fantasize about cutting her cable, or just calling Comcast to turn it off. Sometimes I fantasize about shooting a gun through the floor, but don't worry, I don't have a gun. Anyone who fantasizes about shooting guns should definitely not own them! Sometimes I agonize about the different crossroads of my life; the paths I chose that led me to where I am now; earning a rather pitiful (in my opinion) salary and having nothing near a down payment on a house of my very own, where there would not be a hungry TV blasting mofo whom I hate living underneath my floor.

If you f*ck off, you can eat more ice cream

I have written before about this woman at my work; her name rhymes with Leggy, so let's just call her Leggy. She is indeed leggy as well as being fond of high-waisted jeans. She's a tall, very slim woman with long arms, fingers, legs, toes (oh, yes I've seen her toes... she wears some ergonomic sandals that have separators between each toe!), and a very long nose, figuratively speaking. She's always in others'
business and believes herself to be the patron saint of healthy eating, riding a bicycle, buying a house on the cheap, Lasik eye surgery, the benefits of metal braces over Invisalign, why people should never buy bottles of water (the bottles pollute the environment), and how to not be fat. This is probably her favorite topic. She brings her food from home and heats it up in the microwave and I don't ever know what exactly it is, but it fits in one tiny plastic container the size of a man's wallet and it smells like wet cat food.

Upon returning from her lunch break today, which she enjoyed out in the sunshine (to be fair, she actually ate out of a round container today, the diameter of which was about the same as that of a teacup SAUCER) she cheerfully informed me that it is almost bicycling season. She thinks I ought to ride my bike to work. I actually don't have a bike, but I did tell her once that I have one, just to avoid the painful conversation about WHY I DON'T HAVE A BIKE. For authenticity's sake, I simply described Dear Daniel's bike to her, down to the color, brand, shifting mechanism, pros and cons. I added some strategic whining about not wanting to ride in the dark of early morning or early evening. That got her off my back about riding to work for a few months.

Now it is getting lighter out and I apparently no longer have an excuse for not riding my non-existent bike to work. She told me this today, and her parting shot was a cheerful, "You can eat more ice cream!"

God! It's just so dated to me, the way she maintains her weight, by a careful balancing of calories expended and calories taken in each day; her little tiny cat food casseroles, her weird obsession with ultra premium ice cream. I rarely eat that kind of ice cream anyway, just because it's milky and rich and I can taste the eggs, not because I'm afraid of being FAT. Who gives a fuck? In reality, don't most people, most kind-of-not-wealthy American women my age, have days when they eat nothing but carbs and cheese and other days when they eat nothing but diet soda and cigarettes and probably semen? Half the people are obese and the other half are anorexic, and we're all screwed up about food and our bodies because of our stupid baby boomer parents, like her! I'm lucky to be in the middle of the whole stupid fat-skinny continuum and I really feel like it's as much genetic luck as the careful balance of my macaroni and cheese with my hikes through the forest.

That said, I really do want to spring for a huge 5 gallon of ice cream from Costco or some other equally horrible food source (oh yes, there's the food-related class snobbery coming out) and put it in the freezer at work, unmarked, to see who gets into it.

The Beautiful Orchid Urinals

I made a brief and stealthy trip to the 56th Annual Pacific Orchid Exposition yesterday; brief because I'm recovering from a cold and stealthy, well, I just felt like saying that.

There were so many incredible plants, many of them so strange as to seem otherworldly. There was an orchid called Dracula Exasperata! There were many orchids bearing signs that said "FRAGRANT!" and "SMELL ME!", because most orchids aren't fragrant, unlike, say, roses, which don't really need signs inviting you to smell them; everyone knows they're fragrant. Let me just tell you-- Did you read that novel The Lovely Bones, in which heaven smells different for every one, and smells like each dead person's favorite smell when they were alive?-- I've often thought about what my heaven would smell like-- cinnamon buns? Chocolate bread pudding baking? Now I KNOW-- heaven smells like fragrant orchids. Seriously. There was never a softer, greener, more delicate fragrance in all the world.

And now we shall segue coarsely to the orchid urinals by artist Clark Sorensen.
This strange mix of art and bodily function had many show-goers gaping in surprise and delight. Some people disapproved, but I saw more than one perfectly nice older lady giggling, and it was mostly women who approached the sculptures pelvis forward as if they were going to pee in them.

The fifth photo is one of the SMELL ME orchids. The next is the plant I took home. You would have to have an iron will not to buy a plant at the Orchid Expo! Phalaenopsis are pretty common but I've never had one with spots that look just like ink before!

Last photo is my favorite orchid of the show, presented by White Oak Orchids in a display called "A Spidery Wild Side".

I may never brush my teeth again

Maybe that's a little overly dramatic. I will brush my teeth again, but I am coming to the end of my last tube of Lush's White Toothpaste; an apparently discontinued item.

Because Lush Cosmetics has a cult following, and because they frequently roll out new items and discontinue other items, Lush devotees usually pass information about what's going to be discontinued in these chat forums on the Lush website. Fortunately, I also live in a city with two Lush stores, and the people who work there usually share information about discontinued items as well, so you can stock up on the stuff you like before it goes away.

I didn't read or hear anything about the toothpaste. They had a black one and a white one, both came in these small tubes, less than 1 ounce each, like your standard trial size toothpaste. At $6 each, they were pretty expensive, but I love the White Toothpaste because it tastes like vanilla and makes your teeth feel really squeaky clean. Some people say it also seemed to have a whitening effect (I'm not sure about that. I had my teeth professionally whitened with the Zoom! process so personally, it's hard to tell). It also didn't bubble up or lather up the way most toothpaste does, and you could drink orange juice or champagne right after brushing your teeth, unlike with mint toothpaste.

I had two tubes of this stuff at home when I went to Lush and noticed they had no more. Fighting panic, I asked the person working at the store if they were getting more. "I think so, " she said. Some investigation revealed that this item is actually discontinued! ACK! Had I known, I would have bought at least a dozen; that's how much I love this toothpaste!

I hear they have fancy flavored toothpaste in Japan; Japanese toothpaste is apparently what inspired Lush to make the White Toothpaste and Black Toothpaste in the first place. Despite having a cold, I will be heading over to Japan town today after dragging myself to the once-a-year Orchid Society show. I can't miss the orchid show; even if I had been put in a full body cast yesterday I would still be going to the orchid show today!

For Meagan, who loves color!

No one loves color more than my friend Meagan and me, and she wears a candy-colored necklace where each bead is a different colored fruit sour like no one else can, not to mention her black with neon colors Spank Rock tee shirt with the neck cut out 80's style.

I'm not sure where this love of the 80's came from; I think it's because we were both a little too young to enjoy it the first time it came around! I was just a kid, and while I admired all the teenagers and young adults in their 80's fashions, I was dressed in a blue plaid polyester school uniform five days a week and whatever painfully preppy play clothes my mother had me in on the weekends.

Home sick, there's not much to do; I can't even concentrate on an adolescent lit novel. Browsing online retailers is pretty much the extent of what I can handle, in between making batches of echinacea tea. I found these Betsey Johnson shoes on Zappos.com.

Meagan, these would look so good on you! (Her feet are really tiny. Not that I think wild shoes only look good on small feet, but you know what I mean.)

Sakura Souffle Pens

I went to Wondercon 2008 this past weekend, and oddly enough, I ended up with very few comics-related items. Sakura pen company, maker of Gelly Roll pens, was there promoting their Souffle pens and some Sumo wrestling tournament they sponsor.

The Souffle pen looks like a pen but has special ink inside. It goes on wet but dries to a thick, pastel, opaque shiny raised finish. You can write on metal, glass, and plastic. They were giving out these packets of outline stickers, which is the easiest way to use the Souffle pens. You put down an outline sticker and fill in the outline with the ink. The sticker makes a little raised border to hold the ink, which is pretty runny at first, in place. Scrapbookers know all about this, apparently.

I had too much fun doodling and decorating my MAC lipstick cases! After I did a few, plus my iPod shuffle, I looked around the house for more stuff to decorate. DD tried to keep this decorating urge in check by pointing out to me that I have MANY lipsticks that have not yet been decorated.

These came out awesome, in my opinion! And it helps me know which is which. I really do have twenty or so lipsticks all in the same cases.

Don't We Deserve Fiesta ware?

One of the problematic parts of my job is that although there is no office manager, many office manager-type tasks fall to me. Fast forward to my choosing some new bowls for our kitchen, because all the bowls have "gone missing."

Our kitchen at work is gross. It's beyond dirty. Everything is just kind of old and shabby and that's okay, but it's the dirty part that freaks me out. Like parts of the wall where it meets the sink where the grout is missing and mildew is growing, and linoleum that is peeling at the edges, only the edges are like four inches broad. Departments take turns cleaning it, each department getting one week, and then your turn comes around about once every six or eight weeks.

Our silverware and dishes came from the Goodwill, or they come from employees like me who donate to the kitchen. Everything is a weird mismash, which would be fine, but there's got to be some standard, and the really weird things, in my opinion, have to go, like a plastic plate that has some unicorns on it that someone literally got from Burger KIng ten years ago... or things that are chipped to the point where the material could harbor bacteria. Our old finance manager would just take herself to the local Goodwill every six months and come back with an assortment of truly depressing dishes.

She's gone now. All the bowls disappeared to the dark recesses of messy desks and the scary locker room. I ordered Fiesta ware, which is not made in sweatshops (make in the USA), has a long and interesting history, is colorful, sturdy and reasonably priced.
You would think people would be happy, but everyone had something to say. Some people told me their dire predictions: "everything will disappear". Some people reacted as though I busted out my company credit card and ordered a full set of friggin' Wedgwood fine china. The sad part is there are fewer than 100 people in the company, and about 25 of them are truck drivers who are never in the office and kitchen anyway. So there are only about 60 of the rest of us, and yet we don't think our coworkers deserve anything even somewhat decent. I've never worked with such a large proportion of people who disliked themselves so much and felt they deserved so little.

Anyway, I kind of like Fiesta ware. The colors I chose for work are a little bit too reminiscent of original Skittles for my taste (good for work but not for home.)
The colors I would collect are: Sea Mist, Persimmon, Chartreuse, Turquoise and Peacock.

Scent Free

I've worked at two "scent free" workplaces in the past five years. Scent free means you're not supposed to wear perfume or use any weird chemicals because people may have allergies or sensitivities to the scents or chemicals. While I would appreciate not having to smell perfumes, say for instance CLINIQUE HAPPY (hate!), the scent free standard just doesn't really work at all. It mostly works on the honor system. Those who don't get it or who don't want to get it will still come to work doused in their usual perfumes. And then there are those who smell like mildew and body odor. I daresay I'd rather they smell like the dreaded Clinique Happy.

I have one co-worker who is allergic to lavender scent. The interesting part, the part that evokes some skepticism, is that she's allergic to real lavender and she also freaks out if she smells fake, chemical lavender. Another person says she hates the smell of mint. She told me this because I was wiping down the kitchen with unscented, natural spray cleaner to which I had added a few drops of peppermint oil. "Do you not use mint toothpaste?" I asked her. She just repeated that she hates mint.

When "scent free" doesn't work on the honor system, or people don't honor it, the scent police at work (oh yes there are self-appointed Scent Police!) will point out that you smell like something. A passive-aggressive, "Huh. You smell like something... huh. PERFUME?" with the word perfume uttered with shock, disbelief, triumph and scorn.

I don't wear perfume to work, like I don't get the little atomizer and SPRAY myself before heading off to work, but I certainly do use soap, shampoo and hair products, and then body lotion that has some very slight fragrance to it, and deodorant. Plus I add a few drops of lemongrass oil or tangerine oil to our laundry as its drying, but that's because our detergent is completely unfragranced, so our clothes smell like nothing instead of smelling like Tide or whatever. I really don't think I smell like much. Maybe if you get close to me and whisper something to me you'll smell something. I feel like I'm being a good citizen of work by not wearing perfume or scented stuff to work, and it really annoys the hell out of me when people actually wear perfume, like they purposely sprayed it on that morning! It also really pisses me off when people smell like BO or rotting socks or when the company owner's dog pisses or poops inside the building. Or when high level managers walk by smelling like a weed dealer. That's the really annoying part of the scent-free workplace... the hypocrisy and the flagrant disregard of the rule!

Angelique Houtkamp

Dutch artist Angelique Houtkamp's work is just so awesome. I love her flapper-esque dolly faces and 1920's imagery with the nautical, arachnid, tattoo and animal themes. Check her out if you never have.

If you know the alphabet, be a poll worker!

I know the poll workers are all volunteers. And I know a lot of them are retirees. Also, where I voted, at least a few of them appeared to be middle school students... and yet, when you arrive just before 7:00 am to vote (for one presidential candidate and about three propositions) IT SHOULD NOT, EVEN UNDER ANY OF THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, TAKE TWENTY THREE MINUTES! The poll workers were just barely unpacking their boxes when I arrived. They had no clue what to do. It took them a full five minutes to find me (as well as the three people in front of me--five minutes each, totalling a fifteen minute wait before it was even my turn) on the roster. They had to open the special secret box you feed your ballots into and fiddle with it. They thought "Green Party" was the same as "Independent." They couldn't find DD's address even though he was in line right after me and we live at the same address.

Really, if you're a reasonably logical person who knows the order of letters in the alphabet and can do basic math at third grade level (isn't that when they learn addresses? Third grade?) you MUST volunteer to be a poll worker next election. I have to do it. I now consider it my civic duty to spare everyone in my voting area from a similar experience next time.

Edward Gorey's Dracula

Yesterday was my last chance to see the Dracula exhibit at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum, so DD and I went. The stage sets and costumes were designed by Edward Gorey in the 1970's and he won a Tony for the costumes.

The Cartoon Art Museum is more like a gallery than a "museum", if, like me, you think of a grand place when you hear the word "museum". On this particular day the Cartoon Gallery was filled with rain-wet bratty tourist children whose parents were apparently unfazed by their screaming, wrestling, whining and bumping into artwork on the walls.

Still, it was worth it to see Edward Gorey's original drawings for the Dracula sets, with all his tiny, meticulous pen strokes and his neat italic handwriting! The best parts, to me, were the real invitations to the play's openings in New York City and London.

http://www.cartoonart.org/

I HATE THE SUPERBOWL!

It's so dumb. And it's so repressed-homoerotic. I hate all the shouting. And I hated all the mom-and-daughter escapees downtown today!

How to Give Your Stuff Away for Free.

In the attempt to de-clutter my apartment I'm forever assessing my junk and giving it away. My stuff is in pretty good shape, but I'm too lazy to try to sell it, so I give it all away via the Craigslist "Free" section. I gave away all this stuff this weekend: a bunch of cheap wineglasses and water goblets that were used for large dinner parties, three decorative pillows from Crate and Barrel in colors I never really liked so they just sat in my closet for the past two years, and several handbags from when I was into vintage-y, feminine clutches. They, too have been sitting in the closets for the past 5 years and have not seen the light of day or the moonlight of evening since 2002.

At least, I'm trying to give away the handbags. The woman who is coming to get them is completely unable to follow directions and has been on the phone with DD for the past HALF HOUR trying to find our apartment. I should have known when she slowwwly asked me for my address... and I patiently told her it was on the ad and gently suggested she do a mapquest or google maps kind of thing. Then she asked me to hold on while she wrote down the address from the internet and then read me the directions from her computer.

Giving your gently-used items that you no longer want away for free is good, of course. You don't want them, they're still good, and someone else really wants them.
They don't go into the landfill (at least not for a while). But sometimes dealing with strangers you meet in the free section of a classified ads website is excruciatingly difficult! My formula (which obviously failed miserably with this handbag woman) is to take clear photos of the stuff, and include photos in the ad. This keeps people from asking questions. Then I record an outgoing message on my voice mail saying people can leave a message if they are interested in the stuff. When I have a few messages, which usually takes all of thirty seconds, I take down my ad and listen to the messages.
Then I call back the person who sounds coherent and somewhat intelligent. I dunno. I called the handbag lady because she was talking to her obviously small child in the background and I felt like I wanted the young mom to have some pretty, almost-new handbags. After talking to her about five times for a total of about 45 minutes telling her how to get here, I not only wish I'd never called her, but I judgementally think she never should have reproduced.

Rain, Day 28

It feels as though it has rained every day for a month.
Is it still winter?
Was it ever warm?

I'm sick of it!

Charm Obsession

I boarded the Juicy Couture charm train late in the game. I don't even know how long Juicy Couture has been making these things, but it all started for me in May 2007. My friend M. and I had started hanging around the costume jewelry case at Bloomingdale's staring down at the vast array of Juicy charms. They're large, and many of them are very detailed, with little rhinestones, tiny writing, parts that move, and parts that open, revealing little details inside, like a heart box of "candy", only the "candies" are many multicolored rhinestones. There's a jewelry chest that open, revealing tiny gold chains and strands of pearls, and a mini snow globe that really works.

I bought her the starter charm bracelet and a charm for her birthday mostly because I was glad that she liked something yellow gold (the bracelet is gold plated). She's quite the little goth and the whole time I'd known her, which is about 5 years, she'd disliked yellow gold, preferring silver. I love yellow gold-- I love white gold, too, but yellow is most flattering on me. I always thought yellow gold would be most flattering on M, too, because as a child she had a lot of honey/gold tones in her hair (which is now a darker brown).

Some time later, our friend R. bought me a Juicy charm bracelet, too, and I began collecting charms. Recently I got R. a bracelet as well. Juicy makes several different bracelets, so ours are all different, and we each have different charms. M. and I love to discuss charms when we're bored, ranking the ones we like and dissing the ones we don't.

This one is actually my *second* Juicy charm bracelet! After I saw the movie Blood Tea and Red String, I started to love red, white and blue. Not in a patriotic, American flag way, but more in a French-y, nautical, classic way.

The blue swallow (sparrow?) was a Christmas gift from M. and the nautical heart was a recent "just beacause" gift from DD. The red heart came with the bracelet and is the only part that doesn't come off.

I'm on the hunt for a red, white and blue popsicle charm and a red and white life preserver charm. Both are discontinued and difficult to find.

Soup in a Can

When people think of "comfort food" a can of vegetable soup does not usually come to mind. However, for whatever combination of reasons, I have loved Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable soup for as long as I can remember. Once upon a time I was playing with some kids who belonged to a friend of my dad. Our dads were negotiating over some decrepit, non-running VW bug for what felt like hours, and the (evil) kids informed me during the course of our play that meat is a dead animal. I was quite sure this was a lie, so I asked my dad, "Is meat a dead animal?" He was caught off guard and unprepared to answer this question, but I have to hand it to him-- he didn't lie. The (evil) kids said, "HA HA, WE TOLD YOU SO!" I was furious at "not being given a choice" about what I ate and refused to speak to my dad for several hours.

My mother's solution to my vegetarianism was Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable soup.
Okay, not very creative, but she was young and we were poor. I could make the soup myself, being careful with the electric can opener and standing on my stool at the stove. I ate a friggin' lot of that soup. And because I prepared it for myself and ate it the few times a year my mom let me stay home from school (I feigned illness)
alone, it took on this very pleasant association for me.

Now, I know how to make homemade chicken soup and homemade vegetable soup and potato cheese soup, and I'm not a vegetarian, but I still eat this soup! You know, it has a meager amount of noodles in it and the vegetables are square and small and mushy but I still like it.

I've finally found an acceptable substitute. It's Amy's Alphabet soup, and like my beloved it's got alphabet pasta, a tomato base and some small pieces of vegetables in it. Unlike my beloved, it's organic, and that's really good! We will live happily ever after. And so, Campbell's Vegetarian Vegetable soup has been added to the list of (beloved) conventional foods I no longer eat, along with Diet Coke, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and any number of Dorito-Cheeto type items.

Goodbye French Country... Hello Modern!

Today I sold my dining table and four chairs. This thing has been with me through three apartment moves, two cities, a lot of dinners. It's a nice little round, with two leaves you can put in to make a pretty huge table that seats 10. The problem is that even at its smallest, it's a little big for any dining area I've ever had and am likely to have here in San Francisco. It fit well into the first apartment's dining area, but in the second one it was just totally wrong (it was really a kitchen with a breakfast nook, not fit for a formal dining table at all) and in my dining area now, it's too big. If it were square it would be fine.

So, I've got my heart set on a sleek square, chocolate colored wood table with a glass top, which opens into a rectangle twice its size for guests. It stores its own leaf--the glass leaf slides under the top glass surface. I love that! I'm sick of wrestling with this table's leaves, which are heavy and which are stored in fabric leaf cover felt bags and take up practically a whole coat closet. I'm on a quest to maximize our small space! My goal is to have a place for everything and everything in its place, and that every item will pass the test-- either beautiful or functional, and hopefully both. This table, which no longer suits, is moving on to another family. I'm so excited!

Made in Italy, Made in... China?

We received a small end-of-year bonus at work, and when I say small, I do mean small.
It was half the amount of last year's, and to add insult to injury, it came with a letter from the company owners in which they used the word "duel" when they meant "dual".

Fighting my initial impulse to wipe my ass with the check and flush it away ("money is money...") I cashed it at their bank, that day, and spent it all in one place (not hard to do): Kate Spade. I don't love a lot of Kate Spade, but I liked this distressed gold and pink wallet, and I'd been using a thin case that only holds an ID, bills and two credit cards. Coins were always loose in my purse and the ID case is insubstantial.

For the price, you would think this little number would be made domestically or in a country where workers are paid a decent wage! Kate Spade is made in China, and a rather obtrusive white tag with MADE IN CHINA was firmly attached to the inside of the coin section of the wallet. Tacky. My friend Ruth carefully cut it out with a very sharp pair of scissors without leaving any white behind and without cutting the seam of the pouch (now there's a pal!). I don't know how I feel about that annoying detail of Kate Spade stuff. Of course, the wallet was, to me, free. Of course, someone with more money sense might say I should have added the small bonus to a Roth IRA or something; ha ha. (As we said in junior high: "Not!") Well, the wallet is super cute and very functional, and my ATM card and bus pass are both bright lime green, which looks pretty with the hot pink lining. So, I'm happy.

Cougars and Daddies

There's more interest in mainstream popular culture lately about sugar daddies and "cougars"-- the term "sugar daddy" has been around forever, but is "cougar" a relatively new term? It's new to me! Playing with age and power has been around in the leather community forever, too, but it seems fairly recent that websites devoted to sugar daddy dating and cougars hunting dating have sprung up.

I only semi-jokingly told DD that if we weren't together I'd definitely be a cougar in a few years-- a woman who prefers younger sexual partners, usually at least ten years younger. Getting older is weird... personally, I always liked to date people older than me when I was in my twenties, because when you're twenty-three, someone forty-two is just so much more interesting, together, well-traveled, has read more books and has more good stories to tell than someone your own age... can help you choose your wine, knows the difference between cashmere and camel hair, and thinks you're just the most adorable, soft-skinned, funny fresh young thing they've ever laid eyes (and hands) on. Then, I liked that age and power dynamic. Now that I'm ALMOST mid-thirties, I think it'd be fun to be that person to someone younger. I think that makes me a cougar kitten now.

My R2-D2 Mimobot

This is my new little flash drive. It has 1G of storage and it's just so cute!

It's made by Mimoco. They do limited editions in waves. So many of them are simply awesome!

The Coolest Thing About These Rocks

... is that they're chocolate!
from Sweet Dish candy store in San Francisco...

The Pregnant Goat

Out in the boonies where my mother lives, there's a ranch where people raise and sell llamas. It's only a few blocks from my mom's house. Every time I go visit her, I walk over to the llama ranch to see the llamas. They're really beautiful and graceful, and they have such big eyes and long eyelashes. They look very intelligent, and they're curious--they all come over to look at us when when we go by to look at them!

The people with the llamas also have a herd of goats. This time the goats were even more interesting than the llamas. They were totally pregnant. I've never seen anything quite like this pregnant goat. She looked like she'd swallowed a flying saucer. It was kind of disconcerting, actually.

And a Lump of Coal

This is a Nintendo DS Lite, and my little sister wants it. She is not a brat, she is not spoiled (in fact, she's deprived, in my opinion) and she did not throw herself onto the floor of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory screaming that she had to have it. She mentioned it to me when I saw her last, a few weeks ago.

I e-mailed our father to ask if he had already gotten it for her, in which case I would have gotten her some games for it. There are age-appropriate games for this thing, with such titles as "Build a Bear Workshop", "Hamsterz Life" and "Charlotte's Web."

Our dear father responded saying that she doesn't need this game, that she already has the "keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome, and that even if she had this game (meaning if I buy it for her) they will probably not let her play with it, because she doesn't need to "zombie out" in this way. My dad fancies himself a non-consumerist hippie, but only when it's convenient for him. Please, they live in an affluent neighborhood where white people and a handful of Asians who don't want to live around people of color and poor people go to live, and her mother drives a Mercedes. Hypocrites! The last time I saw my sister, her hair was a rat's next, uncombed, her pants were five inches too short and her shoes didn't match anything else she was wearing (none of it matched, actually). Why not get her some cute clothes? Soon enough she will have to deal with breasts, bras, body issues, and ugly office-appropriate clothing.

I'm hardly saying they're neglectful parents... they're just so out of it, so cheap (they can WELL afford the stupid Nintendo DS), and they dress her so goddamned ugly.
It's really a shame. And at my age (no longer in my twenties, shall we say) and my dad's (61) I can't exactly go off on him the way I'd like to. I'm old, he's old... I can't really just tell him where to shove his granola. My poor sister. Shall I give her a ball of homespun wool (I can pick the little fuzzies off my rug and save them for this) and two sticks to knit with as her educational, non materialistic Christmas gift?

I have half a mind to go out right now and buy an overpriced, hot pink velour sweatsuit that says "SPOILED JUICY BRAT" or "HOTT JUICY KID" (or some such nonsense) on the back and send it off to her... WITH the Nintendo DS Lite. In pink.

Twilight

I've just finished reading, in rapid succession, the three novels in the "Twilight Series," a vampire teen love story/thriller by author Stephenie Meyer. I thought it was a trilogy, but apparently there is another novel in the works.

Twilight has a cult following, and is quite a phenomenon. (A movie is forthcoming.) It taps into a lot of the romantic fantasies that make people tick, I think. There's a gorgeous guy (Edward) who is mature (he's something like 100 years old, though physically he's stuck forever at age 17), rich, generous, protective and hot. The female protagonist, Bella, is sort of the classic heroine of romance novels: smart, beautiful but she doesn't know it, stubborn, headstrong yet vulnerable, kind of unemotional with most people, but of course extremely passionate with the guy she's in love with, and so forth. I think that's the gist of the romantic plot, but there are many twists and turns, and the novels create and describe the magical/supernatural realm in ways that really pull you in! They're very fun to read... Freud be damned... and adolescent literature is still a genre that I love.
Although a lot of adolecent lit does have sex in it (did that start with Forever, in 1975, by Judy Blume?), the Twilight series (SPOILER ALERT!) doesn't. It's a big sexual tease, actually!