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A post about nothing

Um. I haven’t written anything in a while.

Correction. I haven’t posted anything in a while.

And now, so much time has passed that the voice in my head is saying, “Oh my god, are you kidding me, your next post has to be something really awesome to have made it worth taking this long to come into being, like having had a dragon land in your yard or something.”

A dragon has not landed in my yard. Just FYI.

What I need to do is post something, so I can get back into a rhythm without obsessing (which I do, but we’ll get to that later). So this post is about nothing. (Call it my Seinfeld post.) In fact, you probably shouldn’t even read this. It might be boring.

I don’t even have writer’s block, really. I have started writing about a number of things.  There are no fewer than five open Word docs on my laptop right now, in addition to this one. I have about 20 or so other starts in a folder. Some of them you may see someday.  Some will languish forever. Maybe because they aren’t fully formed ideas, but also maybe because I’m wayyyyyy better at starting things than I am at finishing them. Someday we can talk about Narnia, which, funnily enough, is what I call my Spare Oom. (Which probably isn’t funny at all if you haven’t read the first book.) Why Narnia, you ask? Well, in addition to the normal way to enter a room (through its doorway), you can also get to this room through a closet. Hence…yeah. Anyway, Narnia is filled with unfinished projects. The dollhouse I bought when I was 13 (which is currently disassembled because it kind of fell apart when I moved). A large bag of yarn that I bought to crochet an afghan for my ex-husband, which for obvious reasons I lost interest in when I got divorced, and also I no longer work with my Crochet Mentor who could teach me how to make things even though I can’t read patterns and do everything backwards because I’m left-handed. A big box of clippings and mementos for a nonexistent scrapbook. A box of mason jars for when I, you know, take up canning. (WTF.) And those are just the things I know off the top of my head. There are boxes in there. And bags. And piles of stuff. It’s not pretty in Narnia. It’s an uncompleted project wasteland.

Maybe it’s because I get distracted easily. I’m now mulling over the words “incomplete” versus “uncompleted”. I’m not actually sure uncompleted is a word, but it doesn’t have a red squiggly line under it, so it must be.

It’s officially autumn now, which we know not because the temperature is cooler (I had my air-conditioning on over the weekend), or because the leaves are turning, but because my TV is exploding with new television shows. As a pop culture junky who is also a little obsessive, I watch way too much TV in the fall. I used to limit myself to one new show a year. Now I identify every show I might be interested in and set my DVR to record the first episode or two, in addition to all the other shows I already watch. Because the slightly obsessive part of me can’t just watch a show from time to time. I have to watch all or nothing.  I started watching Scandal midway through last season, and over the summer I had to binge watch everything that came before. Same thing with Good Wife the year before, except I had three seasons to catch up on. So when new shows start, it feels like my opportunity to get in from the start and not be forever playing catch-up. Yes, I watch too much TV. I recognize this. It’s kind of sad how liberating I find it when summer gets here and my DVR can go back to storing movies for me to delete unwatched at a later date when it gets too full. But too much TV is another one of the lame reasons I haven’t been blogging.  Although some TV makes for good blogging background noise. Dancing with the Stars is the perfect companion for writing. No intricate plotlines to keep track of. At the moment I’m writing while attempting to watch new show Hostages, which is far too complicated for me to follow while doing something else. This suggests to me that I will be cutting it loose soon, if I don’t care that I’m not giving it full attention.

Speaking of yarn (well, you know, I said the word “yarn” a while ago), I was walking through Michael’s over the weekend while on a quest to find inspiration to fashion my own tie-backs for my living room curtains. Which was a failed mission. But I did get kind of swoony over all the pretty yarn. Way too swoony for someone who doesn’t actually know how to knit (at all) or crochet (without major guidance). It made me want to work on a project. WAIT, OMIGOD, I CAN TIE THIS ALL RAMBLING NONSENSE TOGETHER (sort of)! Because when I’m crocheting while watching copious amounts of television, it makes me feel productive, and like I’m not being a totally useless human. Plus, when it gets cold out, having a pile of yarn on your lap is warm and snuggly. Anyway, I’m thinking of attempting to figure out how to make something on my own. Eons ago, I bought a teach-yourself-to-crochet book. Even though I’m inept and left-handed, I’m not a complete idiot. Surely I can figure out how to do this. If I can find the book. It’s probably buried somewhere in Narnia.

And if a dragon ever does land in my yard, I hope it looks like this. I like how in this picture, Ruby and the dragon aren’t being confrontational with each other. (See tiny Ruby on the patio?)

Wendys Yard Dragon

(Thanks, 3Names.)

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Blogging, Humor, Pop Culture/Entertainment

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Who needs brown paper packages tied up with string when you have self-sealing envelopes?

A while back I posted a list of things that drive me crazy. Lest you think I’m a supercrab who only focuses on the negative, I thought perhaps we should have an equally obscure list of things that I adore beyond reason.  Let’s call it….

Things that make me unreasonably happy and sometimes I go on at great length about how much I love them:

  • Priority Mail prepaid flat-rate forever envelopes. Delivered to my home, for free. Or maybe they charge $1 to deliver, I’ve lost track, but still totally worth it for my work-from-home set up.  All I have to do is stuff them full, address them, and leave them outside my house for Mailman to pick up. Postage never expires. No waiting in lines. No fake nuns.  Woot!
  • Dropbox – It’s perfect for file sharing for work, since we’re in different locations. It’s perfect for volunteer work where people need access to the same documents. It’s perfect for accessing random crap from my phone, when I’m nowhere near my computer, like the list I made of movies that I used to own but no longer do but would like to again, in case I see one in a bargain bin somewhere. It’s perfect for everything. And it’s the easiest thing in the world to use. My mom was telling my about a medical emergency her husband had a few weeks ago (he’s fine, I promise) and in the story she had to leave the hospital to go home to email someone a document. My immediate reaction was, “I need to show you how to use Dropbox”.
  • Self-sealing envelopes. I know it probably seems that I’m obsessed with mail. I’m not. But I do like mail, and I do NOT like the taste of envelope glue. Plus, you know, George Costanza’s fiancée Susan. But mostly I can’t believe it took so long for someone to come up with these and now that they exist I appreciate the crap out of them.
  • Shazam. An app on my phone can listen to a few seconds of music and tell me what song it is and who sings it? THAT SHIT IS AMAZING! For this reason alone I consider my smartphone a worthwhile investment.
  • My scarf from Ireland. 3Names and I spent a marvelous week traipsing around and all I knew was I wanted to bring home some piece of knit something. I looked at loads of sweaters, but they were all big, bulky-looking affairs that aren’t my style and probably would have made me spontaneously combust. One day we were in a little shop on Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, where it’s literally like going back in time. In amongst some of the more typical souvenir-type items, I found a lovely, soft, colorful knit scarf, long enough to wrap around my neck twice when it’s really cold. The tag said it was hand-made in Ireland. Was this a trap for a gullible tourist? Ha! When I took it to the clerk to pay she said, “Oh, my neighbor Maggie made this.” I wear the crap out of it, but gently, so as to extend its lifespan, and when someone comments on it, I get all happy-like.
  • Fuzzy Blankie, capitalized because that’s its name, not just a description. Fuzzy Blankie was a gift from Sunshine a few years ago and it turned me into Linus. It’s warm. It’s soft. It’s fluffy. It’s comforting. It’s soft. (It’s so soft it deserves to be mentioned twice.) It’s white, and somehow, miraculously, the Queen of Spill (that would be me) has managed to keep it remarkably clean. Dogs are not allowed to lie on it.  Fuzzy Blankie is always there for me when I need it.
  • Compliments from strangers. No explanation required.
  • When Ruby Dogwonkafonka sticks her face right up in mine and burps. I know that sounds disgusting. Ok, it is disgusting. But it makes me laugh every time. Partly because it seems so deliberate, and she never looks sorry. And her timing is impeccable.
  • This one set of hand-me-down sheets that my dad gave me. I have no idea why he didn’t want them anymore. (I know exactly why he didn’t want them anymore; they didn’t match his décor.) They are so soft and comfy that they have made all other sheets completely inferior. I am on a quest to find something that will be their equal, but so far I haven’t found anything. Or anything that I can afford. But. I. Will.
  • This video. I am not sure how many times I have watched it, but I would guess it’s in the neighborhood of 36,284 times. I think it’s hilarious. (FYI, you’re only committing to a minute and thirty-eight seconds of your life if you click the link.)
  • The infamous rainbow shower head.  
  • This blog post. It makes me laugh my ass off. After Beyoncé, it’s the thing I’m most committed to getting the entire world to read.

    He totally goes with the chair with the missing leg, no?

    He totally goes with the chair with the missing leg, no?

  • Tomás, the colorful metal t-rex Klondike gave me for Christmas. Whose boyfriend is better than mine? Come ON, I have a t-rex in my freakin’ living room.  (My style is, um,eclectic.)
  • My next door neighbors, Jim & Phyllis. They give me vegetables from their garden and chili and baked goods from their kitchen. They let me borrow tools and ladders and a power washer. They keep an eye on me. And my house. And my dog. In a nice, neighborly fashion, not a Gladys Kravitz way.
  • Crack cookies. They don’t actually call them that at The Fresh Market, but they should. They actually call them something like Heath bar cookies, and they are stupid delicious. I make people eat them so I can get them to concede that they are, in fact, freaking amazing.

As said when the other, negative list concluded, this is not all-encompassing at all. It’s just my version of Maria von Trapp’s raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. (When did this blog become so full of nuns??)  Personally I think my list is a little better than hers, but she had to deal with Nazis so I’ll cut her some slack.

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Home, Humor, Just W, Pets

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Sometimes I am an idiot and sometimes I get it right.

In 2011, Mumford and Sons and The Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan all performed together at the Grammys. It was amazing. (Except for Bob Dylan, because he is really not amazing at all, ever.) It was the first time I’d heard Mumford & Sons (and probably the first for The Avett Brothers) and they knocked my socks off. The whole performance was killer, but I focused on Mumford. And I still love them. Yes. Muchly. My point, however, is that I did not fall in love with the Avett Brothers that night. I was too blown away by Mumford.  And sons.

I have several friends who like The Avett Brothers. They’re generally people who have respectable taste in music, but I never ventured into Avett territory to give it a listen. For some reason, however, I decided I should go see them when they come to town next month. The Avett Brothers, that is, not my friends. Although I’m not opposed to seeing my friends. In fact, I quite like some of them.

This scenario is peculiar, because I don’t usually to go to a concert when I really have no familiarity with the music. Not completely unheard of, however; 3Names convinced me to go see the Zac Brown Band with him a few years ago, even though I’d never heard of them, by paying for half my ticket, and he was right, it was a fun show. I do like to support things here in town, especially when they are uncommon, special, not your usual past-their-prime or not-yet-famous acts that pass through these parts. A few years back Ben Folds performed with the philharmonic and even though I dig him, I dig the Phil, and it definitely fell into that atypical for Fort Wayne category, I didn’t go. (This is the part where I am an idiot.) I had some legitimate reasons for not going, but mostly they were just stupid life things that I should have worked around. Everyone who went absolutely raved about how amazing it was. And I missed it. I could kick myself, still today. This is one of my biggest concert regrets in life, second only to missing Florence & the Machine open for U2. That was something I actually WENT TO, I just didn’t allow adequate time to get there. In my defense, East Lansing does not know how to move traffic. Jesus, people. It’s not like you have football games there all fall. Oh wait, it’s EXACTLY LIKE THAT. Learn how to move the freakin’ cars!

Anyway, I am determined not to have the same kind of concert regret again, and somehow I got it in my head that the Avett Brothers show would be something not to miss. I don’t know why exactly I thought that. But I bounced it off Klondike and he was game, and the tickets weren’t outrageous by today’s concert standards, so ok, let’s go. And the concert is Valentine’s Day. Klondike, act surprised by your present of concert tickets. 😀

So then I decided perhaps I should check them out ahead of time. By good fortune, Santa just gave me an iTunes gift card (I know, I’m Jewish, but iTunes! – who am I to say no?) so I downloaded “I and Love and You”. Oh, sweet Jesus, what took me so damn long?? I can’t remember the last time I loved a CD this much (even though it’s not a CD, it’s a collection of digital files, but I don’t know how to deal with that; I’m in the digital age, but reluctantly). Album. That might be the right word. Of course, that conjures up an image of a vinyl record. Whatever. Call it what you like, I’m in love.

I get to see them in concert in six weeks? Oh hells yeah. I’ll report back, but I fully expect it to be awesome.

This is the part where I get it right.

Oh yeah, and I just downloaded “The Carpenter”. Might as well keep going.  🙂

P.S. I tried to find the amazing Grammy performance for you, but no such luck, unless you want to watch a shitty video of someone watching it on TV. Seriously WHY do people shoot videos of their TV screen and post them on the internet?

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Friendship, Music

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The best $30 ever spent

I like stuff. I have a lot of stuff. Shiny, sparkly, colorful stuff. It’s all over my house. And I can be an impulse shopper, but I try to limit the dollars spent on shiny, sparkly, colorful impulse purchases. You can get more shiny, sparkly, colorful stuff (impulsively, of course) if you don’t spend too much on one shiny, sparkly, colorful thing. This is, in fact, one of the benefits of living alone: you don’t have to worry about whether anyone else likes your shiny, sparkly, colorful things, and no one cares about your impulse purchases.

(I just walked past another benefit of living alone. There is a heap of laundry on the floor over there, some in a basket, some just on the floor. It’s been there for, oh, a while. And no one has to know, or be annoyed by it.)

The other day I was reveling in the awesomeness of one of my impulse purchases, and I thought, “This is the best thirty dollars I have ever spent.”

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m talking about my (shiny) purple toaster, which I impulsively bought one day for $30 at Target, even though I had a perfectly functional (and boring) toaster already sitting on my kitchen counter.

Haha! Wrong! I do love, love, love my shiny purple toaster, and someday I hope to have more purple appliancy friends for it in the kitchen. But no, the amazing $30 dollar purchase I was marveling over was my showerhead. Don’t go there, it’s not what you think. I have a light-up, LED, color-changing showerhead. And it. is. da. bomb.

I first discovered it, of all places, on the Facebook wall of a local seafood restaurant. (We can discuss their lousy use of social media another day.) It was apropos of nothing, just a cool looking picture:


I reposted it to my wall because, holy crap that was pretty damn cool (and shiny and colorful)! And before I knew it, a friend had Googled it and located it for sale. And it was ONLY THIRTY DOLLARS. And there were only THREE LEFT!!!! It was a shiny, colorful, impulse purchase perfect storm. I hemmed and hawed for a few minutes. I mean, come on. I’m a grown up. (Sort of.) Is a light-up rainbow showerhead really what I need in my house?

Answer: hells yeah!

I ordered it. It arrived. I kept my expectations low. Were the pictures online and on the packaging a little misleading? Yeah. Does it lower my water pressure a teeny, tiny bit? Yeah. Does any of that matter? NO. It’s soooooo awesome! Especially in the dark.

Which is what happened the other night when I had my Best Purchase Ever revelation. I came home from a less-than-stellar Zumba class (NOT your fault, Lori, if you’re reading!!!!), and I was cold and tired and kinda crabby. Hot shower would be a good remedy for that anyway, but add in the bitchin color-changing lights and it is impossible to be in a bad mood in the disco shower with all the other lights off. It also might be kind of impossible to shave your legs with all the lights off, and hazardous getting out after turning off the pretty light-up shower, but who cares???? I kind of want to go take a disco shower right now, even though I’m fairly clean, having just showered earlier today.

It’s spreading, too. For my birthday, Klondike got me a faucet for the kitchen sink that lights up. That one is temperature-indicative. Blue lights for cold, red lights for warm, green for in between. It pretty much rocks, also.

Someday I’m going to die, and my house will be a realtor’s nightmare. Perhaps in my will I should indicate where I put all the original, boring, non-light-up water features (the linen closet, in case you should be the one settling my estate). In the meantime, it’s my house. Colorful silliness prevails.

Mine 🙂

Thanks, 3Names, for the groovy pics.

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UPDATED, 20 minutes post-publishing….

Um, yeah, so I might need to get this. Thanks, Krista.

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