Scanning my #$@! photos: A 21-Day Salute (Day the first)

look ma, one hand! Despite my busy-ness, despite my picayune woes, and mainly because I am both stubborn and perverse, I am going ahead with my monster plan for the next three weeks.

Yes, from the obsessive neurons that brought you Cheering the Hell Upâ„¢ and Cleaning My Damned Apartmentâ„¢ comes the next 21-Day Saluteâ„¢, Scanning My #$@! Photosâ„¢. You have The BF's anal-retentive brother to thank for this; on my recent visit to The BF Family Farm, I was both agitated and inspired by the masterful job The BF's Brother (a.k.a., TBFB) did on the family photos.

I suppose I should have dug deep, deep down into the detritus of my ancestors' photo boxes to find some more appropriate salutory photo. But frankly, I suspect that if one exists, it is at the very bottom of a scarily large pile.

So instead, I have chosen the above gem, taken on the set of one of the many Gatorade commercials I authored, me, whose lack of coordination was rivalled only by her lack of fashion sense.

Lest you miss the finer, more spectacular points of this photo, I must needs point out the following:

1. That actor-boy is holding up my out-of-shape, copywriter ass WITH ONE HAND!!!

2. My (white) cross-trainers have Velco straps!!!

3. I am wearing an actual Tilley Hat!!!

Betcha can't wait 'til tomorrow...

xxx c

If computers R the sp@wn of S@t@n, why @M I const@ntly coming up with @ddition@l re@sons to use one?

zuikkin' english My Macs continue to conspire against me, one getting hinky as soon as I get the other one fixed. For months I've been hobbling along on my 12" PowerBook, watching my useful time working in Photoshop slowly shrink as the program decides to lock up more and more, in much the same way that it did on my G5 before it went south in July.

Die on me once, shame on you; die on me twice, shame on you, you mercenary POS robber barons.

Sigh...

So this afternoon, after a new business meeting down in Orange County, I'm driving back up to one of the 67 Apple stores in the Los Angeles area to give them even more of my money. Why?

(a) Because #@*() Apple won't let me install the Tiger OS that came with my $2800 PowerBook on my $3000 G5 and I need it to sync the computers and end this madness

(b) Because I killed the "a", "q" & "1" keys on my spare keyboard and I'm tired of swapping back & forth or finding work@arounds

(c) All of the above

---

For some reason, WordPress decided to gobble up 1/3 of this post between my pushing the "publish" button and it showing up on a browser near you. I don't know why; clearly, I am more technologically handicapped than I even realize.

Anyway, as I said (I think) the first time I posted this, the events of the past several days have helped me understand why The BF says he must visualize half-clad young Japanese women before he can wrap his mind around other people's stupid computer questions. I am just trying to take care of my own stupid computer problems and all I can think about is a stiff bourbon and a long, hot bath, followed by a swift whomp to the head with a 2x4 before falling into a deep, deep sleep until sometime next year...

xxx c

Image above is a still frame from a Japanese TV show called Zuiikin' English, in which half-clad young Japanese women aerobicize to common English phrases such as "I Was Robbed by Two Men" and "Spare Me My Life." Via TV in Japan.

The downside of getting your shit together

Oh, no! You start with the easy stuff: cleaning. Sorting. Trips to Goodwill. More trips to Goodwill.

Then maybe you drop a pursuit or two, say, your previous livelihood, for example. And then maybe you add another, one that you know will prove useful to your down-the-road self, but that you're not too facile with now so it takes a lot of time. A lot of non-paying, stress-raising time.

And as you prune and cull and pitch and clean, you start to notice what's left, say, your heart's desire, for example. Which should be a series of shiny, happy moments for you and that organ in the top left quadrant of your chest cavity, only it feels more like someone took all your clothes away and hid them in a closet and then ripped off a wall of your house and replaced it with glass.

So instead of feeling happy and graceful and proud and clean, you feel like a lumpy, pigeon-toed spaz who's been thrust into Swan Lake against your will and everyone else's better judgment.

I've never said it before, but I'll say it now: the only change that's easy to make is four quarters for a dollar.

And only that when you've just come from the bank...

xxx c

Most excellent photo by Javier Bravo via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Shedding excess baggage

luggage I've gotten a little better with the clothes packing; I generally come home from a trip with everything worn, plus or minus that extra pair of underpants I threw in just in case.

But I still take along too much stuff-stuff: books, magazines, and a to-do list sixteen days long called All the Crap on My Laptop. If I were flying to Perth and back with four layovers and weather delays at each, I wouldn't have the time to get through the stack of New Yorkers alone, much less all the projects I plan to fill my many, many idle hours of travel with.

Here's what I ended up doing: walking...a lot. Eating...a lot. Doing that thing you do in motel rooms a lot...a lot. (What? You don't watch late-night cable and drink bourbon when you're on vacation? Wackos.)

And in those few waking hours when I wasn't hanging out with some nice Bloomingtonian or walking the farm or driving around The Half-Blind BF (he lost a contact mid-trip), did I do the work I brought with me to do? Oh, no. I walked around a bookstore, looking for more not-work to do.

So how is it that on the way home, my baggage felt significantly lighter? And that this morning, despite a delayed flight (where yet more work did not get done) which also delayed bedtime until 2 am, I woke up feeling rested and refreshed instead of anxious and fretful?

Yeah. I guess I got my work done on this trip, after all...

xxx c

Photo by Sidereal via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

How to avoid writing (almost) entirely but get your curtains (almost) finished

copenhagen curtains 1. Start a new project.

2. Start another new project.

3. What the hell, start a third, while you're at it.

(IMPORTANT: Do not drop any previous projects.)

4. Ignore obligations and accompany friend to see great new show.

5. Become obsessed with getting known universe to see #4.

6. Spend hours on phone attempting to accomplish #5.

7. Watch nonstop television in anticipation of #1.

8. Bust out sewing machine in disgust over procrastination/vain attempt to multitask and justify #7.

9. Break sewing machine.

10. Post to blog about 1–9.

xxx c

Photo by svanes via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

A loaf of bread, a crapload of artichoke dip and thou

tour guides

I had my gals over last night. They are an extraordinary bunch and deserve only the finest: delicious food, wine that costs more than $5/bottle and a clean, clutter-free environment in which to enjoy both.

Since we've finally been gifted with The End of the Horriblest Summer on Record, I thought I'd bust out the Chief Atheist's family gravy recipe, a.k.a. pork-and-tomato-flavored crack, with meatballs, and kick off the season properly.

I am pleased to report that I have worked out the last kinks in making the recipe 100% SCD-compliant. I have not, however, received official permission to release the recipe to the general, salivating public, so you're all going to have to feed your own red lead jones via the Soprano family recipe I linked to in a previous gravy-related post.*

But since I am not a completely heartless bitch, I will provide you with another amazing recipe I adapted from the back of a Trader Joe's product:

Tasty Artichoke Dip

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 can artichoke hearts packed in water, drained
1 fistful fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, washed & dried, stems removed
buncha (1/4 c? 1/2c?) extra-virgin olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Pulverize garlic in food processor. Add artichoke hearts and parsley. Process, drizzling olive oil as you go until you see a nice, pulverized mix (1/4 - 1/2 cup or more, depending on how decadent you want to be). Add salt & pepper to taste.

Eat with carrots if you are an SCD-er, or delicious bread if you are blessed with a normal digestive tract.

Bonus benefit: not only is it SCD-compliant, it is also IC-safe as well! And it actually tastes good, I swear!

Well, okay, not as good as the gravy, but come on: what doesn't taste better with pork?

xxx
c

*UPDATE: Gravy boy pulled his link. Until I can post the real deal, this is the most authentic recipe I can find.

Most excellent photo courtesy of Patrick Q via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

I like to watch too much

gaping maw of farrah When normal people have to do something, they do it.

When type-A people have to do something, they do it...and blog about it.

Introducing My TV-Free Year, a long, long, long overdue effort.

Officially launching on October 23. Countdown already in progress...

xxx c

UPDATE 2/14/16: URL & site content long gone. Excelsior!

"Gaping Maw of Farrah" mashup = farrah_logan (by ambientfusion) + Gaping Maw of Disney (by libraryman), all via Flickr and all released under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0 license.

How I pulled my head out of my ass

solid rock jesus I was never much for church.

My parents were good Catholics, at least, as good as divorced parents can be, and I was sent to Catholic school. But it was staffed by a teaching order of nuns, so there was no real accountability outside of class, and Divorced Dad either took us to the guitar mass at the rich parish or the high Latin mass at the poor parish, so there wasn't much chance of my 9-year-old self being moved by the Spirit on Sundays, either.

Still, every week, I did the drill: kneel, cross, sit, stand, cross, sit, cross, stand, sit, stand, walk, cross, walk, kneel, sit, stand, eat pancakes. And honestly, outside of the pancakes (which were exceptional those rare weekends we went to the super-boring mass with my grandparents in Wilmette and were rewarded with Dutch Babies at Walker's), only two instances stand out.

The first was sometime after my First Holy Communion, putting me at around nine years old. This was circa 1970, post-Vatican II but pre-whenever it was that they let you take the communion wafer in your hands and stick it in your mouth yourself. Being a normal nine year old, I was dying to know what this Body of Christ actually looked like. I mean, come on: someone sticks actual Jesus on your tongue, you don't want to know what it looks like?

So I hatched a plot.

I would bring a plastic box with me to mass, clear, and with an EZ-open hinge. Since I'd already determined that the Savior had an extremely fast melting point, I developed an advanced mouth-breathing technique that would effectively keep my tongue dry from placement until I was back at my pew and could safely stick Him in the box. I practiced the maneuver from tongue grab to pocket in the privacy of my room until I was certain I could execute it with the necessary stealth. For once, I couldn't wait to go to church.

The day rolled around and I was stoked. It was cool enough that I could wear a coat with big pockets, not so Chicago-cold yet that I'd have to wear mittens in the drafty Cathedral. At the designated time, I walked to the front of the church, proffered my dry, sticky tongue to the priest and then, in a single, fluid move, ducked down my head, glided to my seat like Martha-Goddam-Graham and secured the Son of God in my emptied travel sewing kit with a click.

I was glowing with anticipation, Jesus throbbing away in my pocket like a hunk of infidel kryptonite when I felt The Claw, my mother's hand, surprisingly strong, biting into my tiny, stick-like arm. The Voice of Death followed swiftly: Put. That thing. In. Your mouth. NOW!

When people harumph about the abysmal math and science scores of American girlhood, blaming the patriarchy or gender favoritism in the classroom or Malibu Barbie in her overaccessorized beach house, I feel like waving a plastic sewing kit in the air and crying out No! It's ignorance! It's fear! It's the smothering of the exploratory impulse by the frightened executors of the status quo! I especially feel like doing this on those rare occasions where death (or death by sacred union) finds me in a church. Also, I itch like a sonofabitch, and in places I cannot safely scratch in a House of God.

The Church and me, you see, we are not so much for each other. Which brings me to the second incident, far briefer (thank GOD) and more to the point.

One day, while sitting in church, bored out of my skull, it occurred to me that these people around me, standing and sitting and kneeling, actually believed. They believed that Jesus was the Son of God, born of man. They believed that he was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead. They believed he was coming back at some point, and that anyone who wasn't in this room was in for it when that came down.

I would like to say that from that moment on, I was free. That on a cool, gray Sunday morning at Holy Name Cathedral on Chicago Avenue in 1970, I pulled my head out of my ass, saw the light, and was free.

Alas, it was not so. I was weak; I was nine. Divorce, its attendant difficulties and one particularly scary nun had already stripped me of whatever fragile self-esteem I'd managed to build up thus far. I saw the light, alright. And then I quickly stuck my head back where it couldn't get me in any trouble. It would take another 32 years, worlds of pain and a cosmic whomp in the gut for me to extricate it once and for all. 32 years. Oy, what a waste.

I'm not sure if talking about what I went through and what I learned from it will help anyone, but I feel like it's wasteful to not try. I started my blog two years ago with the vague notion of getting some of what was inside of me out there for other people to see. It seems to have worked, here and there, but it's time to make a larger effort. These words are one small part of that effort.

One small, pompous, but incredibly earnest effort.

Be well. Be strong. But mostly, don't be like me...

xxx c

NOTE: I'm doing this elsewhere, and this entry will probably be the only cross-post to the blog. I hesitated even putting it up here, but I figured if I'm going to be true to my word, I not only have to be transparent, but tell people where they can see (through) me. We now return you to your regularly scheduled communicatrix...

Photo by toxickaty via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Big Yellow Taxi

21910568_9c4ffd1f39_z I'll be honest: I prefer those periods characterized by boundless energy and the fruitful activity that accompanies it to the doldrums. But I learn more from the latter.

Yes, once again, my colon has decided to show me who's boss. It's a benevolent dictator, really: provided I toe the party line, I get to keep my fine job, spacious apartment and weekend dacha by the lake. But when I decide to be a spoiled brat and assert my right to individual expression in the form of forbidden carbohydrates and intensely caffeinated beverages, I get my ass kicked. Literally.

The good news is I'll finally get a semi-scientific read on how well these toxic immunosuppressants work to keep the bugs at bay vs. the diet. I have The Good Insurance through the end of the year, so tomorrow, I'm scheduling what will be the last of my free-ride colonoscopies for some time. And since this is the first time I'm getting one when (a) I'm on meds for reals and (b) I'm mad cheating on the SCD, I'll finally have actual, visual proof of what my gut has been telling me (literally) for a long time: I do better off carbs AND meds.

Not that my beloved-if-blinded-by-Big-Medicine GI docmeister will agree with me. But since I will pretty much be my own health insurance for the foreseeable future, his vote doesn't count for much anymore...

xxx c

Photo by esselNYC via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

,

To do: demonstrate the beauty of listmaking

,

75051646_83fae07c46_z

  1. Acknowledge listmaking's traditional, order-making properties
  2. Show fancy, web 2.0 examples of above
  3. Introduce idea of listmaking as creative and/or social activity
  4. Show masterful executions of the above that demonstrate my unparalled genius with the form
  5. Show earnest misfire that humanizes me
  6. Show that list on epinions so I can get my last $10 and cash out
  7. Show how to beautify lists with Flickr
  8. Direct people to Lisa Nola's site (include link to her lists)
  9. Pimp the communicatrix's listography
  10. Get the hell off internet and work on actual to-do list

xxx c

Photo by magillicuddy via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

visiting my furniture

by the fire I caught up with my past today. More specifically, I caught up with my ex-husband, whom I have dubbed for some time (with affection, usually...sometimes) the Chief Atheist of the West Coast.

I was but a girl of 28 when I met him, which is to say, I was a complete moron with my head so far up my ass, I could have given myself a colonoscopy had the lighting been a bit better. Long ago, I figured out his half of the responsibility for things tanking; it has only been in the last three or four years that I've not only accepted my own, but fully understood it.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable visit, which was not entirely surprising, since we were and are both very funny people. (Humble, too!) What was surprising, and pleasantly so, was the utter and complete feeling of relaxation about the event. For the first time in...oh, 15 or so years, nobody had an agenda and everyone was there to listen. Myself included. I was not always the paragon of communication I am today; in fact, much as Tom Leykis often says he understands the sh*t people do to each other because he has done it all, en route to becoming the communicatrix, I erred in pretty much every way one can when it comes to knowing yourself, hipping the rest of the world to it and sticking to your guns.

The only weirdish part of today's field trip was an unscheduled stop at The Chief Atheist's crib. He'd become a homeowner since we split up and was rightly proud of it, this ain't an easy market for non-millionaires to break into.

The place itself was perfectly nice and not weird at all (the restroom was a particularly welcome sight), but it was mighty strange to visit furniture and mementos I'd spent so much time around in previous lives. The Chief Atheist was a great fan of my paternal grandparents and inherited quite a few pieces when they passed on; seeing the tables and chairs I'd eaten Jell-O on as a five-year-old was more than I was prepared to deal with on a random Tuesday morning.

I am not friends with all of my ex-es. I'm not even sure I would like to be. The Chief Atheist and I agreed that the meeting was nice and that in a perfect world, other such meetings would happen maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

And that was that. I came, I caffeinated, I drove to Trader Joe's, where my conversation with the checker about the ongoing lack of Gerolsteiner (they're mid-repackaging, apparently) was just as drama-laden as the one I'd just come from with the man I was married to for 8 1/2 years.

It was a nice place to visit. Now that neither one of us wants to live there anymore...

xxx c

Photo © Linda Plaisted via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

the communicatrix elsewhere: talky mctalk-talk

toastmasters logoIf you've never been to a Toastmasters meeting and have always been curious, I'll be representing the Del Rey club in the Area A1 level of the Humorous Speech Contest tomorrow night. My topic? The One Thing Worse Than Public Speaking. I've already given it once to some acclaim at my local meeting, a couple of weeks ago. But I've lived the subject matter for some time. (Don't you hate it when I get all Woman Of Mystery on you?)

And while I plan to release all of my speeches as MP3s eventually, this one will probably be a live-only experience. Unless, of course, I get shitcanned tomorrow night, in which case I might just release it first, out of pique.

DETAILS:

Saturday, Sept. 30 Santa Monica Place Mall, Colorado & 4th Street, Community Room Registration: 5:30 (I have no idea what this means, but I've been told to be there by then) Call to Order: 6pm (if you have no idea what this means, see Robert's Rules of Order') Contest: 6-8pm

Admission is $9. There is some dinner included in that, probably from one of the food court establisments. You pays yer money, you takes yer chances.

There's parking for $3 in the mall, but I've been warned to get there EARLY (yes, in all caps) so as to make it on time.

The Toastmasters, unlike me, are very big on starting promptly...

xxx c

the communicatrix elsewhere: bonus GBSBS

GBSBS contributorsThere's a new bonus episode of the Great Big Small Business Podcast up featuring yours truly on online resources. Only I'm calling it a bonehead episode, since a major reason it happened is because I (drumroll, please) emailed my original MP3 contribution to myself.

Clearly, I have no business advising anyone else about business. Other than that, it's all good...

xxx c

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What's your mantra?

einstein/focus graffiti If I were Carly, surely the title of this post would have been, "I forgot my mantra" (and the subhead, "And stop calling me 'Shirley'").

If I were Neil, it might have been, "Mantra, schmantra."

If I were Brandon...hell, I dunno. He's got about 40 IQ points on me. Maybe "/mantra"?

But I am me, and my mantra is this:

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Now I know it's not a mantra in the traditional, Buddhic sense: a set of words used during meditation to provide a point of focus. I mean it in the more Westernized sense of a credo or motto, something I feel sums up who I am, what I'm working on and what I believe in.

But it is a half-assed mantra of sorts, in that I tend to use it, to actually say it aloud, or 'aloud' in my head, when I get into a tight place. And yeah, to complete the circle of craziness, 9 times out of 10 I find myself in that tight place because of my adherence to the credo/motto/mantra.

It's also more like a mantra in that it was cosmically gifted to me, not because I was hunting it down in Bartlett's. In fact, it came up so organically, I was pretty sure I thought it up myself, and was mighty proud of myself for being such a smarty.

Of course, I didn't. Via the magic of Google, I discovered that opera singer Beverly Sills had coined the phrase, which means I probably stumbled upon it first sometime in the '70s or '80s, when my mantra would have been something exactly the opposite, if my head were far enough out of my ass at that point to even have a mantra.

To seal the deal, my ersatz mantra was a natural progression from something I laid full claim to. For as long as I can remember anyone asking, which probably was sometime around the beginning of my sophomore year in college (a.k.a. that time in your life when you officially begin Pompous Ass-hood), my ready answer to the question "what is your pet peeve?" was "wasted potential".

(I think this is where Brandon and his 40 extra IQ points would type "/barfs".)

I have no idea if this will remain my mantra to my dying day, unless of course, that day comes way earlier than I'm planning on. But it's a good enough one to hold me: short, strong and sensible. Easy to follow, too. Except, of course, when it isn't.

Then again, that's the whole point of a mantra...

xxx c

More great pearls from Beverly, here.

Photo by Dave Gorman via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.