Lucy's Spleen

Thirty-Two Things to Do

1. Give birth (to a human)

2. Try sky-diving

3. Dig clams

4. Ride in a helicopter

5. Travel in all seven continents

6. Visit all fifty states

7. Become a home-owner

8. Keep chickens

9. SCUBA certify

10. Commission a portrait of the two of us

11. Can preserves from wild edibles I forage myself (I'm looking at you, next summer's elderberries)

12. Host a foreign exchange student

13. Volunteer, full-throttle, for a political campaign

14. Take my mom on a tour of Western Europe

15. Drive the entirety of California State Route 1

16. Learn to play piano

17. Canoe in Everglades National Park

18. Employ advances in modern medicine to correct my natural "all but blind" myopia

19. Safari in Botswana

20. Leave a small inheritance to someone

21. Hunt fowl (and clean, cook, and eat any takings)

22. Sow, tend, and harvest a spectacular garden

23. Ride a camel as a means of transit

24. Volunteer at an elephant sanctuary

25. Create a quilt for someone

26. Sew myself a wearable garment

27. Manage a small home apiary

28. Man the signing-in book at my local polling station on voting day. Flip to the page for folks from my neighborhood without needing to ask for their names.

29. Explore a rain forest from within the canopy

30. Learn to climb on a top rope

31. Track genealogical records for my family and my husband's at back to the first US arrivals from the UK, France, Sweden, and Denmark

32. Keep making plenty of lists

Rule #1: No thinking about the archives. No looking at the archives. 

Can it really be that I have no chocolate hidden anywhere in this house? No? Oh, good.

The first three friend couples are in various stages of secret to full blown pregnancy. I am thrilled for them but also this hurts me in a deep, unexamined part of myself. It means I lose a part of myself, a deep-running piece of my identity which has been the self-held belief- and okay let's face it most people who know me have believed it also- that I would be the first. I'm disappointed in myself that I'm not ready like I thought I would be; I never finished college and now here's another way I have managed to fail. When am I going to start acting my age already?

On the other hand, don't get me near them because as I keep saying pregnancy is contagious and the reality is I don't want to be pregnant, not quite yet. For one thing, I think if I hold off I'll be the first of my Grandma's grandchildren to not already be knocked up at the time of walking down the aisle. Lu was a very religious woman and she only died a couple of months ago. I still can't believe she won't be there to see us married, but I believe she would have appreciated that a little bit. Also, I'm so outrageously happy right now. I'm too happy to care about being or not being parents yet. We are so in love and we slept in until 11:00 both days last weekend; we have few obligations and so goddamn much fun together- what's the rush? Third: I used to be religious as all hell and what can I say? I'm a little old fashioned still.

Things to make or do by the end of this weekend:

Re-cover the second of two Road Find chairs (do)

Hang new photo prints in living room (do)

Gyno appointment (make)

Vacuum everything (do)

Paint/hang new used shelf/towel bar in kitchen (finish). I've been multitasking by painting this shelf all the while of writing this post, drinking wine, and chatting with a girlfriend. I'm using the most incredible shade of green.

Moss, Lichen, Leaves, Stones

 

Exploring My Talent

1. Needless to say, I ignored the girl who wrote me on Facebook that, "I am trying to friend as many Emma's as possible we are the coolest! Ad me :)."

2. I'm depressed that I even know about this, but who in the hell is Miracle Whup trying to reach with its "will not tone it down" ad campaign? Does Kraft really think it's money well spent to try to sell me on "hardcore Miracle Whup attitude and revelry?" Also why does all the media coverage describe the campaign as "for hipsters?" It so doesn't even begin to be ironic enough for the Bacon Generation. Asserting that "snarfing sandwiches" will be "very cool and totally hip" is not hip. The terms "in your face" and "massively dope" are not hip. Miracle Whup is not hip, it's oil and corn syrup. Fuck you.

3. Well, at least there's this:

(From Craigslist musicians community listings - SLC)

Exploring My Talent

I just went through some hard time and found that I am indeed a man. I have learned to vocalize my feelings and thoughts with a genuine voice. Through the scream therapy I've been undergoing, I've realized I have a real voice for the screamo crowd. I think I could really pull it off if I had some good musicians behind me. It almost feels like Satan is talking through me the way my voice bottoms out in its gravelly baritone when I hit the bottom notes. However, I want to sing serious stuff, like messages of a political nature but through stories of animated characters (anime too). I would like to venture into the realm of Skinny Puppy too, if that makes sense. The important thing is to really enjoy what we're doing at have fun, but say something. I don't have any equiptment or mics, but I do own a mic stand. I think I have a cable that might work if I don't shake it too much. I no a drummer who is recovering from a crack addiction, but he seems really bent on the recovery--so there is that. I am looking for a guitarist and bassist who can really experiment with all this and let me in turn experiment with my new found voice. I am gettin a raise soon from 10.00 an hour to 10.50, so I hope to be able to save up for a mic. I have weekly recovery meetings and a few doctors appointments a month, but I should be able to make 2 practices a week (hopefully). I can split a rental room, but my mom says she'll let me use her garage if I need to--so there is that. I have a girlfriend (on and off), who is semi-supportive, so I might be able to get rides to practice fairly regularly. I was going to answer the Toxic Rockers ad, but my brother won't let me borrow his friend's drums. I am really interested in this and can even do some artwork if we get to needing some grapfics. I once fell from a train into a marching band unloading from a road trip---I think that means something and I want to honor that experience. I hope this is reachin the right peeps, cause when my dad was alive he invented the seripentirial and he wanted me to kind-of find a nitch like that, but I think contruction and screaming might be it for me...but I feel good about it. So, since I only have access to my friends wifes computer (when she's not here), just reply and I'll get back to you asap.

Just Wrong

• I thought that I would use Twitter more with the advent of lists but I'm not. So far my lists are "The Old Standbys," "Ril Frenz," and "TBD," plus I have a "Who Gives A Shit List" which pretty much sums up my feelings on that topic. 

• Swine flu alert in the workplace! My cubicle neighbor's kid has it. I am making a concerted effort to not turn into Angela from The Office over it. I will have to quit immediately and take a job in a restaurant or hospital or day care or anyplace legitimately germy if I catch myself employing wipes, sprays, or spritzes or -heaven forbid- posting signs on anything. 

• The very first thing that happened in my day was a chimp putting its dick in a frog. How about you?

5

Fine:

General Friday-likeness all day today.

The fit factor of the t-shirt on my coffee crush this morning.

A long break for a fancy birthday lunch for pal B. at Sportello. My God that place is good.

Regular:

Not having any complicated work to do when we came back to the office all tipsy and jolly and ineffectual.

Later, remembering to take the beer out of the freezer.

Gross:

Stan and I were in charge of a buddy's car while he was abroad for a couple of weeks. We used it a bit and had a great fine safe place to park it and it was there and it was there and it was there... until this morning, when our pal went to pick it up to drive to an appointment and found it had been towed to make way for some utilities maintenance. Le Big Suck.

P.S.

Another fine thing! Stan was invited to attend some secret society dinner tonight for the world's oldest continually published humor magazine. It was held in a castle. He's coming up the stairs now. I'm going to go hear all about it.

Food, On the Subject of

1. You want to know what blows superlatively? The 365 Everyday Value brand soymilk from Whole Paycheck. Every day I have it in my fridge is a day I value any other brand besides that one, so it sucks extra that I unwittingly doubled up with this purchase, meaning now I have some to value avoid using at work and some to value waste at home. Great! I suppose they make it taste like ass on purpose so people will be willing to spend more on the name brands, so how about all the resources that go into producing something intended for people to not buy? What does that say about your values, Whole Foods, hm?

2. I have an urgent need to make these browned butter Rice Krispies snaxx, but will hold off until there is an acceptably non-insipid ersatz Milche Preparation in the house to savor with them.

3. What’s for dinner?

MORNING

There's a new boy slinging coffee at my downtown coffee place and I'll tell you- Oh, my. I was already enthusiastic about going in there, as the place plays a key role in my daily achieving-of-consciousness, but let's just say now they have two ways of getting my blood going. Pitter pat!

My first reaction when I discovered him was to be startled. I can't remember the last time I was attracted to someone besides my spouse. I had to run that first little excitement through the ol' data processor for a minute before I could identify that what was happening was my cartoon pupils turning into heart shapes at the ends of a pair of cone-shaped eyes bulging out of my cartoon head.

NOON

How often have you been mindlessly humming some tune, something you know backward and forward without even thinking about it and you've been humming or running it silently through your head (depending on how much at work you are) for the past two hours or two minutes (who can tell, and what difference does it make?) it's just THERE, you've been not-thinking it for so long that it is a part of yourself, it's the theme song of your life, it's what your days just go along to, possibly what all your days have always been going along to, only all of a sudden you realize you're singthinking it all fucked up and wrong? 

"When you're/ With the Simpsons/ Have a yabba dabba doo time..."

NIGHT

Speaking of my (beloved, first above all others even up to and including junior baristas) "spouse," otherwise known as my partner: right this minute (and at all other times, it seems to me lately) I'm supposed to be working on putting together some exquisite, labor-intensive, crafty assemblage to ship out later this month by way of save-the-date notices for our wedding next summer. Or should I say our alleged wedding next summer? Given the way I've been fiddling around with this blog and every other possible distraction, there could turn out not to be a wedding. I'm currently going for being in denial about all the effort involved, so I'll be able to work myself into an appreciable frenzy/World of Hurt next spring when suddenly it's all upon us and everything. Quick! Somebody give me a smart little epigram about procrastination so I can better shame myself as I continue to fart around and not do anything.

Too late, I have an old family favorite on hand already.

EPIGRAM

If you will not when you may, when you will there shall be nay.

Cape Cod

 

 

 

SLC Update

Home visit checklist (so far):

1. Traditional pesto birthday dinner with Stan's dad:  ✓
2. Big Cottonwood Canyon naked boulder scramble:  ✓
3. Dip in glacial creek waters:  ✓
4. Pals BBQ, Parts I & II:  ✓
5. Handgun-firing practice in the way-out, middle-of-fucking-nowhere desert:  ✓
6. Pronghorn antelope sighting:  ✓
7. Hit dirt road, open Pabst:  ✓
8. Drinks with granny:  ✓
9. Visit farm/feed animals, Parts I - III:  ✓
10. Girls dinner/wedding planning:  ✓
11. Import the mountain of CDs we left at mom's house into iTunes (waah, bo-ring!): likely to never be finished 
12. Wake to phenomenal mountain view daily:  ✓
13. Reaffirm that the West is the best: ✓✓ or ✓++