July 4, 2009
This is only half of the bounty. Let’s do this, Least Safe American Holiday!

This is only half of the bounty.

Let’s do this, Least Safe American Holiday!

Dear Independence Day, Thank you for providing a socially acceptable opportunity to embrace my juvenile and unbridled love for explosives and pyromania.

Dear Independence Day,

Thank you for providing a socially acceptable opportunity to embrace my juvenile and unbridled love for explosives and pyromania.

Minnesota! Thanks for not letting a lack of stupid book learnin’ stand in the way of enjoying the 4th!

Minnesota!

Thanks for not letting a lack of stupid book learnin’ stand in the way of enjoying the 4th!

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

via youcankeepthechange

Zooey knows just what kind of song you need to sway your hips to on a Saturday morning.

Blueberry pancakes, hot coffee, long walk, snuggles with a random kitten and the day is only just beginning.

I’m remembering that adventures abound if you’re willing to set out after them…

July 3, 2009

coffeymuse:

“Lukenbach Texas” - Waylon, of course

I gotta go; You enjoy this as much as very much as I do.

So far my morning off has included a nice long walk through the quiet city, a hot bath and now, getting my car fixed out in the suburbs. I got to ride to the parts store in this beauty, which has me mentally carving out a new path for my life. One that includes more open air, off-road adventures and fewer days wearing pearls in car pool lanes. In other news, it is sweet like honey out. Just lovely and calm and springy. Thanks for that, heavens.

So far my morning off has included a nice long walk through the quiet city, a hot bath and now, getting my car fixed out in the suburbs.

I got to ride to the parts store in this beauty, which has me mentally carving out a new path for my life. One that includes more open air, off-road adventures and fewer days wearing pearls in car pool lanes.

In other news, it is sweet like honey out. Just lovely and calm and springy. Thanks for that, heavens.

July 2, 2009
To say I am not an IM afficianado would be a significant understatement. I humph over Twitter and dislike Facebook and sometimes, when the young fun kids at work try to guide me gently into new worlds, like video IM, I get baffled and overwhelmed. I think I exited out of Ali’s chat two or three times before I understood she was actually trying to talk to me. These days, there is too much substance to write about. I find comfort in keeping the mental machinations, the thoughts and plans, quarantined inside my head. Stretching and climbing towards conclusions or resolutions as I walk around the lake, passed by women in yoga-wear and men who somehow smell of cologne or clovey soap and not sweat. I went for dinner at my favorite little Vietnamese noodle shop. Realized for the first time that the family lives above the restaurant. Was delighted when my favorite server recognized me, sat me on the side where he stacks Asians as opposed to the side reserved for white hipsters. Ate my pho spiced hot, in my work out clothes, in a cracked vinyl booth. Tired and relatively happy. These are the three little things I can write about tonight.

To say I am not an IM afficianado would be a significant understatement.

I humph over Twitter and dislike Facebook and sometimes, when the young fun kids at work try to guide me gently into new worlds, like video IM, I get baffled and overwhelmed. I think I exited out of Ali’s chat two or three times before I understood she was actually trying to talk to me.

These days, there is too much substance to write about. I find comfort in keeping the mental machinations, the thoughts and plans, quarantined inside my head. Stretching and climbing towards conclusions or resolutions as I walk around the lake, passed by women in yoga-wear and men who somehow smell of cologne or clovey soap and not sweat.

I went for dinner at my favorite little Vietnamese noodle shop. Realized for the first time that the family lives above the restaurant. Was delighted when my favorite server recognized me, sat me on the side where he stacks Asians as opposed to the side reserved for white hipsters.

Ate my pho spiced hot, in my work out clothes, in a cracked vinyl booth. Tired and relatively happy.

These are the three little things I can write about tonight.

Why the hell wasn’t I informed that these happened?
Why the hell wasn’t I informed that these happened?
July 1, 2009

One in a series of mental polaroids

How can you forget being a kid who was sick?  When the fever burned from inside your eye sockets…nearly as intensely as your utter, presumptuous impatience at being sick at all?

When you curled up on the yarny orange and brown striped couch with the hulking arms at each end and the nubby loose cushion buttons that you twisted round and round and round. Half afraid and half delighted that no one knew if just one more rotation might fatally detach them, pop them loose to be hidden and disavowed.

I only wanted a sheet in those days.  Nothing of any consequence can touch my belly when it is roiling.  I will lie on my side and feel sorry for myself, preferably in a man’s white t-shirt.  It was my dad’s back then.  Stretched and worn soft by work more than wash.

As I was at seven, I am at 32.  My hands shake on the walk to the bathroom and back.  I take down the 7-up and let it go up again.  I lie on my side, and observe the hot tear that creeps slowly out of the corner of my eye and down on to a couch that is neither orange nor scratchy.

All the same impatience and disbelief remains.  HOW can my stomach mutiny against my body like this, I demand to know?  And where is my mother’s cool dry hand to lie on my forehead like reparations?  All the same discomfort and self pity remains but now, life goes on.  You pull up your laptop and respond to work emails.  You apologize for going home sick (a concept that fills you with shame).  You expect no popsicles or soup.

These are the nights when the system seems an outrage:  Who the hell made us grownups?  Who the hell declared us ready to care for ourselves….ready to let go of the tender comfort and attention that maybe only rallied in those moments when we were sick or injured, but at least showed up enough to be catalogued and occassionally longed for.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

tylercoates:

Dinosaur Jr. - “Start Choppin”

Will I never outgrow Dinosaur Jr?  Someone, I forgot who, once told me this great story about meeting two stoners out east on a fishing dock.  One of them – the big hairy one, if you want to know - claimed to be a longtime Dinosaur Jr roadie, which seems improbable.  And on his blousy white t-shirt, he had handwritten J Mascis’s name – spelled completely wrong.

They remain the only exception to my “Hating Guitar Solo” rule.  Because really, who gets your irrationality better than these guys?