whaddyamean

When did I stop writing? I did stop writing. It is obvious from the lack of blog action here that I stopped writing. What the heck?! Me, I'm a rambling, meandering, swirling wordy girl. There are stories. or there should be. Whaddyamean it is June?! And I haven't written since the end of April. Sigh.

My world has gotten more and more scheduled. And there has been less and less time for things that are selfish and silly like blogging.

I think we're ready for the mid-summer resolutions. Or perhaps it is time to check in on those resolutions made back in January. Or not. Hm. I'm kinda worried about the kinds of things I promised myself I'd do. Did I promise I'd be keeping my house clean? If so, hahaha, not so much. Well, I've done a grand job of keeping things generally tidy except for the spare bedroom. That place has become the scary blackhole of suckatude. Everything that needs to get out of the way goes into that room. It has become full of papers to file, tools to be put away, projects that are in mid-projectyness. Gak. I'm going to have to go in there. I just know it. and I'm a little afraid.

It has been the summer of not quite summer so far. Lots of cool weather and rain. Whaddyamean it is mid-June? It is 60 degrees and raining and in the 40s at night. This *isn't* summer. I'm pretty sure it is October. And, well, if that was the case I'd be happy because Halloween would be right around the corner. Oohh. Maybe it is time to put up the scary decorations. I think it wasn't that long ago that I took them all down. Maybe I need to come up with some kind of spooky summer zombie holiday. One that celebrates the creepy things that happen in the summer. Hm. What are the creepy things that happen in the summer. Getting stung by a bee. That is a scary summer thing. A BBQ that gets out of control. Scary, but not spooky. And bees are kinda happy. Except killer bees. Killer bees must be pretty darn grumpy. Hm. There must be something spooky about summer. I'm just going to have to keep thinking.

In other news, I've been thinking a lot about my lack of Morocco action this summer. I'm trying to figure out what comes next. I'm still slowly accruing frequent flyer miles. Slowly rebuilding the travel savings fund. And I'm not sure Morocco is where I want to go next. Earlier this week I was at the boyfriend's house and picked up the "teach yourself russian" book on his bookshelf. I got a little ways in and was giggling and giddy at the ease at which I was learning the letters and sounding out words. Eastern Europe could be fun. Maybe Turkey. I loved Turkey when I was there and I'd love to go to Eastern Turkey. So many options. And Italy keeps coming up. And Japan. And India. There is also the idea of just going someplace. I may need to take a road trip to southern colorado. Or Wyoming. Thermopolis. Or Vermont. I think I need to stop dreaming and just pick something and DO.

That girl

In a conversation with a friend last night I caught myself saying "Yes, I'm *that* girl, but I don't know what *that* kind of girl is."

I've been thinking about this on and off today, and realize that I DO have a pretty good idea about what kind of girl I am.

I'm the girl who frequently puts the needs of others ahead of her own. I'm the girl who doesn't really do anything half-assed, whether that's work or hobbies or relationships or down-time. I'm the girl who sometimes starts projects but gets distracted with other projects and it takes a year or so to finish up that crazy scarf!

I'm the girl who loves things so much that she names them and tries to remember to take a picture for later. The girl who loves so much that her heart breaks over and over again. The girl who cries every time she goes to her Longmont house and stops by the spot where her Nemo cat is buried. The girl who cries at beginnings and at endings of all kinds of things.

I'm the girl who loves her country so much that she votes AND works at the polls and got excited about jury duty. I'm the girl who also sometimes goes to city council meetings, marches in protests and writes her congress-people. I'm the girl who likes to follow the rules and will also work to change them when the rules aren't good. I'm the girl who went on strike twice and was the one with the bullhorn turning around teamsters the second time around. I'm the girl who became management and had the good boundaries to not say encourage or discourage the employees who came asking for advice about going on strike.

I'm the girl who loves food but sometimes gets busy with other things and forgets to eat. I'm the girl who thinks tomatoes out of season are one of the most abysmal things to eat. I'm the girl who thanks the Universe regularly for her lactose tolerance. I'm the girl who keeps a graph paper lined lab notebook in the kitchen to document her cheese-making experiments. I'm the girl who makes lists on paper and uses Excel for things like travel packing lists. I'm the girl who eats dark chocolate and doesn't bother with milk chocolate if there's a choice. I'm the girl who keeps a jar on her desk with both kinds of chocolate to lure in all kinds of chocolate-cravers to say hello.

I'm the girl who walks between worlds, who shape-shifts, who knows how to blend in and who knows how to stand out. I'm the girl who trusts her brain more than she trusts her body and frequently trips over things when she doesn't watch the ground. I'm the girl who sinks instead of floats but will occasionally take a bath because the probability of drowning is manageable. I'm the girl who likes numbers. I'm the girl who has a lot of numbers in her head and dates and phone numbers and names. I'm the girl who is pretty sure she's still got a lot of physics constants in her head, but isn't quite sure if that's the mass or the charge on the electron she's seeing. I'm the girl who used to know the difference between grad, div and curl and how to use them but doesn't really remember vector calculus anymore.

I'm the girl who takes on leadership roles and avoids leadership roles and then takes them on again. I'm the girl who started a chapter of Society of Physics Students at her undergrad institution and the girl who started one and advised it at UCSD. I'm the girl who stopped writing to go online to see if either still exists and squealed with delight when she looked at their websites. I'm the girl who is trying really hard not to get sucked into becoming the president of the board next year. I'm the girl who is working with the President and Senior VPs at work on tracking the rollout of the strategic plan.

I'm the girl who has on her whiteboard at work the following:
"Let's be specific about our needs and wants and then we can better manage our expectations." PB
"Students ARE the mission"
"Infiltrate!"
"Grateful not Grumpy"
And who listens to her ipod on "shuffle" just so she can giggle when the music shifts from Kiss to Yo-Yo Ma to Rage Against the Machine to Frank Sinatra to The Cure.

I'm the girl who has been knee-deep in irrigation water, up to her elbow inside an alpaca's womb, and in over her head in a few situations. I'm the girl who's been in a hot air balloon, a helicopter, a biplane, and a variety of other small aircraft. I'm the girl who's been on an elephant in St. Louis and a camel in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. I'm the girl who still considers getting a 350+ pound llama to trust her enough to let her walk up and put a halter on as one of her greatest life achievements.

I'm the girl who sometimes is ranty and sometimes is melodramatic and sometimes is loquacious and sometimes is quiet and sometimes hiccups like a loud dying goose. And sometimes has run-on sentences. And sometimes has sentence fragments. I'm the girl who likes to run in the snow with her arms wiggling above her head like Kermit the Frog.

I'm the girl who is all this and more and is still just Jennie.

wiggle eyes and wish fish

Have I cursed myself? Have I created some inadvertent cloud of absurdity all around me? I know to be careful what I wish for, but maybe I wasn't all THAT careful.

It was a bit of a strange week. A week of me being the bad cop, of being the Enforcer, of being really present and aware, at times being hyper-vigilant, and a lot of time being downright silly. It was also a week of saying goodbye to Maggie the Dog, the Best Girl's dog who I lived with for months and who took care of a bunch.

But I'm done being sad and I'm done being bad cop, and I want to focus on the silly because not only is this the Winter of Absurdity, it is the Winter of Aburdity, HA! (WOAH!) and the Winter of No Dumbness! (WOND!)

On to the absurd (cue circus music):
I did say to someone at work this week who I startled "you didn't see me come back through because I'm a ninja". Because sometimes I AM a ninja.

I had a day of treats on Saturday. Good coffee and pastry at the KittyMama's coffeeshop choice followed by time spent with her at an Aveda salon with a mega-sale where we sipped cucumber water, munched on more pastry treats, spritzed and dabbed layers and layers of essential oils and perfumes on ourselves until we smelled like flowers and hippies. We then spent a long, long time in a used bookstore where I didn't buy the following book:
"Chicken Poop for the Soul" but I really, really came close to getting that one.

I did buy a bunch of other books:
-a book of short stories by Barbara Kingsolver
-a book on Pottery since I've signed up to take an intermediate/advanced wheel-throwing class starting in January, and I've never ever taken pottery before and I need to learn Pottery vocabulary more than I need to learn Klingon (priorities, right)
-"Crosbie's Book of Punned Haiku" (yes, puns within haiku!)
-"How to Be A Villain: Evil laughs, secret lairs, Master Plans and More!" Because any book who has chapter titles such as "Getting Started with the Forces of Darkness" and "Making an Evil Plan" is just plain absurd!
-"The Government Manual for New Wizards" because, well, I just couldn't help myself.

Other treats I bought for myself this weekend: wiggle eyes, a package of 100 pipe cleaners in assorted colors, and a small box of crayons. Why these? Well, the KittyMama and I have a plan to make Wish Fish. We'll make fish on paper and write wishes on them and hang them like ornaments. I might hang them in doorways because, well, why not. I love the idea of making holiday wish fish. I need to come up with good wishes.

And I think I'm going to carry the package of wiggle eyes around with me. There's quite an assortment of sizes in the package, and I might just need to randomly stick wiggle eyes on things. I'm awfully close to making a whole wiggle eye lampshade. I think a wiggle eye lampshade would be SO silly that it might cross the line into creepy. Never know until you cross the line, I suppose. I might need to stick wiggle eyes on toilet seats or on maybe on my office door. Maybe. I'm taking wiggle eye suggestions, so please, send them my way! Maybe the winner with the best suggestion will get wiggle eyes in the mail. Or maybe a photo of me with the wiggle eye winning project.

Contest has started and operators are standing by....

Winter of Absurdity KickOff

The Winter of Absurdity (WOA) has begun. My friend the KittyMama and I have declared it. We will embark on many absurd ventures this winter, engage ourselves in absurd activities, and generally be over-the-top ridiculous.

The WOA has begun and we're in beginning-stage planning. Our kickoff will likely involve going to a mall in suburbia for sushi. Perhaps we'll bring kazoos and play arias.

The WOA seemed to start off with a bang. A bang of weirdness, which I suppose is all part of absurdity. Let's see...yesterday I drove from St. Louis to Boulder, a 15 hour trip and started out my Monday by going up to my house to meet a man with a backhoe. Yes, over the Thanksgiving weekend a water pipe burst in one of the barnyard corrals at the house. Sigh.

Mr. Backhoe is someone I've met a few times before, since he's the ex-boyfriend of one of my (ex?)-neighbors. My tenants weren't going to be home, and someone was needed to show Mr. Backhoe and the plumber where to go and what to do and to get in the house to turn the water on and off. After Mr. Backhoe started digging, my tenant came out of the house. Seriously? Seriously. And suddenly I was girl in the ol' boys club. I know a lot about a lot of things, but plumbing is not on the list. I did love watching the backhoe in action and had backhoe envy, even. After the backhoeing was done, the plumber wasn't scheduled to arrive for an hour, and my tenant felt well enough to show the plumber where the problem was located, so I left.

I went to the grocery store to grab some lunch on my way to work. When I put my little lunch in the back seat of the car, I discovered Richard. Or, more accurately, I discovered the small package containing the cremated remains of my friend (and fellow road-tripper)'s deceased friend, Richard. I picked up the Richard packet and put him in the finger-well on the driver's side of the car. I really want to put a pretty ribbon on Richard. I know this is inappropriate, but I have a really strong feeling of affection toward Richard, even-though I've never met him.

I got out of the meeting and got a message from the Best Girl that she'll be putting her dog to sleep on Wednesday. So I went straight over and spent time with them.

The Winter of Absurdity is starting out strange. I suppose strange is a cousin to absurd, eh?