Friday, October 26, 2001
surrealist holiday in brazil
What a day today. I'm sitting around answering my email, sewing up some more journals, and standing in the middle of the IdeaStream, catching a few as they whiz by me at light speed.
I'm pretty much playing hooky from work today. Call it a personal day. I feel too good to listen to any more of anyone else's problems. (Actually, I'll probably log in for about an hour here soon, just to round out the week and get some more cash. I'm liking amazon.com a little TOO much lately. Just bought four more today: Trail Through Leaves by Hannah Hinchman, who I love. A book on handwritten letters. A book on creative journals. And Derek Powaczek's "Design for Community", which has my little geeky inner self standing up and cheering on the desk.)
I'm planning on taking a long bath, reading some of my current book (or one of them at least), and then packing up the Art Tote Bag to sit at a cafe for a few hours and drink coffee and watch people.
But there really was a point to all this: One of the ideas from the aforementioned stream is a kind of surrealists meet collaborative fiction type thing. I need about ten highly creative, a-little-left-of-center souls to play with me. Wanna play? Leave me a comment with your email. :)
------e
Idea Queen, and
She Who Is Always Left of Center
Posted by beth @ 12:14 PM PST [Link]
Wednesday, October 24, 2001
art sale
All this organizing is making me realize a few things:
a) that I'm extremely fortunate to be blessed with abundance. I have more stuff than I could ever use. Ever.
b) I need to pare down. I'm thinking of having another big art sale, but not until I have a chance to make a couple of the things that I'm thinking about. Maybe I'll go for trades.
So -- if you've got something cool that you've made by hand that you're thinking about trading away or giving away....let me know. Maybe we can work out a trade when I get a list of Fun Stuff To Get Rid Of.
I'm also thinking about doing a little book to make some extra cash. (I want to buy some more printer cartridges, but I spent all my extra cash on Books. This is why I'm not entrusted to be the treasurer of any large corporations. I'd be handing out bonuses and motivational books and forget to buy, oh, say, computers or something. Sigh.)
-----e
clean queen
Posted by beth @ 03:12 PM PST [Link]
media whore
I bought more books yesterday, breaking that whole little pact with myself that I wouldn't buy more until I was done with the ones I have. I think I'm part squirrel -- putting away books for the long winter ahead.
(Actually, according to emode's 'friends' test I'm actually part Phoebe. Go figure.)
I got five (five!!!) books yesterday:
* Where The Girls Are (about women in the media)
* Minding the Body (women writers on body image)
* The Creativity Book (by Eric Maisel, who breaks everything down for you.)
* Discover Zen (beautiful book)
* Jemima J. (a novel about ugly ducklings. :D)
And that's after putting another four or five back. I. must. be. stopped.
And, of course, I've done none of the organizing yet. I'm a master procrastinator. I'm planning on starting here in a few minutes, but, as things go, it's falling on the priority list. I have -books- to read. (And an in-the-queue pile that's taller than me now. Sigh.)
------e
bookgirl
Posted by beth @ 12:29 PM PST [Link]
FAFSA woes
Moving toward a paperless government, the DOE has the FAFSA form online these days. And, of course, the IRS has the whole e-file thing, which I like a whole lot. :)
However, because it's all paperless, it's really easy to not keep things around, I'm finding.
I went to go fill out the FAFSA today for the Spring term at RCC (Art major!), and I can't find anything even remotely resembling my 2000 tax return form. I believe this is because I e-filed and didn't keep anything, because I'm a great big giant dork. It's also quite surprising because it seems I have saved every OTHER scrap of paper since the beginning of recorded history.
I've got love notes from my high school lovemonkey, but no tax form. Dammit!
So today, I'm Getting Organized(tm). Again. Going through all my files, ditching the unimportant stuff, binding anything that IS important into volumes so I can find it easier (hey...I knew I bought the comb binder for a reason...), and generally tidying up.
I love being a packrat, but I love the idea of being able to go back to school even more. (RCC has this program where you get in free if your income was low enough, and since I'm divorced, H's income doesn't count. Woohoo! Free school!)
------e
aspiring art student
and way too disorganized
packrat type person
Posted by beth @ 11:20 AM PST [Link]
Monday, October 22, 2001
deja vu all over again
Ever have one of those days where you feel like you should be doing something that you're most decidedly not doing?
I've been like that all day. And it's not like I have any shortage of things to do, of course. But it's not any of those, I don't think. I should be working on TSC. I should be taking apart the kitchen drain to see why one side is draining slow. I should be making some handmade journals to sell. I should be doing my deco swaps. Instead, I'm sitting here answering email and trying to figure out why I'm so restless inside my own skin.
I'm listening to a bunch of belly dance music that I downloaded from Limewire, and not even that is bringing me back. Usually that does the trick. Nothing like a little tabla to just wake up the soul.
Part of it is that I'm slowly figuring out my own sense of style, and nothing around me seems to fit anymore. I hadn't realized how much I'd amalgamated and assimilated the likes/dislikes of people around me until then. Relics from my Martha Stewart Syndrome(tm) days, bits and pieces of old boyfriends and old lives, things that embarrassed the "cool" me that I put away.
I don't want to be anybody anymore. I just want to be.
-----------e
Posted by beth @ 08:16 PM PST [Link]
Sunday, October 21, 2001
kingpin -- non-mafia
I got home around six from running errands. Just the usual stuff: buying plants, since I managed to kill all the other ones; laminating things for the store; telling our shift leader to fire a slacker who didn't show up for work. Y'know...the usual.
H was bored. So bored that he was bothering me while I tried to get dinner ready. He needed entertainment, and I had a flash.
"Let's go bowling," I said, somehow channeling some deeply-ingrained white-trash urge buried deep inside some unused lobe of my brain.
H became thrilled at this prospect. Ever since reading Lisa Carver's "Dancing Queen", he's been convinced that he's just trailer trash, despite my assertations that he's actually faux, hipster trash instead. (The kind that thinks it's COOL to come from white trash roots. They annoy me. Live for five minutes in Norfolk, Nebraska, and suddenly, being surrounded by trailers and Big Hair won't be so fun. Trust me.)
We got dressed. I put on one of my dad's old bowling shirts (one that's half-navy blue and half-teal, with "KING'S LANES" in bowling script embroidered across the back, which are the local lanes in Norfolk, where my father reigned supreme until the cancer started eating away at his strength and the chemo made him too weak for a proper ball-spin.), hoping to draw on some of the paternal energy. H put on a button-up shirt and a nice pair of shoes.
"You will never fit in," I tried to explain to him. "You're too well-dressed. Wear a t-shirt."
He didn't listen to me. Still asserting his trailer-park roots (despite being from a family that counts its net worth in millions...*gag*...), he claimed that this is how he always dresses. I just rolled my eyes.
I roundly whipped his butt. He blamed the shirt. I said I told you so at least four times. My final scores? An unimpressive 103, 138, and 113. At least they were all over a hundred.
On the way to the car, H looked at me. "I didn't know you were this much FUN," he said, believing this to be some kind of compliment.
"And I didn't know you sucked this bad on the lanes," I responded, ducking his swipe.
I've got a blister on my thumb, and I'm nostalgic. My father would have been a pro bowler if he hadn't married my mom. Then again, if he'd chosen the former, I wouldn't be here. I guess it's a trade-off he made willingly.
There are times when I feel like my father's still present in my life. When I accidentally do something to fix the car. When I grill something and it comes out okay. When I smell freshly-cut grass.
And tonight, while I threw a ball that looked destined to be a strike, I thought I heard him laughing on another lane.
I miss him sometimes.
-------e
bowler queen
Posted by beth @ 10:16 PM PST [Link]
