Thanks for the fish

So Thursday morning it started sleeting. I carpooled with J, taking my subaru all tricked out with snow tires. My office is about 40 miles south of where we live, and he’s about 17 minutes even further south. That means I had to drop him off, then turn around and come back north on icy roads. Then I had a dentist appointment (no cavities, not much plaque but receding gums as always (have I already written about this?) so I had to drive back down south, then back to work, then back to pick up J and then home. It has been snowing/sleeting/freezing rain all day so the traffic was horrendous and it took us forever to get home. My piano lesson was canceled and I planned to work from home on Friday.

Friday morning, I’m afraid it’s not bad enough to work from home and consider going into the office anyway. J is watching the tv and can’t really figure out how bad the roads are. Our local school district hasn’t cancelled school. With my previous boss, he was fine with us working from hom. My new boss seemed a little skeptical, but grudgingly agreed, but I felt guilty. Then, before I had a shower, the power went off. Fine by me, that just meant I could stay home guilt free, take a vacation day, and sleep. That got old fast. No power, no heat, no water, no INTERNET, no phone (cuz it goes through the internet/cable), no shower, no taking a doo doo when I needed to. Well, ok, I got one flush and it was wasted on the smallest turd in history. Even my cell phone doesn’t really work from our house in the woods.

Around 1, I’m freaking out about all the food in our freezer. We’ve been on a sale spending spree. Every time anything is on sale I buy it. So we have about $200 worth of pork chops, chicken breasts, cheddar brats (yum), not to mention our harvest of corn, blueberries, etc. from the garden. We decide to drive all the way to Augusta to go to the gym. We have “black card” membership to Planet Fitness so we can go to any of their locations. The Brunswick one had power going on and off (we called from the mother in law’s house). Augusta had lost power but it was back on. So we drive up there, work out, have showers, come home and the power is on. Thank the lordess. We’re not even big consumers of electricity, but let’s face it, modern life was built around it. You can’t do shit (literally) without it. We have a well that is hooked to an electric water pump. Our furnace is electric. We have a propane fireplace but the fan is electric. For all my “I’m a pioneer!” boasting, we were woefully unprepared. No food that didn’t require cooking, no water, no way to heat the home. We were fucked.

Anyway, the power came back on but we were without cable and thus internet and phone until about an hour ago. I did a lot of reading. I finished my Anderson Cooper book and then read “Nickel and Dimed”. I guess I’m on a nonfiction kick. Most of all, I missed blogging. My sister and I have a reading blog and I haven’t been able to check it or update it, and that’s been killing me.

What else? Had our office Xmas party last night. It was a little boring, and I got a little jealous, but mostly I looked pretty fabulous, drank a lot of beer, but did not get embarrassingly drunk, J won a gift basket (I never win anything) and I talked to my new boss a little. Fairly uneventful. Not sure I’ll bother next year. Tried to get J on the dance floor. The only dance I remember from our lessons in the mambo, but he wouldn’t go for it. Oh well.

I’m not even dreading work tomorrow because I’m sick of sitting in the house doing nothing. It’s nice to be connected to the world again.

It looks like this storm is pretty bad, huh? I’m watching the Ike coverage on Fox News…not sure why. I guess it just happened to be on that channel. Of course I wouldn’t normally watch Fox, but as they’re not talking about politics, I guess it’s as good as anything else. Speaking of politics (which I shouldn’t) and news coverage, I’m starting to see the Republicans’ point about the media having a liberal bias. I mean, I think Sarah Palin is a kooky nut as much as everyone else, but I think some of the questions that Charlie Gibson asked her were bullshit and he never would’ve pulled that crap with a man.If she weren’t such a psycho, I would really almost be tempted to vote for her and that old guy. And if I am saying that… crazy left wing liberal that I am, this doesn’t bode well for Obama.

But back to Ike. This is horrible. It looks like we’re on the verge of a catastrophe bigger than Katrina. Lives lost, lives ruined, not to mention the rise is gas prices if the refineries are hit. They are talking about gas and oil prices doubling or tripling. As someone about to enter a Maine winter with (still) no heating option other than oil, all I can say is I’m fucking fucked.But as J said tonight, at least we’re not getting hit with a hurricane, our house isn’t going to be destroyed, and we have each other (and the kitties). awww…warm fuzzies! But we’re still fucked.

We went to the gym tonight and did our running. We’re up to 5 minutes jogging, 3 minutes walking X 3. I feel good now. I’m feeling a little bit motivated, like I really want to challenge my body and make it do things I want it to do. And make it stop doing things I don’t want it to do.I do love a challenge, so I’m not sure why I’ve never gotten into working out. Probably because it’s hard and it hurts. And I get all sweaty. eww.

Ok, back to Ike. I just don’t understand these people who don’t evacuate and then they say that their lives are in god’s hands. That makes no sense. No sense. God gave you a brain, probably a car (in their logic I guess), gas, a map, a highway, Fox news… what more do you want god to do for you? Honestly. But what really pisses me off are the people who not only put their own lives at stake but their children’s lives as well.

Well, gun shooting and ballroom dancing tomorrow!

good thing? Despite myself, I couldnt’ stop from being productive this weekend. I worked my ass off. Now, I feel halfway good about myself, and halfway dead tired. Now I’m painting my toenails fire-engine red and looking at what the week has in store for me:

Hopefully a more sane week at work
Watercolors class on Tuesday
Piano on Thursday
Ballroom dancing on Saturday

Then my sister is coming to visit and we’re going down to Boston to see Patty (yay!) open for a band called Swell Season. I’d never heard of them but I guess they are some sort of Irish hoozeythingy. Should be fun. Also have a ton of other things going on… football games and author readings and french classes oh my! A busy and fun fall awaits.

Meanwhile, Hanna the Hurricane came through yesterday but didn’t do anything too major…just rain and wind. Today was one of those gorgeous post-storm days. Windy and blue skies and everything totally vibrant and alive. Oh, and I went running! Finally back on track and it felt good (other than the part where it hurt like hell). I also started putting to bed the veggie garden. I halway took the fence down, halfway took the tomato cages down, and halfway took the cornstalks down. Well, there’s always tomorrow to finsih the half-assed things I started today. I also (almost) finished painting the downstairs bathroom. Just a few touch ups left. And I froze all the rest of the corn. Meanwhile I have about 3 bushels (I don’t really knwo what a bushel is) ripening on the counters. I suppose I’ll get aroudn to doing something to them soon.

Oh, and there was a cormorant in the driveway today. Pictures…

Nearly finished bathroom

Toes in Sacred Scarlet (nice name!)

Martha Stewart’s Minestrone salad

of running at a time. It’s still nearly killing me, but I can’t but feel that I’m making progress. Now I’m having a cosmo.

Today was nice… one of those sundays that seem to last forever and can hold a million lifetimes of whatever I want to do. For instance… my mom stayed over last night so we had tea together this morning (plus I slept in). Then she left and I decided to continue on the bathroom project that I started several weeks ago. Just took a picture.. maybe I’ll remember to add it later. I only have one coat of primer on so far and it’s always surprising to me how little that first coat of primer does. In other words, it looks like total shit. But still… progress… I don’t require much. It was painted a dark green so it’s going to take a few coats of primer and a few coats of lovely periwinkle paint before it looks good. Luckily I have beadboard on the bottom half of the walll, so the surface area is pretty small. Then I just need my dad to help me with the lights, hang the mirror and I’m done.

Then I worked on Cider House Rules for a while. It’s a 5 page song and my teacher told me to not try and memorize the final 2 pages. pshaw! Whatever! I can totally do it. I’m working on page 3 right and that’s the hardest page, so once I get done with that it will be cake. The recital is on the 15th…so plenty of time.

Continuing to read, and continuing to love A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murikami. I lived in japan when i was in elementary school and then again for 2 years when I was in high school. That’s a long time ago now but it’s a time I remember fairly well. This book is about Japan so it’s fun to read as I can related a teeny bit to it. I love the way he writes. I always like those sort of bumbling self effacing narrators with personality..and the story is sort of hard to grasp, and I like that too. I think that’s one thing I don’t do well - mystery. Being a copywriter, I’ve spent my whole career trying to write things that are totally clear and don’t need any interpretation at all. Perhaps I need to get over that with fiction writing.

Another thing I’ve noticed about my writing is that the hardest part for me is finding a good idea. IN my writing group (when they decide to meet which is pretty infrequently) we have a writing prompt and then just write. I always find something to write about with the prompt. But without a prompt, I’m hopeless! But I’ve read things about different authors and they always ask them “where do you get your ideas” and they always say…everywhere! the newspaper, tv, friends, whatever. Sooooo… I think what I’ll do is write some short stories for a while and try to hone the craft of coming up with ideas. I’ll look through magazines and write a story about something I read, etc. I’m going to start tonight. As soon as I write this, finish my cosmo, make dinner, eat dinner, etc. etc. etc. But really, I will.

Dyed my hair “really red.” No, that’s not the name on the box (that would be Light Auburn). I came downstairs and sat at my computer. J was at his computer right next to me. 5 minutes later, he finally looked at me and just sort of stared. I smiled. He said “That’s really red.” I said “do you like it.” He said “That’s really red.” So heretofore, light auburn will be known as “Really Red.” I, for ONE, like it. Love it.  It’s holy sexy, if you ask me.

Well, I suppose that’s all I did today. I bought an ashtray for my car at VIP yesterday. I guess that says something about my committment to stop smoking at this particular juncture. Eventually the running and the smoking are going to butt heads. Ha ha.. get it? butt heads. i kill me.

Well, guess that’s all. Did I mention I’m signing up for french classes. So in anticipation of that. arriverci! Oops, I think that is Italian. uh…. oh! Au Revoir! Oh! One more thing… it never stops raining here. Ever.

an arc. The rain is incessant, and it’s not just regular rain. This is pouring, torrential, tropical, tornadic rain that hasn’t stopped for about a week. After half a bottle of red wine, I passed out at 9 and then woke up 2 am in a slight panic attack. Then laid there and listened to the rain, and the thunder, and watched the lightening. Finally went down and pooped around online, then more laying in bed till the sun came up, at which time I went to sleep. Why can I never fall back asleep till the sun comes up? I’m deliriously tired now and intelligently finishing off the red wine so I can relive the whole experience tonight! Yeah… some evolutionary genes I just did not get.

We had a mini-department outing this afternoon and went to see Mamma Mia! I’d actually seen the show years ago when I lived in DC and it was cute, though I actually think I like the movie better. It was really good. There’s some slight tension on the department. I hate to say it, but I’ve sort of been ganging up on a coworker with another coworker. I don’t approve of my own behavior. But I have to admit that for once it’s nice to be on the giving end rather than the receiving end of a big ol’ snubfest. But I know how karma works so I need to cut it out. Plus, it’s just mean.

Man, oh man… what can I say. Maybe I’m just tired but I’m starting to think that I need a major change in my life. I love my life. I’m happier than ever, but I just have nowhere left to grow. Am I supposed to be doing this and only this for the rest of my life? That thought scares the shit out of me. I just dont’ think I can do it. I think I may need to go out and buy a fire engine red mini cooper. I’m too young and childless to be driving around in a station wagon. Why yes, I AM having a mid-life crisis.

day than a summer day today. It’s cold and dreary, overcast and intermittently rainy. We were out late last night “gallactic bowling” with some friends. It was sort of fun, but I drank too much beer, ate too much bowling alley food, and well, I can’t deny it… bowling kicked my ass. I started off strong with a spare, then as I got tireder and tireder (I know that’s not a word) I got worse and worse and got many many gutter balls. But oh well, better than sitting home on my birthday. : )

So we got home around 1 in the morning and you know I normally go to bed at 9, so yeah, that was way past my bedtime. Oh, and J took me out to a nice dinner too. I had hanger steak and garlic “smashed” potatoes and a cosmo. Anyway, so I slept till 11, got up, ate breakfast and then we tried to do some zen-ifying of the office. We had these magazines on a bookshelf in teh office, some that we’ve been toting around since 1998! So I went through them ruthlessly and tossed 99% of them. It’s silly the things you keep. Then, with all that extra space, we decided to go to borders. To help with my book research, I bought a bunch of books about pirates. : ) Call it synchronicity, but everywhere I went there was pirate stuff everywhere. Or else we can just assume that pirates are very popular and I’ve just never noticed it before. You decide. Then, I got to chatting with the cashier at borders and she assured me that there is buried treasure off the coast of Cliff Island in Casco Bay, left by Captain Kidd. Yes, you’re wondering where all this pirate stuff came from out of the blue. You’ll see when my novel comes out, which coincidentally I have to start actually writing tomorrow! Exciting.

So no garden tasks accomplished today because of the poopy weather. I have officially crossed off zero of 26 items on my list. But I have high hopes to get at least 2 done tomorrow, in between novel writing, and piano practicing. I’ve also vowed to keep the kitchen, living room and bedroom clean. J has been cleaning constnatly and I frankly can’t handle the guilt. He wont’ stop! Damn him! NOOO! Sigh… the things I have to put up wtih from that man. It’s almost too much for me.

I’ve dropped the Enya song from teh recital program. My teacher thought I shoudl concentrate on teh other one (ouch). But she gave me some good tips and a plan of attack, so I feel good about it.

What else? Made squash soup, bought some sexy peek toe black Tahari heels from TJ Maxx ($29!), watched Deja Vu (quite good actually), snuggled with the kitties, and let J have the last bit of wine that I didn’t drink on Thursday night. Decided again that I should quit drinking and instead of beating msyelf up about it, I’m just going to decide to keep deciding that I should stop drinking and maybe one day, I will actually do it! Habits are hard, man. But I quit smoking, so I rock. I also bought a book by the Dalai Lama called “how to see yourself as you really are.” So that will be my bedtime reading tonight. Well, it’s almsot 9, so I think I’ll go up and get ready for bed, bring up some magazines ,and  some books and just relax and try to heal from all that bowling!

Oh, and my mother in law bought me a $50 gift certificate to the local greenhouse! We haven’t gotten the veggies planted yet. In fact, haven’t even rototilled the poop in yet, but maybe manana. So I will probably buy the veggies with the certificate. Need to figure out what to plant first though. We will do much better this year!

before I’m off to make some chocolate chip cookies. If I’m starting weight watchers on tuesday, then I guess I better enjoy this stuff while I can. I’m actually making them for my friend A at work who bought me and our other coworker starbucks gift cards and I didn’t get him anything. I dont’ really like giving things to people at work, because then it creates an expectation and everyone already has too many people to buy for. My boss also bought me a bunch of stuff, but I feel weird about making him cookies. I made J go up and borrow eggs from his mother so now he expects a pay back too. : )

Had a nice weekend despite fire-breathing pms. Went to the gym friday night and then to a greek place in portland that had live music and a live belly dancer! fun! I’m not sure J was crazy about it, but I liked it and it made me feel adventurous. Now I have to decide where we’re going next Friday. Yesterday we went to see I am Legend, which was pretty good. Still have Brokeback Mountain from netflix but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. I also made my January purchase - a new pair of running shoes: $35 at TJ Maxx. We went for a long walk today, taking advantage of the sunny and fairly warm day - tomorrow’s supposed to be another snow storm. I guess I broke the shoes in by the size of the blisters on my feet.

Today have just been watching football and walkign around with my fluffy red blanket wrapped around me. Taking it easy. Wrote 600 words in my book for the first time in 5 days. But it’s coming along and I’m delving a bit into research now, which is kind of cool. Learning about Turkey and their customs (and where it is on the f-ing map). : ) Looked at a book at borders last night called “a short history of myth” which had an interesting insight. I’ve vowed not to buy any more books this year, so I just read an entire chapter in the store. Next time maybe I’ll move on to chapter 2. The interesting point was this: the first major deity was a goddess, one that eventually evolved into the greek goddess of the hunt, artemis. It seems sort of coutnerintutive that a culture that relied on men exclusively to provide food (since women were not hunters) would create a female goddess to worship. But when you think about how fragile society and survival were back then - procreation was, obviously totally critical. So the men were essentially going out and risking their lives simply because women’s lives were too important to risk as they were the ones who gave birth.

J turned me on to a great new singer today - Kate Nash. Very cheeky and a great beat. She has a song called “dickhead.” J knew I’d like it because he thinks I like any music with lots of expletives sung by women. Which is essentially true, but just by coincidence. I’m working on my song tonight. I have the words and the notes and the timing - now the hard part is making it fit into measures. It’s neat actually writing it all down though. I totally recommend it! And if I can do it, anyone can. : ) Great therapy. And just good clean fun.

out there. I ran out to start my car this morning without a jacket. It wheezed and coughed and finally started up. Looked at the thermometer in my car and it was a whole 0 degree! ( I just typed “zegree” and it took me about 10 seconds to figure out what was wrong with it… hmm). Right now it is 8 degrees. We were supposed to see the oz tonight but he had the flu so it was cancelled..which we didn’t realize till we tried to park. Oh well. Luckily J has been practicing his zen (which for me is absolutely heavenly) so he took it pretty well, but was disappointed. I’m practicing my zen too and even though I was quite an ozzy fan when I was in 8th grade and it would be kind of cool to see him (he’s a living legend, no?) my ears are sort of thanking me right now.

The last 2 days I’ve been practicing these buddha type things and man has my outlook improved. It’s made lilfe so much more pleasant that I can hardly believe it. A few things happened at work that would’ve normally sent me over the edge, but I just let them go. I just shut my eyes and breathed and thought about things and thought about people’s intentions and then kind of got over myself. It was good. ANd I narrated myself all the way to work in an attempt to stay present…”red honda passing me on my right…ford escape trying to merge… oops bad merge, my fault!… giant indian on the route 1… 65 miles per hour sign… patty griffin on the radio… ” That kind of pooped my out though so I had to give in and daydream a bit at work. But I felt a lot of love for my fellow humans today, and you know that that can be rare for me. But hey, were all just trying to get by… trying to be happy. Kindness is a good thing.

Went to borders (somebody stop me) and bought some calendars for 50% off…  “pigs: pretty in pink” so CUTE! January has a close up of a pig smelling a rose and says “stop and smell the roses.” oh god, so it’s damn cute I could die. And I got an audubon engagement calendar, which I bought so I could keep better track of my finances. I keep overdrawing my account and it’s because the way my paycheck gets paid - biweekly so it’s always on a different date. It’s much better to get paid on the 15th and 1st so you can at least plan for it. So I guess I just have to map it all out manually. Gots to do something. Paid off my subaru using my savings! Of course now I have hardly any emergency savings. Oh well. My sis sent me “The heroines journey” which I won in a bet. I bet her my parents wouldn’t buy a house in maine, and so far they haven’t (though still threatenign). Looks like she got it on swaptree that crafty snake! ha ha. Oh well.

Meteor shower tonight. I’m obsessed with shooting stars but can never drag myself out of bed at ungodly hours. This one is supposed to peak at 4 am, and of course it has to be the coldest damn day of the year. Maybe I will do it! maybe i wont’. Tomorrow I get to go to a half day conference about marketing a medical practice and then work from home the rest of the day. NOtice how I didn’t put “work from home” in quotes like usual. That’s because I actually do have to work (eyes rolling). lame! rude! but it’s all good.

9 pm and I still have 600 words to write. off I go…

The redskins are in the playoffs!! Football season just got infinitely more interesting! Unfortunately they have to play Seattle - the team that kicked their asses last time they were in the playoffs.. and then they have to play the cowboys again. Last night I drank way too much and invited our friend Z (a cowboys fan) over to watch the game. Cowboys and reskins get along like um… cowboys and redskins, so it could’ve gotten ugly, as I can be a really poor loser. But luckily that was a non-issue since we smoked them like a… something (can’t think of anything funny).

It was fun to have someone over. We get hardly any visitors over here… partly because we live in the middle of nowhere but mostly because we never invite anyone (unless I’ve had too many glasses of wine). I would have to say, though, that the one thing my life is missing is a more active social life. I don’t have any good friends that I see on a regular basis. I have people I go to lunch with occasionally. And people I talk to at work. And a few good friends who live 600 miles from here. I don’t really have a friend that I would feel comfortable calling if I was crying and in an emotional crisis though. I should probably get me one of those.

I had a  hangover from hell today. Usually drinking doesnt’ bother me, but after I had a shower I actually had to go back to bed for awhile. But then I just started eating carbs and that seemed to work, so I haven’t stopped since. I made gingersnaps from the king arthur flour cookbook. and pasta pasta pasta. And ramen. I’m on a ramen kick.

I’m really digging kurt vonnegut. damn! why can’t i be that good??? It burns me up. I have to stop losing faith in my own book every time I read something though. I would like to write something brilliant and meaningful and funny though. I really really would.

What else? I was thinking today about some things and I sort of realized that some things I do because of other people’s suggestions. Like, by nature, I’m a pretty emotional and honest person and it’s really hard for me to hide my feelings. But I remember when my first boyfriend dumped me and my oldest sister said to me “Don’t you dare call him! Don’t let him know you care. Don’t give him the SATISFACTION of knowing that you’re hurting.” And I really took that to heart and have acted on that advice more than once. But now I realize that that’s just not my style. It doesn’t work for me. I’m the kind of person that just needs to have it out. Needs to let it all hang out as ugly as it may be. So at least I’ve finally figured that out. I think when you go against your true nature it just makes you miserable in the end.

Expecting more snow tonight. >: ( i HATE winter!!!

hunkered down all day in anticipation and it has been snowing all day. But in the end, it’s only about 6 inches, which is nothing. I think it’s sleeting right now or maybe it’s stopped altogether. We went up for J’s family christmas last night and that was fun. His sister was there and she’s a hoot when she wants to be. She was on her game last night so we had fun. Then J’s dad kept feeding me drinks… tried eggnog for the first time, and some stuff he brought back from Scotland. Then in my drunken state I had the bright idea to invite them all the breakfast this morning at 8 am (huh?). J’s sister got us a gift basket with pancake mix and maple syrup and stuff, so I thought it would be a fantabulous idea to make it for them. And actually it was fun. We don’t have people down very often and we dont’ see the sister much since she lives a state away. And then I napped and ate and wrote all day.

Wrote 600 pages in my book, though I haven’t worked on it for 2 weeks. It’s definitely a work in progress. There are things that I already need to change, but I’m just continuing forward as I stumble my way toward a plot. A lot of things will need to be edited later though. Also reburning some cds that have gotten ruined in the mess that is my car. Not looking forward to driving to work tomorrow.

I did Tae Bo with J tonight. I only make it about 20 minutes into it and then give up, but I got about 2 minutes further than usual. At this point, I figure anything is better than nothing. This has been an ugly Christmas season in terms of gorging.

Anyway… I feel good about things lately. I think..I hope..that I’m finally learning the lesson of acceptance. Things are what they are. And as much as you overanalyze them, they still are what they are. So there’s no point making them into things that they aren’t. Yeah… : ) When in doubt, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

New list of books I want to buy:

How to see yourself, by the Dalai Lama
The world without us, by Alan Weisman
On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
Foolsgold, by Susan Wooldridge
Practicing: A musician’s retrn to music, by Glenn Kurtz
Real simple cleaning (my housekeeper quit)
A man without a country, by Kurt Vonnegut

Ok, now that I”ve said that out loud, I guess I have to go and finish a book now.