last day

Erm, I guess you can see I wasn't all that crazy about nablopomo.

More tomorrow. Busy snuggling nano.

flotsam

Here it is again, another evening winding inexorably until midnight, and me whining that I have nothing to blo for napomo. Today I worked for over ten hours! Today projects bested me and deadlines fuddled me! Today, Stuart had the day off and updated me throughout the day on nano, and the cute things he did.

Today I ate little reese's peanut butter cups to stay sane while I shuffled and re-shuffled the week's priorities to make room for bigger, loomier projects. While I sat there I thought about the turkey, and my family, and the crunchy yellow leaves in the park.

There isn't a moral here. Shoo! Sometimes a crappy day is just a crappy day, not a box of chocolates. However, I will award special points to 9pm onwards, where Stuart made sure there was dinner (reheated Brazilian from mom, thanks mom!) and a glass of wine and magazines and an adorable dog waiting for me, and then we watched a scary Doctor Who episode and then I curled up with some long-overdue Grey's Anatomy. Oh, Shonda Rhimes! But also, oh, Stuart! You are both awesome.

(Stuart is awesomer, obvs.)

suck/rock vol 2

Suck:

Being cranky all day and then realizing it was ladyreasons.

Crappy internet at home.

Being stuck in traffic for seven hours from New York to Rhode Island.

Having to re-interpret nablopomo to mean "If I haven't gone to bed yet and it's 1 AM, then it's STILL THE TWENTIETH."

Rock:

Nano exceeding all our expectations about his car-riding abilities by napping happily on the backseat with Stuart the whole way here.

My mom (I have missed her!) and her delicious soup when we finally arrived.

My dad and his patience with the "project of a dog" he met today.

A new coat.

Stuart (always).

cozy evening

Sometimes you're too busy living life to blog it.

And by living life, I mean, Cuban takeout and Doctor Who on the couch with my two favorite lads.

you can't always get what you waaa-aaant

You know what I truly love?

Yoga.

I know. Do you hate me now? Did you just lump me with people that wear too many natural fibers and talk about their chakras? Hey! People that wear natural fibers and talk about their chakras! Please don't be offended and egg me, seriously, I love hippies. I'm just, you know, not a hippie in any way. I recycle a lot and buy organic dog food and that's the full extent of my hippie-ness.

Except for yoga. I love yoga! And don't tell me I'd love pilates although I'm sure I would for its exercise-y properties but that's not why I love yoga. I love yoga because most of the time, I am wound rather tightly and running on pressure steam. [Let me interject by pointing out that I am not high-strung. My dog is high-strung. Thoroughbreds are high-strung. People who cannot deal with the tiniest of setbacks and collapse under pressure are high-strung. I do not collapse under anything, in fact, I excel under pressure. So be ye warned about calling me high-strung as I have a friend who did so and I still haven't entirely forgiven that friend although I mostly have. I am just tightly wound, IS ALL.]

Wow, that was a long aside. Where was I? Oh, right, yoga. I love yoga because it is the one thing that makes me take long, slow breaths and feel like I am walking on fluffy rainbow clouds for several hours afterwards. In college, when I first discovered yoga, I was living with my best friend Beth. One evening after a session, we were having dinner or doing homework, or just hanging out, and she repeatedly asked me if I was alright. I finally asked WHY she was asking, and she looked at me, baffled, and said, "well... you're just so.. QUIET."

See, I was insulted by that because for one, Beth is basically my sister, and two, she was right. I feel centered and calm and loosely-knit after yoga. I don't usually feel centered and calm and loosely-knit unless it is a weekend and I have done my writing that week and the house is clean and we're lounging on the couch and there's coffee and maybe even some french bread and cheese for breakfast, that's an example of when I feel like I do after yoga. There are others of course, most of them involving picnics or wood fires or Buffy.

So I don't like yoga for exercise. I don't even like yoga that is slanted towards exercise, at gyms with mirrors and perky teachers. I want the fullblown hippie effect - the bright clean mirror-less space, the music, the incense, all that talk about my SPIRIT and my MIND/BODY connection. I love every single touchy-feely minute of it.

Of course, I can't afford yoga in New York. Which is where I like to lay the blame when I'm full of anxiety nerves and negative toxins, because obviously, if I did yoga, I would be floating around all the time and also very rich and successful, right? Heck, I might even get taller! SHUT UP I MIGHT.

This post has no point. It's Friday. I'm a bundle of nerves. I thought I'd let you know that if I did regular yoga, I wouldn't be. The end.

movie review haiku

Hmm, the Brothers Grimm;
Terry, those special effects?
Worse than the accents.

opening the floor

It's Friday and we went to an intensely loud and awesome concert last night and I am duly wiped out today. So! Who wants to offer me advice on the following topics?

1. Excited peeing is the current challenge in the Brigouras household. nano has apparently decided that lo! he is too good for the weepad, he don't need no stinking weepad! Which is great, hurrah for quickly understanding the awesomeness of walks, nano. Except that when we get home, little dude, you get so excited that the minute we start to snap on a leash or collar you tinkle tinkle little star all over whatever it is you happen to be sitting on. The books tell us not to yell at you like we would if you were, say, CHOOSING to pee on our floor. The behaviorist said your bladder is strained and you need a midday walker in addition to your two small morning walks and two longer evening walks which I, as your human, think is counterproductive as you're not quite ready for a total stranger to come into the house and snap a leash on you and drag you outside and besides, your humans are not made of money, nano, you'd better get that in your head before you start coveting blinged-out sweaters. Besides, if your bladder is all that strained, why not use the weepad?

So I am doing what we all do in times of crisis. I am turning to the learned internets and soliciting their opinions. Do not be judgy or rude to me as I will cry and unicorns will fade into blackness, man. Have you ever dealt with an excited pee-er?

2. Knitters! I am a humble rookie in your ranks but I've just discovered that making scarves from pima cotton instead of wool prevents that eventual letdown I feel when I actually FINISH a scarf and then find that I don't actually like wearing wool scarves all that much. What can I say, I'm a cashmere snob. But pima cotton is a delight to work with and I just made the loveliest scarf for myself and I'd like to make one for a friend with a new skein, but here's the thing. I want to know how to seed stitch or rib and every time I try and follow the instructions I find, my work looks like a freaking mess. How do you switch from a purl to a knit in the same row?! I don't understand. And do you start from the cast-on, or do you cast on a single purl or knit row and THEN start switchbacking? I don't get it. Help me, frenzied knitters of the internet.

See? Instant interactive content brought on by probing questions, with minimal work by your exhausted webmistress. What can I say, I never promised you a rose garden. Petit Hiboux: Testing Your Patience and Abusing Your Kindness since 2002.

ERROR!

This is like going to the front of the room on your second day of school and having to admit that yes, your dog DID eat your homework, you swear.

I wish I could blame this on nano and say my dog ate my power cord, but I don't see a single chew mark on the thing and besides, nano's too busy scarfing down rawhides to bother with a boring tasteless white cord!

So no, I have no excuse, except that I sat down with fresh pencils and pocket protectors and a slide rule with my first day outfit on (not really, I am wearing scotty dog pyjamas right now) to write my first nablopomo post and LO! my laptop was on 17% power so I went to the kitchen where the power cord was plugged in and moved it to the living room.

And plugged it in.

And noticed, huh, no soothing orange light! No confident powering-up on my battery icon!

So I'm on Stuart's computer which, people, somehow, is designed for a tall person. I am not a tall person. So me and my iBook are going to the genius bar for a diagnosis.

Does this count as a post? It'd better. And speaking of better, I'll be that tomorrow.