ah the songs jim

It’s cold but good out there, people, don’t be fooled by those lying little shoots of green and spring colors in the shop windows. Spring is never coming, no matter how many brightly-colored new shirts I buy.

I’ve been namby-pambying back and forth over whether we should get the NY Times Weekend delivered. One the one hand, I love cozying up with Week in Review. On the other hand, wow, that’s a lot of dead trees!

Walking in our park (yes it is ours, you may walk in it if you’d like) I looked at our beautiful multi-borough view and LO! There was a giant yellow and blue thing squatting in Red Hook. Brooklyn IKEA! Verily, have you come to pass? Will I be able to resist your siren call much longer? Especially when I’ve got stewardship of my mom’s car in May? Magic 8 Ball says no.

Things that are righteous awesome: chili night, library books, being twenty pounds lighter, Nano growling at himself during solo tug-of-war, spring trips, checking off to-do lists.

Things that should man up: spring, our television and its mysterious turny-offy disease, mealy apples, ABC spring programming already.

stuff and things

Today’s looking not so bad for a day that started out wrong. Two sunshiny walks with Nano worked wonders, as did two solid hours of nose-to-the-screen writing. I’ve found that lo, though we have an office, I worked better surrounded by tea and apples on our kitchen table with the internet shut off at the base. No cheating, Cavouras! I am my own worst boss but I was a good girl today. And even Tuesday where I actually stared at the screen (no lie!) for two hours and wrote about - lemme check - 150 words. So today = doubleplusgood.

Feeling guilty that there’s a Department of City Planning meeting in my neighborhood about their zoning/re-zoning plans and I’m not going. I should get involved with the world around me, Goal #329 for 2008! But I also want to be home making dinner and singing silly songs at Nano, sorry Community.

Anyone else tempted to try Electrolicious’s Unplugged project? I am, mostly because I suspect I will utterly fail. No screens would mean I’d finish that scarf and write letters and go to bed early. Whaddya think? Want to do it with me? I am a pack animal.

dork night

We may have spent just a little too much of yesterday evening playing Guitar Hero. What! Don’t judge lest you play it yourself and get hooked. When I first tried it at my cousins’ house this Christmas I got booed off stage trying to play My Name is Jonas on easy and guess what! Yeah, I rock that shit now on medium. Just how I roll, homes. WEEZER STYLEE.

It’s also been raining fit to float an ark around here, so it’s been nice to be cozied up in the office thrashing away at a video game and then tearing apart a chicken for dinner. We are savages! Well, savages that get rotisserie chickens at Whole Foods anyway. Yuppie savages! Definitely.

We watched Brazil during dinner and let me tell you a funny story that really just encapsulates me: back in college I sat down to watch it with friends and a piping hot pizza and, well, something about the pizza tasted off so I went and threw it up? Not only did I not eat pizza again for a year, I somehow decided that I never wanted to watch Brazil. People, I was wrong! Shit was funny.
And fin!

hark! spring

I saw these tiny green shoots sticking up out of the crumbling brown ground of Nano’s favorite pee spot. Were those there last week? I keep searching at the trees in our park to look for those telltale buds that lo! Hark! Spring has risen! But nothing yet on the branches, people, you’ll know when I see them.

I’m feeling better, head-cold wise, so it was bathtime for Nano, something he’s long (happily) been avoiding. Witness the scratch marks on my arm! Frantic little mutt thinking his twelve pounds against my more-than-twelve-pounds is going to get him outta that sink. Not! We made up for it with towel time in the bathroom which is one crazy scene. Especially when you add Nano’s new favorite thing which is baby! Carrots! Give him! Now! I think we actually managed a “sit!” for a sliver of carrot.

I’m going to see The Other Boleyn Girl tonight with S. Brown, oh yes I am, don’t judge with your judgy face, I love these overblown overflounced histomelodramas. Plus bonus awesome neighborhood pizza, all crunchy and melty. Sunny days that end in pizza and flouncy dramas are good for the soul. Yes?

serenity

I saw this guy on the subway platform this morning; he looked really put together from about twenty feet away as I stood there at the end of my platform listening to the dulcet tones of Ira Glass. He was talking into a phone and looking at some other electronic doodad in his hand. But then I wandered over to that bench to sit down and I realized he was babbling this low-grade neurotic mania into the phone and pressing what looked like the same button over and over again on the doodad. Maybe it was ESC! ESC! ESC! But I couldn’t tell because he was speaking maybe Hebrew?

I thought of him just now as I sit here at my desk at work because I feel like I’m repeating the serenity prayer in my own head without realizing it. Am I talking out loud? I’m sick with this pesky cold. I have things happening at work that simply cannot get solved in the 20-something hours I’m paid to be here every week and I’m taking them home in my head like a monkey on my back. God grant me the serenity, indeed. And maybe stop thwarting my to-do list!