"Okay, the next part, I'm going to read this part really fast, and I encourage you to listen carefully because it's stuff that the FDA is making me say: users in the trial have reported a number of side effects, including, for instance, slight madness, moderate madness, jitterbug leg, jitterbug legs, jitterbug foot, zombie toe, acute slappiness, chronic slappiness, and the crazies."
-- "Designer Emotion 67" by Charles Yu, collected in Sorry Please Thank You.
I was walking Lucy a few days ago and a woman pulled up beside us. This isn't as unusual as you'd think. It's a small town and people can't resist corgis.
In her backseat was her own corgi, Rosie. We let the dogs sniff each other, chit-chatted about the chewing and the herding. Then discovered that our dogs are sisters. No, real blood sisters from the same litter. You know what had to come next, yes?
(Lucy's in the background; Rosie's looking at you.)
I'm really not sure which is which here.
A lovely time was had by all - and Lucy is now sacked out under my desk because she had Too Much Fun.
Once upon a time, Lisa and Adrienne worked for the same alternative newsweekly. Now, both spend their respective lives mining their creative souls and leading hermit-like lives. And so an idea was hatched. Every week, one would send the other a sketch—either in illustration or word form—and the other would make a companion to the sketch. The result would be posted on both their blogs every week, just for grins. Even if the result isn't award-worthy, the exercise makes both minds more nimble. Hopefully.
Here’s how much the upcoming presidential election is taking over my mind: where you see a man and a monkey I see a metaphor.
The man is the American electorate, largely good natured with a few bad habits, as evidenced by the belly and the cigar. But mostly harmless and vaguely ethnic.
The monkey represents the candidates, forced to perform, stuck on the end of a leash and bitter about the whole circumstance. “Klank,” they say. “Klank.” At night, you know that there will be shoe pooping, just because.
The tip cup is there for China.
November can’t come soon enough.
Text ©Adrienne Martini; illustration ©Lisa Horstman. Until the end of time. Or something.
* I'd like to work here, please.
* My new favorite band, maybe?
* I kinda want to try a Lemon Pineapple Squall.
* This is just up the road from me, fyi. Hey! These guys are just up the road from me, too.
* Don't drink and draft.
* Local cheese tour. Who's in?
* No one benefits from anonymous criticism, which is a lesson to learn as early in your career as you can. (Which brings to mind my favorite anonymous student response comment: "You need to be taller and have longer hair." Still not sure what to do with that.)
* I might have to see this. (And, conveniently, will be in the city oh so briefly in September....)
Just a programming note: given that this week and the next will probably test my parenting weaknesses to the nth degree* and that a Certain Very Bad Dog chewed through my computer's power cord, posts might be light for the next little bit. Unless they aren't. But, really, they probably will be because I try to keep the grumbling about truly unimportant things to myself most of the time.**
On that note, a question -- I'm a big fan of tailored button-down shirts and am feeling the sewing bug and need to add to my teaching wardrobe since we're ten days away from the start of college classes.*** Given that, would attempting this shirt be completely crazy or just plain nuts?
* long story - but it involves not being fast enough on the trigger for a summer camp and being at the point in the summer when all of the fun summer stuff has been done so many times that it's no longer fun summer stuff and my general dislike for the hot and the sticky. Etc.
** Shut up. I do. You don't even know.
*** but not public school classes, which adds to the general chaos.
"You should approach You & Me as you would approach a recreational drug: with plenty of time on your hands and in a safe location where no one will throw scowls your way for openmouthes bouts of metaphysical awe spiked with bursts of giggling."
-- Jonathan Miles on Padgett Powell's You & Me in Aug/Sept's Garden and Gun, which I'd intially bought for the stories on Knoxville but may have to subscribe to because it is awesome.
I sew a little bit. I'd like to sew more - but am hampered by being self-taught.* Thanks to the new fabric shop in town**, I took a lesson last night and made a tote bag.***
The class was taught by Elizabeth (above (I think - and hope someone lets me know if I'm wrong) and Betsy (below). They also have a blog and a business and, incidentally, other jobs. Elizabeth, for instance, is a gynocologist, who told us at least one joke about her field.***
A convenient pin cushion.
My finished bag.
The lining.
The trick now will be not putting my newly won knowledge into craziness, like sewing slipcovers or shirts or luggage or something. But the totes. Oh, the totes. So quick. So easy. So purty.
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* actually, I'm also hampered by living three cats, one dog, and two kids in a relatively small house while also holding down about four jobs plus knitting, reading and running.... let's just stick with "hampered by self-taught" and move on.
** Project Anthologies. The owner Melany is working on the website. A better sense of this cute and lovely shop is here.
*** Word to those I know -- you may all be getting tote bags for Christmas.
**** I can leave it in the comments.
Once upon a time, Lisa and Adrienne worked for the same alternative newsweekly. Now, both spend their respective lives mining their creative souls and leading hermit-like lives. And so an idea was hatched. Every week, one would send the other a sketch—either in illustration or word form—and the other would make a companion to the sketch. The result would be posted on both their blogs every week, just for grins. Even if the result isn't award-worthy, the exercise makes both minds more nimble. Hopefully.
I can’t put the same level of devotion into the summer Olympics for one simple reason: the summer games don’t have curling.
Every four years, I find myself fascinated by a game that involves rocks, ice and a couple of brooms. It’s shuffleboard, more or less, but with more Canadians. And while the idea of being glued to the tv watching folks shuffle their boards (or whatever it is you do on cruise ships), I can’t look away from curling.
I blame the yelling, because I giggle every time someone screams “HARD!” as the sweepers sweep. Curling calls to my ancestral memories of bocci. Plus, this seems like one of the few events you could compete in while holding a beer. I could totally be a curler -- and even went so far to see if there was a curling team in my area. There isn’t, which is a pity.
Until 2014, I shall make do with the methadone that is the summer games. Rhythmic gymnastics only just scratches the itch.
Text ©Adrienne Martini; illustration ©Lisa Horstman. Until the end of time. Or something.
* I kinda want one. (And can hear the Featureless Saint muttering, "oh hell no.")
* I still don't think I'm a helicopter parent.
* Surprise!
* Journal ideas.
* Turns out that cocaine and baby formula aren't the same. I'm shocked, I tell ya, especially given how much grief I got for feeding my babies formula.
* Speaking of, on prenatal depression.
* Abby Sciuto and the world she has wrought.
* What they really think.
Summer is kicking my ass, frankly. It's not just the heat, it's the house full of kids* and the lack of a meaningful schedule. Also, the Featureless Saint and I start back to our real jobs in about two weeks, which means there are syllabi to write, etc., but the kids don't go back to school for two weeks after that. Which means that the juggling will soon commence and I am too hot to think too hard about it.
Which might be why I started crying in the middle of the bookstore** yesterday.
Before I open the door on Sunday, I've gotten into the habit of picking up the Garrison Keillor edited Good Poems and flipping it open at random. Yesterday's poem -- John Updike's Dog's Death -- nearly broke me into a thousand pieces, partly because it's a great piece of work but mostly because good friends just had their new puppy die.
So that's how my Sunday afternoon started, weepy and in awe of Updike for so perfectly capturing the ineffable. And also slightly ticked off that Updike wrote something that I love, dang it. But that's my issue, not his.
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* Usually only two of them, yes, but it feels like four dozen when you are trying to actually finish a sentence.
** For those just tuning in, I work at the Green Toad, my local bookstore, a few hours every month because it makes me happy to hang around with the books (and the women I work with, natch).