all about library

What? I haven't blogged all week? Either the week was really fast (it wasn't), or I was spending time reading (I was) when I'd otherwise be blogging. I am finished with Smashed. And, as I am apt to do when I end a book, I sink my eyeballs deep into the world of goodreads and read, finally, what people thought of the book I just read. It is my own book club, exactly how I like it: I don't have to say anything. So, perhaps Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There will come now or Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which I left on my desk at work, doh).

I think if I just scribble this here, like I always do when times at work have me questioning why I serve the public forty hours a week, it will help me enjoy my weekend.

You handed me a piece of paper to throw out and said that's my blood on it there after it was in my hands. Sure enough. You weren't kidding. I am happy to be your maid, but only under those conditions. I deal in bloody scraps of paper alone. You said, when my back was turned, she didn't understand what I meant at all, did you see that? You should have heard what you asked me, holier than thou wife beater. You said, when my back was turned, this library sucks. No, you little procrastinating piece of shit kid, YOU SUCK. You argued about minutes of your time like you are actually important. News. For. You. Middle-aged dudes plugging away on their laptops in the middle of the work week in a public library are not hotshots. They're unemployed. And you, the lady with your Ph.D. Don't correct me when I omit the Dr. from your name. Listen up here. Ph.Ds from the University of Phoenix are worth less than my high school diploma. Suck it.

Guys. I feel so much better. I promise I do not have a heart of stone. I am very, very nice to the public. I should tell you that 98% of the people I help are people I would trust to watch my dogs and cats - that's how lovely my job really is. It's all the bitches and assholes that screw me up, take the pleasure of out my day for ten minutes, and make me question this whole librarian thing.

saturday a.m.

• Smashed : story of a drunken girlhood (Zailckas, 2005); it turns out this is what I'm reading now and enjoying. The author was in high school the same time I was (maybe one year behind me), so I get her on that alone. Pre-cell phones, post-Cobain (okay, he expired when I was a freshman). I read a lot yesterday; my eyes are thinking I'm up too early.
• Steve is taking his dad to the airport, so that's why I'm up early. When he gets back, soon, we'll have a good start on the day. The sunrise hasn't even happened yet. Living at this latitude/longitude still psychs me out in the summer months.
  
• ::yawn::

newsworthy

• have lots of mosquito bites
• yes, have been outside - weeding, tidying yard
  
• reading some; haven't found anything lately that's keeping my attention
  
• there was a moth in my car this morning that was the size of a baby bird
• looking forward to Friday - who isn't!

envirosax shopping bag

My mom *still* sends me care packages. It is like being at summer camp, permanently. I love it.

d. sergei and cole, in love

disappearing acts

Countless. Yes, that's how many posts I've started over the week that never made it beyond the first few sentences. I did write a post in Google Docs today, but it misfired twice and wound up somewhere in my favorite third place, Internet.

In all things media:

• I was finally able to borrow the soundtrack from ONCE and it is so so so great; listening to it is kind of like watching the movie again and again, which a friend of mine has done (10 times!). I couldn't do that, but I could listen to it 10 times in one go.
• I finished reading I'm Looking Through You (Boylan, 2008). I was taken with the subtitle: Growing up haunted which my brain automatically took for Growing up in a Haunted House Let's Talk About Spooks and Ghosts CAMPFIRE LORE. My brain was half correct. Yes, the author grows up in a creepy haunted house, but the real ghost in the closet is the author's secret desire to be a woman - which he eventually becomes in later life. Whoa, transsexual surprise! And once a ghost, always a ghost. Quite a fast read for even my slow eyeballs.
  
• Now I'm reading another memoir - Swallow the Ocean (Flynn, 2008). It's starting kind of slooow, but the reviews have been promising so I'll hold out a few more chapters.

Afraid this might get deleted, or something. Publishing now.

on fooling you, sewing, and work

Sunday is here again (not Nicole Kidman's daughter; the actual day of the week.  I sure fooled you, didn't I?). 

 

Not a lot of news to report...my weekend went by too quickly, but I managed to get some things done.  The housework, yes, the housework.  I took a whack at it and so did Steve.  We cleaned our office and I went through all of my fabric - covered in dust - and made a promise to myself that I will start *sewing* again.  We interrupt this blog post to ask Kimberlina how she is liking her sexyhot Bernina?  Do you love it?  Do you recommend it?  I have two sewing machines that are both out of order - ok, one is not (my grandma's brand X; she bought it the year I was born, but the tension gives me more agony than it's worth), but the other (Steve's mom's machine - a Pfaff) definitely needs a tune up.  Both of them are older machines.  Maybe I'm in the market for a new one.  I grew up using first my mom's Singer and then when she upgraded to a Bernina, I swore I would never sew on anything else.  Maybe it's time to prove that swearing is OK.

 

Well, time to get to work...library doors are almost open to public.  You lovely public.  Want to hear about the lady patron with the spittle collecting at her lower lip as she told me about the calluses on her feet?  No?  My stomach if full; I don't even want to remember it.  *gag*

thank god i have a blog

It's the one place that's all Madge, all the time.

d. sergei the feline pillow

you might just see me

Kimberlina inspired me to try the super rad PictoBrowser. Here are some photos from my trip to Portland/Eugene/Coast last month...

quick! post something.

Here are the little things that have been going on the past week:

• Television. And lots of it. I bought the third seasons of The Closer and Weeds last week as we watch both shows exclusively on DVD. We blew through The Closer and tonight we'll conclude Weeds - with pizza.
• IKEA. And lots of it. Well, not lots. We went last Saturday; it was Steve's virgin voyage. Rumors come and go of a local store, but until anything happens we have to make a 100 mile round-trip to Sunrise for shopping. Dude! I didn't think it would be so busy; it opened in October! But there were tons of people in the store wedged in every possible nookkencrånny. I don't like crowds. I think if you ever lose your mom in a crowd as a child you are a hopeless case: you will never love crowds.
  
• My last haircut was not a favorite of mine; my hairdresser redeemed herself Tuesday night. Love my new coif.
• Reading. I was so banking A Mirror Garden to give me satisfaction, but it did not and I gave up about 45 pages in -- time to find something else. Easy enough; yet another memoir: I'm looking through you : Growing up haunted (Boylan, 2008).
  

happy fourth of july

Eat.
Drink.
Be Amerryica.

third food posting, beware

It's nothing too boring: Junior Mints. Perfect combination of chocolate and mint. The mint isn't too bright hot, so the chocolate actually has a chance. And JMs are mighty good with popcorn at the same time, though I am not doing that right now.

Yesterday afternoon I made some yummy tofu - combine lemon, olive oil, oregano, soy sauce, garlic, then drizzle over tofu and bake for a half hour @ 400°. I ate almost the whole pan when it came out of the oven. Tofu taboo! The recipe came from Moosewood's Simple Suppers. I will probably make some more on Sunday...

We went thrift shopping today.
We had lunch out today, on Clematis.
Lots more rain, lightning.

a.m. scramble

Coffee + bagel, again. It doesn't help that we have a Dunkin Donuts four blocks away from our house and we can walk there, though today we drove because then we took our breakfast yummies to the beach and waited for the sunrise. But we didn't see much because over the horizon were dark clouds, lightning, thunder. Not what you expect in the morning. Summer! Rainy season. I forgot what it could be like, seeing as we'd been in a drought for the past two years.

I forgot to mention that, last week, I accomplished something major. I paid off my credit card. I was never one to carry a balance in the first place, but when I wasn't working it sort of became necessary. In the beginning, I only charged food, gas: the necessities. Then it was used for a lot of miscellaneous things and soon, the balance became Everest high. That began in late 2006. Now, in mid-2008, it's finally got a $0 balance. It was a cause worth celebrating. We had breakfast for dinner.

COOK SOMETHING TODAY. This is mostly a reminder to myself.

home, free

Food consumption today, if I think I might be doing nablopomo:

• Chex cereal
• Bagel + maple-frosted donut (shit! Well, it's Canada Day) + large coffee w/cream from Dunkin Donuts
• Since it's the afternoon, I might pour myself a little glass of wine. Undecided at this point.
  

That's it. And it's so late in the day. I am eating crap, and that's all there is to that. Boy, if you air your dirty eating secrets for the entire internets to see, then it really makes you want to eat better.

We lost power today for about an hour. A small taste of what's to come if we have a wicked storm season. Shoot. When you are without power, you can do this: read by the gray cloud light coming through the window. I'm halfway into Miranda July's No one belongs here...Portland Hipsterville called, wow. I do like it if only because I can relate to loneliness in her short stories. And Portland; it makes me think of home.

Next on the reading list is a memoir. A Mirror Garden, by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (2007). I know nothing about her, although in my constant search of memoirs, she - an Iranian American writer and theater artist now living in Austin, TX - turned up and I was intrigued. There are 104 illustrations in the book - little sketches done by the writer. It's so charming that I might have to drink tea while I read it, out of a pretty teacup. I can tell she's going to teach me a lot of things, and I like that.

Jane is doing her infamous sleeping pose: flat on her back, little toes pointed outwards and upwards, front paws twitching every now and then. In fact, all the pets are sleeping right now. We are relaxed (oh, Jane is awake now!).