Godot Waits on Me.

11:10pm: Pulling hair up, Tying apron on
Being snowed (and iced!) into the house this evening gave me plenty of time to:

A. Read "Women's Experience as a Radical Critique of Sociology"

B. Bake up some delicious cheap 'n' easy bread that has been rising since yesterday

C. Add another batch to The Great Muffin Experiment 2009


The house smells GREAT and I have all the bread and muffins P and I can eat for the whole week!

So, here's a healthy thrifty tip, friends-- stop buying bread! It's delightfully easy and affordable to make, it's a good life skill to have in uncertain times, and it's a wonderfully meditative art! Here's the recipe I've been digging: Mmmm fresh bread. Bread making becomes even more affordable when you buy your flour in 25 lb. bags-- which is sort of fun in and of itself.

This week's muffins: ( Lemon Lemon Poppyseed! )

Igloo building workshops at my place tomorrow!

3:06pm: New Years, New Years
I had a lovely winterholidaytime with family and friends! I learned to play Backgammon, learned to make vegan peanut brittle, went on some hikes, and had many, many laughs.

Lately I've been spending much of my free time skipping around the kitchen experimenting with new recipes. Okay, so my kitchen is definitely too small to skip in, but I sort of take a couple of happy steps one way or the other now an then. There is something truly satisfying and valuable about preparing meals from scratch and then feeding pretty plates of food to loved ones. Plus, I really dig the challenge of veganizing all of my gramma's wonderful, hand-written, vanilla and oil-spotted recipe cards.


So, I have a few goals for this upcoming year:

-Maintain daily meditations
-Have all of my PhD applications in order to submit next winter
-Ensure the Weinland Park Community Garden has a very productive season, and invest a lot of time in engaging community members in the garden
-Spend more time in the woods-- backpack at least two weeks on the Appalachian Trail
-Spend more time making art-- set up my ceramics studio in the basement
-Visit Blue Rock Station, and take their natural gardening, straw bale building, and/or pop bottle greenhouse building workshops
-Visit at least one intentional community this summer-- perhaps Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
-Spend more quality conversation time with loved ones-- host more dinner parties (you're invited!)


Sending everyone positive-vibing calm and cleansing new year wishes.

12:23pm: Just call me Ms. Promotion!
Yep-- promotions are pretty exciting things. Now, promotions in the non-profit sector are slightly different than in the "other world," but exciting nonetheless. I finally have benefits! And, get this-- paid vacations!

Working for The Godman Guild Association is really excellent for me because it requires me to put some creativity to work on challenging issues, and the position definitely keeps me on my toes. The Guild is was the first settlement house in Columbus, and is over 100 years old. It's been doing really important work in community development and support all along, and continues to do so. My position involves ensuring elementary-aged kids have the basic necessities, resources, and tutoring/counseling they need to succeed in school, which is so heart-breaking and challenging but simultaneously highly rewarding. (Yep, there's lots of snot, vomit, and hours spent wrangling sugar-dosed children, but there are also daily hugs from kids whose favorite part of the day is my after school program, and lots of pictures drawn for me! And dancing!)

In addition to my academic specialist position, I'm also the new (and most-thrilled) coordinator for the The Weinland Park Community Garden! So I'm working hard to prepare for planting season, corralling volunteers, and starting a Garden Club at Weinland Park Elementary so the kids can get their hands dirty too.

And, yes, I still cradle visions of saving the world.

The best things about being out of grad school (for now? forever?) is that I can finally hold a full-time position with a non-profit that I care about AND I can read books for fun again! Currently, I'm re-reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, and reading for the first time: The Zahir by Coelho and The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. I'd love your recommendations too-- so shoot 'em over! Where do I find a hip book club in this city anyway?


Whew, I feel so whole and healthy right now-- it's a lovely thing! I wish you all the same.

2:17pm:

12:05pm: Need a roommate in SF/Berkeley?
The skinny: I'm moving from the East coast to SF for work and eventually grad school, and I need a place to live in August/September. I'm scouring Craig's List and prodding my SF friends to find leads and figured dropping a note on Livejournal as well couldn't hurt.

( The specifics: )

4:59pm: Existing
Gorgeous gorgeous mild blue-skied day. It's our reward for sticking out the past week of sweltering and storming. Pittsburgh is wringing out its hair and finding animal shapes in the clouds today.

I re-read _The Metamorphoses_ in the park with some iced tea. Listened to a band fumble and rehearse next door. Stretched and sunned myself like a cat.


Breathing deeply. Learning to be still (and solitary.)

11:31pm: rain, sweat, rain
Remarkable how much more centered I feel. Yoga, meditation, raw foods, no booze, delicious teas, pawing in garden dirt daily. It all seems so simple. Simple.

I have packed boxes today. Small ones. Ceramic poodle. E.T. mugs. Maté gourd. Letters that make my heart heavy. _Ishmael_. Handfuls of jewelry rescued from garage sales. Mod Podge. Nearly expired film. I've decided to embark on an adventure in minimalism. I have no head for it just yet, but am eager to reexamine my living space and piles of things. I'm only taking with me what I can fit in a small borrowed car. It's simultaneously invigorating and painful. Need anything? I'm having a yard sale this weekend with a "Free to Good Home" corner.

I've been enchanted by these sorts of dwellings lately. A tiny little house on some fertile soil. Surrounded by a community of radical barefoot gardeners, weeping willow poets, ecstatic mad-eyed dancers, and post-urban mystics, gypsies, and shamans of all sorts. I'm off to play in Pittsburgh for a while, but it's just playing. I'm already on my way somewhere else.

I'm in a good space. I feel very light.

1:40pm: A whole year
I feel tiny spiders inching up my veins, my nerves. My nerves! Moving to Pittsburgh in three weeks. Not a single cardboard box packed in the whole house. Such a lot of work for a stone's skip on the map.

Summertime makes me feel twelve. Cutting off my jeans, cutting my hair, napping in grass, making popcicles, violently scratching poison ivy. The air is so thick it makes things move slower, I think. And puddles of sweat bring the neighbors together against the common enemy of relentless humidity. When's it gonna rain? When's it gonna rain?

I'm going to miss Columbus. It's a good summertime city.

9:28am: Suffrage!
I found these great images online from both sides of the U.S. women's suffrage movement. They are wonderful!

( Here! )

1:06pm: I have just spent nearly two hours scouring the interweb for instructions on making pincurls and fingerwaves. I have big, big plans for the 1920s party tomorrow with this mock-twenties bob: Hello Jay Gatsby.

I positively lust for my great-grandmother's skill with the hair arts. She still sets her pretty white hair in impressive 1940s waves weekly with no equipment besides pins and setting lotion. It's stunning.

So, if any of you would like to assist in my 'do (and my quest to become a coif master), please drop a line!

4:46am: Talking to my kitties at 5 a.m.

I haven't adjusted to the six hour time difference yet.

Upon arriving home from mad mad Barcelona I read a letter from my doctor saying she has scheduled more tests for my kidney as soon as I get back because things aren't looking good. Oh, and my healthy kidney is too small.

So, I am positively reeling from a fantastic trip to beautiful cities and the Mediterranean-- and wondering what the hell I am going to do if my kidney begins failing.

Already I have decided to take the summer off of school and not graduate until the fall. Yeah, I cried a little, and threw some stuff at the wall, but ultimately I need to keep my mom's insurance until I can get adequate insurance with an adequate job and all. And, of course, I am only insured under her as long as I'm a full-time student. Still, this is only good until I'm 24, so I need to get right on that adequate job thing.

I hate feeling so disconnected with my body. I hate not having control over its health.

I'm sort of a mess, and furious that I can't just be left to revel in my pretty trip across the ocean. And it was pretty, folks, oh so pretty.

3:49pm: clever

Acrylic on chewing gum on pavement

Ben's Chewing Gum Art

Love the dirty pavement!

12:17pm: blast!
Recently two of my fav favorite companies were bought out by mega-corporations I'd rather not support. I am a sad kitten-- and in need of some recommendations! I need natural, environmentally conscious, vegan, non-evil corporation lotion, face wash, mouthwash, and toothpaste.

Recommend away!

***
L'Oreal buys The Body Shop: *sigh*

Colgate-Palmolive buys Tom's of Maine: NEW YORK - (AP) Consumer products maker Colgate-Palmolive Co. said Tuesday it agreed to purchase control of the privately-held Tom's of Maine, which makes "natural" toothpaste and other personal care products, for $100 million in cash. What Tom & Kate have to say

10:31pm: Smile for me, little one.
I listened to The Zombies' This Will Be Our Year twice to discern why it made me burst into tears. I didn't actually figure it out, but I had a damn good cry despite feeling intensely silly. The Zombies for chrissake!

Now then. With a new cocktail of vitamins, extracts, herbal teas, and a fresh bottle of 5-HTP, I'm ready for action. Or, rather, sleep and mental well-being.

Wish me luck. I hope to be slithering out of my cave soon.

1:34pm: Sigur Ros tonight!

Maybe some pretty music will drag me by my hair out of this stressy funk.

Atleast my art and writing is at it's best when I'm moody and volatile. Goddess knows I have enough art and writing to do this week. Of course, the things I keep working on are not for classes, so I guess it's all irrelevent.



Now then, I'm in need of some nude models. Male and female. Must be comfy with nudity and with me and a camera. It's "tasteful" work (whatever that is...) but still fully nude. It's for my senior photography project and will be exhibited (but not on the internet, don't worry.) Please check amongst your friends and let me know of anyone a.s.a.p, because I have to write my project proposition soonish and need to know if I'll be working with males/females/both/neither/etc. If anyone would like further details on the project, just let me know. Thanks, kittens!

4:17pm: Venus is still in retrograde, eh?
My mittens went off on an adventure without me today. I found them on the bus, several hours later, and one was missing a button. My hands were cold all day, but I respect their need for some time alone together.

I can't wrap my head around "love", so perhaps I should stop using that stupid ambiguous pink-heart-candy-in-the-grocery-store-aisle word. I am in a warm, technicolor, big-skied place with a person who breathes deep, laughs loud, and kisses hard. We exist in opium-tripping Parisian Impressionist paintings. We exist in stark unpublished Post-Modern theorist ramblings. We exist in pictures drawn onto foggy windows. We exist in thick, spicy, eyes-watering-finger-food. We exist in the hazy hushed stillness of a closing museum.

10:23pm: Photo
( Photo: She Leaves a Light On )

6:29pm: If I had bootstraps, I would be pulling myself up by them.

2:46am: Ahhh. Yes. Let's call this a poem.
Oh how I miss drunken typing to a blinking cursor.

screen too bright to fully

focus

Oh how I miss...

and It just reeks of "pathetic."


... and that's okay.


I'm sad.

*pause*

And that's okay too.

Because somewhere in between The Beats and Post-Postmodernism
it became uncouth
to write about
this.

So.

I acquired a garter belt today.

... and that's okay.

9:28pm: Oh my my.
I had a nastyickycrappy day. So I hopped on my snazzy new bike, rode on over to the co-op, and bought myself a pretty organic blood orange (because I've been a good girl and deserved it.)

Now I have sticky sweet orange juice on my chin and fingers (and keyboard). And it feels wonderful.

The best 50 cents I ever found in the dryer and spent.

3:34pm: Oh woe is me, an anti-capitalist salesperson
I need a sweet new job, please.


Suggestions?


I have mad server/barrista/bartending skills--

And I can make these
impromptu haikus
like nobody's business


Plus I write! Yeah. I can copy-edit and write term papers and inserts for greeting cards and poems for your loved ones (and enemies!)


Annnnnd... I make a rad anatomically correct vagina throw pillow. (Plus mending! I'll mend your busted jeans and socks.)


Help meeee!

10:11pm: Eight Month Hiatus
I have this little 1960s ceramic frog that sits on a bookcase in my room. It has bulging cutesy 1960s ceramic eyes (which, incidentally, are not both focused on precisely the same spot). And I know that no matter where I go for the rest of my life I'm going to have to take that silly little thing with me. If I take nothing else, I'm still going to slip my little ceramic frog in my pocket and walk out the door-- perhaps defiantly (sometimes seemingly pointless defiance is necessary.)


Seek metaphors at will.

7:05pm: the plan.
Tonight: Spends copious amounts of time at the library. Start a paper on feminism rearing its ugly head in 18th century domestic novels.

Tomorrow: Class. Finish paper. Work.

Friday: Actually finish paper I said I would finish Thursday. See Jon Stewart!

Saturday: Pout. Work. See The Decemberists and Rebecca Gates!

Sunday: Pout then work again. See The Books! Then write a paper on 1970s films' revamping of the classic femme fatale.




Oh yeah.

1:36pm: Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul
My my. A little livejournal cattiness goes a long way.







Spring rains make me all sappy and emotive. And then as soon as it's sunny again I go into manic hysterics and want to twirl around in fields a la The Sound of Music (complete with skin-crawlingly trite song and choreographed dance.)

I have a sunburn. Blasted translucent skin.



I wish Allen Ginsberg had been my uncle.



Now then, off to brood a bit and then play some atrocious music and make the basement inhabitable.


Oh, and 50s party? Soon? Yeah? (Everyone find your poodle skirts! Dig.)

6:35pm: Ode to Today, you grotesque deranged fuck
Do you ever have one of those days where you think you'll probably die of some freak brain aneurism or simply spontaneously combust because fuck it's been a long day full of the most obscenely bizarre occurrences and hindrances and annoyances and all of your frustration and anxiety and worry has simply been replaced by (or reduced to)anger because perhaps its the most elemental base emotion unadulterated seething bitter anger that isn't directed at anything in particular but rather everything and 'fuck' becomes a mantra and it makes one walk more decisively and talk louder and be more honest and look at everything and everyone with crisp focus and harsh backlighting like out of some Orson Welles movie about the mighty falling and the anger glows this intense and beautiful red-violet and consumes everything and exudes from everything and one feels powerful and strong and practically begs confrontation so one can demonstrate their super-human abilities and maybe shoot piercing lasers out of their eyes and scale tall buildings and destroy entire cityscapes--Yeah I've had this kind of day today-- so I simply think that I cannot exist for long in this chaos without becoming it and I'm well on my way so the immediate future looks grim yet thrilling in its utter abandon and wild anarchist freedom I am free to explode into space and alter egos and other dimensions and abstracted realities void of social constructions and control of the mass subconscious I am reckless and powerful and will surely be destroyed soon if there is a greater being in control of things and I hope there is so I can give him the finger and spit on him and laugh maniacally until he smites me.