Ghosts' Dreams

I get irritated when I can't find something on the internet. In my head, the internet is bits and bytes of information floating around us in clouds, and if one should need to know something, one need only to reach out and pluck the right bit of data out of the air. This is true if one needs something that lots of other people need, like how to have dreadlocks* or a recipe for sugar cookies** but if one becomes obsessed with, say, a quote, perhaps a quote from a certain book (Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist) that one particularly wants to write in one's journal, and one is sure one has the book somewhere (but it may have gotten stuck in the basement in W's Great Book Purge of 2008), well, one might be out of luck.

One may very well be hunting fruitlessly for quotes on the internet as a way of writing a scene in one's novel that one does not particularly feel like writing.

One may have accidentally become Evelyn Waugh or Nancy Mitford.***

The quote that I was so hot to write down here was something like, "After that there was nothing to do but smoke and be a writer."

Victory Over Japan is one of those books that just stays with you.

I cannot remember now if I have been writing about the Being Right in this space yet. If I haven't, by Being Right, I mean when I know things that I wish I didn't know. Sometimes it seems like a good trick, like "How did you know that, Miss Cleo?" but it's not really. It's just a kind of plotting a character arc, and being able to say what is the next point on the character arc. It's remembering that there are only, what, seven "person versus something" themes, and it's an understanding that people are basically predictable. I did not ask to know this trick, unless you count the whole Being a Writer Who Tends to Focus Heavily on Character-Driven Plots as asking for it, which you probably could. Or else I caught it from Sundesha, who also has Being Right, has had it ever since I've known her, and has flummoxed me on a few memorable occasions by using it. She's far better at it than I am. Yesterday, I bemoaned my Being Right to her. "It's not that I want to know these things," I told her.

"You can't turn it off," she said.

Oh. Right. Hooray. More on this later.

In other news, I'm continuing to write a goddamned novel, and the novel is kind of porny. But Vv, you say, whut? You, Miss Prudish Writer, have written a sex scene?

I've written two. Good thing no one will ever read them, because whooo-weee, do they stink! I think I may write a whole bunch more, because it takes a lot of words to describe sex: not just the act itself, but the getting to the act, and then the aftermath, and then (as we all know), sex often causes problems, which have to be sorted out, which means more words. And the more words, the better. Anyway, I expect it's good practice for when I write a better novel.

I'm thoroughly enjoying myself, except for the part about not sleeping very much. I am using way too many adverbs. I am spliting infinitives. I am ending sentences with prepositions! I know! It's craziness!



*not for me, in case you were wondering
**that one was for me. The cookies were delicious, thanks for asking.
***This is a hysterically funny joke, but only if one is me.

I'm in a Go Eat Worms mood.

You know:

Nobody likes me
Everybody hates me
Guess I'll go eat worms

There was more to that song, I'm sure, but I do not feel like asking google about it right now.  I'm certain it went on to describe different kinds of worms to be eaten.

It seems like I've forgotten how to laugh lately.  I know, it sounds like the beginning of a trite story for small children: Once there was a princess called Prinji who had forgotten how to laugh.  All of the jesters in the realm came to her and told funny jokes... etc.

I think it may have been an actual book, but I don't remember how it ended. 

It may have something to do with the writing, which is crazy weird.  I mean, I know how to write, more or less.  I forget who said it, some famous writer, but someone said, "Writing is easy.  You just take out a blank piece of paper and stare it at it until it bleeds."  I enjoy the process.

What's new, though, is that I'm not deleting an effen word, which is not how I usually roll.  Usually I write 100 words and then delete 75 of them.  Then I play solitaire for an hour.  But this time, I'm just leaving every poorly-worded phrase and stilted sentence.  I'm breaking all the rules!  I'm using adverbs to modify the word "said."  Like, all the time. 

"I constantly use way too many adverbs," she said, matter-of-factly.

I like adverbs.  Yeah.  I do.  It's a little embarrassing.  I know they aren't cool.  I know that admitting that you like adverbs is like admitting that sometimes you like to spend several hours on the couch eating junk food and watching "Girls Next Door."

Maybe all of this Cranky has to do with being embarrassed about liking things. 

Maybe I should be more honest.  Maybe I should make a list.

Things I Am Now Not Ashamed to Like:
1. Lists
2. Occasionally lying on the couch for several hours watching "Girls Next Door"
3. Adverbs
4. Potion Eyeshadow Primer
5. Black lipstick
6. The Cure
7. Advancing the plot with dialogue

That was cathartic.  I have to go write more.



Postscript: The aftermath is just as low as was expected.



*I started writing this several days ago, and I think I was going somewhere with the subject line, but I can no longer remember where I was going.

PostSecret is good.  Frank Warren is engaging and sincere and humble and funny, just like you'd want him to be. 

It's also good to go out, to take in an event, think about things.  Going to hear Frank Warren talk about PostSecret is absolutely the perfect exercise for NaNoWriMo: so many stories and ideas and low-hanging fruit begging to be baked into novel pie.

But really the best part was after the talking and audience sharing and the video and the standing ovation.  Sundesha and I walked out together.  We didn't say anything just yet; we just smiled at each and let ourselves be swept along with the crowd toward the door.  When we got outside, it was chilly and wet, a perfect November night, and Sundesha walked arm-in-arm back to the car. 

A comfortable silence is a rare and beautiful thing.

It wasn't that we didn't have anything to say; when we got in the car, buckled our seat belts and checked  the messages on our cell phones, I said, "Well, that was totally worth it."  We laughed and talked about PostSecret, being thirty-something, fear of success, her photography and my novel.  But I am grateful for the comfortable silence as much as for the conversation.

This world is so full
So full of crashing bores
And I must be one
Cause no one ever turns to me to say,
Take me in your arms and love me*

If I believed in astrology, I would think that my Stars are Out of Alignment this week.  The moon is in Betelgeuse, or Venus is in Furs, or the sun is not in Daylight Savings Time,  or whatever the right term is.  

Spooki says, "Just say the walrus has a cold," which makes sense in Spooki-context.

But whatever it is, it's causing me to feel awkward, and stilted, and sometimes like a marionette, and everything seems a little off-kilter.

Lappy is broken.  Thus saith W and also Spooki.  Yea, there was much lamenting and gnashing of teeth.

I had sort of assumed that it was Broken For Real, but I had to be sure.  "Just take it away and if it's inconvenient, just say you looked at it, and pat my hand and tell me that you're really sorry, but it's the Flux Capacitor, and that it will cost nine million dollars for a new one," I told Spooki.  I am pretty sure that Spooki really did take the thing apart and look at it, though. 

I know: quit'cher bitchen, Vv.  Everyone reading this already knows that W, being nice husband, is letting me use his other laptop.  But I get attached to things.  I sort of think of them as my friends, like how I sometimes talk about my GPS unit as if it (she) were a person, e.g. "Sally and I drove to a place today."  Lappy was always Lappy, but this machine that I'm sitting in front of right now is still The Other Laptop, e.g. "I have to put winamp on The Other Laptop so I can listen to Morrissey when I'm writing my novel."

Maybe I should put stickers on it, or something.

But anyway, W let me use Other Laptop, and Spooki took Lappy apart and had a look at it, and Other Spooky offered to troll eBay for a replacement motherboard for me.  Next time I'm having a Go Eat Worms kind of day, I'm going to remember that people do nice things for me.

But I am writing a novel, and that has made all the difference. 

It's crap.  It's vile.  It's the worst tripe ever written by a human.  But I'm plodding along anyway.

Here is a list of foods that I decided today while I was eating them are my favoritest food ever:
Spinach
1% milk
Avocado
That mozzarella cheese that so fresh and spongy that it comes in a little tub of water
Soft-boiled eggs

Speaking of novel, I should be writing words right now.


*Morrissey, for a change.

Sometimes, Restore From Saved Draft? yields unexpected gifts.  For example, I was going to write something just now, and when I clicked on "Post" I found an entry I'd been working on (and apparently not posted) last week.  So I think I'm just going to continue where I left off.



For some reason, I have Billy Idol's "White Wedding" stuck in my head, and have had it there, all day, rattling around.  I can't remember most of the words, so I keep singing, "Hey little sister, something some-thiiiiing!"

As my mother would say, "A song in my heart, and a bubble in my brain."

Some selected snippets:

"Yeah, well," I told Spooki, "Redneck girls don't get super excited when they find out that MAC finally has black lipstick.  Finally!" 
"Unless they are goth wannabe redneck girls," Spooki said.  "And even then, they are more prone to Wet'n Wild." 
"Wet'n Wild smells like crayons.  And probably tastes like crayons, too, but I've never eaten crayons."
"Probably tastes worse."

I think it's kind of funny that Spooki is familiar with Wet'n Wild.

"Seriously.  I need a Meatwad hat," I told W. 
"You could be Meatwad for Halloween," W said.
"YES.  That's a fantastic idea," I said.  "Will you be Shake?"
"Absolutely not.  I would have to be Frylock."
"Oh.  Right.  Of course."

We're not really going to be Aqua Teen Hunger Force for Halloween.  Though I still don't have an effen costume yet.

I have the black lipstick, in case you were wondering, and yes, it is everything I had hoped for, and does not taste like crayons.  And since I was on a roll, I also got some Urban Decay eyeshadow primer.  Preliminary tests indicated fantastic-ness, but I have not had a chance to wear eyemakeup since I've gotten it. 

When did I turn into a girl who is excited for eyeshadow primer?

So, it's time to write a novel.  And, on cue, lappy shuddered and died.  Yes!  One day before the novel-writing starts!  W says I can use his lappy so novel writing is still on, as of right now.  In fact, I should probably go write, seeing as how it's November 1.

This weekend, I very nearly killed Dorothycat.  Then I saved her life.  But it was pricey.

Poor Dorothy.  I should have known better than to bring lilies home.  I should have known that she would eat them. 

At least I caught her eating them, remembered (too late) that they would make her sick, and drove her to the vet right away. 

After two nights in kitty hospital, she's home, looking a little raggedy and refusing to take her pills, and I feel like the worst pet owner ever.  

Not going to say how much it costs to prevent a cat who has eaten stargazer lily from dying, but it was a lot.  I'm chalking that one up to Now You Know Not to Buy Lilies at Meijer.

Or, rather, the time has almost come to write a novel.

But Vv, you ask, why you do this?

Because I'm a glutton for punishment?  All I know is that I'm super excited for it.  

Before then, there is much to do in October, starting with houseguests next weekend, and Halloween, and some things inbetween too.

So Vv, you ask, what have you done in preparation for this craziness? And what, pray tell, will this novel be about?

I've begun compiling a list of interesting character names, starting with Minerva.  I have no idea what it will be about.  My favorite subject matter: complicated relationships, I daresay.

*What is it with walruses lately, anyway? 

1. I'm not sleeping very much or very well, lately.  I keep finding myself awake in the middle of the night, pursuing an unlikely train of thought to its illogical conclusion. 

2. The Intrepid Dr. F said to me today, "So are you taking fish oil?"

I said no.

"And why not?"

".... Because I'm a vegetarian and, so far as I can tell, it's made of fish."

Dr. F is respectful of that sort of thing and said he would look into another source, so I respectfully said that I would consider taking fish pills.

I did consider it, but only for a minute, because it turns out that, as I had suspected, fish oil is made from dead fish.

It's true that recently, I told W that I sort of miss seafood once in a while.  Really, though, I miss it in the way I miss things I don't really want to come back, like I miss believing in Santa Claus, or hanging out in chat rooms, or being youthful and foolish.  I don't think I could actually reconcile myself with eating a dead fish, or taking supplements made of dead fish.  It would make me wonder what is the difference between our two absurdly large goldfish, Capt'n Morgan and Nugget, of whom I am fond, and fish whose lives were sacrificed because omega-3 is trendy right now? 

The difference, I suppose, is that goldfish are pretty. 

If provig is made of animals, please please please nobody tell me. 

3. I went to SCA, after much indecision.  All of the offers, like "I'll help you make a dress," and "I'll loan you a dress," and I show up without having taken any of them.  I was thinking, well, I guess the look I'm going for is Made an Effort.  Really, though, I wasn't going to go, but angel said let's go, so we went.  Probably next time I should make a frock, and also camp.

"It's like camping, but with uncomfortable clothes," I told H & B.  They said that yes, it was rather like that.  We did not camp, because everyone knows that Vv is notsomuch about the camping, but after we were there, I sort of felt like we should have been camping, because I wanted to stay.  Blasphemy!

It occurs to me that I have really no idea who reads this and who doesn't, so rather than type something I oughtn't, I will tidily sum it up and move on: awkward, interesting, awkward, funny, awkward, distressing, awkward, funny,did she just say that, wait did that just happen, yes it did just happen, and it was really nice.

Also, it occurred to me that SCA should be on Stuff White People Like any day now.

4. It was a long holiday weekend, and I thoroughly resent having to go back to work tomorrow.

You Are Joan

You are sexy, sassy, and smarter than people realize. You know how to work a situation to your benefit. You are constantly getting underestimated, especially at work. That's okay, because you always get the last laugh. You are one tough cookie. You will do what it takes to survive, and you have the men of the world wrapped around your little finger. You put on a brave face, and no one really knows the true you. You're a lot more complicated than you seem.

Of all the things that are vexing to me at this moment (and trust me, there are a few), the most vexing thing is that a small muscle above my right eye twitches constantly, and has done so for several weeks now. 

Don't worry: there are enough chocolate Jell-o pudding pops for everyone.

I think someone should start a Jello-o Pudding Pop exchange. 

Pudding pops only come in a variety package.  I love vanilla pudding pops, find the vanilla-chocolate mixed ones tolerable, and hide the chocolate ones in the back of the freezer and buy another box.  It's not that I don't like chocolate in general, just not chocolate pudding pops.

Consequently I have a great many chocolate pudding pops in the back of the freezer.  I eat them, occasionally, so it feels wasteful to throw them away.  Therefore I purpose that someone, somewhere, must like chocolate and hide vanilla, and this person and I should trade.

Except for that they'd probably be melted by the time they got to the other person.  So.... anyone want to come over and eat some chocolate pudding pops?

A bat.

Bats dying. 

Honestly, I swear to FSM that I saw that on my el jay homepage, and thought of a bat, before I even read the text asking what it looks like.

It's been quite a week. 

The camera (fancy), and the GPS (Sally) that W gave me for Christmas, and W's phone (rather pricey to replace) vanished from the car last night. 

And I know in my heart that someone was the car, because someone tore open a plastic bag of my beads that was in the back seat, a bag that I had personally carefully tied shut, so as not to lose any of my small packets of beads.

Apparently, beads are not worth stealing.

Ditto for the car charger for Sally, which was left on the floor.  I hope the battery goes dead just as they are very nearly at a hard-to-find destination. 

Fuckers. 

I hope they are also confused by the plethora of photos of antique vibrators on the camera.  They don't deserve to know about antique vibrators.

I'm in some mood tonight.

But I'm grateful to angel, who bought me drinks and listened to me bitch about my bad week tonight.

1. A set:  a brush, a mirror, two little glass jars, and a larger glass bowl with a lid, probably for loose powder, all in pale green and brass.  They don't make things like that any more, or if they do, they are not nearly as lovely.  "They should be displayed," she told me.  And she told me the story about a great aunt, and a brown wedding dress, and I felt a connection, like I'd been entrusted with something.

2.  She handed me a stack of business cards.  I handed them out to all of my friends.  "It's more to do with Sundesha than with me," I told everyone, when they complimented me.  "I don't really look like that."  My friends (bless them) gave me puzzled looks and said that I do, in fact, look like that. Later,  I joined a conversation about the cards. 

".... really, very minimal editing," Sundesha was saying.

"But she took the photo in the first place!" I protested.  "Maybe she didn't edit so much, but really, the original photo..."  I didn't want her to be modest.  The business cards look fantastic.  I feel like photos of me, taken by Sundesha, are more Sundesha than they are me. 

Still, it's me, and that caused me to wonder if I should try to realign the way I imagine myself to be closer to the photo on Sundesha's business card.  It's a revelation, and a gift.

3.  Yesterday was our anniversity* and we have been married for seven years.  When W picked me up from work yesterday (the Passat is broken, but that's another story not involving Gifts, which is this entry's theme) there was a perfectly-wrapped box on the front seat of the car.  Inside was a stereoscope, which is a sort of Victorian ViewMaster, and also some viewing cards.  I don't know why, but I have always liked stereoscopes.  Maybe it's the flights of fancy they must have inspired: Oh, look, Edgar!  It's Egypt!  How grand!  Or maybe I just think they are pretty.  I should go take a photo.

It's actually much nicer than that, but lately I can't get the camera to work properly, and somehow, I can't open Photoshop on my lappy.

*Anniversary.  I spell it wrong on purpose, because of a still-funny inside joke

A snippet of a conversation:

Natural Mage: I want a flying monkey, and I want the theme music for flying monkeys to play when he enters the room.

Vv: It'd just poop all over the house.

Natural Mage: Not as much as you poop all over my dreams, Jill.


That made me laugh really hard.  I've noticed that I don't laugh much lately.  Oh, sure, I chuckle.  I appreciate wit and satire.  I congratulate others on their clever remarks.  Occasionally, I chortle.  But I don't often laugh.

In fact, recently I revisited some past internet funniness.  All your base!  Trogdor!  The hampster dance!*  I came across a list somewhere, of Teh Internet's greatest hits.  Much of it is still pretty funny, but I didn't really laugh, and I hadn't realized the lack of actual physical laughter until the Natural Mage accused me of pooping on his dreams. 

The Daily Show is, in fact, funny.  I watch it often, but often I'm amused and appalled at the same time.  Yes! that was so clever! Jon Stewart, touche!  But I hardly ever LOL. 

The problem, I think, is that (aside from the above-referenced snippet), I don't find scatalogical humor to be funny.  I don't think people getting hurt is funny.  You know that thing on yootoob? The one where the guys gets hurt in a fairly spectacular way?  I didn't see it.  And if I saw it, I'd be confused by it:

*guy falls on his face on yootoob*

Everybody Else: Ha ha ha haha! That's the funniest shit ever!  I'm going to forward it to everyone I know!
Me:  Oh dear.  Is that guy okay?  He looks like he got hurt.  I hope he's okay.

So I think I need to laugh more.  I think I am on my way to Boring Town.


In other news, I logged into OKC for the first time in... well over six months.  I don't know why I was taking a break from it for so long, but I was.  It's not even like I was still getting innundated with messages from people wishing to show me their webcams anymore, what with the message at the bottom of my profile discouraging that.  In fact, in my inbox, there were several winks (two from W), a couple of vaguely complimentary messages, and a message from someone who looks, in his profile photos, rather a bit like a younger Vincent D'Orofrio.  He seems nice enough, and I'm trying not to swat people away. 

I'm also trying not to be in Boring Town, on OKC and also in real life.


*not really.

I'm reading Edith Wharton this week.

I feel like that should explain EVERYTHING, as in:

Person: So, Vv, how're things?
Me: I'm reading Edith Wharton.
Person: What, The Age of Innocence?
Me: Yes.
Person, Ah, I completely understand.

Of course, merely that I'm reading Edith Wharton does not really explain anything, nor should it.*  It couldn't explain that while I had really wanted to go to the SCA event, I didn't manage to go, what with not having a frock, and various and sundry other reasons.  It occurs to me that maybe, partly, it's the wrong time period for me to get excited about.  Needless to say I would really adore historical reenactment of the Victorian Era, and none of that mucking about in the Civil War: I want something much less muddy, something that does not involve me sleeping outdoors.  I want English house-parties on country estates, afternoon strolls in the garden, calling cards and drawn-out love affairs wherein people speak in half-sentences (Oh, you didn't-  All this time?  But we mustn't-  &c.).  Or else Regency: wouldn't that be fun?  Wouldn't we all look so lovely in our flowing empire gowns, attending the Ball, Oh Mister Darcy! and all that?  Or let's be very naughty and French and eighteenth century.  Let's wear dresses so wide we have to walk sideways through doorways.  Let's have ridiculously large powdered hair and pretend to be dairymaids.  I confess that lately I've been wanting the makeup that goes with that look.  Perhaps it has to do with the many hundreds of times I saw Barry Lyndon** as a child and young teenager catching up with me, but somehow, I really want a fake mole. 

Recently I was lamenting to someone about how we are woefully lacking in a Jane Austen Society chapter in our area.  The person I was talking to is a brilliant seamstress, and could undoubtedly make Regency gowns while she was sleeping.  She and I wondered why, aside from those Jane Austin-obsessed weirdos who go to balls** there aren't any historic recreation groups that don't involve camping.

Anyway: I didn't go.  Which is just as well because it is seriously 150 degrees outside, and I would gotten my borrowed frock all sweaty.  I am trying to remind myself that the beginning part of the summer is the worst part, because after a few weeks I adjust to it, and then I only sweat a little bit, as opposed to the copious amounts of sweating I am doing now.  But really, honestly, and I say this in the most un-whiny way possible: I hate summer.  Every day I thank my lucky stars for air conditioning.

In summary: Edith Wharton, Victorian, Regency, Jane Austen, and summer is unpleasant. 


*That is reserved for Wuthering Heights: the Book That Makes Me Cranky
** I would dearly love to be one of those weirdos.

Plans keep changing.  Yes, I will go to Chicago, and SCA event.  No, I cannot go.  I will go to Pennsylvania instead. 

I will go to Pennsylvania two weeks later than I had planned, for less time than I had planned.  Yes, I will go to Chicago.  Maybe I will go to SCA event.  I will go to Pennsylvania for the originally planned amount of time.

Maybe I won't go to SCA event.  H kindly offered to loan me a frock.  I had every intention of making my own damn frock, nothing fancy mind you, just a bit of a something that wouldn't look too out of place.  A number (two) of people who actually know what they are doing offered to help me with the frock.

They did not, however, refer to it as a frock.  I think only I call it that.  Everyone else calls it garb, as in, I always wear my garb when I go outside of camp, or, Put your garb on before the King sees you in your tighty-whiteys!  I don't care for the word garb, though.  It's too close to grab, and grab is too... I don't know, grabby.  

Anyway, lest it sound like I am making up excuses for not having made a frock, really, I told everyone, "Yep yep, going to P-A that week.  Sorry I can't go.  Maybe I can go to the other one, you know, the one in the fall," and everyone made sorry noises and suggested I go to the one in the fall.  Everyone knows that I could not possibly start on a project so far before a deadline.  That would be madness.  September? Pffft, that's like two years from now!  It'll only take, whatever, five minutes to make a frock!  So I did not make a frock, and now I wish I had a frock.  Not that the thing H would loan me would be below my standards, but I wanted to have made a thing.  "What, this?  Oh, I made it.  It took five minutes or whatever."  I had thought it would be fantastic to be a nun at the SCA.  Or else wear a simple aubergine linen dress and be called Astrid* or something.  Anyway, I keep telling everyone, "We'll see."  Lately I'm afraid of commitment, mostly because my plans seem out of my control.

But I do feel like something ought to be going on, and that it ought to be something interesting.  I've been on a campaign to get the Natural Mage to visit, but other than that, there seems to be a deficit of me plotting things.  Tonight I was watching "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and thinking, yes, it's really all about Jungian archetypes, if you look at it closely, and why didn't I think of it before? and then I thought, woh.  I am on my way to Boring Town.

Also, apparently all about apostrophes.**

On a completely unrelated note, I do not understand Holocaust Denial.  I read a little bit about it today.  My interest was piqued because of an article I was reading about that guy who shot someone in the museum.  Apparently the shooting guy Denies the Holocaust, or something.  I did not understand this:

Person A: I was at Auschwitz.  It was really, really horrific.  So many people died.  I barely escaped with my life.

Person B: You made that up. 

So, that's not exactly the case, from today's research, though a few people really that ill-informed.  Apparently some of it is Maybe It Wasn't Quite Six Million, and some of it is Well Maybe It Was Six Million But Maybe Some of Them Were Already Sick and Would Have Died Anyway.  Or somesuch.  I decided that maybe some people don't want to believe that human beings could be so... inhuman.

That's probably the wrong explanation.   I had more to say, but I think I'm off to bed to dream about Jungian Archetypes.

*Astrid was my name in German class in high school.  I rather liked it.

**and italics

So, I've been ignoring everyone. 

OK, so not really everyone.  And not really ignoring, as in someone saying, "So, Vv, how're things?" and me looking around and whistling a tune and pretending like I don't hear anything.

I can't really whistle anyway.

It's not that I don't want to see anyone; rather it's that the effort required to put on some going-out clothes and makeup, and then driving to a place, and then parking, and then driving home makes me feel like staying home.  It's a low-energy time of year for me.

Also, I'm feeling sort of unmoored lately.  I don't know how else to describe it.  I have started driving to work every day, which I have never ever done, which was odd at first, but then I got used to it.  W, though, has been working late, which means that I often know that he won't be home when I get home.  I don't know how to make decisions that don't affect other people.  I get in the car after work, and I think, I'm hungry.  I could stop for a veggie burger.  Or I could go home and heat up a frozen thing.  Or I could go to Meijer and buy baby cupcakes.  Or I could go to Hobby Lobby and purchase a packet of beads.  Oooh, I love purchasing a packet of beads at Hobby Lobby!  Hooray!  Hobby Lobby!  ... Wait, I'm still hungry.  Maybe I should have pancakes at IHOP.  Or else I could...

The problem, obviously, is that the decision only affects me.  It's one thing to make a decision when I have to take someone else's wants/needs/requirements/quirks into consideration.  Like, well, I would really like to go to Hobby Lobby, but I always end up staying too long and W has to stand there and wait for me, so I guess I don't really need a small packet of beads tonight.  Or, I would like to go to Hobby Lobby, but I always take too long to pick out a packet of beads, and then W texts me and asks me if I got lost.  But when it's just me, in the car, trying to decide on beads? veggie burger? strawberry pancakes? I don't quite know what to do with myself.  I end up wandering around for a while, and then going home to watch "Robot Chicken." 

I had meant to write this some time ago, but characteristically, I did not:  I was cranky, a few entries ago.  I was cranky in a BAH! kind of way.  This may have been misinterpreted as something other than me bitching and whining.  I should like to say now that I was merely bitching and whining.  People who read this humble journal are perhaps accustomed to lighter stuff in the entries for public consumption: I went to a place and saw some people.  The cat did a thing.  I make fun of myself for doing something.  I'm sort of gothy and it's funny.  In other news, antique vibrators.

There are private me-only entries that are less fluffy.  These are where I keep the thoughts that make me sound really petty, and where I write the things I do not feel like explaining.  Occasionally, I will start an entry of one sort, say, the Public Fluff, and without meaning to, I will transition into less fluffy subjects.  When I look back on what I wrote, I decide that it's too much work to perform surgery to excise the fluffy bits from the other bits (which perhaps sound worse than I meant them to sound), and just post the whole thing.

Sometimes I am sorry I did so, because it causes people to become Concerned.  I don't mind so much, except that it's a waste of perfectly good Concern that people could save for something else: something more important, like the Economic Crisis or a Swine Flu Pandemic.  On the list of Really Important Things, I hope that Vv is Sometimes Cantankerous is very near the bottom, if it appears at all.  I was cranky, but now I'm not. 

Just so everyone knows.


Speaking of antique vibrators*, my birthday device is still mysterious.  I got a battery of the correct size and.... I don't think the device works the way it was meant to work.  The brochure shows a sad Zelda applying it all over her body.  She was notably not screaming 'Jesus Christ!' while doing so, but when I put the battery in, and touched the roller, I screamed, "Jesus Christ!" because the thing delivers a shock.  From reading the pamphlet though, I think it is actually supposed to contract the muscles... not quite a vibrator and not quite a violet ray either.  I sense that my collection is in danger of expanding from antique vibrators to quack medical devices of the first half of the twentieth century. 

I'm pretty ok with that.  I may need a new display case though.


*And you knew I would, too.

I should not have wasted so much time being cranky about birthday, because it turned out perfectly: the sort of day when the weather is fine and everything is good.

We had a mini-golf championship.  We left the house at 2:30 and returned at 9 after five courses of mini-golf, stopping midway for some refreshing ice cream.  There were a few hiccups: one place that was supposed to be a mini-golf course turned out to be someone's house, and another turned out to be a pile of dirt.  Still, those things made it seem like more of an adventure. 

We came home, washed the dust of five mini-golf courses off, dressed up a bit and went to San Chez for dinner, where the word "delicious" is just not sufficient to describe the food.

W gave me a present, and I don't know what the correct name of it is.  It's a quack medical device from the late 20s or early 30s... some kind of battery powered electrical... thingy.  It's called Electraply.  The booklet says that it is "a pulsating machine used on the body of its therapeutic action and for administering electrical massage."   It may actually work when I get a battery.  The best part is that it's a very complete set, with the attachments and the booklet and the receipt showing that Anna S. Agnew paid fourteen dollars for it in 1932.  

I will probably have to stop and get a battery on my way home from work.  I really want to know what it does. 

One more thing: Nietzsche Family Circus is my new favorite thing:

This is the best. 

Or maybe this.

Today's Writer's Block questions asks,

LiveJournal is turning 10 and we're feeling nostalgic. What was your first LJ post about?

and I thought to myself, well, I don't quite remember.  Perhaps I should look.  

It was pretty boring.  It was really a sort of sticking my toe in the water.  What struck me, though, was the date:  May 12, 2005. 

I have been typing wordy entries since 2005.  In fact, I think I may just go change the subtitle of my journal.

Four years seems like an impossibly long stretch of time since all of the things that coincided with me starting a livejournal happened.  ECT and getting to be friends with Sundesha and many others. 


I was going to stop being cranky about the birthday party business, and really, I was.  What got to me was that I had to write an email to S explaining all the complicated and nebulous reasons, and that was difficult.  S had invited us to Chicago, but I don't think we can go.

W had said to me that we could just do something, just the two of us.  LIKE WHAT, I said, in what was probably a less than attractive way.  "Like anything," he said.  LIKE WATCH TEEVEE AT HOME, I said, probably sounding like a shrew.  I'm sure he is sick of the subject, and I am getting sick of the subject, too.  He did not mean that we would watch teevee at home, I'm sure.  

"I want someone to figure it out and tell me," I told Spooki today.  I am such a brat over it, like a eight-year-old girl in a pink frilly dress.  But one thing I have learned from how many years of seeing Wise Maggie is that when I'm upset over something that, in the great scheme of things, seems very small, I should ask myself what is really bothering me.

Hm.  *coughs*  Er. 

Go on, Vv, you say, let's have it: the real reasons for having been upset about things you have written about publicly and privately? 

Um.  I'm worried about money.

AND?

I'm worried about being irrelevant and ignored.  I'm afraid that no one else will care about something that is important to me.  That I'm just that weird chick who cares too much about people.  That those who like me, like me for being boobular, or for thinking that I'm someone I'm not really, or for my penchant for buying people drinks at goth clubs.  That I'm boring and predictable, and that people lose interest in me after a time.  That I'm not as pertinent as I think I am.

OK, that's enough of that for tonight.  I think I'll just go smoke now.