Crazy Aunt Purl Lives!!!

Okay, so this is post 104... Life happened again, what can I say?

Here, finally, are some photos and a short clip (don't worry, Laurie-- no incriminating evidence here!) from Laurie's recent book signing. Can I just tell you that I felt SO WRONG at this event because I didn't bring anything creative to do with yarn while we waited for things to get going?! Everybody knitted. Everybody. See those empty chairs? One of them is mine, and the others were soon filled with more women. Knitting.

Here is Laurie, answering a question about her back yard Zucchini Monster. We all laughed WAY more than you're imagining we did. She is even funnier in person than on her blog. Probably because there is no edit button in a public speaking event. Whoopsy! On the up side, it is amazing how at-home you can feel in such a public place, when you know that everyone there likes yarn and cats, too, and hey-- they're probably also divorced-- just like you.

I even took a very short video of her toward the beginning of the reading, when she was still settling in. SLM, this is for you. Thank you for forcing me to go in your place. THANK YOU!!

Pumpkin Party, Martha Stewart Style

It's almost Halloween. A time when the veil between the worlds gets thin, and Mystery is in the air. So is some fresh cold air, red and brown and yellow leaves, and lots of laughter.

Went to a pumpkin carving party at a friend's last night. Had a blast. It's the first time in several years that I've carved a pumpkin, and it turned out pretty cool. See?

.

Mine is, of course, the cat.

It was a fun and creative time, full of sharp pointy things and LOTS of pumpkin seeds.
Some crazy fool even tried to carve a Butternut Squash! Luckily, L had an apple corer with no slicing arms on it, so S eventually used that to get the squash meat out of the middle. Apparently, he has plans to set it on fire later this week. That's why the squash looks so scared. Foreshadowing. In the end, it turned out pretty well, as did the ghost dog on the right. What's creativity without a little extra effort anyway?

I tell you, every time I go to L's house, I learn something new about being a hostess. We've actually started teasing her about being a bit like Martha Stewart. This time, she made pumpkin pancakes, with applesauce (made from scratch, thank you) to go on top. She unobtrusively marketed her friends' (and her own) saleable skills, made everyone feel welcome, and enabled a few new friendships to form. I was even able to catch up with people I used to know, and share a little of my hard-won perspective on starting over after a difficult relationship with someone who appreciated the insight. Wow.

I tell you, Martha Stewart is just lucky that L has a day job!

The Ex Factor

It confounds me just how many different ways there are for one person to fugck with another. While still saying things like "just because we're divorced doesn't mean we can't be friends and have a civil relationship," and "I don't think we need legal paperwork for that-- I trust you."

Yeah, the legal paperwork was for ME, you dolt! And I still haven't agreed to do it. Something he obviously didn't hear the first three or four times I said it. Which totally explains most of my marriage. The rest of my marriage can be explained by the fact that he thought $350 was enough money to bribe me into agreeing with his plan, no more information needed... And that even though THIS time I managed to walk away without (this used to be MY m-o) agreeing to anything, apologizing for anything, or getting angry over anything-- I still walked away feeling belittled, ungrateful, and confused about his true motives.

And I had this horrible urge to write him an email apologizing for representing my own interests in the conversation, and coaching him through his obvious confusion about what he's allowed to show concern for as a friend vs. a significant other. Because that is what I would have done while we were married. (He stopped mid-sentence to apologize for showing an interest in and concern for my well-being, and changed the subject. It's the only time I came into the conversation at all, and it was STILL all about him! Now that takes talent.) None of which I need or want to do, actually. No, ACTUALLY, I'm furious with myself-- and with him-- for having those desires in the first place.

Now, I've been doing a very good job of relinquishing responsibility for his well-being, and halting his continued attempts to mess with me. I've just been doing it slowly-- because I had to continue interacting with him for another six months regardless of my own desires. But this one interaction threw me back (temporarily) to where I was three years ago. Not cool.

I realized that by changing the rules on me, and making his little financial offer, he'd shaken my composure to such a degree that I had lost my footing and fallen into old (and familiar) habits. Thanks to my best friend's sage observations about truth in advertising, however, I'm no longer confused, rattled, or otherwise lost. I recognize just how far I HAVE advanced in my quest to be a healthy individual. (capital H, capital I) And I'm going to make my decision based on what's best for ME, with no remorse about representing my own interests, thank you very much.

Ahhh, yes-- the Ex factor.
After all-- I was married to it. (This is actually another one of those "We Know What That Means" quotes... but that is a story for another time.)

We Know What THAT Means

Recent additions to the list of phrases, and their history:

"Somebody oughta just pee on his shoes."
Folks, we were all sitting at my favorite Chinese Cuisine Restaurant, all twelve of us, and we were talking about that poor senator with the wide potty stance. R said (pointing out how totally NOT news-worthy the whole issue was) that if some strange guy had put his foot into R's stall, that looser would have walked away with a bloody stump. That's when I chimed in: "Or at least wet shoes!" It was a wild night, really.

"Anybody got a ziplock baggie? We could neutralize that (insert problem here) real quick!"
Now, as much as I think I'll probably say this to someone someday, it actually has to do with Crazy Aunt Purl. THIS ENTRY HERE. You gotta love the quick-thinking of the FAA when it comes to neutralizing threats to the American Public. I tell you, I'm going to carry a baggie like that with me from now on-- just in case! (You also gotta honestly appreciate that supervisor who managed to find a way to allow her to keep the offending mascara, but still meet regulation requirements in this obviously inapplicable situation.)

"He's the kind of person who'd hand in a poem for grading."
This one is a bit more obscure, but it did come up recently, for my mom. Basically, she went to a two-day workshop with a Nationally Acclaimed Poet (I think he won the Nobel prize for Poetry or something). On the first day, he asked folks to write a poem about their town. On the second day, he (being a free spirit and poet) forgot about the poems until folks asked if he could look at them after the workshop ended. And a few people actually handed their poems to him for "grading" like it had been an assignment and not an opportunity! And he did it!

Then other folks started reading their poems to him before handing them over-- which is how poetry is meant to be presented, by the way. And later that week my mom was confronted by a guy who obviously cared more about regulations and lines in the sand than about people and creative thinking. She described him to a friend from the workshop as "He's the kind of person who'd hand in a poem for grading." And now we all know what THAT means! (I enjoyed the story, but I think it took my mom a good 45 minutes on the clock to tell it, because she tells a story with such detail that you could actually have attended it yourself, whether you need those details to appreciate the punchline or not!)

Now, this list doesn't mention old favorites, because it's the NEW PHRASES list... but I'd just like to give honorable mention to "tweezers and a lemon," and omg-- I just tried to spell cuisine with a Q and a z!!! I need help. kthxbai.

Neighborhood BBQ

It's 2am. I'm up and blogging because it's quiet. You know, in comparison to the last 25 minutes, during which time the all-building fire alarm was screaming at the top of its lungs.
Loudly.

But I learned that having some idiot pull the fire alarm at 1am is a REALLY good way to get to know your neighbors. No shigt, there we were. All of us. From the whole building. Standing around in our coats and sweat pants, laughing because we each determined that it wasn't OUR room that was on fire, and therefore tried to dismantle the ceiling alarm in our respective rooms... before we realized that this was not an alarm we could dismantle. No. In fact, someone came up from a different floor to apologize to those of us standing around outside, and explain that he'd left his friends alone in his apartment for a few minutes, and that someone had gone and pulled the fire alarm. Which can only be turned off by the fire department, it turns out. Thank god someone thought to call them.

We also laughed about what each of us thought to bring out of our apartments when we thought the building might be burning down. I brought my cat, my purse, and my book of passwords. I even remembered to put on pants and a coat, and get my car keys before I opened the door to my neighbors and went to stand in the cold for however long it took. The girl below me who thought to call the fire department took a moment to clean up her dirty clothes pile, and then grabbed her purse and her recycling so the place would be clean when the firemen arrived. She even had her make up on. A guy from down the way grabbed ear plugs and his leather coat. The guy below me grabbed his guitar.

Funny what matters most when you can't take everything. Funny that we all checked out our own places and assumed it was our own false alarm (because this happens a lot individually for us all-- any combination of cooking and oil will do it)... and that it took probably 5 or 10 minutes for us all to get out of our apartments. If it had been a real fire, would we have made it out?

I put my cat in the car, and then stood with everyone else on the sidewalk while people who'd been through this before told us how it happens, and how it gets turned off. And the guy with the do-it-yourself tattoos and the idiot friend (and the just-starting party) apologized. And finally the fire truck came. And they turned off the alarm. And we all wished each other a good night, and went back to our respective 2am activities. If my cat catches pneumonia, I know where to send the bill, that's for sure!

I've definitely decided to sleep in. Don't call me, k? And... I'm glad to say that most of my neighbors are pretty darn nice. Even at 2am.

Just Awesome

So today, I went straight from work to the Crazy Aunt Purl "Drunk Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair" book signing. It totally rocked. I was asked to notice if she's really as cute in person as she is in her blog photos-- the answer is yes. She also talks with a really sweet accent and a killer sense of humor, and she does get calmer as the event gets going. She's one of those people that it is IMPOSSIBLE not to love.

Oh, and did I mention that I did in fact show up divorced, and covered in cat hair? And baby goo... but not exactly what you'd call DRUNK. I don't drink and drive. Although after work, sometimes I wish I could...

I think we also all got our endorphin fix from laughing at all the awesome stories and funny moments Laurie shared with us. And we all recognized in meeting her (as her blog has helped us see so many times before) that we really are not alone, and that we are definitely NOT the only person to go through what we've gone through. Be it divorce, knitting frenzies, awkward social situations, talking to cute guys after too much wine has been drunk, or failing to ever use our oven as an oven. Like for cooking, as opposed to storing other kitchen things. Which reminds me that I should probably make sure I did get all the hidden stuff emptied out of it last week...

After I get some much-needed food and sleep, I will upload my photos and post them-- It'll be my official 100'th post. Very appropriate, I believe. Oh, and even more cool-- she totally talks the exact same way she blogs. And she was HUMAN!!! I've never met an author who was human before. Her biggest piece of advice about writing your first book? Write Fiction! Understandably, touring the country and answering all sorts of personal questions about her life has been a bit uncomfortable at times. Apparently, she always thought her first book would be a steamy romance (fiction) anyway... And the second book we all want to read when it gets written has an awesome fried chicken recipe in it already.

Oh, and Firefox is her browser of choice. GO FIREFOX, we love you!

Dinner....

By the way-- did I mention that she promised to take a picture of her still-insane zucchini plants just for one of the people in the audience who asked about them? I'm looking forward to that. Rogue Zucchini Runs Amok!!

Moment of the Day

No shigt, there I was. (That's how all good Army stories start. Makes you want to hear what's going to happen next, doesn't it?) Sitting behind the Reference Desk at the Unnamed Public Library, observing Reference Services in action.

On one side, young guy, quiet voice, girlfriend hiding around the corner:
"Do you guys have the Kamga Sugtra?"
On the other side, mature mother with 8-year-old daughter peering anxiously around Mom's elbow:
"Where do you keep the Frog and Toad stories?"
The juxtaposition of those two requests (and the stages in life of the people making them) was priceless.

I just love the Reference Desk. I really do. Today, among our other requests, we also had one for the history of bread making, one for books about Thunder and Lightning for toddlers (somebody got scared), and a woman who hadn't used her library card in over five years, but really really wanted to check out Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. We also discovered that we have NO books about spiders in stock, and only one children's fact book on mosquitos. It was a sad day for somebody. Also, I discovered that ALL the copies of The Princess Diaries, vol. 1, are checked out until doom's day, or the day after. I have to read it before our next Teen Council meeting, by popular choice, no less. That's going to be fun. Oh, and apparently the third book in some Violent Fantasy series for pre-teens is due out soon, and nobody quite knows when. Solution?
Ask Reference.

And lets not for get that the crazy man wanted to have a staring contest (which we've all been warned NOT TO DO with this particular crazy. Seriously. As soon as they saw him coming, the closest librarian turned to me and said, "Don't make eye contact with this one. He's bad-crazy.") so he made kissy noises at all the women behind the desk until our WONDERFUL security officer of the day came back inside, and crazy man left. Apparently, the crazy man is still smart and sane enough not to cause trouble in front of a cop. Who, by the way, had just finished dealing with another crazy person (female this time) who'd been harassing patrons on their way into the library.
Wednesday is crazy people day.

So yeah. Just another day at the office.
How was yours?

....You know... In retrospect, it occurs to me that some smart producer will eventually realize that libraries are NOT boring, and all the insane stories we librarians have amassed over the years and years and years we've been working with THE PUBLIC (all of it) will finally have an OUTLET. Can you imagine how FUNNY and yet Reality TV Bazarre a sitcom could be if it were based around all the stuff that happens around the Reference Desk at a busy library? I mean-- we've got rebellious teens trying to shock us by asking for info about occult magic (Yes, that section is HERE, and we've got some great websites to suggest as well. Have you read anything by Scott Cunningham yet?); and we've got elderly ladies learning to use computers so they can do online dating; and we've got the little angelic boy who keeps finding new and inventive ways to jam the printer... There is even a whole genre of librarian humor devoted to different terms and best locations for "doing it" in the stacks, you know. And we've found the dirty condgoms to prove it, thank you very much.

That's not even MENTIONING all the drama and hilarity of filming the librarians themselves. How about the 5foot tall ex-rugby player with her dog's footprint tattooed on her back? And the old-school reference lady who turns off her hearing aid when she doesn't feel like helping people? And the ex-Secret Service guy who left Government work and went into on-call reference services at the public library, but likes to act tough and tell war stories from Desert Storm (he wasn't ever officially there, you know) around the few male librarians we've managed to hire...

What about old what's-her-name who accidentally left behind forty-one pairs of black pumps when she retired? (We're still not sure what she wore home from work on those particular days.) Or Henry, who up until a year or two ago, was both head of a well-known Academic Library, and one of the best-loved down hill ski coaches (not to mention his hobby of white-water rafting!) ever. Oh, and that hot children's librarian from Europe, with the cute little accent and the cute little buns... Too bad he's married... And I don't think you could pay me enough to wear those two 8-foot tall cat costumes that require someone else to lead you around because you can't really see out of them... But yet those two cats are seen at every ALA conference, bumbling around after cute library geeks whenever they find one...

I tell you, a sitcom based on library world would strike PAY DIRT. Nobody could make up some of the stories we've got to tell! And believe it or not, I have personally met every one of those librarians previously mentioned. And most of the patrons, too. I have yet to find a condgom, but I know people who have, and I did once find a squatter in the library at closing time. He'd set up his tent back in the Government Documents section, correctly assuming that nobody goes there if they can help it, and was preparing a wiener dog over a propane burner for his dinner when I passed by. I still can't believe the fire alarm didn't go off.
But then... you know my opinion of fire alarms.

Hi, this is cool.

Okay, go check out this podcast of this all-girl's elementary school. It rocks. It's also kinda funny at times-- because these are kids. And kids are funny sometimes.

CHECK THIS OUT!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVhzDJPxKKg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Ffeministing%2Ecom%2F

96... And Counting

So, much to my amazement, this is officially my 96th post on my err-what blog. Watch for national news coverage when I hit post #100... or not...

Did I bump into Mr. Nice Eyes at the Garden when I went back on Friday? no. But the leaves were all turning color, and the air was crisp but not snot-cold (you know when it's cold enough to make your nose run, even though you are perfectly warm in your fleece vest and ear-warmers? snot-cold), and I'm really glad I went. Turns out the guy in the entrance box has a mother who used to be a librarian. So even though my school STILL has not sent me a student id (have I mentioned that I graduate in two months?), I answered three questions right and got in at the student rate anyhow. Just to clarify-- I AM a student. ...And I like red heads.

Did my student loan eventually show up? YES! On Wednesday. So I made huge payments to my credit cards and spent what was left on that stereo I promised myself back in July. I should be getting the other half of my student loan ...oh... sometime before Christmas.

In the meantime, I cannot BEGIN to tell how you much I have missed having access to music in my home. In fact, I have barely turned the stereo off long enough to sleep since I brought it home. I'M THAT EXCITED!!!

It made me think. My ex was always the one who played music (and chose what to play) while I was married-- and to give credit where due, he sometimes tried to play something he thought we'd both like to hear. Mostly, he played the soundtrack to Jay and Silent Bob. There's a whole track devoted to artistically rapping the word "fugck." And a few songs about being high and all the things that didn't happen because of it (like getting to have segx). And... well... I mostly ignored the other tracks because they were rather offensive.

So... let me just reiterate how HAPPY I am to have MY OWN STEREO. It's been five years. Plus. And I've been playing awesome music like the "happy radio station" that only plays upbeat songs, and my rodrigo y gabriela CD-- this group is from Mexico, where they were a heavy metal band. But then they went to Ireland, and started playing guitar in local pubs and on the streets there. Now, they play acoustic guitar like I've never heard it played. Oh, and I'm playing my Enya music, and trying REALLY HARD not to break out the Christmas music again-- waiting until November, at least. I mean, really. June and December are the real seasons for that kind of music, and I'm trying not to jump the gun.... Trans Siberian Orchestra, HERE I COME!!!

My Shania Twain and Carrie Underwood are sounding pretty good, too, not to mention that Kid Rock CD I took as part of my divorce settlement. I love the duet with Sheryl Crow. Umm... A little Stray Cats, a little Sugar Ray... Cap'n Bogg and Salty... Dvorak... Godsmack... Jet... Gypsie Kings... Pink... Yeah. You could say my taste is eclectic. Or bizarre.

Approaching Normal

My good friend, Gussie Finknottle, and I went to the Gardens yesterday. We thought we'd catch the Fall Colors, but I guess we were a little early. It was beautiful, as always, though, and we sipped green tea and noshed on lavender-flavored chocolate in one of the enclosures in the Garden. That is a day I want to repeat as often as possible.

As we wandered down to Gussie's favorite bench, we passed a man deep in meditation by the falls. I thought nothing of it until he, in turn, wandered past us as we sipped our tea. He was a good looking man. He was alone. He was about my age. Gussie and I had fun admiring his many fine attributes after he'd walked past. I suspect he may have heard some of what we said because he showed up in many of the places we went after we'd finished our tea and taken our pictures. He has very nice eyes, and a really gentle smile. I know because we achieved eye-lock in passing.

The funny part is that I had no idea what to DO about it. I felt shy about approaching him-- and what the heck do you say to a guy you've never met??? You have nice eyes, here's my phone number? How old are you, and are you currently in a relationship because I don't want to ask out a married man who's twice my age? (or, conversely, who it's technically illegal for me to date) ... I guess maybe he was also unsure of what to do about our little non-existent interaction... because we never did do more than bump into each other and smile a lot.

And I'm actually pretty disappointed that I didn't take the opportunity. How likely is it that I'll run into him again in THIS town?! It certainly never happened before. I'd remember him. And really-- what IS normal when it comes to approaching someone you think you'd like a chance to know better?

I still don't know, but at least I have a sort of a plan if I find someone interesting in my path again. I'm going to go up to him (a good way to start, non?), and ask if he works around here. Tell him I was feeling shy about asking a stranger on a date, but maybe if I run into him again once or twice, he'll ask me instead. I figure a mix of honesty and humor can't be bad, and if he tells me he IS seeing someone or married or working at K-mart after school (high school), well, at least I didn't ask him out on a date, and I know where NOT to go to avoid seeing him again. I think it's a good plan. I think this because at least now I HAVE a plan.

And... in the meantime... I might just plan to hit the Gardens again next Friday.
... Just in case.