Tuesday, May 26, 2015

You Say Tomato...

The mailman came to the door today and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the hell I'd ordered in the little brown package he carried. 

Me to Brain: "Did I order something lately??"

Brain: "You've been ordering quite a bit of shit recently, actually, for an unemployed person."

Me to Brain: "Yeah, but that was just small $10 items to keep my spirits up, and it happened to be stuff I could use, too, such as a new pair of flip flops with a massaging bottom that feels nice on my feet, and an Ohio necklace to show where my heart lives."

Brain: "You didn't need that stuff. You know you didn't."

Me to Brain: "Shut the fuck up. Back to the original question. Am I still waiting for something else that I don't even remember ordering??"

Brain: "Just go get the package and find out and stop bothering me."

So that's what I did, all the while worried-wondering if I'd lost my mind to the point that I'm now ordering stuff I don't even know I'm ordering. I mean, what if I"m putting stuff in shopping carts all over the Internets and don't even know it until it shows up?? 

That's dangerous behavior, Reader. 

I opened the package and saw this little green box of Chaga, and it took me several moments for my brain to process what it was, all the while hoping when I opened the invoice it wasn't some $275 little nugget that I might have looked at (although I had no memory of doing so) and then accidentally bought. 



What I found instead of an invoice was a gift note from my friendie The Healthy Hoff, who ordered me some Magic Mushroom....Tea....because she felt sorry for me wanted to help me after watching me help her move shit  this past weekend from an attic in a vacant house she is trying to sell.  Wherein I say "I helped" I really mean "I looked through and moved boxes to the top of the stairs and she carried it all down. Three Flights. By Herself." That's how I helped. 

But I did brave potential spiders, webs and other possible scary things and only screamed once when I opened a security box and it was full of webs that may or may not have touched my gloved hand, and other than that I was brave. Even when I was fairly certain I was at some point going to uncover a carcass of some animal that had died up there, because there was a smell in a specific area, and I may or may not have seen some sort of animal poop on top of a box. I just tried to ignore all that evidence that pointed to Dead Thing and plunged ahead despite my concern. I'm brave like that, like a warrior. An Old Attic Warrior. 

My reward for bravery was Magic Mushroom Tea. And also because she probably wants to get me a little more healthy and nimble so the next time I can carry some of the boxes down the stairs. Probably that. 

I was a little skeptical about the tea, because there was An Incident.  I tasted something made from a mushroom while she and I were in San Francisco last month. That's where we ate at a vegan Asian restaurant and I put Rieshi Mushroom Medicine Soup in my mouth. The Offending Soup is the brown liquid with the silver ladle. The white bowl of deliciousness in the front was their won ton soup, which could have delightfully fed a small village. 



Yeah, we ordered a lot of food. That's how we roll.

Anyway, the Medicine Soup made me want to claw out my tongue from my head. I made an actual "Pa-tooey" sound as I spit out this part of the soup onto my plate. Because I'm a lady.




This may have been a sponge. It would not chew into pieces. It refused. The Healthy Hoff kept insisting I just swallow it down, it's good for me. 

I've heard that before, Reader. I wasn't falling for it. 

So with that all-too-recent experience in mind, I had earned a bit of my Magic Mushroom tea skepticism. 

However, The Hoff generally does have my best interest in mind, so I did a little Googling about the tea, figured what the hell could it hurt, and made myself a cup. 

It stirred up and looked like this:



It had an earthy flavor, very mild in fact and not at all as harsh as the Rieshi Medicine Soup Incident.

I don't know if it was the boost of oom-pa-pa that I got from the tea, but all I know is that later on in the afternoon I had a phone interview for a company I am excited  about and I couldn't stop my mouth from spewing out words. 

They just kept pouring out. 

I knew they were too many words, but I was powerless to stop them. 

I was speaking to the CEO. 

At one point he asked me about my vendor contact with one of my prior suppliers and I said the name,  "Mike Cunts." I said  MY CUNTS. To the CEO. In an interview. 

READER. You can only imagine the horror in my brain and yet I was powerless to do anything about it at that point.

My Mister was in the back room and heard me loud and clear saying "MY CUNTS." He wanted to know just what sort of a job I was interviewing for. I know that' s ending with a preposition, but I just said MY CUNTS to a potential hiring person, so there are bigger issues at hand than my trying to rewrite that sentence. 

The guy's name is Michael Kuntz, by the way, I think it's pronounced like "Koontz" but I'm frankly not sure because he would say it really quickly, as if to avoid his own name. So I think I"m actually correct, but really? That's what I brought to the conversation. 

Thanks for the gift of health in a mug,  Hoff. I will continue to drink a mug full every day, and hope that I can control my mouth and avoid all references to cunts, twats, beavers or anything else that may paint a visual of My Flower during an interview.


Saturday, May 23, 2015

Tilt-A-Whirl

Has the world stopped spinning, Reader?? Something is definitely off it's axis, as it is 8:31 a.m. and I am up. In the MORNING, Reader. The REAL morning, not the morning I pretend happens at 1:00 in the afternoon. I'm drinking coffee, eating my organic oatmeal, cats are fed.  What the what is going on around here??? 

Well, I'll tell ya what. One way I get out of my own "woe is me" head is to do something for someone else. And so on Facebook, I offered up the one thing I can offer people at this point, which is my time. If someone needed help with something, they just had to let me know when/where/what. And my friend needs help today packing up an attic's worth of shit from a house she's selling, and that's what we're doing this morning. 

Now Reader.  I don't know if any of you have seen me move around lately. But as Kenny pointed out yesterday, after I'd spent the better part of the day staining the deck, I'm about one bout of hard work away from needing a wheelchair. When I forget to take my arthritis medication, which is more often than not because bad schedule on my part, I am soon reminded that I need it.  So yeah. Some days it's rough around here. 

However, if my friend thinks I can haul boxes up and down steps, I will be there. I may be better at the packing part, we'll see. 

Funny enough, all the requests that I did get from people for help all involved packing up shit because they're moving.  It's one of the things I'm the worst at, haha. Had it not been for my friends four kids doing a shit-ton of moving for ME, I would probably still be living at my old house.  But I can box the hell out of stuff, so we are going to get it done today.

So that's my morning. And a BBQ this evening. So yeah. Spending time with friends. Good day. 

Yesterday I did jump right in and start my porch staining, as I had so boldly claimed I was going to do. The only way to do it is to just fucking do it.   You can see from the picture below how much it needed a good drink of stain. I don't believe it's ever been stained before.  I have the entire railing and spindles complete. Just need to do the floor either today or tomorrow, as I have time. I'm super excited about it because I love love love my deck, and it needs to look like someone loves it. 

Now it does. 


The cats are less than happy because they're not allowed out while all this is happening. The spiders are less than happy, too, because several of them have been relocated. Because they aren't allowed to live on the porch. It's a rule. 



Friday, May 22, 2015

Catching Up

Well, hey there, Reader, Hello! I really really thought this whole "Unemployed Trixie Bang Bang" stint would have me pounding out a litany of nonsense to fill my hours and your minutes. Instead, I've found I've been short on words lately and long on projects instead. 

This is the first time EVER in the history of EVER that I've actually gotten all my yard work done (well, weeding, trimming, raking, planting and so forth - I still have some bolder projects on my list, like adding steps to my hard-to-walk-up hillside, and planting something nice along the side of the house) DONE before Memorial Weekend. I'm usually the house that gets the yard looking acceptable in August, and then it's time to put it all away and rake up dead leaves soon.  I've got flower pots hanging, some deer food...er, I mean flowers...planted in the ground, and my upstairs deck is cute-ed up. At least it is for the moment, it's all coming off the deck today because I'm going to stain the deck as soon as I'm done here. My friend Murdoch gave me several gallons of stain a while ago (2 years?) and I've finally got the time to use it. We have a short window for staining in Ohio. It has to be warm, but not too warm, with no rain in sight. So I'm going to give it a go today. Let's hope for the best, Reader. I've never done this project before. 

Come over this summer, Reader. We'll have drinks on the deck. You're invited any time.  That's the other perk of unemployment. I sort of a have a company-ready house most of the time. I mean, as long as you don't look behind closed doors.  The main area is sort of okay most of the time. I've been beating the clutter back with a stick. 

So speaking of the unemployment, I'm still unemployed. The money part totally bites a big one, but the not working at Tiny Town part is the BEST THING EVER.  I do not miss the crazy stress one little bit. I've heard it's been midnight hours there more than once, and I wish that were an exaggeration, but I've heard they were there working til midnight. How happy would I be if that were me, Reader? I'll give you one guess.  I've really had the chance to re-evaluate things and I frankly do  not want to get back into a high-stress job like that again.  It really makes me too bitchy and frowny.  I mean, I'm going to have to do something, and I almost had a panic attack about employability the other day, and the woe-is-me-will-I-ever-work-agains tried to take root in my brain but I fought it off. I have a good support network to talk me off the ledge when that happens.  My friend Amy called me right away and a few other folks chimed in to stop it in it's tracks. 

So don't let me kid you, it's not all Fun-Employment, as my friend coined it for me. Because I have been having a lot of fun. But sometimes the worries sit with me for a bit. Then I go to the grocery store at 2 p.m. when no one else is there, or sit out on the deck in the sunshine and read a book at 3 p.m., or meet up with friends, or just enjoy my house and I put it the worries back where they belong. Also sleeping til when-the-fuck-ever I want is sort of nice, too. Lately that time has been noon. The other day I beat my own record and I slept until 1:00 p.m. Even I was a little embarrassed about that.  But mostly I was refreshed. 

That's about all I've got going on at this particular moment. I've had so many other things I wanted to share with you, but this is where my fingers decided to go today.  Maybe some other stuff will come later. I really haven't been feeling very creative at all lately, but I'm going to force some words out every day for the next week to sort of get back into the habit. Because you miss me, Reader (shhhh....let me believe that, I'm unemployed, don't crush my spirit)

Oh! I almost forgot to mention the other venture I've taken on lately. I can't even believe it myself, but I've decided to become a Mary Kay consultant. Meaning, I'm going to start selling Mary Kay skin care. Because I tried the product recently and it's awesome. I used to use it years and years ago, but was recently re-introduced to it and was hooked, lined, and sinkered on it.  I was sooooo soft and smooth! So yeah. I'm getting that off the ground June 1st. If you need a hook-up on soft and smoothness, let me know.  Even if you don't let me know, there's a good chance I'll be calling you to give you a facial soon.  Don't block my call, that will hurt my feelings. I'm unemployed, remember (yep, there's the pity card, I just played it!)

Happy Friday, Readers! Commemorate Memorial Weekend. Thanks, Veterans, and all Military personnel for your service. I need to hang a flag. And dress up my cat in the Uncle Sam outfit. Stay tuned for a picture of Patriotic Kitty Purry. She'll be as thrilled as you are right now. 

The end. 




Thursday, May 14, 2015

Sweet Dreams

Hey there!! Long time, no chat.  I've sort of been out of the rhythm of writing the nonsense that floats round in my head. I know, I know - I hear your plaintive cries for more.  I had toyed with the idea of chucking the whole blogging thing altogether, just because who cares, shouldn't I be doing more important things such as cleaning, helping the needy, taking classes that could oh, by the way, maybe help me get re-employed. 

But then I felt like I was getting a little stuck in myself, because my words didn't have a venue anymore. And I felt like my creativity was getting really rusty, because use it or lose it. While this may not seem very creative to you, Reader, compared to oh, say beautiful watercolors (which is how my cousin is tapping her creative energy, and wow is it nice!), it is a little creative for me.  I just can't frame this and and hang it on a wall and have people stop by and say ooh and aaah.  Well, I guess I could but that would be some really odd decorating. Which could actually possibly spark a new trend, because why not. Hm. Maybe I'll start a Pinterest board of my nonsense words on decals for walls. For instance, we could have a decal that says "The Best Things to Put In My Mouth are Not Vegan!" in pretty scripty font and put it right on your kitchen - or bedroom - wall.  We don't judge here. That could also be a pretty script wall decal! "No Judge-y Zone!" In the bedroom. Or the bathroom. Where ever. We don't judge what you do in either of those areas. 

Hm...I guess I'd better get back to writing on a more regular basis, because see how rusty I am? Those are not even good at all, Reader. 

Alrightie, that is not even the intent what I started to tell you all about. What I wanted to chat about today is why is it so gol'darn tough to sleep the older we get?? What-the-what is up with that?? I have gotten into a very awkward and unproductive sleep pattern since I've become a lady of leisure. I think I've had sleeping problems for years now, actually, but I was forced to get up in the morning to go to the j.o.b.  Now, without that structure, it's just a free-for-all around Chez Bang Bang. 

So I've started to really try to train myself into better sleeping patterns. I thought while I was gone for three weeks floating around the West Indies and then beat-nicking around in San Francisco I would straighten this shit out. I was with early risers. It should have helped. 

It sort of did, a little. And then I came back to reality and it was was to square one, where square one equals night-owling around until three and four in the morning, and sleeping til noon.  

Sleeping til noon makes for a shortish day to get Stuff done, Reader. 

So I embarked on a mission to find restful sleep at a reasonable hour.  I have a brainwave app that is actually the best two dollars I've ever spent. It's called Brainwave, 32 Binaural Programs. I plug this in all. the. time. I use it for creativity, meditation, sleep, concentration - you name it, there's a brainwave for it.  Download it. You won't be sorry.  

The brainwaves usually help, but I have to sleep with earphones and that's a little uncomfy, and then I find myself waking up when the waves are over or my earphones fall out. 

I figured I needed some other sleep tricks.  My brother suggested I do 4-7-8 breathing for better sleep.  A few Facebook friendies chimed in that it works well for them, so I've been giving it a try. I do find I fall asleep rather easily, but not in three or four breaths. I need to do this about a dozen times. 

Why is sleep so hard for me, Reader? I don't have any additional work stress, so whyyyy, she plaintively lamented? I mean, I don't have any trouble at all sleeping from six in the morning until noon. None. Nor do I have a struggle with an afternoon nap. It's just hard to reset my clock. I wanna go to bed by midnight, up by eight. And sleep through the night. 

In addition to 4-7-8 and Brainwaves, I also had the opportunity to try Kangen water, because my friendie, who's a Frankie Valli Season Singer, was in town for a concert and he hooked me up with two gallons of this Magic Water.

Now, a little about this Magic Water. I only had a couple of gallons. But it was the first time I haven't gotten up throughout the night thirsty, nor did I have to get up to pee. The theory is, this water hydrates you better than regular water and also does some other magic stuff. I did sleep straight through that night.  I have to say, it was rather impressive. I just can't afford to get myself one right now, because see the last line of Paragraph 1. So I will be mildly hydrated rather than super hydrated for a while. 

And then the other night, after all my tricks were in place - a giant rig-a-ma-role of breathing, brain waving, relaxing stretches - to get a good night of solid sleep, I was deep in dreams and felt a thwack on my face. 


So I guess you know the end of this tail. Er. Tale. 

Basically, eight cats = I'll never get a solid night of sleep. Because a cat tail beating me in the face at three a.m. is part of my world.  All the Kangen water, 4-7-8ing and brainwaving can't compete with a contented cat, lost in her own dreams, happily flicking her tail right up my nose. 


Friday, May 8, 2015

To Have and To Hold

Kenny's grandma died last Saturday.  We held her funeral today.  Ninety-five years, and it's never quite enough time, is it.  

I've been busy with that this week. A lot of hugging has been involved, which is seriously not my strong suit. I'm trying to get better at it, but I'm concerned I'm becoming an over-hugger. And a too-tight-hugger. It's a fine line, that hugging thing.  Too loose seems disingenuous, too short seems standoffish, too tight may not only be painful, but clingy as well and too long seems like someone should be buying someone dinner afterward.  I'm just not sure about the whole thing.  

In other news, I found out via phone call that my youngest nephew is getting married on Saturday morning. That's tomorrow.  So I've gotta put on a dress and go to that extravaganza in the park. 

In even other news, my oldest nephew, who was supposed to get married in June, has postponed the whole thing for some convoluted reason I couldn't quite understand. They're still together, and may or may not already be married, I'm really not quite sure. 

I guess I'm on a need-to-know-basis, and I'm okay with that. 

Just tell me where to be, I'll be there. 

And I may even smother you with a hug when I see you. 

Friday, May 1, 2015

And Scene.

I'm back to my regularly scheduled life, Reader.  And I'm back with a head cold, so even extra exciting.  

I have so. many. words.  I don't even know where to begin.  Let's just say that once my head stops feeling like Spongebob Squarepants is living in between my ears, I may have some words to actually write.  I know, I know - I didn't do any of it like I had planned while on my Life Hiatus, but maybe I'll be able to get back in the groove. Maybe.

Tonight I've got special tickets to see Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons at the Playhouse Square downtown. I've got to get started on getting ready for that because I am currently a mess. A jet-lagged, stuffed-headed, deaf-in-one-ear mess.  

It's gonna take a little work, Reader. And some smoke and mirrors.