...and witty and GAY!

I bought some pedicure implements today and did myself right up. Soaked the feetsies, trimmed the nails, rubbed the callouses off as best I could with torture devices, and then finally polished the nails right up like a sack of potatoes*.

They are now a pearly cotton-candy color. Very sweet and 5 year old.

I also depilated where necessary, and treated a minor chin blemish.

I have five books on tape (CD), way too many cucumbers to snack on, and nothing packed. I leave on my trip tomorrow and clearly I'm not going to be ready to go straight from work.

Hey Nemoid and Jamie! See you soon!



* "like a sack of potatoes" here is an intensifier. In this sentence, you could substitute "good." Blame my sister for its coining shift in meaning. Silly kook!

Uhhhhh

My compost has a temperature. It's at least 130º and is nice and damp. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit I hauled out my meat thermometer to get a reading. I'm fascinated with compost.

Today I interacted (i.e. exchanged verbal language) with:

• A guy on the phone who is running a study I might participate in.
• My friend Emily on the phone.
• The cashier at Big Lots.
• A woman in SuperCompare, who first explained to me what mamón is (the fruit, not the pejorative*) and then encouraged me to try one**.
• The cashier at SuperCompare.
• Two different clerk-types, a vitals-sign taker, a phlebotomist and my neurologist (doctor's appointment) at Evil Southern Private University Medical Center.
• My next-door neighbor.
• His dog. (That's stretching the "verbal language" part of my definition a bit, I know)

I have: green beans, eensy cucumbers, one wee yellow straightneck squash, several tomatoes, and thriving dill.

*Hm. I'm not sure that "fruit" contrasts all that well with the Spanish slang term.
**This thread of conversation is just ripe*** with opportunities for puns and misunderstandings.
***See?

I work therefore I...

...write?

I've been asked to keep a section of my organization's web page up to date with monthly "Hot Topics" about adolescent health. I wasn't really looking forward to it at first, until I realized that the request could be reframed and it would better appeal to me.

So. I'm BLOGGING FOR WORK, EVERYONE!

(Won't link to it here, but would be happy to email the website if anyone cares. I wouldn't if I were you. It's just going to be articles about teen health issues)

I just sent my ED the first article. About keeping cool in the summer. Avoiding heatstroke and sunburn...apropos, no?

Thank god for screens

That title up there might just distract me for a second from my original thought for a topic. I'll come back to it.

Look up there, for a second, to the post title. What do you say when you, ahem, don't cotton to the idea* of deities? I went with the non-capitalization, feeling like it's preferable to something acutely awful like "Thank Goddess." I don't know why the alternatives bug me so. Thank Deity. Thank goodness. Thank the lord. Thank heavens. There's just not a secular option that I can come up with. (Thank goodness is the closest, but since it's probably finding its roots as a substitute for the word 'god' I've decided it doesn't count as secular.)

Anyhoo, back on topic.

Airco.

I've decided to delay turning on the central air for as long as humanly (Stewly) possible. I have ceiling fans in almost every room, and it's still getting cool enough at night that it's not entirely unbearable. And really, I'm not home for most of the day.

Remember, I'm also the one who, when my past roommate moved out, opted to set the thermostat at a nice 60º F and just wear sweaters. I'm hardy that way.

It's been getting up to 90º during the day now, and I'm employing all the right tricks to keep the house cool. Nonetheless, it's a muggy 80º inside. Doable.

I wonder when I'll break.

*Did I use that phrase correctly? I can't readily find an online definition.

Ahhhhhhh

Yesterday I turned on my PDA only to find that the screen was so dim as to be barely legible.

Fuuuuuck. It's the only way I maintain some kind of handle on my schedule. I never got the hang of a paper organizer, and with my bad memory I HAVE to have some place to record everything that I do or plan to do. Otherwise I'll call a person twice for the same reason, not even realizing I'd already done that.

(That's normal, right?)

I'm still recovering from my extended period of no income* so the thought of shelling out money for another PDA is kind of appalling to me. Luckily I have very basic needs: a) it needs a calendar, and b) it needs to sync somewhere on my computer.

After about 20 minutes identifying what the superbasic-est, most cheaply available PDA would be for me, I did a price search.

Jeepers!** It's like, $100!

So I remembered that at one point I had had a brainstorm (which I would have entered onto my to-do list to follow up on, if my damn PDA had worked at the time) that I should be doing some trouble shooting about the situation, just in case the PDA wasn't really dying.

(It was a long-shot, borne of utter frugality)

Fixed.

Phew!


*aside: remember my glee at filing various and sundry insurance claims and health savings account expenses? Yeah. I didn't bank on them BEING REJECTED.

**Who knew? Etymology is fuuuun.

Who cares if it's wobbly?

I just mowed my lawn with a 21"5 horse power Murray gas-powered push mower. My hands are shaky from the vibrations, so it's kind of hard to type.

It's certainly hard to figure out where to put the commas among all the descriptors in that first sentence.

I also picked up a FREE weedwacker, which so far I have not been able to get to start. I am not sure why, but I don't really care. I'll take a look at it later

For now, I feel so powerful! I pull a cord and VROOOOOOOOOOM! I push the poor limpy little baby mo-mo (commas?) along and it does its job, chomping up the grass, chewing it all up underneath and drizzling it back out below once it's nice and pasty.

When I get a minute I'm going to need to turn it over and figure out how long before the back wheel falls off and whether there's anything I can do to patch it up.


Oh, it's fun to accidentally mow over small, hot pink stuffed animals that have made their way into your yard. But I will try to avoid that from now on.

Whew.

Soy Ploy

I got these free in the mail yesterday. I was supposed to, via their marketing instructions, "spread the Soyjoy" by eating one and giving two away. It's better for them that I ate two and plan to toss the third.

Blech. Why I even finished the first makes me scratch my head. Let's blame it on my being hungry and not very....awake. They're sour and bland at the same time, with a texture kind of like an extruded, soft-in-a-bad-way, tightly-"crumbed" biscotto. (Yes, I went there.)

p.s. don't let cheap mangos get overripe. They lose both the tang and the sweet, becoming just bland. Or maybe that's because they had to ripen here at home rather than at ALL on the tree.

A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter

Whoa. This is really stupid, and yet I've been hoping to run across it for months now. When I walk I sometimes chant along to this.
Now I'm kind of bummed, though.

Motivation

One of the kids I worked with at my last job wrote a poem; he performed it spoken-word style at a celebration we had shortly before the program ended.

My then-boss contacted the author and had the poem printed up and framed for me before I left that last job. When I moved this summer, I almost ditched the poem. I did ditch the certificate of appreciation that the former employer gave me at the same time, cause, meh. It's hard for a certificate to make up for being laid off, you know? I toss things into the trash without a moment's hesitation. Sometimes it bites me in the ass later on, but at least I'm not like my grandma and sister, who hoard things. My friend R convinced me to keep the framed poem, though, so I put it away somewhere in my office and forgot about it.

Well, I came across it a couple of days ago and put it in my bag to take to work. It's hanging behind my monitor, along with a rescued (bad) oil painting of a group of unidentifiable shorebirds.

I wanted to share it. I've changed the teen's name (trying to keep the rhyme) and left out the title, for anonymity's sake.

Week one was team building
Not knowing a soul
Getting used to the old light in the ceiling
And the room being a little cold

As the weeks progressed we got to know each other
Minds got loose
Soon we felt like long-lost sisters and brothers
We were beginning to expand our family roots.

So much fun now
That we can barely pay attention
The group is one now
Learning all types of preventions

Preventing pregnancy, date rape, HIV and STIs
Through our strong ties we can make people realize
If they open their eyes
And look past the horizon
People will hear them now; there's no need for Verizon.

I leave here a pain annihilator
Not a heart breaker
But a spirit levitator
And I had a great group of friends there to help. They are my mind motivators.
So most importantly I leave here not just Ricky Dean
But Ricky Dean a peer educator.

It would be really, super easy to snark on this, and OH don't you know I have (There's no need for Verizon??) . But it really touches me. Something I did...something I facilitated, made this 15-year old boy have these thoughts. His sense of self comes through so strong...Go Ricky Dean!

This is why I do what I do.

More fun with...

...FOLK ETYMOLOGY!

Shitload or Shedload?

Example: I have a shitload/shedload of things on my mind these days.

Passtime or Past(t?)time?

Example: My favorite passtimes/past(t?)imes these days have to be birding and daydreaming.

I swear I come across these things daily. I have definite opinions. I just like to double check with y'all.