Thursday, October 16, 2003
Tuff Skins
I am bone tired. Monday night’s TKD class was relatively easy, but I ached until yesterday. Last night’s class has me wiped. The muscles around my hip sockets feel like they’ve been peeled like string cheese. The area around my shoulder blades feels like I might have once had wings and they were pulled off. I whine. I’m a big baby. It hurts to walk on my feet.
I have the nastiest feet of anyone I know. I mean like, dog paws. Run on hot gravel with my hooves, hard calloused feet. I try to keep the tops relatively inoffensive… nail polish, etc. But don’t look too close. And for your own safety, don’t touch them. They are nearly as tough on bottom as a year-old labradors.
Sometimes other women (particularly mom-women) make pedicure appointments for me. Once in a while I’ll go. I sense pity and revulsion in the heart of whoever is poised with a razor blade (among other tools and stones) and wants to file or, when desperate, cut off the offending material. I say “Leave it! I need that, these are functional feet.”
I have been working on these callouses since I was at least 17 as a lifeguard. A few years ago I did Afro-jazz, also shoeless. Lots of pivoting and dragging of the feet. Running, walking. And now TKD, with it’s requirements to do things like pivot your foot with it flat on the ground, about 70 degrees, while it holds all your weight. I look around class and all our feet are jacked, not to mention filthy.
The quiet destruction comes from shoes. I think most women can relate to this.
I come home and once my feet are clean, put on massive fuzzy pink slippers and walk around wincing. Sometimes I wear ok shoes, foot-wise, like the docs I have on today. Any shoe with the slightest heel and my arch doesn’t touch the inside of the shoe, so it’s all toes, ball, and heel. The boots with the 4” heel I had on tuesday, don’t even get me started. I have 34 pairs of shoes, after donating about 3 dozen to charity over the last year.
I love feet (in a non fetish way). I want to take pictures of all my friends with their hands touching their bare feet. Somehow feet and hands are so personal, so human and distinctive. But so are their shoes. why do i love shoes so much?
I just remembered being woken up in the wee hours by hearing someone (thing) go “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” It was likely a radiator or a pipe, but it woke me because it sounded like a voice in the living room. I like my apartment because it’s 97% sinister-vibe free.
I have a new photo album up - from “real” photos I took with my fully manual Nikon - of a Drag Race in Dupont in Fall ‘01. Soon I’ll put my other stupid long scrolling html pages into this auto-gallery thing so maybe they’ll be easier to see, and it won’t take me so long to get pix up.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Commercial
Just the night before I was thinking how it had been a while since we had rain, and so (and so?) it came yesterday. Mild in the day, completely ignorable, then last night, I had to turn off the tv to hear its noise and the pounding on my windows while I was working/playing on my laptop (joy!). I almost turned off the lights for the lightning, but I would have fallen asleep.
Oh - Check out the Napster Bits link over on the right under fun. They made little flash videos for different music genres and they’re done so very well. I can’t decide which is my favorite, but the metal and the hip hop are in a close run.
Before I turned off the tv, I think it’s important to note that I haven’t watched tv in a good while. Maybe as long as since the last rain. There was nothing good on, but I actually laughed out loud at a couple commercials particularly the Dunkin Donuts commercial with Ricardo Montalban from Fantasy Island. Opening scene is a woman sitting in a park with her coffee, and Ricardo Montalban’s voice - like a voice over - passionately expounding on the virtues of the coffee. Then he’s right there, sitting closer and closer to the lady, talking fervently about the coffee, his hand on the bench near her thigh. She’s dumbfounded and doesn’t move. The closing shot captures their forms and the tension..... the weirdness, perfectly. Goodness this tickled me. heehee.
The second good one was done by Mass Mutual - but you only find out at the end (it’s one of those). The music is Joan Jett’s “I hate myself for loving you” and it’s got a big closeup of a lumpy toad with a series of phrases above it. I suppose I’m the target market and it worked, but oh well.
I freaking hate the Range Rover “respect” commercial. I want to come charging out of the jungle and slaughter everyone in that car with a dull machete, I hate it so much for the attitude it reveals and propagates. Those ethnocentric piles of chicken crap.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
User Been mySquirrel
um, i’m a novice when it comes to mysql where i’m not just tapping into pre-existing stuff.
trying to set up a db on my server space with dreamhost, doing a tutorial… with the goal of playing with php & mysql. Following these instructions, “Copy and paste the following text to a file and save it in MySQL’s bin directory.”
Where can I find the bin directory? “which” shows me only
“usr/bin/mysql”
but um… help? Am I jumping the gun? this says nothing of the mysql config so perhaps it’s not set up properly for/by me yet.
I do *have* mysql in my host’s package so it’s at my fingertips if I can figure this out.
if anyone can point me a little further, I’d be much obliged.
Monday, October 13, 2003
Howls
This weekend opened with a full moon and a dog that’s been howling outside for 2 and a half days. Sounds which perfectly accented the tone of unrelated events. Yelping and crying and howling in the near distance.
At first I pitied the inconsolable dog, thinking he/she was left alone. I laughed at it too, because it kept interjecting its voice between all the normal sounds of my apartment. Then I hated it: waking up to it, falling asleep to it. Strangest of all, last night as I lay in bed processing things, I felt jealous of that hound. If only I could let go and howl sometimes, even if it took days to get it all out.
I’m fine, but don’t feel much like talking. I have a lot to do. so here.... i understand. i know. i’m sorry. i can’t.
Friday, October 10, 2003
Love, Shiny and New
At 6:39 pm last night my beautiful, glowing, 5.6 pound baby was placed in my arms. I felt myself swell with hope, joy and pride. The sweet little ID said
PBG4 15"/1.25GHZ/512/80/SuperDrive.
The delivery was relatively swift and painless, just a faint tinge of concern about reimbursement coming before my credit card bill (i religiously avoid carrying a balance). Suddenly the trip home felt fraught with peril. I sought to, with subtlety, protect the precious bundle in my arms, and the Airport Extreme Base Station in a bag on my back. If only I had a volvo and a car seat.
It’s so incredibly beautiful. This is my first PowerBook. My other Mac is so old - the Lazarus machine - it has died and been brought back so many times. This is also my first laptop, because I could never justify one to myself before. It kept me up late last night. I barely ate. I just wanted to figure it all out and I couldn’t stop caressing it or put it down. I kept washing my hands to keep it as silky soft and clean as it came. I turned off my lights except for the tv and the soft white glow of the backlit keyboard took my breathe away.
ooooh i want to be home with it now.
Mommy’s bringing a new ethernet cable for the router and getting your wireless network all hooked up today. Sleep now, my precious one....
*snicker*
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Don't Hold Doors For Strangers
Yesterday I had so much to get done I let mintJelly slide for a day. I put in an application with a decent company in ny and hopefully they’ll want to talk to me. I have a feeling they will (since they were asking for my resume) and it would be a cool challenge. I find that more and more I have the mentality that I *am* moving. Which is probably a good thing in light of last night’s foolish act.
Last night I did something really really REALLY stupid. I am the worst tentant in the world! I was fully paranoid after the fact. Dear God. I was leaving my building about 10:30 to get some Gatorade with Otto and on my way out… despite the big sign about NOT letting people you don’t specifically know IN, and despite them including in a memo recently “the building is only as safe as the last person to go through the door” we let two people in.
I thought I recognized them. I did! I really do recognize most of the people in my building, it’s not that big. So on our way out I looked at this man and woman, I knew them, sure. They were about a foot and a half apart. The woman held a small pizza box. Then as I was looking at the man, searching his face, he looked me in the eye with a weird intensity/aggression/interest. My bells went off. I looked down as he passed.
He had drops of blood on his crotch.
Blood right where his party piece would touch. Seemed like he didn’t want me to notice (ya think?!) They entered the building. We walked down the stairs. “Um, Otto, I thought I knew them but now I’m not sure.”
My mind was going so fast on its own tangents I forget what Otto’s reply was.
“That man had BLOOD on his crotch, on the front of his pants! Like dripped on. Or maybe coming from the inside! Oh my god I just let a psycho killer into my building! what if he abducted that woman, what if she fought him and that’s why he’s bleeding. Dammit!”
Um, PARAnoid. paraNOID. Oh my But see, I have a sense for these people. I’ve been stalked twice, assaulted, I KNOW the look, I trust my gut and it saves my ass all the time now. I am so hoping I was wrong.
The worst was there were cops just everywhere last night. Some high security event and they were crawling all over the area, in cars, in flack jackets, pulling people over and checking them out.
And I wanted to go up and say, “Hi Officer, I just did a dumb thing. I thought I knew people and doubt it now, but um. A man had blood on his crotch. And, are you writing this down?... I feel it’s important to note that the blood may have come from *inside* the pants.”
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Wool Coat
I finally got enough sleep that this coffee is a pleasure and not a crutch. Last night I had a really challenging class, lots of water, a hot shower, finished my book and fell into a deep deep sleep. I dreamed all night like my brain was emptying its cache. I saved a tiny bug who has lived in my sink for two days and was becoming unresponsive. I listened to white stripes as I got ready for work, and remembered my sunglasses for the walk. Jim just sent me some photos he took in high school and I have no words to describe everything related to them.
Today I get to work on our tattoos feature. I have no plans for tonight, finally. There is no one I’m supposed to see, or anywhere I need to be. I don’t need to think about time. I can make my little work and non work lists and check them off in my own time. I can breathe.
Today is such a beautiful day. I want to walk in the cool air for miles and miles. If I were still in Virginia I would know every trail in every bit of unauthorized chunk of wood. I’d crunch through the brush and leaves as quietly as possible. I’d lay down in a long wool coat and fall half asleep with my hair and an arm for a pillow. I’d wake up at nightfall really really awake. Eyes dilated. Mind dilated. Charged. Calm. Good.
1992
Monday, October 06, 2003
Oh I'm So Glad You Came
Jim picked me up. We didn’t entirely want to go. Being in his car as he drove, listening to good music, felt comforting and familiar. I felt the gap to a distant time close. We found a bar in Clarendon and hung out for about an hour so as to not be early, or even on time for our 10 year high school reunion.
The most I was hoping for was to see a small group of people in whom I was interested. I had vague ideas of where people have gone. I had assumptions about who would have kept in touch.
We did of course have to wear those badges with our senior picture on it - a special kind of hell, but funny never the less. Was good to see those in a way. After you’d talked to someone a while, you could glance down and appreciate the similarities and the changes.
All the people I was closest to came, and even better, whether they were single or not they came alone. We formed like mercury rolling together, all over again.
The mauling began pretty quickly. Over and over it went like this:
“Mia?!”
“Katy!!”
::Crushing Hug and Kisses::
fucking fantabulous. then we’d run around and find more people.
My damn camera died way too early. We were still sober and things were just getting started. Here are the photos.
I was so glad to see all those people! I have never hugged, kissed, and stayed arm in arm with folks so hard and happily in absolutely forever.
So many good feelings and memories came back. Everyone looked so good - so completely grown into themselves. Each had an air of confidence and seemed comfortable in their skin - AND they shared the absolutely gonzo enthusiasm that I felt in those hours. That’s probably what made me the happiest. What good people. How incredibly cool to have found them again.
I did see my old best friend Melissa, who things had gone so terribly wrong with. I didn’t recognize her at first. She has cut off her long long brown hair and it’s now short, and black. So glad she walked right up to me and said “Hi” in exactly her old way. I just hugged her for a long time, and kissed her face, and couldn’t help crying.
One of my old flames smelled exactly the same, and looked even better. rat bastard.
Actually, EVERYONE smelled the same. At one point we were actively burying our faces in each other’s necks because it was so startling and wonderful. Perhaps it was the combination of scents that brought a lot of our memories back.
Christina still smells the same - so good. I love this person so much. I used to tell her I wanted her to influence my children, and I still do. She’s a massage therapist who also does prenatal massage “backs and bellies” in Miami, just like she’d wanted to. She called me ‘sex on a stick’ at about 1:30am, really damned loudly, might I say. awww shucks Chris. You say the sweetest things. It’s strange to be among people who know you a little too well. but so good.
For everyone, I could give a rundown of the ways they’re awesome, and the memories and feelings I have for them. ...about how I’ve thought about them, and hoped they were happy.
The best part is now I have their contact information, and some are much closer geographically than I knew. YAY! Also I spent more time talking with people I didn’t really know that well in school, but they’re great and live close.
Rebecca, how’s your dress? I hope I didn’t actually burn you. Justin burned me too if that makes you feel better (hand once, skirt once), but at least not a full lock of hair like he did in high school. Katy, rock on for marrying a marine “who also is a firefighter and also plays rugby.” Um, damn girl, good job. Jason, I am going to try to find out which photographer was in your area then, and see what has come of that excursion.
Jim, thanks for driving our sleepy, drunk asses home at 5:30 in the morning. Thanks for having 5 versions of Jesus and Mary Chain’s Teenage Lust to play in the car, just like old times. You are wonderful, and I will always be your wing man.
I have to finish this post with a song for all of us. Yesterday morning I broke out Cure’s Disintegration, and this sounded just right with its obligatory references to fur and Christmas, and of course, all the other words fit perfectly too.
“Oh I’m so glad you came
I’m so glad you remembered
Walking through walls
In the heart of December"*
mp3: Last Dance
zip of mp3 (sometimes works better): Last Dance
*Breaking into Christina’s vacant house in the small hours of the night in December was the last time we all were mostly together I think. The house that had meant so much was for sale, and as college freshman, we knew we wouldn’t likely see each other again anytime soon. It wouldn’t be the same. We didn’t want the night to end. We didn’t want those years to be over. I’m so glad you all came.
