Borrowed Ideas

I just got this idea off of Delicate Flower and decided since I’m trying to prepare for Indie Art Market I better find a lazy way to post. Like you didn’t already know too much about me, here goes:

Rules: 1. Respond and rework; answer the questions on your blog, replace one question that you dislike with a question of your invention, add one more question of your own.   2. Tag other people.

What is your current obsession?

-My children falling from great heights into fast-flowing water. Oh, wait – you mean like a fun obsession? I would say it’s iced chai tea with soy milk. And nuno felting. More on that later.

What did you wear today?

-My pajamas. Or at least, the clothes I slept in, which is just a black v-neck tshirt. And I did manage to add yoga pants before leaving the house. The shirt was clean when I put it on, and my body was clean too, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. Okay, yeah. It is.

What’s for dinner?

-Tonight it’s “whatever husband can go out and purchase.” Most likely Chick-Fil-A. I am speaking about doulas at tonight’s Birth Matters Lynchburg meeting. You should come.

What would you eat for your last meal?

-Ecstasy.  Sorry, husband. I’m dying anyway, right?

What are you listening to right now?

-The sound of one house clapping about the children being gone for the morning.

What language do you want to learn?

-All of them. Seriously. But in order of immediacy, I’d have to say: 1. Spanish (I already know some) 2. Italian 3. German 4. French (I can read a fair amount of French already) 5. Japanese 6. Russian 7. Chinese 8. Zulu.  I pick up languages fairly easily, and in fact taught myself Spanish. I had three years of French in high school but can’t really converse, though I can, as noted, still read some.

What do you love most about where you currently live?
I can walk to a park, a bookstore, a gourmet deli, a college campus, a bike trail, a river, my favorite coffee shop, the house I grew up in, downtown, and some of my good friends’ houses. And I can hear the trains thundering through all day.

What style is your current home decorated in?

-Early American-Swedish “Family of Five on One Income” (lots of Ikea, which looks really funny in a 102 year old house)

If you were a time traveler what era would you live in?

1920s-1940s. I would be a flapper, of course, to start with. A wildly inappropriate woman who likes to have fun and do the jitterbug. And actually, that description fits me now.

What is your favorite color?
You know that color you sometimes see at twilight when the sky isn’t completely dark yet but it’s a deep, deep blue and the trees are all silhouetted black against it? That color. And also, aubergine.

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your wardrobe?

-Can it be shoes? My Sketchers oxblood, shit-kicker boots that I got at the Goodwill last year. They almost make me wish it would get cold again. Almost.

What are your favorite films?

-I love violence. I do not know why. So here they are: 1. Wild At Heart 2. True Romance 3. Very Bad Things 4. Burn After Reading 5. Memento 6. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels   And also some that aren’t so violent: 7. Princess Bride 8. Ever After (embarrassing, I know) 9. Mo’ Better Blues

Your favorite books?

-This list would be entirely too long. But here are a few 1. One Hundred Years of Solitude 2. Like Water for Chocolate 3. Cold Mountain

Do you collect anything?

Yes. Phobias. And also, turtles. But not real ones.

Okay, that’s enough. I cheated and cut out the questions that would be too boring for you to read my answers to. Plus, some crafty goodness awaits me.

Just look at this nuno felt extravaganza!

What I’ve Learned

This semi-hiatus has not afforded me much more time than I had before taking it.  One thing that has improved is the state of my home, but I can’t be too specific on that just yet.

I have learned a few things, and here they are, in no particular order:

1. There’s a reason writers say, “Write every day.”  It doesn’t take long for the brain to atrophy, and it seems the more I write, the more ideas I have for writing.  So I’m sorry to say it, dear family, but it looks like in order to write more I’m going to have to spend more time writing. I’ll miss you! Mostly.  And no, silly, I don’t mean you. I mean the other ones.

2. I get much validation from having my writing “out there” for others’ scrutiny and, dare I say it? I shall indeed: praise. I write for praise. It’s like working for food, only with less tangible reward. And since I haven’t been writing as much public material, I’ve suffered a downswing in my self-esteem. Yes, I realize this is unhealthy, but I have been amused and horrified at my desperation for compliments, and at least the experience has made me more aware of it. It is so very ugly when viewed on the page, in comment threads, that I intend to give it up much like I did smoking. By which I mean, quitting over and over only to start up again and then finally kicking but still dreaming about the day when I am close to death and will get to pick it up again.  Only thirty-two years to go.

3. I hate people even more than I suspected.

4. I don’t mean you, silly. I mean those other people.

5. Why I learned number three by not writing, I’m not certain, but I imagine it has to do with going to New Jersey. I’ll have to explore this more in the future.

6. GPS devices are useless. See, while we were on the road to New Jersey, I explained to four year old Ethan how they work. On our way back, in a coffee crisis, I typed in Starbucks and found the one closest to our route. When we arrived where the GPS said it would be, however, we were essentially in the middle of a field of tall grasses that looked nothing like dark, French roasted coffee. At that point, Ethan piped up from the back seat:

“That’s because there’s no such thing as a thing in space that goes around and around the planet and takes pictures and sends a signal to the GPS device! They’re not real.”

So this has been quite the educational experience for me.

The Incredible Shrinking Blogger

Ha! Don’t I wish!

No, folks, I don’t mean my waist line.  That would be great, but I’m actually talking about the blog itself.

See, I have a problem.  I spend way too much time writing and commenting around WordPress, and not nearly enough time on other things. Like say, sleeping. Writing things that might make money some day.  Showering. You get the idea.

Plus Mr. Barely Knit Together is gone for three and a half weeks doing army reserves summer adventure camp annual training, leaving me in charge of a surly teenager, a large dog, and two small, rabid wombats.

So  I’m curious to know how few posts I can get away with per week.  How long before you grow tired of checking? Are we at that point in our relationship where I could take a week to go off by myself to that cabin in the mountains and not have you worry that I’ve found someone else?

And how about my commenting? Will you miss me, fellow bloggers?  Will I eventually be forgotten, replaced by some shameless hussy who steps in to fill my comedic place? (I’m keeping an eye on you, Claire Collins)

This is not to say that I’m even capable of showing any kind of restraint when it comes to…well, to anything really, but mostly to following all my amazing blogger friends and replying to my sarcastic, cynical readers adoring fans.

So what do you think? Can I take a whole week off?  Will my stats suffer? My god I’m obsessed with mice tats.  Uh, I mean my stats.

I would really like to hear from you. What would it take to keep you happy in my absence? Do I need to give away prizes or something? Make big promises of joy and money upon my return? I could just occasionally upload random photos of my exploits.  ”Barely Knit Together makes her morning coffee!”  ”BKT brusing her teeth!”  ”Barely Knit herding cats!”

Maybe this will be good for me.  Maybe I’ll actually start to interact with real people whom I can see in real life and touch and hear and connect with.

Nah.  Forget it.

Guess What! I’m An Award Winning Writer

Now that I’ve lured you in, you should know there’s no money involved. Do you hear that, teenage daughter?

But a new reader and a blog I just started following, Eric Richardville at Soupalaxy, has given me The Cherry Pie Award.

I hope this is not a joke at my expense, wherein I get a pie in my face.  I’m pretty sure it is legit; he seems so kind and genuine.

So a big thank you to Eric, and I hope to live up the honor.

Kidnapped! The Saga Continues

Stardate June 4, 2009.  Day 3 in captivity.

Wait a minute.  Is it day three, really?  Those hours in the trunk of the Pacer really threw me. 

My treatement at the hands of this dastardly duo has been moderately taxing.  They tried to feed me a Big Mac, which everyone knows is the most disgusting creation ever to grace a sesame seed, wallpaper paste bun.  And since McD’s stopped using hydrogenated oils, the fries suck too.

So I’m hungry, and still tipsy from the shandy drinking last night.  And I had some kind of crazy dreams that my children were texting me to ask how to use the washing machine.  Thank goodness my cell battery is almost dead.

Why don’t I use the cell to cal 911, you ask?

Well, my captors have been wooing me with poetry and promises of Christmas gifts. I’m finding it difficult to turn them in, despite the hardship of riding in the back seat of a Pacer with Fundamental Jelly driving and Alantru talking constantly.

Actually, I find it refreshing that they haven’t asked me to find them a pair of matching socks yet, so I may just hang for a bit and see where the wind blows us.  As an added bonus, FJ is especially handy with pointing out rare reptiles.

So our journey is essentially an unending diatribe by Alantru about the marvelous things beginning with the letter M, and his attempts to verbally work out the best way to avoid Best Man duty (a task, I assure you, he is not suited for), punctuated by shouts of, “Blunt-nosed leopard lizard!” and “Gilbert’s skink!”

This has been an educational experience for me, and I feel myself drawn inexorably into the web of mystery surrounding these two men.  

And I do love a good shandy.

For My Adoring Fans

I’ve been doing this blog thing for a while now.  Believe it or not, I existed before I was “discovered” by Ram Ventkaartakarawhatever.  But since his comment, I find myself deluged by well-meaning but crazed visitors.

So in the interest of holding their (and your) interest – I bring you a resurrected post from the early days.  Way back in August of 2008.

Enjoy.

Too Long For Twitter

It’s hot and my feet are old.  It used to be that I had time to make myself into a girl, but now it’s all I can do to make myself get up.  All I want right now is to put down this laundry and this sad life and put on lip gloss that smells like fruity bubblegum.  I want to walk down the street and get whistled at.  I want to climb trees.  I want to skip school and meet you in the Chinese gardens again.  I want to hop trains like we used to and end up somewhere new.

I want to make sangria and drink it around a bonfire with everyone happy under the trellis that I helped build so many years ago.

I want to swim naked in the creeks again in the moonlight and pretend it will always be like this.  I want to jump off the rock by the waterfall and into the water and go under and this time maybe never emerge from the cool, sweet darkness of being young.

It’s “I Need Therapy” Thursday

I’m busy chopping up pieces of paper and trying to assemble something like a coherent story, or a set of notecards, or at least some coasters from it, and in the mean time, I am SUCKING like a suckling pig sucks on an apple, or maybe more like a sucking chest wound.

Between teaching myself HTML (WTF??) and trying to figure out how to make my boobs look 20 again, I’m too distracted to give you anything good.

So I’m giving y’all a break and losing my audience and probably ditching my fabulous career so I can catch up on everything I’ve been ignoring, like washing my hair and folding laundry and organizing my toothpick holder collection.  My little ones are buried in the clothes and I’d really like to see them again before they turn into surly teenagers (and in case you’re wondering, the “little ones” are not the boobs).

This time I swear I’m really doing it.  I can quit posting junk any time!  I’m not a junkie!  Watch me kick, I can do it.  Oohhh, the spiders! They’re crawling under my skin aaaaaaaarrrrghhhhhhh.

Besides, my self-esteem has packed its bags and moved to Alaska to be with Sarah Palin (whose boobs don’t need my help).  I’m thinking being next to her might make me look like a good mother, and since my body will be elsewhere I won’t have to worry about any physical comparisons.

As for my body, it will be hitting the road, too, but in a different direction, maybe to trade school.

I might be better suited for a life of physical labor.

I’m thinking lumberjack.

Me in my minivan, with the stupid puffy hair the haircutting lady gave me, ready for a Fear and Loathing experience. Without the hallucinogenics. Boo.

So so long, and thanks for all the fish.  And the M&Ms.  And the wampeters, foma and granfalloons.  They were good, too.

I’ll be back next week with my super hero persona back and intact.  If I can find all the necessary pieces.

Virginia Summers

I was supposed to take time off, but I give up – I can’t stop myself.  I have to tell you something.

I want to tell you what summer tastes like here, what its sounds are and how it wraps itself around you in a heady fabric of humidity and flowery fog.

I wasn’t outside tonight for thirty seconds when I got bitten by a mosquito.  Then I heard the tree frogs and their love songs in the night, and I knew we were almost there – almost to the time when everything just busts out in lush and lusty bloom and hue.

On a night like this, you could sit on your porch drinking wine or moonshine and the neighbors would come out one by one and some would join you.  And you would sit and drink and smoke and laugh until the last cigarette was gone and all the ice melted in the sultry heat.

The older children would be forgotten about, as they played in the moonlight chasing fireflies long past their bed time.  We would hear them, and let them be, just for now, like we once were.

Finally the children would sit at our feet and listen to our boasting and storytelling, listen to the soft murmur of wishes and dreams that seem so close in the moist air.  They are still so we stop noticing them; they hear our truths, set free from the secret places.

On a night like this, you can smell mimosa and its sweetness so fleeting makes you turn your head and wonder what it was.

On a night like this, sticky sweet, moody, you might forget yourself and kiss passionately in front of acquaintances.  You might slow dance in the front yard by the gardenia bush.  You might lay your blanket out under the stars and forget everything you’ve ever known.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Look, folks. I’m taking a few days off. I have work to do and a husband gone with the “army” (like I really believe that old scheme!) for the weekend. Plus it’s Mothers Day for pete’s sake (should that be capitalized?). So I’m going to make like a mother and piss some people off.

Wait a minute, something isn’t right there.

Oh well, nevermind.

Here is a prompt. It’s better than nothing. Or is it?

Do with me it what you will.

It was a dark and stormy night.  The streets of the city, my city, shone with the shininess of a shiny penny in the gaslight lights that lit things up lightly.  I poured myself a glass of eighteen year old Cragganmore scotch, and downed it in one gulp as I rubbed the three day stubble on my ruggedly handsome yet craggy face.  It’s a pricey cure, but I was ready to drink away the…?