Not here!

This blog really is closed. I fiddled with settings a few weeks ago, and decided I am definitely staying over at wordpress.

Come see me at  meganlynae.wordpress.com

I'll probably be deleting this blog altogether in a few weeks. 

Not at all. But I like it.

When I was in college, I would occasionally have 12 page papers that I was expected to write. I genuinely hated these. Genuinely. And, to add insult to injury, the papers were generally due at the end of the semester. This was a time when I wanted to be DONE. I did not want to write about how Shakespeare's use of Greek gods in metaphors proved...something I can't recall now. This lack of love for all things papers would create a problem. I would procrastinate much longer than was wise to start them.

During my senior year, I needed to be writing about some ESL concept or another. Which, hooray. I was so not starting that little barrel of fun until the day before. Having the patience and attention span of an addled goldfish, I wrote a quarter of a paragraph and then thought: YouTube. I wonder what's on YouTube. Let's go watch videos! And so I went to YouTube. And fiddled around looking at things that I had no business looking at whilst I had a PAPER DUE. In the course of things, I typed in "bilingual" (a portion of what the paper was about) and up at the top was a video of Eddie Izzard. My friend Anna had sent me a YouTube clip of him that I had sort of ignored. Maybe I was wrong! Maybe he was funny! Or better yet, maybe he would save my doomed paper!

Which, of course he didn't. But I do love the bilingual clip.



I really don't speak French. It's moderately close to Spanish in the scheme of things, but not close enough to make any sense of it. Not that I can legitimately make any sense of Spanish either. Let's call things as they are, shall we? But because of the miming, the cognates, and the awesomeness that is Eddie Izzard, this clip works anyhow, and I love it.

There's something superior-sounding about French, especially to my Midwestern ear. It tends to sound good even if the content is completely ridiculous. The accenting and rhythm of the language is so suave. I currently have a couple French coworkers and even their broken English has this extrasexy tone to it. French is fairly awesome that way. Also, I'm fairly certain that the fact that I cannot understand any of it makes it possible for me to focus only on the rhythms. But it seems unfair to underestimate the way in which Latin-based languages tend to sound smoother than German-based languages. There are fewer vowel sounds and softer consonant sounds on the whole, and that lends itself to a less guttural -sounding language in general. See? I did manage to pull a little bit of something out of my ESL classes. Even if Eddie Izzard was more interesting than my papers.

Oh and this guy, too.



I'd apologize for the sound quality on the clip, but it's the best of the three I could find. And it's not so bad that you can't understand what is being said. Well, maybe except for the French part. But if you don't speak French it seems more than a little unreasonable to expect YouTube to teach you.

I read:
The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything by Mark Reiter, Richard Sandomir and Nigel Holmes (Like March Madness brackets, only on more day-to day to day topics. For instance, Animal won as the Best Muppet.)

To the Window, To the Wall...

I've never felt remotely good at dancing. It's a side effect of that "Everyone is staring at me!" syndrome. I'm working on that. But honestly, the only way to get better is to practice, and how often can you really do that? I will occasionally find myself doing a little hip shaking while I'm waiting for the copier, or someone else will point that out to me, but that's not practicing so much as moderate impatience masquerading as dance.

This is, of course, a smaller issue in the scheme of things, but it comes up occasionally. Maybe I shouldn't care, just wave my hands and shake my ass around and whoever sees me, sees me. But honestly? Have you met me? I can't do that. And I also can't afford lessons.

Here's to half-hearted, poorly executed dancing. Making it look awkward since 1997.


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Fruit and Fabric Foibles

So, yesterday I went to a local fabric place, the Textile Warehouse.

Two and a half blocks into my six block walk, I had seen a green object in the street, but I was listening to Nizlopi, humming along and I forgot about it. So I go to cross that intersection, and what do you know? That green object in the street is slippery! I fell directly onto my left hip in the middle of the street. In the split second after I fell, I looked down and thought: Is that a cucumber? No, I think that's a lime.

See, I live in a Latino neighborhood, and people buy bags of limes to put in their cases of Coronas. Apparently this one didn't make the cut. Or! Conversely! This was a beer-soaked lime I fell on. Anyhow. It gets...better? I'm going to use the word better loosely.

Before I can scramble to my feet, I hear a car pull up to my right. And it doesn't sound to me like it is decelerating, likely because they haven't seen me lying on the tar. And I'm thinking my obituary is going to say, "She died due to injuries incurred in a car crash following a fall onto a stray lime." Or maybe a tombstone: "She looked both ways, but not down. Reader, take heed." But the car stops, closer to me than I'd like, and I get up and walk off. Like you do, pretending that nothing has just occurred here, I can't imagine what you're looking at. Safely to the other side of the street and on to my destination. Someone from across the street watched this happen, but said nothing, and for this I am eternally grateful.

Anyhow, back to the Textile Warehouse. There are several floors of fabric, very loose organization and it. is. not. clean. Though, it's not the fabrics that are dirty. It's just...everything else. Also, if you don't know what you want, it is daunting. But! I knew what I wanted! And it was only moderately helpful. I asked one person, who told me to ask someone else, and that some one else told me it was in the basement. And when I went to the basement, I nearly died. Again. The fabric wasn't folded over on the bolts. It was full width on 60 inch poles. I am 58 inches tall, so the fabric was taller than me. What *on earth* would I do if I found anything I liked? This was not going to work.

As I contemplated my doom, one of the men who presmably worked there came over to ask if I had found the type of fabric I was looking for. I told him I had, and he vanished almost immediately behind a row of bolts. Crap. I found an aqua jersey knit that I wanted, and I walked around in pursuit of him, sans bolt. Maybe he'd call somebody, or maybe he'd carry it upstairs for me! Optimism, huzzah! I found him near some shimmer organza (it looked like fairy tutu material) and I asked him about getting the fabric upstairs. He said David would do it. While he was standing thisclose to me, he shouts

"DAVID!"

And I nearly die a third time. As I scramble to reassemble the fragments of my last shattered nerve, David shows up and carries the bolt upstairs for me. I pay, leave, and head home with no issues.

The damage? Less than $15. And a really gnarly black bruise with green edges.

Everyone Kept Their Distance!

This past year I was introduced to SMITH Magazine's 6 word memoirs. In the spirit of both a short blog post and a dip into the memoir form, I have the following 6 word memoir from my trip to and from Denver this past week:

Not patted down. It was miraculous.

 
I read:
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueneedin (Collection of short stories. I really liked them. Even if most of them were fairly sad. 

Logic? Nooo.

Scene 1:
Sunday morning at 2:30 a.m., room pitch black
(Vague scratching noise)
(Repeat scratching noise louder)
Cue Megan, who sits bolt upright in the bed.  (I would love to include a link here, but YouTube disabled the video I wanted. It was funny, though.)
[Thinking]
What was that?
Should I turn on the light?
No! I shouldn't! What if it's an alligator? I bet someone brought me an alligator. I won't be able to go back to sleep once the alligator has seen me.

What. the. hell. I kid you not, this is a fair approximation of what I thought. And it took me a little bit to fall back to sleep. I am certain that I was hearing the house mouse out in the kitchen. It had to have been. Says something about my mental state that I did not turn the light on to check. So, it could have been an urban alligator. Sure. As far as who would come into my room after I was asleep and put an alligator in there, presumably one that dislikes light? Clearly someone with a heart of cold, hard stone and a hatred of all things good and holy. Luckily, I don't actually know anyone like that, so I don't think that I'll worry much about it.

My conclusion, simply, is this. The human brain is crazy. Just wild and crazy.

It's just, exasperating. Really.

I'm going to be traveling next week.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't travel often and I've mainly only traveled after 9/11. That said, I am tired of being treated like a potential terrorist threat everytime I go through security. I get patted down at least twice a trip: once leaving and once coming back. I recall a trip where we had a layover and for whatever reason they made us go through security again, and I got patted down *again.* Lovely.

Federal law requires that you remove from your body all possible metal items, and that any metal that you must take with you that is not:

1) in your carry-on and as such x-rayed
2) placed in those plastic baskets and then x-rayed

be checked over with a wand and sometimes swabbed.

And so. In the best possible situation, I would be waved over to a line where they check medical items. This happened *once.* I stood behind a lady in a wheelchair and they did all of the wanding, swabbing, etc without making you stand in line just waiting to fail the metal detector "test."

Like I said: once. Every other time I go through the metal detector, set it off, and then am asked to wait to be checked by a security guard. Some airports have glass boxes for you to stand and wait in.

And I wait, because of part two of federal law. In the event of a patting down, the guard must be the same sex as the passenger. Somehow there's never a lady around when I go through.

But honestly? I am not a security risk. I have a cane and a brace that set off the metal detector. I. am. not. dangerous. Promise. Someone said to me once, in Miami I believe, that you can't be too careful. What about hidden explosives? She mentioned this as she was swabbing down my brace after having me remove it in aforementioned glass box. Really? Explosives inside my shoe? Don't you think I considered the likelihood of my entire leg being forcefully separated from my body? I think I said something like that to her and she said, well, suicide bombers, you know. At which point I wondered whether she meant that and was very brave to stand so near to me, or if it was a line that they tell employees to use.

Regardless, this is the government. They know better than you do. You can't talk to the government, especially since they've passed the ADA legislation. ADA, which stands for American Disabilities Act, allows for handicapped stalls in every airport bathroom, wheelchairs every 100 feet or so in the airport, a series of phones for the deaf, elevators, accessible lounges, and so on and on and on. But ease in getting past security? No, they say, we do not want the people to get soft. The disabled cannot have everything! Go and stand in that line, even though you know that you will not succeed in getting through!

And of course they require you to put your backpack on the conveyor when it's your turn, even though it will cause it to become separated from you for a period time while you wait to be examined. And not allowing your personal possessions out of your sight at any time while in the airport? Isn't that one of the cardinal rules?

Which, whatever. It's just that it makes me tired, to have to explain that I'm going to set off the metal detector, that I will need a chair to sit in before I can remove my brace, and that no. I am not going to do anything to harm the other passengers. Promise.



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More Baking in the Bathroom, I Say.

Did you know that nearly all of the ingredients in shampoo/conditioner are objectionable to hard-core environmentalists? I love the internet, it contains all sorts of random bits of...stuff. I remember watching an episode of the West Wing with Anna a few years ago where one of the characters muses that an idea would have to be substantially far off of the beaten track to not be somewhere on the internet.

Anyhow, so I came across a few people this week who would whole-heartedly recommend that you replace your shampoo with a baking soda/water concoction and your conditioner with apple cider vinegar. Which, ok, you want cheap and safe? That's cheap. And presumably safe. I know nothing about vinegar, so whatever internet environmentalists. I'll take your greasy-follicled well-informed word for it. But baking soda? I bake and I ain't no fool. It is *not* the consistency of shampoo. Not even a little bit. And anyhow, would it be strong enough to do the job? It's just baking soda and water.

And then I remembered the time that Alex left the lid to the butter dish on top of the toaster oven while he had it on. And I was able to remove some of the heat-transferred lettering with nothing but water and baking soda. Yikes. Look out hair!

Though, I'm entertaining the idea of that stuff sneaking out of the bottle at night and scrubbing the moderate grey-ness off of my tub floor. That would be fine.

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I can see... a tall man in a hat

"How many days has it been
Since I was born?
How many days until I die?"

And it goes on from there. It's a song by Leon Russell and the Shelter People. Now, the folks in blog-land suggest that a good post will include a photo. So, here's one of Leon Russell. I'm sorry. The internet made me do it.

 

Yikes. 

Moving on.  Let's talk about the foretelling of the future. That desperate need to know things before they even happen. I am officially over it. My crystal ball is broken, my chakras are completely out of alignment, and I. do. not. know.

On a day-to-day basis, I will occasionally get a small smattering of questions that assume that I have any idea about things that have not yet occurred, nor have I seen.
For instance:
1) Is that next bus an express?
 Now, really. I am not a driver, and I have been standing here a few minutes. I have no idea. I can tell you that an express bus will not stop here, but I have no idea whether or not it is coming.
2) It looks as though it could rain, don't you think?
No. I have phoned in my daily weather order with God, and I have been assured it will not rain until 8 p.m. Synchronize your watches.

I also get particularly riled by people who use scripture to foretell the future, in specific the book of Revelation. I'm going to hazard a guess that it is unlikely that any part of the book can really, successfully tell you whether or not the earth will cease to exist on a specific Wednesday in 2012. And if it did, what then? What shall we do then?

Do I have a point? Why, yes, thank you. I do. And it's this: go live today. And just today. If you are forever squinting so far into the future that you don't see what's in your lap right now, how is that a fulfilling way to live?

Go forth. Have a live-in-the-moment life. And stop asking me about the bus.

With a Gauntlet!

Someone suggested yesterday morning that a change in attitude was necessary on the part of someone else, otherwise they would be required to, "go medieval on them." I have no concept of how this became code for a beating, because all the books *I've* ever read on the era tend to depict something like this.

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Though perhaps with fewer kittehs. Which is a tragedy, really.

This is the first in a projected series of lolcats to "enhance" posts. Look out for the kittehs, they is preshus.

Relax. Go Have Some Ice Tea On The Porch.

Oh you wily, tricky, *irritating* swine flu. Do you know how you have taken over the evening news, the local papers, the internet, the international consciousness? Do you know how incredibly important you sound, with your new name?

H1N1.  (Looks a little like a license plate for someone named "Hiney." Heh.)

But, yes flu, I know. Resistance is futile. It's like back in the summer when we were all afraid of tomatoes. Which is just ridiculous. Because honestly? And I promise that I'm not casting aspersions here, you are FLU. Now, I'm not saying I want flu, or I like flu. Flu, I am happy to concede your awfulness. It's just that, well, I've always recovered from flu. You know, in a fairly timely fashion. With no long term effects. So, imagine my surprise, Bon Monsieur H1N1, when 6 o'clock news on three different channels gave you a five minute segment this week, and then at the close of the report, recommended stocking up on containers of Gatorade. Just in case. In case of what? Are there magical antibiotics in electrolyte drinks now? No. It's for nutrient replenishment after the vomiting.

You see where I'm going with this, right? You have a name, and you came directly from barnyard animals, but ultimately you are just flu. A lot like all the other flus in your family, where there aren't enough shots to prevent you, but a little patience will wait you out. Now, please. Step back from the limelight. And leave the major news networks alone.

Damn uppity pig virus.  You are on notice.


I read: The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris (Second time, even better than the first. So much nuance that I missed on the first go-around.)

Sometimes Singing a Rainbow is Overrated.

I *love* color. Love it. I almost never wear neutrals without a splash of a rainbow/color-wheel color. Black, black, grey,* TURQUOISE!*  That's what I do. I had a conversation with one of my co-workers recently about her tendency to always wear brown. She referred to it as "easy color," and I was a little baffled. It's neutrals, right?  Where's the color? Besides which, I find it hard to match neutrals with neutrals.

Because I? I love color. Looove it. So, perhaps my new favorite song is a bit ironic.

Grey Ghost

Oh in the grey
Grey ghost that I call home
In the grey
Stony lonesome I call home
In the grey
Grey ghost that I call home
In the grey, grey ghost that I call home

Oh he will not
Walk out the river now
He will not walk out the river
He will not walk out the river, singing
Don’t fall through the stars
Don’t fall through them
Don’t fall through the stars
Don’t fall through them
On the docks in Memphis, with the boombox, nodding out, singing
Don’t fall through the stars
Don’t fall through them
Don’t fall through the stars

In the trail of the barge and the light upon the brine
He has staked these thoughts and the force is undivided, singing
Don’t fall through the stars
Don’t fall through them
Don’t fall through the stars
Don’t fall through them
Sleepy-eyed, the man is wading out into the night, singing
Don’t fall through the stars
Don’t fall through them
Don’t fall through the stars

Embracing some hard-luck citizen
Disgraced like some strange Bob Balaban
And placing your heels down in the sand
And

In the grey
Grey ghost that I call home
In the grey
Stony lonesome I call home
In the grey
Grey ghost that I call home
In the grey, grey ghost that I call home

At least the album cover is colorful.

Lyrics and picture courtesy of Mike Doughty's website

Seriously.

Do you know what I miss? Warm weather. I honestly wish that spring would just come already. I am ever so over this rainy, crappy, windy-ness that we've been treated to recently. Spring. I mean it. PLEASE. You'd be so welcome here. We'll have a parade, or a dance, or a something. In your honor. You could name your terms. Whatcha say spring? Do you like jewelry? Think it over. Let me know.



I read:
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (It's a realistic story! Except Dracula's an undead vampire, and still kicking around biting people for the last 500 years since his supposed demise. Creepy? Oh yes, ma'am. But also sort of compelling.)

Color, Now with 90% More Nuance!

A friend of mine posted a link to this "color ordering" test today. The point is to arrange the colors in a spectrum from, for instance, blue to pink. This is more complex than you think, as that a lot of the in-between purples tend to look more or less identical. Was it a little more pink or a little less blue than the one beside it? I found the whole thing fascinating, and I fiddled with it for about a half hour. But then when I finished the only thing I could think of was paint colors. Would you like Blue? What about Pale Blue? Blue Violet? Pale Eggshell Blue?

I have to repaint my bedroom, really, it's starting to make me crazy, and I know that the only thing that will succeed in making me more crazy is selecting the shade (hue?) of green that I am going to change it to. So...hooray! I'm going to be picking paint colors in the next month. Green? Grass Green? Kelly Green? Yellow Green? Yellow Grass friggin' Kelly Green? Ugh.

I read:
Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon (A collection of essays that had mostly been published first elsewhere. I liked the one where he talks about another essay and his decision to write The Yiddish Policemen's Union.)

An Open Letter

To the man who shouted, "Hey! I'm 40 years old and I haven't died yet! Dig that!" as I walked by:

Dear Sir,

Ummm....hooray?

Love and kisses,

Megan Lynae

Sometimes, Technology is Awesome

So, it has been a sad couple of weeks here on the internet. I've started using Google Reader to keep track of all the blogs I read, and on last Wednesday morning my Reader list was filled with posts about Madeline Spohr, who had died suddenly at the age of 17 months. I followed their blog, and I was shocked. Then, on Monday morning, it was filled with posts about Thalon Myers, who had also died suddenly at the age of 3 months, who I did not know at all. And so I ask you, universe, what is the deal here? Expecting no real reply, I will simply say this: it was too soon, and it is heartbreaking.

As I type this, over $27,000 has been raised for the March of Dimes in Maddie's name, and over 450 posts have been written in her memory.  And for Thalon? In one day, $3,000 was raised to help pay for funeral costs. Now, I understand that the internet is just a bunch of computers on a bunch of different servers, but I'd say it's more than that. Because over $30,000 donated to people that may only be real and/or visible on the computer screen? That shows something more than just the wonders of technology. It's a community-centered mindset, and compassion, and just all-around amazingness. It's a level of care and concern which briefly broke the Spohrs blogserver.

Maddie Spohr was a curly-haired blonde that would show up occasionally on my Reader, always with a big toothy grin. She was born early, and with that came extra specialists, I specifically remember a post about her OT/feeding evaluation, where her mother reported that Maddie had gained weight despite not quite following the specialists advice. I believe the words "SUCK IT feeding specialist!!!!" were used. And that? Is one of the things that I loved best about the blog. These were parents of a special-needs child who were not cowed by the medical establishment. Fantastic. But let's be honest, the pictures? Of that little sweetie? Made my day. Frosting-covered lips at someone else's birthday, wide-armed shrug at her mama's April Fool's joke, ogling over Matt Lauer, holding a bottle sideways, wearing a bunny-hooded towel, and on and on.

The honest truth is, I've never actually met the Spohrs. I think they live in California. Probably. But that doesn't mean I didn't gasp when I read the first post about Maddie, and cry a little (at work! on lunch!) when it was corroborated on the Spohrs site.  Because the internet does actually bring people together in amazing ways. I'm sure the AT&T crooks folks who provide us with DSL would be thrilled to know that.

I read:
Little Bee by Chris Cleave (It's about British immigration issues, sort of. It's beautifully written, but a good deal more sad than I was hoping for.)

Baking Products of Doom

So, we had brunch this morning and made pancakes from scratch. Despite having to re-Google everytime we want to make pancakes, I think we've finally found a recipe we like and will keep. Hooray!

I noticed something about our flour this morning. At home in Ohio we used Gold Medal flour, which has a pretty blasé label that looks like this:

I'm fairly sure that Gold Medal is not a regional brand, and we'd be able to find it here if we went to one of our major chain grocery stores, but the little one is really, really close to our house. And all that it usually has in stock is a brand called Ceresota Flour. Which is absolutely fine, honestly. I promise.

Because I have nothing substantial against Ceresota Flour. Really! It tastes absolutely no different, I imagine that the price is comparable, and it has the added convenience of actually being at our local grocery store. I do not need to use the exact brand of flour that I grew up using. But. See, this morning I got a real good look at the label and I was a little taken aback. I know a lot of brands use little kids to sell their food products, but oh. my. jeez.

Would you look at this?!?

Does anyone else see the problem here? Look closely. That baby is slicing himself some bread, with the sharp knife heading straight. toward. his chubby little fist. Ummm...hello, flour company? This is not a sweet and pastoral image for the front of your bag, so much as an advertisement for one way in which to ensure that your child be taken to the emergency department and then directly into the protective custody of the Department of Children and Families. Honestly. Good GRACIOUS.



I read:
Intern by Sandeep Jauhar (Memoir of the first year out of med school. Well-written, compelling.)
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (All about a family of carnival workers. Surreal, and just awful. No redeeming value, despite its use of magical realism, which I usually love.)
Plan B by Anne Lamott (Book on faith by someone who doesn't believe faith has to be unshakable in order to be life giving!)
Grace Eventually by Anne Lamott (I love her.)
It Sucked and Then I Cried by Heather Armstrong (Memoir about post-partum depression. Managed to be hilarious.)

Stuck in an elevator with Dara O'Briain

It's interesting. I just watched a YouTube clip where he talks about elevators. I can't find it now, but anyway. The clip had more to do with messing around in them and inadvertently scaring people than getting stuck in one, but I'm convinced that if I were trapped in a small box for more than 10 minutes, I'd want to be in there with someone that could make into a humorous experience. I take an elevator two and three times a day at work, and I've never really worried about it getting stuck. I suppose that it would, right when I least expect it.

The ones at the Harold Washington Library Center freak me out, though. They tend to make my ears pop, they move so quickly. I hate that. I'm not entirely certain that it's necessary either, since the whole building is less than ten floors, and where are you going in such a hurry? It's a library. Is someone taking the last copy of Outlander ever to exist on God's green earth? No. Good heavens.

Here's hoping it never happens at all.

Sometimes, Even the Cocoa Puffs Will Make You Sad

Let's pretend for a moment that life is linear. You go from one place to the next, and thing are either in front of you or behind you. Do you have any idea how neat, clean, and easy that would be? Because the problem, ultimately, is that life is inherently circular.

Events, I've discovered, will trigger thoughts and feelings that correlate to other events from long past. And some days, you've tripped over so many triggers that everything has the power to make you miserable. Even the cereal. Because, remember that time when...

I went to a local hospital today to see one of my elders. I don't mind hospitals, themselves. They're good things for a community to have, obviously. It's just that there are no good hospital memories. Lots of bad ones though. As if sitting in the hospital isn't hard enough, I've got crap from 7 years ago wandering around in my head. But! I found the exception to the rule today, a person over 12 years old who was genuinely excited to receive a teddy bear. To which I say, more power to you.

Hooray! We're Dead.

I've always enjoyed Calvin and Hobbes. He did all things that I was never quite bold or imaginative enough to do. Terrorizing the neighbor girl, putting his mother's car in the ditch, or pretending he had cloned himself.

Calvin is just, well, a little hyperactive and a little too smart for his own good.  As a child, I loved the dinosaurs he thought he saw, or the stories he made up about things he didn't want to eat. As an adult, I'm amazed that his parents put up with him. My goodness. Particularly the time that he pushes the car out of the garage, it rolls down the driveway, across the street, and into a ditch. Immediately after Hobbes verifies that it didn't hit anything or anyone, Calvin utters maybe my favorite line in the whole collection: "Hooray! We're dead."

There was a set of comics that I followed in the paper that aren't in this collection, that were all about how he set up a snowman "House of Terror." Calvin was nothing if not gross.

This particular collection includes a set of poems at the beginning, which I also particularly enjoy.

I read:
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (Again. I know.)