Happy 6 Month Birthday Bumby

Today marks Coney Sauce's 6 month birthday. 6 short months ago he came into the world peeing, crying and ready to eat. He still pretty much does all that but now he laughs, he grins, he flirts and hides his face, he yawns and he makes the world better by being in it.

Happy birthday bubby pickles, you stole our hearts from day one.

I quit

I quit school.

Lately I've been feeling like life is extremely short. I keep thinking about my friend's struggle with cancer, my grandparents all passing away within the last 4 months, just the general fleeting life we all get a chance at. It's kinda freaking me out. This weekend at my grandfather's birthday party I just couldn't hold it together. I kept crying over everything. From someone asking me about having babies (albeit across the room multiple times) to some old biddies telling me my hair looked awful to my grandpa talking to his old next door neighbor. Then I cried on the way home too for no reason whatsoever.

Lately I just can't muster up the energy to care about algebra, business ethics, or statistics. I cringe to think about the $24,000 tab at the end of this in 3 years. I just don't care. So I don't. I don't like quitting things and I think that was the biggest step, but as some lady said to me when she overheard me talking about the situation to my mates at the coffee shop on Sunday: Don't be your own Grand Inquisitor.

So I'm not. My new goal: Do something I love every single day. Maybe not all day, maybe not very much of it, but at least one thing that brings me absolute joy. And really, why not?

Life is too god damn short not to enjoy it. Right?

Lives of Consumption

First things first: Happy 90th Birthday Great-Grandpa!

While eating breakfast by our front window this morning, on a day where I would spend most of it pissed off at the way humans treat each other, I came upon an article that made me realize we can get it back, you know. We really can.

I can't link to the article, but I'll type it here. It's by Bill McKibben in Conscious Choice, April 2007, page 42, titled "Live Long & Prosper." Maybe it will make you feel better too.

It's a very strong American idea that happiness is something we make for ourselves, to whose "pursuit" we are constitutionally enjoined. In fact, a few years ago an evangelical pollster named George Barna offered a large sample of Americans this question: is the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" found in the Bible? 3/4 of us said yes--even though the phrase actually comes from Ben Franklin. Even though it completely contradicts Jesus' central dictum: love your neighbor as yourself.

How difficult for us, then, is it to stop and realize that the harder we've pursued what we imagined was happiness, the more steadily and successfully it has fled our grasp. We've trebled the American standard of living in the last five decades--and in the same stretch of time the number of Americans who describe themselves as "very happy" has steadily shrunk. It's as if we'd conducted a controlled experiment to find out if money bought happiness and found out-what do you know?-it doesn't. Just like every spiritual leader back to the Buddha has hinted.

But we don't really believe them. We're so primed by our years as consumers with the certainty that more is better that we almost literally can't take in the truth. And can't see the facts that are plain before our eyes: the more prosperous we've gotten, the more lonely we've become. What have we spent our money on in the last five decades? Mostly building bigger houses ever farther apart from each other. We have, on average, many fewer close friends; we eat many fewer meals with family, with neighbors.

We weren't built for lives of isolated consumption. Our collection of limbs and muscles and emotions and senses evolved for other things-that's simply how it is. Mostly, we evolved as social animals-hell, our nearest cousins spend most of their lives sitting around grooming each other, in literal and constant touch.

There are people with too little-ten people crammed into a Chinese hut could use a little more stuff, a little more privacy. They have connection to spare. But we're not those people. The sooner we figure out who we are, the better.

I am not alone

The only way to not feel the world has gone completely mad is to see that others think like I do.

Sarah, another powerful photograph.

Pesky Mac, awesome title and words.

Read about the facts ladies. If you get pregnant and it comes down to you or your baby, it's the baby. If you are pregnant and find cancer and have to undergo treatments immediately? You wait. If you develop preeclampsia, like Cecily, you die. A fetus, a clump of cells not even introduced to the outside world, lives. Women die.

A decision made by men who will NEVER face this decision in their lifetimes. Something that will never affect them. I'm sure they are all sleeping soundly tonight. Me? I'm just disgusted at this country, like I have been for the past several years.

We're fucking de-evolving.

Hoping for a Matriarchy

You motherfuckers.

I just finished reading "Galapagos" and suddenly I sympathize with Leon Trout's theory that our race has too big of brains that cause them to do selfish, evil things.

What a victory, you've now belittled women's lives in this country. Congrats. I'll send you a "Thank you" card as soon as I finish churning butter and tending to the cows.

Fuck.

“I think the rich sends poor people to war so they can dress them up in crisp, new uniforms so they can stand to look at them.”

Like most kids from divorced families, when I was little we would go stay at my dad’s house on the weekends. This house was drastically different than our mothers. Namely, his house was full of books stashed everywhere. Piles of magazines in the bathroom, Calvin & Hobbes collections on the coffee table and most importantly, to me, an entire collection of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. stashed in the cupboards on the headboard of his bed.

Because they seemed to be behind closed doors, unlike the other books lying around the house, I always felt like they were possibly dirty. They were maybe something I was too young to see or that he didn’t want us knowing he had. I would wait until he was working in the barn or elsewhere in the house and sneak in there to look at the covers for some indication of what was inside.

The covers haunted me forever, and later created the monster that is my book OCD. He had all of the covers from what looked like the same artist. Now I have the same obsession with good covers. I only buy a certain cover and then have to match the rest when I buy books in a series, like graphic novels and they have to relate the text inside perfectly. After years of scouring used book stores, all of my Vonnegut collection has these covers and I refuse to part with them even though many are falling apart. These covers just seemed to adequately show the harsh, funny, wry, sometimes dirty, satire contained in the pages that later in life I would come to love about Mr. Vonnegut.

Whenever anyone asks me who I like to read or if I have any suggestions, I always push Mr. Vonnegut. Ask theMan, I’ve been trying to get him to read “Welcome to the Monkeyhouse” for as long as I’ve known him. His books have just resonated with me and his laid back style of writing just hits home without ever being preachy or “better-than-you.” You can tell he comes from the Midwest where we like to stay modest but cynical.

So when I found out Mr. Vonnegut died, I kinda felt like my breath caught in my chest. There are some people you want in the world to stick around to hear what their take on things are, like Bill Hicks and Robert Anton Wilson. So I called Dad and left him the message that our poet was gone.

I think Dad really kept those books in that cupboard because they were his favorites and he kept them close to his bed to fall asleep too. Once I finally picked up “Cat’s Cradle” at his urging when I was probably 14 or 15, I got it. Now, I have to keep my Vonnegut books close to me as well.

So good-bye Sir. May you meet up with Kilgore Trout and continue to watch our crazy ways from wherever you are.

Snowing Damnit

Ugh, just when you think Spring is finally here. Just when you've put away your snow boots and replaced them with ballet flats and open-toed heels. Just when you purchase a very very very summer dress (strapless and short) to wear in one week to your great-grandfather's 90th birthday party.

It freaking snows.

So...now I go in search of a sweater for my new dress, shoes that are not open toed and it's back to the big puffy parka on the train when due to construction, it's already standing room only.

People have it worse off. I'll stop whining, but man I was really looking forward to Spring already.

Pick-me-Up

Today I felt like I tried on a million dresses for my great-gramp's upcoming party. Most looked okay, but there was one thing or another wrong with it. A dress I loved showed too much cleavage but looked frumpy with anything over it. Another was too much of one print. Another I felt like I could wear to a funeral but that would be sorta sad at a 90th birthday party. Blah.

As my self esteem started to plunge I decided to put on this short sweater dress apparently meant for girls who idolize Bratz dolls and take slutty pics of myself with the camera I stashed in my purse while I mourned in the dressing room. Sometimes a girl needs a reminder that she's lovely the way she is.

So your assignment ladies: Go try on something you know will be too slutty, but take in some high heels and make yourself feel like a million bucks. Posting on the internet: Optional.

Dinner party

To celebrate my skunk head and our $20 couch, I decided to throw together an impromptu dinner party last night. Basically it was a reason to drink a bottle of wine and quite being so vain. It worked! I even used a recipe I watched earlier in the day from the Food Network while playing with Coen.

Today I sucked it up and ventured to work. I got a lot of weird looks, even some comments good and bad. Mostly, "what the hell?" Which really is not the reaction I'd like after dropping $130.00. So 2 more days....fuck it, it's just hair.

So hey, I'll give you the menu from the dinner party!

Salad w/tomatos & gorgonzola cheese
Olive ciabatta bread w/olive oil & parm. cheese - baked till crispy
Mashed sweet potatoes
Grilled salmon & Mahi Mahi over routioulle (no clue how to spell that)
Chocolate tofu silk pie for dessert

Now that kinda eating can make any girl forget she looks like she'd spray you if provoked!

I hate my hair

My mom bought me a "make-over" package this weekend so I would look nice for my great-grandfather's party. She doesn't like my hair apparently. So I was stoked! A chance to redo my look, get a cut (it's been awhile) and do something fun! At the salon I ended up with a different guy because the girl I was scheduled with took an emergency personal day. Whatever, I'm laid back so I said OK! I went in wanting carmel on bottom, little richer brown on top with a chunk by my bangs. He goes darker, which at the time I didn't think was a huge deal. Then the bleach comes out, then the brown goes black, then he tells me he doesn't blow dry hair straight when it's been processed this much. Then, "Oh! Your bangs look like fire! Neat!"

Then I leave telling myself I'm not crying over hair because that's dumb but feeling like a total tool because I wasted an opportunity to look amazing. So I called them back and said I hated it, that I felt like white trash, and I wanted it fixed. I'm kinda embarrassed by the hysterics I pulled on the phone. They scheduled me for Friday. The longer I sat with it and thinking about going to work tomorrow and the money mom spent...I called and moved it up to Wednesday.

If I sprayed, I'd be a skunk.

So this will officially be the first time I won't post a 100 pictures of me smiling and all different angles of my hair. Enjoy it while it lasts.