i hope that it falls on you

can't hold a smile

halloween at work with the girls.

i've been watching grey gardens a lot over the past two days again. "everything's good that you didn't do." big edie reminds me of my grandma alyce over and over. i love the silent shot of little edie walking over to a steadily growing hole in the wall and floor where raccoons were tearing at the house. she throws a loaf of bread to them in the hole, not resentful, just taking care of them because they're alive and they're there. no concern for propriety or whatever the decent folk are doing. bring me that life asap!

heldt lumber. i've always had a soft spot for this place. the man who owned my dad's old house before he did, fred fuller, worked there. he was a very eccentric old man with cabinets full of awesome treasures for me to go through as a kid. when he died, his daughter sold the house and everything in it, and my dad kept it all! cigar boxes full of pipes, poker sets, office supplies from the 60s, stamp collections, boxes of bullets, old decks of cards, and, most importantly to me at the time, paper. hundreds of pads of paper half of which bore the letterhead of heldt lumber and the other half of santa fe railroads. he must've worked for them, too. boxes of these pads of paper on which i scribbled endless stories and pictures. over a period of five years i used every pad. anyway, i noticed recently that they put up this awesome installation on the side of the building, subtly spelling out the company name in the wood. can you see it? H E L D T. the wood was green when they put it up and now it's deepening. i should increase the contrast so it's obvious, but i'm too lazy to fire photoshop up.

love this cat at hollywood regency. shit! i almost forgot about the cat at metro retro. this thing reminded me of some kind of 70s sci fi movie. a huge, angular white cat with one green eye and one so icy blue it looked white. it was so austere and angled, like an egyptian statue, sitting all symmetrically with two paws perfectly tucked under. when i walked over to it, it let out this meow that sounded like some kind of broken electronic clock chime. BRAUUUUU. i should go back just to get some shots of it.

so my dog has a tumor. the vet is concerned by how fast it's grown and recommends that it come off immediately & be tested to see if it's malignant or not. fuck! when i took him in for it last month, the vet said not to worry, that it was just a bite or scratch that had gotten infected, and to put some antibiotics on it.

last month:

now:

he told me that even if it were malignant, issues with tumors like this are usually taken care of with the removal. no spreading. but then, he also told me it was a bug bite. i hate to put vaughn under anesthesia because vets are often underskilled or understaffed when it comes to monitoring the animal's condition under the anesthetic throughout the procedure, making sure they don't "slip away," which, according to my paranoid googling, happens all the time. that's why i have refused to have his unusually gross teeth (for his age & massive milkbone consumption) cleaned by the vet. can't risk it!

so anyway, i'll probably have it done at the end of this coming week. poor doggle!

speaking of poor doggles, i am totally calling the sheriff's office on my grandma's neighbors tomorrow. i suppose the only good thing about arpaio is his alleged rampage against animal cruelty. i have not researched whether this is just a spectacle or whether he really is making things happen. anyway, i think the neighbors are beating the dog. he used to be robust, barking and raising hell all the time. he was annoying! now he just slinks through their backyard like a little shadow, never barking, flinching at any sudden movements and acting like a broken thing. he's also totally underfed, way too thin. god damn people. hopefully the agency will actually send someone out. i guess if nothing happens, i could get all ALF on their asses and cut a hole in the chain link fence with some wire cutters, then abduct him and take him to a no-kill shelter. i can't add to my barnyard, but he's sweet and good looking and probably wouldn't languish long before someone adopted him.

Scarlett

so I netflixed scarlett, the mid-90s tv miniseries based on alexandra ripley's "sequel" to gone with the wind. absurdity all over the place, but i was ALL about this shit when i was in middle school.

gone with the wind is a big deal to me because it got to me young. i remember sobbing hysterically on my bedroom floor when i finished the book for the first time, and falling into a weird quiet sullenness for weeks afterwards as i silently obsessed about this book. but then, maybe that's a bookish only-child behavior. i had the same experience with little women and interview with the vampire, for example, but gone with the wind took the longest time to get over.

anyway, the miniseries (and probably the book, but i don't think i'll be re-reading it to find out) is very, very cheesy. dramatic, overdone, pathetically riding the coattails of gone with the wind. in scarlett, she rattles off all of the famous phrases at least once, "fiddle dee dee!" "tomorrow is another day," and "i'll think about that tomorrow." lots of blustery drama, what margaret mitchell simply implied about scarlett's character, she openly declares in the miniseries. i'm scarlett o'hara! no one beats me! i never quit! etc!

i turned it off in exasperation this morning but later realized that this book/miniseries somehow made a deep impression on my ideas of adulthood and what a woman should be, and what i expected myself to become. someone born with an innate sense of superiority and purpose, yet a strong gauge for right and wrong, who went around righting injustices and saving the day, constantly battling the forces of evil and winning after a dramatic struggle. all of which would, of course, be accompanied by a sassy and witty dialogue. hah! it will suffice to say that this is not how my adulthood has turned out. or not yet.

it is funny and interesting to me to consider how i viewed the future at that age. i had no concept of work or serving time in school. essentially, i had no clue or somehow completely ignored the concept of a daily reality. i just knew that i would (i must) arrive at an end result that was satisfactory to me in the ways that i needed it to be. i would be independent, always striving toward some noble goal, taking care of those weaker than myself, accomplishing the seemingly impossible - oh, and there would be horses. everything was negotiable, but horses must be involved.

well, here i am. approaching the death of my extended twenties-childhood and i have no overdramatic superwoman struggles, and no horses. WTF

holy fucking hot yoga

last night was my first, and possibly last, hot yoga experience. my co-worker has been raving about it for weeks, and though i had heard bad things, i finally decided to try it. at first it wasn't so bad and was even kind of exhilarating, but i think it's too intense for my blood. the room was so hot, much hotter than i expected. i think they said 104 degrees, to start out.

it was sort of strange, though. for a beginner's class, the instructor didn't really help or describe the poses at all. i had to just mimic other people, but i was under the impression that each pose is very precise, and halfassing them based on what other people look like could be...a mistake? that was the least of my worries, though. after 45 minutes of standing poses, i was feeling somewhat nauseated and panicked about the heat. i tried just sitting/lying down to relax and get through it, but it was pure torture and i eventually started feeling so anxious and awful that i had to leave the room, which is ~strongly discouraged~ apparently.

when i did leave the room, i was annoyed to find that there were only 15 minutes left. had i known that, i might've been able to power through to the end, but i had no concept of time in there and no idea how much of this hell was left. i probably could have handled it had my stomach not become so shaky. afterwards, though, i felt totally amazing. i still can't really describe how, though. the good feeling continued through today, somewhat.

the only major, major downgrade to this whole experience is it triggered the worst migraine of my life. by the time i had showered and eaten, it was so intense that i started to wonder how bad it had to get before i went to urgent care. so incredibly painful, it felt like my brain was splitting in half. i have no idea how i fell asleep, but it was gone when i woke up. i read online today that apparently some other people have had this same issue from the general trauma caused by the heat. i don't get migraines often, but when i do, i really have to observe the "triggers," because they are out of control. at least this one didn't last for three days.

but, i paid for 2 weeks of unlimited sessions there (HAH! funny), so i may try it again just to see if the migraine was a one time thing. doesn't seem worth the risk, but i guess that's how cheap i am. i paid someone to torture me? well then they're damn well gonna do it.

in which i am a giant nancy wuss.

how embarrassing.

i just had the most absurd roach experience. i haven't dealt with having sewer roaches in my place in a long time, and i guess i've grown soft. i saw one motor out of my bathroom from the corner of my eye earlier and instantly lost it. i paused my movie and sat in frozen terror on my bed, trying to come up with a way to get out of this situation. after too long, i formulated a plan: kill the roach.

as i was dressing (on the bed), the thing approached my bedroom door. things i have learned about roaches: they do not respond to yelling and wild gesturing even if they are big enough that you want to treat them like an animal, not an insect. they do not respond to flung water. they do, however, respond to the wild shaking of a wells fargo statement. it bolted from view long enough for me to grab my things and dart out to the store to spend a stupid amount of my previously carefully budgeted money on roach-killing things.

kills non-stop!

on the way home i thought about that episode of this american life where they talked about infestations. bed bugs, roaches. so many roaches that they crawled into the unfortunate tenants' ear canals and had to be removed in the ER. MORE THAN ONCE. i saw a cop car on the way and wanted to flag them over and say, hey, make yourself useful. follow me.

anyway, it's over. my place is now littered with roach traps. i came home and saw the thing hunkering behind my trash can and sprayed it wildly with raid while screaming uncontrollably. did i mention how large it was? the neighbor dogs started barking. i really am surprised/disappointed in the level of freakout i displayed, but what can you do.

yes.

someone mentioned this short to me and i remembered the jingle "onetwothree FOUR FIVE sixseveneight NINE TEN eleven twelve" instantly.

awesome? basically. early childhood shows are embedded in my brain. like the crayon factory short (i wanted to work there, in spite of the dour hairnetted employees) and the one about the mexican concha pastry things. did i make that up? the cookies that look like snails, i don't know.

which reminds me, i need a churro immediately. i'll get one at the fair to make up for all of the awesome terrible fried foods i can't have now that i can't eat dairy. in fact i probably can't have a churro either, but i probably will anyway.

i watched before night falls last night. holy fuck. i am not a typical movie buff, i do not care about directors and i don't normally care to discuss that kind of shit, but this movie is a masterpiece. so incredibly subtle. i can't really describe it. but there's something about the way people and works of art dwell on and tout their details. the way people brag about their origins, go out of their ways to illustrate the finer points of their beauty or why they are more remarkable than the rest of us...i can't really figure out how i want to articulate it. but this movie doesn't make a big deal about cuba, a big deal about this man's wretched childhood, a big deal about anything but he and his writing. no glorifying or beautifully gritty shots of havana, no excessive reveling in the era other than a focus on the society and social relations. i guess i won't worry about spoilers as this movie is like 8 years old, but in the end when you realize he has aids, it's a fast slap in the face and the rest of the movie is too fast and unnerving, like the disease, out of control roller coaster car. and then the very end - again, fuck. so sudden and horrifying. i cried. for a while! i have been thinking about it all day.

also, javier bardem? particularly bangable.

i am bored. i am unable to spend money due to last week's excesses. i need to avoid things that are bad for me, but, again, boredom creates stupid situations and behavior. for me, anyway. but, i am avoiding them.

i think i'm in need of a radical sabbatical. i need to get out of town. it's mid-october and in the high 90s. every time i go out, i want it to be CRISP.

but instead, it's still hot.

i think my friend just bought a house in albuquerque. this will probably be my next destination. i'm very bored and in need of something.

the new place is awesome. i need to upload some photos. unfortunately, the neighbor in whom i had such high hopes for friendship has...died. i figured we might have a lot in common given that she was 95, still into bars, and a bitch. i shouldn't be that flip about it. does it matter? i don't know. either way, i wish she was still around.

i can't believe it's this late already and i have to be back at work in so few hours. i need to find a new life for myself.

fuck -> it