things I love
Things I love this week:
The new kitchen faucet T. installed last Saturday. It doesn’t leak! It has a spray hose attached, which I’ve gotten out of the habit of using since our old one didn’t work. There’s even a built-in soap dispenser on the sink. I am happy every time I use the kitchen faucet, and that’s often. And yes, I’m a cheap date too. But you wouldn’t know, because I’m married now to the best of the best, who can install a new kitchen faucet with one hand tied behind his back. (Well, maybe. I preferred not to impose the handicap.)
The weather. Every time I complain, come next August or September, I’m going to look back at late March or April and realize that we live in paradise for a few weeks of the year. And that should be enough to outlast a few months of relative misery. It’s gorgeous here. 75 or 80 degrees, before the mosquitoes hatch out…God loves Texas. Yes, He does. The bluebonnets are blooming, the grass is greening, the trees are beginning to beget shade.
And I’m going to Arizona one of these days.
I signed up for a lampwork class in April.
And then there’s this: My Stroke of Insight. 18+ minutes, a short presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who reports on the personal, subjective experience of a left hemispheric stroke. I couldn’t possibly find anything more pertinent to the novel I’m trying to write. Or to the world in general, really. If only the world could be made up of thinking individuals, willing to subsume their psychic energy into the whole.
If only. Wouldn’t the weather be grand?
moose egg
From the perhaps-slightly-embarrassing file: I just took the Christmas moose down from the mantelpiece. After all, tomorrow is Easter. It’s time. I have a moose egg I could put up there instead (it’s a Finnish thing), but it just doesn’t command the same presence. Instead I put up the old broken mantel clock.
It’s one of my thousand things, learning to repair mechanical clocks, but I’ve put it off so long that I can hardly see the tiny little parts anymore, so who knows if that one will ever get done. It would be a major educational accomplishment as I’m not really the mechanical type. I’m not the fix-it type either. I’m not the handy type. I’m not a dab hand at anything, really, except getting words set down. Not even spoken out loud…just set down. It’s not very useful most of the time.
And reading. I’m a fabulous reader. Could there be people put into the world merely to read the writing of other people? There’s so much of it. But it’s not very useful just to read, either.
Upon reflection, though, I think I’ve hit it: regurgitation. That’s my job. Read everything, and then regurgitate phrases like “dab hand” that most of you don’t find entering your casual conversation anymore…there must be some value in preserving the vast palette of the English language. There must. Even if I’m the only one around who values it. Even if there are only five people who ever read what I write.
It’s a value-added blog. At least as useful as a moose egg.
(nearly) the ides of March
I guess winter is over. It hit 94 degrees here in San Marcos today. So glad I got my flannel pajamas sewed up this week.
Tomorrow the swallows will be back. T asks, how can you predict it down to the day? But I’m not predicting. I’m just saying. Tomorrow is the day they come back. Ask them how they do it.
in praise of modern dentistry
I have two rather gory holes in my mouth. They hurt now, even with the Vicodin which is doing unpleasant things to my brain, but getting them made didn’t hurt at the time. It was satisfactorily horrifying, in fact, feeling a couple of teeth rip free from softer stuff, just sitting there observing the process. My jaw fought back. My oral surgeon is a strong man.
Whatever my grumbles about healthcare or insurance may be these days, they all fade in the light of painless surgery. Try it awake some time. Amazing.
complaints choir
There’s a Finnish word, valituskuoro, which means “complaints choir” — a lot of people complaining about stuff simultaneously.
And then there’s this: Complaints Choir.
This is the Helsinki Complaints Choir. There’s one in Birmingham, too, but somehow it sounds funnier in Finnish. There’s even a complaint in the Complaint that the Finnish language is too hard to learn.
Apparently, Complaints Choirs are popping up all over the place. I’d say something about the fabulous juxtaposition of bitching in a choral setting and the awesome transformative psychic energy inherent to choir singing but…meh. It’s not choir night, so I’m too tired.
