I am on a not very forceful quest for a small loveseat for my office. I am not making any progress. I don't want to spend any actual money is the main problem. I need to be very cheap. I did look on Craig's list and immediately got overwhelmed and didn't want to do it. Ugh. Today I went to a furniture store across the street from campus. Nope. then I went downtown to a central street that has a bunch of shitty, seedy mueblerias and furniture stores. I parked and walked about 4 or 5 blocks down the street. I realized that I kind of looked like a working girl walking down the street in my relatively short skirt with my bra strap hanging out and my hobo bag over my shoulder. Not really, but a couple of times I caught my reflection in those dirty, worn out and abandoned store windows and thought, what is she doing down here? I went in to almost all of them and found nothing.
At the very end of my walk in the hot, hot sun I came upon Hollywood something or other at Main and California. I walked by once and glanced in the windows. It looked kind of closed but I wasn't sure. Seemed to have some interesting stuff in there. So I walked back to the door and it was locked but I could see someone in the back sitting at a desk. Okay then. So I kept going north and walked past it and the next store was empty so I turned around again and walked past the same store again on my way to the car. I pass the door and am about 10 steps away and it opens and some big dude with a cigarette says, what are you looking for? I say, a loveseat, and take several steps towards him and the door. He doesn't move as if to let me in. He stands with the door propped open and him in it. He says, what kind? I say, small, you know, something...He cuts me off and says, I know what a loveseat it. I said, well, a small loveseat...Cuts me off again, made out of what? You want leather, velor? I say, uh, well..He says, what price range? I say, uh, not very...Cuts me off, because I'm expensive, that's what high end is. I say, well, I guess I'll keep walking. Asshole. Don't go there!
Listening to Swell Season's tiny desk concert on npr. Nice
about that whole ed hardy tshirt problem...check this out.
The mister to the boys: "Okay, I want everyone naked and in the pool. No ifs, ands, just BUTTS!"
What a good dad.
My far away friend A said that she checked my blog the other day. Hi A! Thanks! I didn't know who or whether anyone was reading this thing. Nice.
I spent a lot of time on the phone today with E, then C, and finally and hour and a half with A on skype from the office. I guess there was a lot of catching up to do.
Thank godot for Alfredo. He came today and cleaned. What would I do without him to come and do the floors at the very least--not to mention all the rest that he cleans. So now I'm sitting in a clean house, by myself. I like this moment and am relishing being able to walk around without having random debris sticking to my feet and almost breaking my neck tripping over cars and train tracks.
Lunch with the mister was really nice too. We went to the fake italian place in the hotel where he works. Watching the tourists walk by is kind of depressing. A whole lot of round meatheads. And what is going on with this Ed Hardy guy? Has he singlehandedly ruined t-shirt design forever? Everyone is wearing these ugly shirts with all kind of swirly lines on them and half metallic designs. A lot of them aren't actually EH but knock-offs. Regardless the whole thing is really ugly and unflattering. Ugh.
My shoulders are bugging me. I think that they're tight from yoga yesterday. I guess I better do some yoga now to try to fix them. Especially since I've got clean floors at the moment!
yea. i went to yoga today. it was good. came home and made my favorite salad for lunch. it was good too.
tired though. babies were up early this morning. good thing they're so cute.
xo
went to work today. sat at my computer with my co-author/student for about 2 hours writing up logistic regression results. it was good. a decent first draft of that section of the paper. she's working on it more now. kind of interesting results. anyway...
made pork sandwiches with lemony coleslaw for dinner a la urban. it was good. i think that's the third time i've made them. yummy. doesn't sound like they would go together but they do.
mister man is out doing a work assignment right now. boys are sleeping. i am sleepy.
i've been thinking about michael pollan's work. he's totally right. i believe him. i read the omnivore's dilemma last summer, in defense of food this summer, his stuff in the NYT.
it makes me angry. heard him on fresh air yesterday talking about how cooking has become a spectator sport. i don't have cable so i really can't participate in that way. i prefer to learn to cook. i've been cooking a lot this summer. sometimes i enjoy it, sometimes i don't. i think it's important though. he said someone told him that cooking your own food is going to be gone in 2 generations or something like that. going to be as foreign as killing and prepping your own chicken is to us today. i think that is sad. it also makes me think about what else we don't do anymore.
recently christie and i were talking about the crafts that our mothers and grandmothers did and how we struggle to remember how to do them and that it is important to do them. cooking is the same thing. and you know what? it's also women's work. michael pollan in his eater's manifesto brings up mom as cook and how your grandmother used to cook a whole bunch of times. but he doesn't really problematize gender in that context. women have been the ones to cook. and what is happening is that women are working and are too tired to cook now. and that is one thing that he doesn't really acknowledge in the context of all these bigger food trends--that much of these changes are gendered. maybe it doesn't matter. and maybe it really doesn't matter to him. but teaching your kids to cook is important. and it's usually mom who does that cooking and teaching and she usually just teaches it to her daughters. ummmmm.....
- been typing a lot today. many emails. syllabus fixing.
- bullets.
- went to yoga for a bit. my instructor wasn't feeling good so we just stretched for a while. then i left. she was really nice though.
well, the mister made it back alright last night and then was out the door at 8 this morning to go get M out of jail. grand total $1,600. i'm deciding to not be as pissed as i was last night because i wasn't the one who had to drive all over the place and pay money and wait in the sun and deal with cops and bureaucrats. and the mister is mad enough and demoralized enough by the experience that it's plenty for both of us. i don't need to add to it. he's saying that he's planning to scale back the "friendship." we'll see. he's got to hold on to M until September 1 at least, because that's his court date and if he doesn't show up for court then the $8,000 debt he's incurred by with his dui, no registration, no insurance will default to the mister since he's the one who posted the bail. so, he's got to make it through august and get as much of his money back as possible and then he can ditch him for all i care. ridiculous. i felt really badly for my nice guy husband. he's just so nice.
