evany, evany thomas

one is silver, the other gold: part one
Tuesday, Jul. 22, 2008 | link

As I said during my panel this past weekend, sometimes life serves up so many great experiences all at once, and my head gets so full of words that I want to use to describe it all, that I get overwhelmed and wind up watching Ghostbusters on TNT instead of writing it all down the way I so want to.

But this has been such a fun week, so packed with people I admire and love—from some of my oldest and dearest friends to spanking-new meets whom I’ve only just had the opportunity to greet after long admiring their writing, websites, and art, and things—that I refuse to let my bad habits swallow these experiences into the void of my non-written-down memories. I will not! My apologies in advanced, however, if this reads like a catalog for a summer daycamp for adults, which is actually very much what it felt like. Starting with…

Last-last Thursday: Art and edible doglets!
I’d say this lucky string of events I’ve been enjoying started on Thursday last, when I hit the Rare Device opening for the most excellent Julia Rothman/Caitlin Keegan (such intimate, fun, funny paintings and drawings!). The opening turned out to be a hot-house hotbed of women whose websites I’ve clicked all up and over, women I’ve always, always hoped to meet in the face one day. Happy in-the-flesh surprises included Elizabeth of a Browner Brown, Victoria of sfgirlbybay, and even out-of-towner Grace of Design*Sponge.

When I met Grace, I actually struggled for a minute to come up with her human name—I’m convinced my brain is filled with a finite number of slots, one name per person, and once a domain name gets in there, it’s forever difficult for me to put another name to that face. And embarrassingly enough, I think actually referred to Grace as Design*Sponge in that same way Buster on Arrested Development talks about “Army,” like an all-powerful entity with no softening “the” before it? Like, “Design*Sponge is so pocket-sized pretty and friendsome!” (Though now that I’m letting this out of the confines of my head, I’m realizing that the Buster analogy doesn’t make much sense at all…really, adding a “the” before “Design*Sponge” would have so much more dehumanizing and worse?) In anyway, Grace was very nice and chatted with me about a whole number of different topics until I noticed that I’d had her cornered for like ten minutes and I stuttered off to get myself a drink and give her leave to snap her amazing photos of the show in peace.

Meanwhile I got in some quality time with my true and great friends Maggie and Annie, and even the Judith (an URL no longer!), whom I’d met once before way back at the Web99 conference? Or maybe it was Web98? Ten years ago? TEN YEARS. (As you read those words, know that I was saying them out loud in an ominous zombie voice as I typed them.)

That’s me, chewing on Lisa‘s magical mystery dog, Wilfredo. In a world where such a perfect dog can live and breathe, how could crime and sadness and rotten milk even exist, I wonder?

Elizabeth, Grace, and Maggie, oh my!

Afterward, Annie rode me on the back of her motor bike to Chow (a ride that earned me a totally authentic exhaust-pipe calf burn), where we met up with Marco and I had myself some delicious chicken-and-steak-and-peanut noodles with ginger cake and pumpkin ice cream on clean-up, the perfect sponge-meal for my many servings of art-opening wine, whew.

Friday: Condo-warming floor party!
Inger just landed herself her very own condo! From the 1920s! With cute built-ins and vintage octagonal bathroom tile and everything! To celebrate this celebratory event, her friends (all people from Marco’s side of the friend family, whom I’m so happy to have in my life now, too) gathered on the day of the official key hand-off for the traditional pizza-and-champagne-on-the-empty-floor ceremonies. Loud, echo-y fun was had by all!

Saturday: Renegade Craft Fair and BBQ and, what the hell, Hell Boy
The fair was an overwhelming parade of greatness, which is why we (Marco and the Mellos) immediately had to hunker down for some giant hotdog fortification before we dove in, despite the fact that we had a BBQ on our horizon. Filled with frankfurter, we were finally able to face all the ingenious and cute and satisfying wares, and I bought all kinds of stuff, from earrings to giant stuffed logs. My log purchase led to a long-hoped-for meeting with the amazing Erika of My Imaginary Boyfriend, the creator of my beloved felt robot ornament and whose felt rock valentines I profiled during my stint filling in and Mighty Goods.

Erika and me and my new log!

The log in action.

After the fair, we went to good friends Peter and Laura’s for face-stuffing of all kinds (including Lisa’s homemade apricot tortelets, holy god), and then ten of us scampered off to the very loud and just-okay but still fun as an overall experience Hell Boy—not nearly as funny as the first one, I’m not sure what happened there. And yet…popcorn! Coke! Marco’s hand to mash!

Sunday: Another BBQ, what?
This time the grill was grilling out on Yerba Buena island, the halfway body of land that splits the Bay Bridge…of all places. Mapquest gave me the most awful directions, causing me to get immediately lost and panicky (you wouldn’t think there was enough room to get lost and panicky on that isle, and yet). After driving around and around, and getting pulled over (by two whole cop cars!) for lurching over a bump-encrusted double-yellow line (no ticket, thank the law, but lots and lots of disappointed head-shaking), I finally found the party. I quickly fell to with the chicken-eating and beer sipping, and nuzzled up with some of my oldest and dearest friends: Sunny (and her cute mom all the way out from Florida!), Leisa, Cash, Caroleen, Scott, Liz, Heidi, wow. In short: lots of laughing and screaming and angel food cake.

Monday: Rest day
Work. Home. Cereal. Sleep.

…Wow, this is getting really long. And my fingers are so hot and sweaty and full of complaint! So I think I’m going to stop the story right here and pick up where I left off (key parties! confidence wigs! liverpudlian! BLOGHER!) tomorrow. Tune in, turn on, and stay cute.

let your chest do the endorsing (was: "barack you like a hurricane")
Thursday, Jul. 10, 2008 | link

Nothing says “support your favorite presidential candidate” like a double-inverted-meta-ironic ringer tee:

Perfect for standing around in your kitchen and drinking half-and-half by the gallon.

Why I’d say this tight, tight tee counts for two votes right here! PS: I’m actually talking about my knockers…I mean my Barackers! Boy are my arms tired. I mean my Obamarms! Help.

My own favorite Marco made these tees and he is very excited about them. And now, if you are similarly excited, you can buy your own for just $14.99 on his etsy-ma-thing, with 25% of what gets made going right into the Obama. Get some!

simple bra necessities
Monday, Jul. 7, 2008 | link

What to do when you’re a big-topped lady in a bra that refuses to map to the cornered terrain of today’s latest silhouette?

Jill recommends a balconette bra, while friend-from-high-school Jennifer claims the 100-Ways Bra from Victoria Secret to be just the answer. But how annoying to be forced into buying special underthings just for the sake of one simple summer dress! Especially a simple summer dress that was purchased at Ross Dress For Less for just $29.99, i.e., less than the relatively steep toll of either specialty bra. Ffft!

My cheapskate solution?

The ribbon was FREE, part of the cute wrapping that Kari used to wrap her happy birthday gift to me this year. I just snipped off two generous lengths, cinched the visible bra buttressing into a tight bow, and done!

I wore this outfit to our fabulous Russian River Escape this weekend with Annie and Eric and their pride of oh-so-friendly friends. Sadly my ribboned ingenuity couldn’t help solve the dress’s other fatal flaw, which is its intolerantly narrow-minded bodice, the boning of which strained uncomfortably against my weekend intake of steak, corn, blueberry pancakes, American apple pie, pulled-pork sandwiches, wine, mimosas, greyhounds, and s’mores, and I was forced to change into a more accommodating dress with plenty of eating room. Triple-hooray for room-to-gorge Plan B dresses!

how the turtle got its grump
Thursday, Jul. 3, 2008 | link

At 2am, the ominous crunching of Daisy working a bone out in the livingroom penetrated my deep-sleep brain enough to stir me into semi-awake-itude. The hollow clunking of the dog worrying a marrow-stuffed bone wasn’t such an unusual sound in and of itself, but the timing was off. In my sleep-slowed head, I mused on the anomaly of it—in my years of knowing her, Daisy had never left our cozy bed in the dark, small hours of night to go chew on her bone. Stranger still, I didn’t recall either Marco or myself giving her a bone in recent days. Maybe she found some chicken bones in the trash? But chicken bones have more of a snapping sort of crunch to them. And the chicken we’d had that night was boneless. Huh.

After about five more minutes of pondering, the pull of the mystery overcame the pull of sleep, and I got up to discover just what she’d managed to get her mouth onto.

It was dark, so all I could figure was that her little chew project was rounder and darker than any bone I’d ever seen. I picked it up and brought it up to my face for a closer squint, as Daisy wagged cheerfully at my feet. And then in a whoosh I went from sleepily puzzled to freak-out scream-mode. “Daisy!” The dog wagged even harder, all proud and self-congratulatory. “This is NOT FOR YOU!” Because? It turned out? The thing I was holding was our turtle’s shell, denuded of its arms and legs and head and tail.

Marco came staggering in at the sound of my yells and I—scrambled and garbled—managed to break the news to him. And Marco, who has owned that turtle for 15 years and who was still basically asleep, did not react well. Tearfully he took the shell and cradled it, and then he asked me if I would do a perimeter check for turtle parts, because he just couldn’t face it. I turned on the light and carefully checked the carpet. Nothing.

We took the remains over to the light, and after closer examination we realized that the turtle’s legs and etc. weren’t so much missing as they were tucked impossibly far up inside him. Marco rushed him back into his turtle house, noting in a panicked, self-recriminating voice that the door was open and that Marco had probably forgotten to close it after changing the turtle’s water the night before. And how thrilled Daisy must have been to discover that oversight! Marco gently placed the turtle inside his water dish, which he likes to swim around in, but there was no movement. So sad! With waning hope, Marco set him beside the water dish, closed the door to the house, and scrambled over to ask the internet how long turtles can survive with their heads sucked inside out.

Marco searched on “dog” and “turtle” and “attack,” which conjured up a gruesome list of links to “hilarious” videos of dog attacking turtles. “That’s not funny,” Marco yelped. “Nothing about that is funny!”

As Marco continued to frantically ask the internet for answers, I went and lay down next to the turtle cage. “Marco? MARCO? I think I just saw his leg move!”

Marco rushed in and the turtle moved again, and we cheered a big cheer. And then we gave him some raspberries. But he wasn’t really in an eating mood, since that would require removing his head from its inverted triage mode, which he didn’t even consider doing until well into the next morning.

But slowly and surely, the turtle and his various extremities came out of their shell. And after a week of vet-prescribed medicated salving for his various scrapes and dents (poor thing!), including a weekend jaunt to Russian River—he needed his drops twice a day so we had to bring him with us when we went to visit Maggie, Bryan, and Co. Evany: “Does baby Hank know about not putting fingers near the mouth-end of angry, biting turtles?” Maggie: “He’ll learn!”—he now seems to be back to his same enraged self, if perhaps even a shade grumpier.

Meanwhile bad, bad Daisy is currently in the midst of a long lecture series about how the turtle is family and we never, ever chew on family, no matter how great it tastes.

And, just like in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when the Fudge ate Peter’s pet turtle and the parents made up for it by giving Peter a pet dog which he named Turtle, we all lived happily ever after.

Welcome back, turtle.

spare change thought
Sunday, Jun. 29, 2008 | link

I’ve always said that I don’t like change, but I think maybe I’ve changed?

Now that I’m older, I’ve started to notice that some of my personality traits, traits that I’ve always thought of as fundamental to who I am, don’t necessarily apply anymore. Even so, I probably continued to tell people my “I hate change” mantra years and years after it ceased to be true, just out of habit. And my friends did the same, all “everyone knows how much Evany hates change!”

I think it takes a special kind of self-aware vigilance to first of all notice that things are no longer as they once were, and then second of all make the effort to update those personal taglines so that the world and your friends are aware of your latest revision.

Sometimes I worry that I’m the same exact person I was in high school, that the things I’ve done and seen and weathered in the years since then have taught me nothing. And how sad would that be? THIS SAD! So it’s a relief, and a comfort, to notice myself doing things I never used to do—transforming from night owl to early bird, making my bed with semi-regularity, embracing change—little signs that I’m capable of personal evolution after all.

welcoming you into the fold
Friday, Jun. 27, 2008 | link

You and your respective HR departments will be glad to discover, as I recently did during an impromptu hallway meeting at my internet job, that all a person has to do to make the words “below the fold“ sound racy is to deliver them in a tart mid-Atlantic accent (with optional raised eyebrows).

If you think about it, like I have, non-stop, “above the fold” and “below the fold” are actually the perfect metaphors for the continuum of sexual progress. So much better than the confusing “bases” we had to work with when I was coming up! A “homerun” was always clear enough, especially when it was described as being slid into. “First base” meant…frenching? I think? “Second base” I’m pretty sure was shorthand for going up the girl’s shirt, which was always so lame because there wasn’t really a similarly titillating male equivalent, and what are you supposed to do if the person you’re making out with doesn’t have knockers, skip directly to third? Meanwhile third was a murky thing indeed, signaling acts that varied widely and awkwardly from school to school—for some it meant hot hands-to-parts action, others thought it referred to examinations of the oral persuasion, and there were even those who thought of third as nothing short of full-on pants off dance off…so confusing.

But the tidily binary “above the fold”/“below the fold” (or, even better, the newspaper equivalent: “under the crease”) is so elegant, so straightforward. I say, “How are things going with that ice cream salesperson you’ve been dating?” And you say, “Oh, we’re still strictly above the fold. But we’re going away to Big Sur this weekend, and I’ve already purchased a bottle of tequila, so I imagine we’ll be well below the fold come Saturday morning.” And I know exactly where you and your ice cream salesperson are coming from. Exactly!

Something else I discovered at work recently: “P2P” has almost nothing to do with prostitutes and the payment thereof?

thunder, lightning
Wednesday, Jun. 25, 2008 | link

Driving up, moments before the sky tore open.

I drove far, far away up north this weekend to hang out with my great friend Kristin, who’s currently recovering from gnarly gut surgery. Which meant I had a totally reasonable excuse to lie around and watch retarded amounts of television all the live-long weekend—best birthday present ever. If only Kristin would get surgeried on more often!

The sun was just about slipping away when the air weirdly filled with that unmistakable electric smell of rain, and then suddenly…big drops on the windshield, then bonafide cracks of shazam-style lightning all across the sky, plus real loud thunder. In California! In June!

When I drove across country with Jill a few years back, we were in I think Ohio when suddenly all this water started falling on our car. Born-and-raised-Californian I just could not get my brain around what I was seeing—I actually asked Jill if maybe a fire hydrant had burst nearby? Midwestern-born Jill just laughed and laughed.

But I tell you, summer rain does not happen out here like that, no. But wild forest fires, with their poisonous, eye-searing reek (nothing at all like the cozy whiff of a fireplace wood fire, or fun Halloween-time leaf fires, despite the fact that forest is nothing but wood and leaves?), those we do just great.

The brown-filtered drive back down, after passing eleven firetrucks and also a freaky man lying on the side of the road with no shirt on and a smiling policeman at his side.

q.e.d.
Tuesday, Jun. 24, 2008 | link

Evany: I think that’s actually one of my best qualities, my willingness to laugh at my shortcomings.
Liz: Well, first you get offended, and then we tease you, and then you see how funny it is.
Evany: [Momentarily offended, and then] laughs and laughs.

I say it's my birthday
Thursday, Jun. 19, 2008 | link

HAMBURGER!
Six layers of hamburger-identified chocolate and cream and airbrushed crunchy-lard frosting, courtesy of the Merritt Bakery in Oakland. And there are more fun birthday pics to be found over at the websites of Eric and Maggie.

I was born thirty-eight whole years ago today, at about 12:50 in the afternoon. It’s true! As my mother tells it, they celebrated the moment with a festive summer lunch of champagne and raspberries, smuggled into the hospital by my father. I’ve always love that little detail, my bearded dad tiptoeing down the White Halls of Labor with berries hidden under his Goodwill tweed.

And then my parents got divorced. And the hospital burned down. And my teeth grew in crooked. And then I knocked them out horsing around inside in slippery socks. But other than that (and the epic earthquakes, and the car fire, and the rug fire, and the layoffs, and the exploded appendix, and the getting caught stealing when I was five), these first thirty-eight years have actually been a pretty great!

Except that it sure doesn’t feel like thirty-eight. Like just last week, when strep grabbed me by the throat and I was forced to finally go in and meet my new primary care physician (a nervous giggler with a strangely appealing case of social retardation), the new-patient form asked me how old I was, and without hesitating, I wrote “27.” Twenty-seven! That truly is how old my brain thinks it is! But then I started listing all my ailments – the bunions and the alcohol intolerance and the weight gain and the patchy skin – and I went from feeling 27 to 907 in five seconds flat.

It didn’t really help much that my hypochondriac’s dream of a doctor answered each one of my concerns with an almost comically depressing three-alarm answer. In response to the sight of my blotchy face skin: “So, is that cancer?” About my new and great intolerance to alcohol: “We better check you for liver failure. And diabetes.” And in response to absolutely nothing at all: “Let’s check to see if your eggs are still viable. After all you are 37, so if it isn’t already too late [to have kids? to be a young genius? to become an Olympic gymnast?], you better find out if it’s time to start hurrying, right?” Right!

Me and my rotten eggs are celebrating our goodbye to 37 (sort of a blah year, I’d say) with a hamburger party, which as those of you who have thrown your own hamburger parties know, involves a large, lard-frosted cake dyed and sculpted to look exactly like a gigantic hamburger, plus ten full pounds of beef.

It’s my opinion that any year that begins with gross amounts of beef (both real and cake varietals) is bound to be mighty. And I really do have high hopes for thirty-eight, what with all the fun I already have lined up on my horizon. Just look:

This weekend I get to hang out in scenic Humboldt County with my favorite Kristin!
Fourth of July weekend it’s to Russian River with Annie and Eric!
Saturday, July 19, I’m scheduled to appear on Maggie’s panel at Blogher alongside Sarah and Melissa, two ladies I’ve long admired and whom I am just Christmas-morning eee!xcited to actually finally flesh-meet!
Early August: Yosemite with Jill and Caroleen? Maybe? If I can get the time off work?
Late August: My 20th high school reunion (I actually wouldn’t say I’m looking forward to this, per se, but it just has to be better than last time, right?). October: To Brooklyn to see Todd and Lisa get nupped! My heart is already swollen in anticipation of this one. And I already have my dress all picked out and dry cleaned! I am ready! Let’s go!

But first: Ten whole pounds of all-beef patty fun.

today's oral fixation
Tuesday, May. 27, 2008 | link

Right now I am wishing I had many dollars to burn regarding this orthodonculous gold retainer necklace, which at $300 is pretty much a bargain seeing as actual, tooth-reforming retainers are probably costing a lot more than that these days?

I wonder whose mouth they got as the model…Pam Dawber, maybe. Or Al Roker? And more importantly, if I start wearing this retainer in earnest, by which I mean in my mouth, will my smile eventually take on those very star qualities?

bedside anthropology
Thursday, May. 22, 2008 | link

Look! Captured! A rare glimpse of Marco’s bedside table:

What we have here:

Mid-century Scandi-modern tripod lamp from eBay

Blue-glow LED clock from the future, via the MoMA Store

Puka-shell necklace from the tropical Hawaiian island of Kuaui

Generic motel ashtray filled with six screws and a guitar pick

Jaunty kerchief

Am I living with Schneider from One Day at a Time? A time-traveling gay man? A Dr. Frankenhangten who, as the inimitable Pamie suggests, is “planning on building a surfer”?

camino for real!
Tuesday, May. 20, 2008 | link

So Camino, the fine-eating restaurant up the street that’s been trying to open its doors for like a year now (it started out as a furniture store, so I guess it had a lot of metamorphing to do) is finally, finally open for business! Marco and I sort of crashed the opening party on Friday night when we innocently strolled slowly by, our necks craning for a glimpse inside, and then a friend of a friend recognized me and we got pulled inside, yay! It’s very pretty in there, all exposed brick and crazy-huge chandeliers and wooden ex-church chairs (bought in bulk on eBay!). But it was very hot and crowded, and we were already packed full from our own dinner which meant we couldn’t take proper advantage of the free food and drink and gawking.

So last night Marco and I decided to do it right and we threw on some finery and marched all 200 feet or so up there and asked for a table. And there was already a wait! On their second night open! (The owners, at least the man half, come from a long tenure at Chez Panisse, so they do have the momentum of reputation on their side.)

We happily agreed to do our waiting at one of the cute vintage metal painted tables at the bar, where I got myself a one of their special tart and icy ginger-mint-“rhum” drinks—pure liquid delight. And then we had a pork-spread toasty thing, which tasted way better than it sounded and also looked (tan, tan, and more tan). And then we noticed none other than Alice Waters and her entourage of ponytailed and natural-fibered Berkeley sorts at the bar—so clearly everyone had to wait!

But soon enough we were seated at one of the bowling-alley-long communal tables, where more drinks were ordered and sipped down with vim, and we got down to eating—sausage salad for Marco (possibly the best sausage I’ve ever sausaged?) and artichoke heart and nettle surprise with polenta for me. Glorious! And then for dessert a cherry crumble with generous dollop of whipped heaven on top!

For those who share my fear of the “popping eyeball” sensation some cherry-related deserts offer, I can assure you that this is a sweet you can order without risk of off-putting mouth sensations! For that crumble was all sticky and gooey, and not at all pop.

Another word to the wise: Don’t miss the jet-propelled air blasters in the bathroom, which assault your hands with so much force they cause your skin to ripple and morph. You know how in the movies, when the guy is strapped to the front of a speeding train and his face starts to flap and pool outward? Like that.

In short, Camino on Grand: offering sausage salads, nettled things, loose cherries, and also bathrooms that will simply blow you away! Bam! Who just typed that? I did.

three yays for ebay!
Monday, May. 19, 2008 | link

I am, generally speaking, a gigantically huge fan of eBay. (Some may even say unhealthily so? What with my 96 positive feedbacks, wow?). But the times I love eBay the most are when it allows me to reconnect with items that I’ve fallen hard for elsewhere but never thought I’d be lucky enough to get my own hot, stumpy hands on.

My top three such love re-connections are, in descending order:

3. The Technicolor Bird Tray
I so admired this Deka bird tray when the Thrift Store Addict landed it on one of his miracle St. Paul thrift-a-thons. In truth, I was a even a wee sick-green with the jealous? But thanks to his lovingly detailed description (he’s always so good about listing, if at all possible, the maker behind each of his purchases), I was able to turn to eBay, type in the key details, and there it was!

2. The Technicolor Dream Dress
This BCBG Max Azria dress was listed for a very long time at Bluefly for a mean price of over $400. Ridiculous! And yet I was still sorely tempted to Add to Shopping Cart. But before I could give in to the heady lack of oxygen in that sky-high price tag, I took a peek for the dress on eBay, and lo: my second all-time greatest eBay triumph!

1. The Insane Miniature Aluminum Briefcase
Ten long years ago, I wandered in to a boutique in LA, one of those crazy high-end places where you have to ring the doorbell before you’re allowed in to even shop inside? And tucked between all the jewels and finery, there it was: The Insane Miniature Aluminum Briefcase. I fell in love on sight and bought it so hard for, I think, a whole $22. And I then proceeded to bring it with me everywhere, from brunch to business meetings, where I would, with much seriousness, whip it out and snap it open like it contained documents of the very highest importance. In fact I whipped and snapped it so frequently that over time the hinges broke off. And then the locks. All the kings horses and men and I tried to glue things back together, but it kept on breaking, and soon I was reduced to the indignity of wrapping rubber bands around the its mini waist, thereby killing the visual awesomeness of it all. Finally, and which much sadness, I put the insane miniature aluminum briefcase out to pasture. But I still spoke of it fondly, pausing over drinks with friends to reminisce over the good times we had with that insane mini aluminum briefcase.

And then one day I had the bright idea to search for a replacement on eBay. It took some work to come up with the right combination of search terms (“small, metal, cardcase, snaps, awesome”? “card holder, briefcase, impossibly small”?. And then…Eureka.

Isn’t it perfect(ly insane)? Lucky for you, there’s plenty more where that came from.

a sad daisy chain of events
Friday, May. 16, 2008 | link

I had kind of an awful day yesterday! First off, we got home from Fontanelle’s (awesome! sweet! pretty!) debut rock show at about 1am the night before, which was pretty late on the work-night scale, so we went straight to bed, no chit-chat.

But unfortunately Daisy the dog had somehow, while we were otherwise off rocking, lucked her way into a barrel of peanuts that we had…tucked away in some closet somewhere? Not sure. All we know is that when Daisy stopped her wee-hour pacing and worrying and whining long enough to barf spectacularly in the corner, the puddle she produced was chock full of nuts.

Daisy then moved her sad self over to the front door, which I took as a hint that she very much needed to go outside. So, even though it was still dark out, I assembled an sweatpanty outfit and trudged outside and watched sympathetically while she hunched into her shitting pose and unleashed a toxic Whoosh of unhappiness. Ridding her system of that hot mess left her quite a bit perkier, though, and as she trotted back upstairs, she seemed almost human again.

After me and my fuzzy two-hours-of-sleep head filled up on coffee, lots and lots of coffee, Daisy and I went out for our regular AM walk, and she was her normal, darting, perk-eared self. As we we rounded the first corner, I whipped out my cellyphone and to give Marco a call. I started to leave him a message about how Daisy seemed completely recovered from her peanuttle debacle, and I had just finished saying the words, “She probably won’t need to go to the vet…” when the dog on the third house in, the one that Daisy has engaged in many a screaming match in the past, threw her body at the fence surrounding the house. Daisy did not hesitate. She ramped right up to defcon 11 and lurched herself at the other side of the fence. I’m not exactly sure what happened next because it all went down so fast (and I was on the phone, hello?), but I think the neighbor dog had learned herself a new trick, one involving the ability to squeeze her sharp jaws out through one of the cracks in the fence. And Daisy got one look at those snarled open jaws and decided the best idea was to attack them with her nose. So suddenly the world was this armageddon of dog screams and blood. Blood! Splashing! Everywhere! Me, in a sluggy panic, at Marco’s voicemail: “Uh, let me call you back.”

I hung up and stood there for a few milliseconds, unsure quite what to do. I knew what I wanted to do, which was throw up everywhere, but instead I took a few uncertain steps forward, pulled by the soothing momentum of our normal walk pattern, but then I woke up and realized we needed to get back home, like stat. So I shakily turned us around, and shakily run-walked toward home, with Daisy trotting happily along and seeming none the worse for wear, aside from periodic gore-spattering head shakes. So we got home and I hustled her into the bathroom and swabbed down her face with a wet washcloth to reveal? One itty bitty wound the size of a pinprick on the tip of her nose. Dink! She was totally fine, in smiling-good health even.

The bleeding had stopped, but I didn’t want her roaming around the house and rubbing open her nick on the furniture. Also it was hot yesterday, like almost 100 degrees already, so I thought maybe the cool, non-direct-sunlit and also very large bathroom might be a good place for her? So I moved her bed and water bowl into the bathroom, and she immediately curled up and seemed totally content. And so I went to work! (By way of a visit to the neighbor, whom I introduced myself to and explained what happened and made sure their dog was okay and he was very nice, etc.).

But when I got to work, I started obsessing over the idea that Daisy would start re-bleeding somehow, and maybe the bleeding wouldn’t stop this time, and maybe she needed to go to the vet, after all? So I left Marco a series of fun messages, and finally he got back into range and was able to call me back, and it was agreed that he’d leave work early and go home and see what needed what-ing.

An hour later, he called in with a report. “She’s fine. If you hadn’t told me what happened, I’d never have known she’d been injured. The bathroom door, on the other hand…” Apparently poor Daisy had spent the bulk of the morning trying to claw her way out of the cool, relaxing bathroom. And when Marco walked in, her smiling face was covered with paint chips, like a kid covered in brownie, all, “Hi!” and “What?”

In short, I make bad decisions and also am not responsible enough to own small animals, and I should just forget about having children. Tada!

Daisy smiles a “what nose wound?” smile as the polydactyl Marbles lounges above (slap me seven!), both more or less de-boned by the heat of the big Bay Area heatwave of 08.

Caroleen and Sunny of Fontanelle touch the soft spot in all of us on a warm San Franciscan night.

a future bright with new shoes, clean teeth, and gentle rocking!
Wednesday, May. 14, 2008 | link

Top three things that are making my happy even happier today:

1. My new spring-sprongy yellow slingbacks, which I purchased this Sunday in the heat of a dire wardrobe misstep (toasty combination of boots and socks and tucked-in pants) brought on by the weather, which started out cold, so cold but then traitorously transformed into a hot, sunny day? We were counties from home and had an hour to kill, so I hotfooted it into Macy’s, where I spied the lovely yellow things, which I’d been actively coveting for weeks after seeing them in action on both another Wardrobe Remixer and one of my favorite online reads. So I snapped them up and wore them the hell out of there, my boot-pruned piggies sighing happily all the way home.

2. Brushing my teeth in the shower. Go ahead! Scrub and froth with impunity! For you have no clothing to worry about tainting with those irascible white spots! Also, it’s strangely cozy?

3. Fontanelle, the new musical offering (which I happen to know features some sort of prerecorded “beats” and “loops”) from my favorite Sunny and Caroleen of Waycross, is unfurling its magicality tonight at the Hemlock in San Frisco! Come on down and sip sippables with me at the bar! I’ll be the one with the notably attractive yellow shoes, and shower-fresh teeth.

I brake for white russians
Monday, May. 12, 2008 | link

Oh what a weekend! Like all great weekends, things started way back on Thursday, when Maggie and I got totally souffléd in North Beach. It was a fluffy, bubbly, chatter-packed night, with many revelations and self-reflections and hour-long asides and explosive point-making and self-shhing and waiter-teasing and maybe some champagne? All of which I paid for dearly with many alcohol-rattled hours tossing and moaning on the couch deep into the night, followed by a dim, hung-overcast morning. I wasn’t really right again until around noon the next day, thanks to a bacon and cheddar cure-all eggwich miracle with side of Coke, holy shit. When I came text-moaning to Maggie with anti-champagne “never again“s that next day, she suggested that maybe the White Russian on an empty stomach, which I ordered at Tosca before our evening really even got started, was to blame? Oh, yes, well. I suppose there’s a personal domino theory in there somewhere.

I went on to sleep the sleep of the almost-dead for 12 whole hours on Friday night, so great, then we woke up and went straight to the gym, of all places. I trained elliptically for about 20 minutes, then I moved on to the weights where I seriously burnt my dark meat, working my wings and thighs beyond all sense. I even got myself onto the skanky inner-thigh machine, which is always just one lingering eye contact away from sexual intercourse, Perfect-style. The singe deepened to a universal, please don’t make me laugh soreness on Sunday, and now today it’s even worse—I feel bruised, like someone battered me with a pillowcase filled with oranges, Grifters-style, or even a pillowcase filled with soda, Bad Boys-style. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it kind of seems like the gym is trying teach me a lesson? A lesson about never going to the gym ever again?

Other weekend highlights include: BBQing for hours and hours in honor of Caroleen’s birthday along with so many long-lost pals (Amy P. and Julie P.! Marilyn in from Boson! Heidi out of Heiding!), visiting my dad (who is doing much better despite a general sense of unease over his still-undiagnosed inability to exercise without feeling like he’s going to have a heart failure, an issue that I personally would celebrate and use as an excuse for never gyming again (read above), but which makes him very sad since he actually loves exercising, crazy I know), Indian fooding with my mom, brainstorming over what we’d name our brake shop if Marco and I were to own our own brake shop (tie between Sir Francis Brake’s and Stop Your Squealing), emergency shoe-shopping for emergency happiness-yellow slingbacks, and even getting myself seriously banged up.

Now that the weekend’s all over, I feel very tired and droopy, like I need a weekend from my weekend. I guess someone’s got a case of the Mondays! Office Space-style! PS, something I’ve been disturbed to discover since going undercover in corporate USA is that office workers now actively quote Office Space, meaning that if they were to make Office Space today, the grim coworkers would be chirping Office Space quotes—all “TPS reports” this and “flare” that—in lieu of the “TGIF“s and “happy Humpdays” of simpler, gentler yors. And, as it turns out, nothing makes a person feel more like she’s at work than meta irony.

childhood rememories to magnet onto the refrigerator of your soul!
Sunday, May. 11, 2008 | link

I’ve had these two thematically similar nostaligigreat internet finds tumbling around in my brain for weeks now, getting shinier and smoother with every passing day. Look! How great!

First, we have these photographic reenactments of childhood drawings (via Lisa), which are so very beautiful and weird and dare I say…Japanese? But with…Russian text everywhere? Yeah, I don’t get it. But I love it! (Marco says they also remind him of the Monster Engine…oh yeah!)

And second, there is this deeply cheering and yay-ful dancigraphic reenactment of childhood and also Huey Lewis (via Marilyn and also Maggie).

Don’t they both make you feel a little warmer, and brighter, and like this maybe world of ours is going to be okay?

heartstrings
Tuesday, May. 6, 2008 | link

Another UPDATE: As of Friday, my dad’s back at home, feeling better but with his ailments still more or less undiagnosed. We’re all very relieved that he won’t be needing surgery, but the looming odyssey of medicinal trial-and-erroring as the doctors try to figure out what’s wrong and, more importantly, how to solve it, is maybe a little bit anxious-making? Hm. In any case…onward and upward. Right?

UPDATE: So my dad had his angiogram yesterday (it was scheduled for 11:30 but he didn’t go in until 7, which as you may know is a lot, lot, lot of the longest kind of hours, especially for my dad who wasn’t allowed to eat or drink the whole day, fun). The good news is that they didn’t spot anything more than a few moderate problems with his arteries, so there seems to be no need for another bypass, which is great! But there’s still the little matter of figuring out what’s behind his failed treadmill test and the heart pains, the shortness of breath, the professor and Mary Ann…So! He’s still in the hospital while they run more tests. And I’m back at work, wondering and waiting and eating my weight in cookies, huzzah?

So I just got word that my pop’s in the hospital with heart woes again, after having his triple bypass eight years ago. They’re pretty sure it’s only going to be a matter of going in (through his thigh!) to do a little ~~angioplasty~~ angiogram, and maybe add a shunt (or is it a ~~stint?~~ stent (thanks, Karen!)), and they’re very optimistic, like 98% so (hospitals like the percentages, and as far as percentages go, that’s a good one!), that it’s just going to be an in-and-out one-day procedure, nothing too scary at all. And when my dad arrived at the hospital (via ambulance, not at all fun, bleh), there were two other guys lined up in the heart room, both having had heart surgery a number of years before, just like my dad, and now back in the hospital with shortness of breath and heart pains, just like my dad. So it’s more common than you’d think, more like a garden snake than the rattler it could be.

So it’s all very much in “it could be much worse”-ville, but still I reacted not so swimmingly to the news. I was at work, in a meeting, and got back to my desk to find a number of messages from my stepmother, who never ever calls unexpectedly. So, with that sinking “unexpected call” feeling, I called her back and got all the details and was totally fine and sane. And then I went back to my desk and…sudden showers! It was like when you hit your head on a dumb cupboard door that you yourself left open and abruptly burst into tears, not so much because it hurts, even if it does very much hurt, but because it surprised you? And you’re also frustrated with yourself for being so dramatic, and that frustration makes you cry some more?

If you’ve worked in corporate culture, and have weak eyes, then maybe you know the particular awfulness that is sitting in your small, grey, sound-porous cube and snuffling very, very quietly, because more than anything, you don’t want your coworkers to notice that something’s wrong because then you’d have to talk about it, and when you’re only just managing to keep it together, nothing opens those floodgates worse than having to talk about it.

And then! After work, walking to the bus stop, I kept freaking myself out like you do after watching a scary movie, where without really trying you can transform an innocent, early evening trip downstairs to get the mail into this harrowing, heart-beat drum solo of self-manufactured fear. I kept imaging worse-case scenarios and then feeling sorry for myself over these imagined scenarios, and then I’d get all weepy and snortly all over again.

But yes. Anyway. I’ve taken the day off work. I’ve lined myself up with a Zipcar for the whole day so I can drive myself to the hospital and eat hospital pudding from the hospital cafeteria and give my dad some high-fives and listen to the doctors tell those weird flat jokes that they always seem to tell, and everything is going to be totally fine.

one happy, sorry, wistful sunday morning
Sunday, May. 4, 2008 | link

Things that make me happy this morning:

1. Using the very last of my less-than-optimal hair oil defrizzer, I LOVE getting to the end of any bottle (unless, of course, that bottle is a bottle of vanilla, and I’m trying to bake something that needs more). Probably it’s my internal revolt against growing up with packrats, but it gives me such great thrill of pleasure to clear out that 1.5-diameter of shelf space. Pow!

2. The perfect, miraculous ringlet that I created by doing nothing more than sleeping on my hair wet.

Thing that I am very sorry for this morning:

Waking up in a freakout at 6:30 this morning and asking Marco why he hadn’t left for work yet. Long, quite pause. And then, “Because it’s Sunday?”

I barely remember this exchange because I guess I went right back to sleep. But when I rolled out of bed two hours later, the coffee was already long-ago made, the paper in a neat stack of already-read-ness. Me: “What time did you get out of bed this morning?!” Marco: “Right about when you put the fear of work in me at 6:30.” Me: “Oh.”

Thing that make me wish I was rich this morning:

So cute! And yet so $528! DAMN YOU ORLA KIELY!!!

And now I brunch.

a little sartorialost
Friday, May. 2, 2008 | link

At what age, do you think, should a person start dressing her age? And if that age is so close to 38 it might as well be 40, what kind of clothing, exactly, should that age-appropriate dressing entail?

I’m a huge fan of the clothes I own now. The rainbow of pinks and turquoises and spring greens of my closet really does make me very happy! But—and maybe it’s the recent move toward the East and West, and also South, that my ass is taking, thanks to my slowing metabolism and/or my ever-growing love of hamburgers—not all of it is fitting quite as awesomely as it once did? This recent expansion has prompted many a gleeful shopping spree at Forever 21, and H&M, and Nordsrom Rack, and, and, and…from which I return lugging bags full of more of the turquoise and orange and red and green things I love, only in slightly larger sizes.

But late at night, when I’m watching through the DVR backlog of What Not to Wear, sometimes a small peep of hmm starts to chirp at the back of my brain, wondering what point do the whimsical tops and the theme dresses and the zany necklaces stop being cute and quirky and instead become weird and even a little bit sad?

The way I see it, this could all end in one (or all!) of three unpleasant ways:

The Docent Crazy
Easily recognized by her conversation-starter of a brooch or necklace or poncho or whatever, the Docent Crazy is always eager to tell you all about this “wonderful” piece of wearable art she found in some out-of-the-way store or Etsy shop.

The Big Top Nightmare
Worshiping comfort and convenience above all, the Big Top Nightmare can start with something as innocent as one pretty, loose-fitting blouse. So accommodating and requiring so little thought, it becomes uniform. Soon, tenty tops are all the Big Top Nightmare ever buys. And once that uniform-wearing headspace sets in, it isn’t long before the BTN finds herself wearing pajamas to work, and also diapers.

The Aging “That Girl”
About five years ago, I asked my friend Sophia how long I had before I became “That Girl with All the Hair Who Drives Around the Crazy Vintage Car?” And without hesitating (meaning she’d been thinking on it), she said, “About a year.” I’ve since sold the car, but all the other “That Girl” traits—the technicolor tights and the horn-rimmed glasses and the wacky purses—are all still well in play. So really I’m teetering on the edge of this one. All I need is the Manic Panic hair (with mental patient bangs) and I’ll fall all the way in.

And then there’s my makeup! The same standby 30-second routine of sunblock with a haphazard dusting of bare essentuality that I’ve been using for the past years also somehow isn’t working as well as it once did? What with my new not-so-fine lines and droopy dog jowls for all the powder to collect in? And my hair! With the encroaching grays making things all sprongy and strange? Plus I continue to suspect that the long, long, long is no longer doing me any favors. Maybe it’s time for bangs? A tight perm? Hats, lots of hats?

Which all goes to say, I’ve been thinking for awhile now that it could really be time for a makeover. Maybe? Sometime within the next month or five, ten years?

But before Trinny and Susannah come bum-rushing in on me and my age-inappropriate togs as we innocently sit at our special booth in our favorite restaurant (the Red Robin in Concord), we’ve actually been enjoying each other quite a bit. Inspired by my new favorite internet, the Wardrobe Remix pool on Flickr, these past weeks I’ve been having deep fun shaking up my office-attire rut and taking some of my favorite old and new dresses and skirts out for an airing. You know, while they still fit?

Nine Days of Faves
1. Thursday’s “a tree grows in oakland” outfit
2. Wednesday’s “hooray for pockets!” outfit
3. Tuesday’s “crabby van crampthoven” outfit
4. Monday’s “making their 2008 debut: MY TOES!” outfit
5. Sunday’s “to the art opening! and then also a wine bar! in a heatwave!” outfit
6. Saturday’s “in search of toast” outfit
7. Friday’s “PTA meeting circa 1973” outfit
8. Thursday’s zany “please don’t pick me for jury duty” outfit
9. Wednesday’s “to work then to dinner then to rock show” outfit

an early morning of updates and invention
Thursday, May. 1, 2008 | link

It’s Thursday! And for some reason I’m wide awake at 5am! And to celebrate, I’m think I’m going to share my latest breakthrough with you: Frozen lemons! Sounds like a state of sexual anxiety, I know, but I’m not actually speaking metaphorically (it’s so early). I really am just talking about…frozen lemons!

The problem: I love, love, love water brightened with a squeeze of fresh lemon, I think it’s so exponentially better than plain water, and it always makes me feel like I’ve done something truly nice for myself. The first slice out of a new lemon is always the best, all tart and twangy, but as I slowly work my way through the lemon, sometimes it’s days and days before I make it down to the last, eighth slice, and it’s always a little shopworn, either depressingly dry and wizened (if I’ve just left the lemon sitting out) or (if I’ve managed to wrap up the lemon and get it into the refrigerator) disturbingly too-wet and fermented yuck-tasting.

So then this solution-based brainfreeze came out of my brain: What would happen if I sliced the lemons in bulk and just stuck them in the freezer?

Roaring success! Not only are the lemon slices fresh-tasting every time, but they contribute to the overall cold-ness of the fluid they float within, pulling the weight of an additional ice cube. They also work very nicely with my favorite iced tea (pictured here), which I’ve been making quite a lot of these sunny days. I even put them in the Nalgene bottle of water I take with me on my semiannual trip to the gym!

I am almost concerned by how absurdly happy this whole lemon business makes me.

Also I wanted to let you know that I’ve updated my call for bedside table paint-color suggestions with photos of what we finally ended up doing with them. And also I added a 14 and 15 to my Evany Rules to Live By. And also I updated my quick note from me to me to achieve something in life to sound less complain-y!

And now I get dressed.

what was I inking?
Saturday, Apr. 26, 2008 | link

When I turned 30 (way back in 2000 eek!), I decided to permanently mark the occasion with a tattoo. I thought long and hard about what to get, and finally settled on a knife and fork, crossed just like Liz Dunn’s racing flags. And just like Liz Dunn, and actually Jill too, I decided on a lower-back placement. No, a little lower that that…a little lower…exactly: right there at the top of the ass crack, the tender real estate that has since come to be know as the land of the “tramp stamp,” something that many people over the years have taken great delights in pointing out to me. Titillated Giggler to me: “You know what people call that, don’t you?” Me to Titillated Giggler: “I sure do.”

I reverse-engineered a whole bunch of meaningful excuses for why I needed this knife and fork, like how it was nod to my family (I chose the silver pattern I’d grown with) and also lady-power (the hearty, steak-knife eating it represents being the antithesis of bird-like, weight-watching Cosmo girls, take that society, POW!) and even practicality (I already had a piece of cake tattooed on my middle, halfway between my stomach and my heart, and now here was a way to finally eat said cake!). But like many people who get tattoos, the real and true reason I got it was that I just kinda liked the way it looked.

So I went back to the same nice man in LA who did my first tattoo (you know you’re old when you forget the name of your tattooist), and just as he was snapping off his gloves after putting the last finishing touches on my tattoo, the other tattooist in the shop came over to admire (the new tattoo on) my ass. “What’s that,” she said to me, “like, ‘Eat Shit’ or something?” Me, suddenly picturing a life full of fending off ass-eaters stretching out before me, weakly: “Nooo…?”

Not only did I not really think that tattoo through beforehand, but I also idiotically decided to go and get it done as part of the first leg of a long cross-country road trip (with my awesome friend Todd Levin, whom I’d met only once before we decided on a whim to take the trip…man, that was truly the funnest vacation ever, full of BBQ pork and great get-to-know-you stories and also, weirdly, strip clubs). And let my me tell your you: There’s nothing quite like having a healing wound on your ass whilst sitting in a car, day after day, for 10 hours at a stretch…my ending was sad indeed.

And the tattoo just keeps on giving! A few years ago, my glorious friend Sunny joined a band called kNIFE & fORK, what are the chances, and while I was leaning over the bar buying a drink at one of their shows, someone came up behind me and said, “Wow, you must be a REALLy big fan.” And I just just nodded a tired I-give-up nod.

Now whenever someone spots those little tines and the pointy sharpness poking up over the edge of my pants (as happens more often that I ever could have ever imagined, yay) and asks, “Hey, what’s that tattoo of?” I just sigh and say, “Oh, you know…Regret.”

This is a "if you’re close enough to read this, we’re basically having sex" pick of the tattoo, wrapped in an insane, barely there pair of message-able underwear, a gift from the one, only Jill (they came with their own alphabet of beads, which you can string on to formulate whatever message you please). I ordered the photo as a greeting card from Kodak (née ofoto) and sent them out as thank you cards.

sometimes marco makes me mad
Tuesday, Apr. 22, 2008 | link

Things that make me irrationally irritated:

1. When Marco sneezes, which he always does very loudly and repeatedly, and which always reminds me of the allergy problem that he refuses to visit an allergy doctor to see if he can get medicine to fix.

2. The snortling and throat-clicking, also allergy-related.

3. When Marco’s screws the lid on too tight, which obviously means he’s trying to save all the good soda and pickles for HIMSELF.

4. When Marco Early Parks, sometimes parking entire blocks and blocks shy of our destination.

5. When Marco leaves used Q-tips in places other than the trash.

6. When Marco insists on wearing his weird baggy elephant vagina jeans.

7. When Marco says “a little sumpum sumpum” or “check it out, dog.”

8. When Marco doesn’t hear me the first time.

And…that’s it. On the flip side, he almost never snores, and he gets genuinely sad whenever he hears about someone dying even celebrities that noone likes, and he does all our laundry, and he guitar-plays Jesse’s Girl on demand, and if he spots a garage sale sign that’s come unpinned, he stops and carefully rights it. And, best of all, this morning I discovered that his weird baggy elephant vagina pants fit ME to a yay!

litteral frame of mind
Sunday, Apr. 20, 2008 | link

One of my all-time favorite Onion headlines is “Want Boxes Of Shit In Your House? Get A Cat,” a sentiment that I know gnawed at tidy Marco just a wee bit when we first started talking about moving in together. Where, exactly, would Marbles’ dumping grounds live?

I’m a big fan of putting littterboxes in bathrooms, since they make thematic sense there. But the bathroom in this place is kind of an open book, with no nooks or available corners to tuck a box into. And the limited closet space is already dedicated to clothing, and who wants to smoke out their clothes with shit and piss fumes?

Ultimately we decided to put her box in the strange auxiliary cabinet that lives on the outer side of the breakfast bar.

Marco removed the door that was there and painted the inside an upbeat puce-y color, and I sewed up a little curtain using a fun woodgrain fabric I found on the internet.

And it kind of turned out okay! We use the miracle crystal litter (NOT the ball bearing kind), which sponges up the smell quite nicely so you almost don’t know the shitbox is in the room at all unless Marbles is actively mixing and scratching in there, something she likes to do for a good five minutes at a stretch.

But recently we’ve been talking about maybe converting the back room—which is now set up as a sort of second living room, with a couch and some chairs and my desk scenario—into an actual dining room, which may or may not help us break out of our bad habit of eating in front of the television. But if we do decide to refocus that area on serving food, I’m not so sure I want to have the shit where we eat?

So I’ve started doing some peering around at alternate strategies, scouring the design-focused sites for some examples of other people’s solutions for the problem. But there’s a surprisingly limited selection out there! Which I don’t really get—surely we’re not the only people who like having a cute-looking house but who also have an indoor cat? (And yes the whole feline toilet-training thing has been tried, but had to be abandoned after it triggered some nasty side effects along the lines of Marbles shitting up the bathtub, a fun habit that took years to break her of, yay.)

I did manage to find a few semi-interesting options (thanks Mosaic Maker)…

1. The Kattbank (via Design*Sponge, of course) is very pretty, and it comes in a satisfying array of colors, but at a whopping $1750, my sphincter says what? Also, do our friends want to sit atop a bench packed with feces? Don’t answer.

2. The Scandinavians sure know how to do meatballs, and also cat shitters. Meet the handsome Dog and Cat Cave (via Modern Cat, who knew?). Cost: a steep $480. Also I’m now thinking it’s not actually meant for litter, since there’s no way to get the shit out of there, which seems kind of key…hmm.

3. The Cottage Litter Box House, just $65. I kind of love the idea behind this, but I’d want to push it even further, with more ornate, Made With Love By Hannah-style detailing. Like a giant coo coo clock, or gingerbread house, only with shit inside!

4. I’m also weirdly attracted to the Red Barn Litter Box House option, also $65, though heads-up: “haystacks and sunflower pot not included,” which is a disclaimer I’m considering adding to my signature file at work.

5. Sara’s DIY wheel-away litter box (via Ikea Hacker), made from Ikea Snack Boxes.

6. Or Dee’s DIY kitty litter hideaway (same link as above, just scroll down) made using the Ikea Hol.

7. Dave’s Handcrafted Litter Box Hiders (via Apartment Therapy), $129.99. Dave makes these to order, and they arrive fully built, sanded, and ready to paint. Best of all, they’re “dog proof so they cant get to the litter and eat it.”

8. DIY Shoji Litter Box (via Apartment Therapy), another serviceable option.

9. Marly Gomman’s “Cats in Style” felt litter box (via Modern Cat), which you can actually watch in action. I LOVE this option, and really: a big, organically shaped felt box that mimics the birthing process with each exit, what’s not to love? But unfortunately even if I did have the millions of dollars it surely costs, I can’t seem to find it for sale anywhere, anyway.

And then there’s also the “Hide-in-plain-site” DIY cabinet, or the weird fake plant holder with hidden compartment, or the Merry Pet Cat Washroom, none of which are exactly quite right either. Shit.

one old-drunk-lady-proof bottle
Saturday, Apr. 19, 2008 | link

Oh dear. I went out for drinks last evening after a long, semi soul-crushing day at work, and one beer turned into two margaritas, and…cut to me, wide awake at 3am, lying in a sad ball on the couch, watching televised commercials about insomnia. Since I turned old, I keep relearning how drink is now the devilment of my sleeping time, ugh!

At about 4am I decided some saltines and fluids might be in order, and yay we had a half-full liter of rootbeer in the refrigerator! But boo, Marco and his gigantic man arms had screwed the top on so tightly, my dinosaur arms weren’t strong enough to access the sweet fizzing sips inside which I so desperately needed!

I’m not sure why but Marco seemed somewhat befuddled when I woke him out of a deep, zombie sleep and handed him a giant bottle to open, open, open?

what's growing on?
Thursday, Apr. 17, 2008 | link

Things have taken a turn toward the science experiment in our house, what with the pussy willows growing totally crazy (I guess we weren’t supposed to put those in water, did Gremlins teach us nothing?), and the garlic suddenly deciding to stop being food and start being some kind of visual poem about spring and renewal and hope?

a rainbow of credenza
Tuesday, Apr. 15, 2008 | link

Marco and I have been looking and looking for a television pedestal for months now, measuring and remeasuring, poring over catalogs, emailing each other links, and falling in and out of love with a whole string of fun maybes and cound-have-beens.

Some were too public (where to run, hide your wires?):

Mondrian Media Buffet at CB2, $249

Too leggy and too dumbly named:

Jazz Buffet at Eurway, $299

Too tall:

Trollsta at Ikea, $349 (thanks to Better Living Through Design for pointing the way, I thought I’d seen everything Ikea had to offer?)

Way too tall:

mshelving at the design-your-own Loadbearing (first spotted in the SF Rare Device store, which uses these pretties as display cases), $1375

Or too dollarful:

webb console at Kerf Design, $1500

But then our search finally came to a big-yay end on Craiglist, with this mod-nod of a credenza, all cute and hand-hewn:

The doors arrived naked, just some unfinished slats of wood, so we went and painted them, with the theory being that we can just repaint them or even get new wood at not much cost if and when we got tired of the pursey colors. And four sides means four different color combinations:

So pretty, yet still brawny enough to support our Death Star television, even with its heavy load of Marco’s hockey, basketball, and baseball (who allowed such a devilish scheduling overlap?) — a total home run slam dunk hat trick!

a perfect match
Monday, Apr. 14, 2008 | link

This nut-cracking squirrel has been wandering aimlessly around the house ever since the lovely Maggie gave him to me two whole Christmases ago. Frankly, we were a little worried he was never going to get a job, what with all our nuts arriving pre-shelled from Trader Joe’s and the like?

But then one shining day, it all just came together:

Doesn’t he look excited to be of help? So eager to assist? Fear nothing, Madam! I am here with the required sticks of flame! Tzzt, tzzt!

bedside table talk
Saturday, Apr. 12, 2008 | link

Update! Thanks so much for all your suggestions! Everyone had such smart ideas for what we should do with these tables, and Keith even sent a link to Colourlovers, which as he said, lets you “upload a picture and it will analyze the colors in the picture and
create a design palette out of them,” pow!

But after all the hemming and hawing and palette analysis, we ultimately gave in to the tractorbeam pull of proximity and went with the green paint we already had on hand after the great credenza paint off, and I think it looks pretty okay! Not too shabby (chic)…

You probably can’t quite see it, but rest assured that both bedside clocks have been carefully adjusted to the exact same time. Can you guess who took the time to time things so perfectly? (Marco.)

Best of all, we can always paint right on over the green if and when we get sick of it, yay for non-permanent decision-making!

- – - – - – - – -

Marco and I just bought two bedside tables on Craigslist for forty little dollars!

And while we’re very happy with the ability to finally store things away in a drawer (a surprisingly big relief, what with Marco’s Swatch watch always trying to tick me to death), and we’re both in love with the new tables’ dainty footprint, we’re not so happy with the color.

Actually the color isn’t really the problem, it’s more the country-cutesy distressing along the edges that we’re not so crazy on. And if we’re going to repaint, that opens up a whole world of colorful opportunities, a freedom of choice that has left us feeling somewhat boggled.

Do we worry about trying to select a color that complements our rough low-thread-count Ikea bedding? If so, whatever color we choose will also have to mesh with the very green green of our other main duvet cover (purchased at one of those gargantua Anthropologie sales):

Or, since bedding is typically more temporal than paint jobs, should we just boldly go forth in an entirely new color direction, untethered by concerns of matchy-matching? With all boundaries removed, the color I keep coming back to is a deep-greenish sea turquoise. Or a burnt orange. Or maybe a nice, comfortable olive green? Basically any of the bold, beautiful colors found in my new favorite handbag (Sale! Zara!):

But maybe matching the bedside tables to the purse isn’t the best idea? Possibly those colors don’t translate too terribly well to furniture? Which means we’ll find ourselves sick of them the second the last coat of paint dries? Wait, do we even have to paint both tables the same color? Perhaps we should double our trouble and select two totally different colors?

What do you think? Please, help my brain think!

I'm not sure I want what Idol's giving back?
Friday, Apr. 11, 2008 | link

I can fully appreciate that maybe last night you were otherwise gainfully occupied and so did not catch this week's THIRD installment of American Idol, but if you did, then maybe you caught this split-second flash of crazy...

...which appeared and disappeared with subliminal swiftness right at the dark, bitter end of the wildly ill-advised montage nightmare of B- stars wiggling and lip-syncing to I'm a Believer?

I no longer know what's happening.

note from me to me: achieve something, stat!
Friday, Apr. 11, 2008 | link

Updated! I got a nice email from Jill after I wrote this, pointing out how much I have actually accomplished in this life, having some of my words published, etc. And I felt a small feeling of heelishness for so glibly ignoring the things I have managed to do up until now? But! I still say that, as far as "proudest" achievements go, I don't think I have one of those. Yet? Maybe never? Either way, though, I felt compelled to report that I am very and totally happy with my life so far, full as it is of quiet, small- to medium-sized accomplishments, even if they aren't quite large enough to be mounted on the break room walls at my place of employment.

So at work they've initiated this put-a-name-to-face scheme where they're putting up photos of everyone in the break room, along with our name, role, and some fun get-to-know-you tidbits, such as "something coworkers would be surprised to learn." Oh, you mean besides the syphilis? Or the thigh-high ALF tattoo? Or that time I used the breast milk from the new-mommy quiet room refrigerator when we ran out of half and half? Then I guess I'd have to say it's my deep, discomfiting phobia of share-a-thons in the workplace!

Oh, I jest. We do have fun, don't we?

One of the other things they asked us to list was our "proudest achievement." I wonder, is there anything more effective at triggering a mid-life crisis than asking a person to pinpoint her crowning achievement? Unfortunately I have run no marathons, birthed no Mensa babies, donated no bone marrow, or any other work-appropriate brags. On the other hand, I did manage to floss every single day in March!

before