sullen and crabby

Lately, I've been in a really, really crabby mood. I don't know what it is, burn-out with work, home, and everything combined with insomnia.

The crabbiness and sulleness has made me unusually anti-social. Like cringing at the potential of human interaction. I don't want to talk to anybody, especially people I don't know or people I know only superficially. I want to put myself on a "communications ban" - I've considered faking laryngitis, or temporary and sudden deafness and muteness.

Since that is not a realistic scheme and because my job and volunteer project calls for me to interact all the time its really worn on my nerves.

Anyway, every other payday I treat myself to a new book and a solitary lunch at the mall to get started on the new book. (This month's book is Sara Vowell's "Assasination Vacation") So, I'm walking to the mall. Everyone in Portland is annoyingly cheerful and smiley due to the emerging sunny weather after rainy season. For lunch hour everyone is out looking stoned, but they are not, the first spring sun in Portland works like a drug, everyone's all blissed out over it until August when everyone carps about the unbearable 2 and half weeks of really miserably hot weather.

The relentless cheeriness I see on the streets only makes me crankier. I make it to the mall where the stubby, crewcut wearing, crunchy granola lesbian holding a petition clipboard says to me, "Do you have a few minutes to spare to hear about Oregon's forests?" I breeze past saying, "No, sorry no minutes for Oregon's forests!"

I always, always get stopped by petition people and I generally listen to their spiel, and sometimes I even sign if I agree. Normally, I would spare a few minutes for Oregon's forests. Not today. No, I wanted to shout, "Burn them down, cut them down! There are too many damn trees in this state!" Yes, out with the trees and all that shade, oxygen, animal habitat and natural beauty crap! I'm crabby!

I get in the mall and forget to alter my path to the bookstore and food court to avoid smarmy beauty kiosk man. There is some sort of beauty kiosk near the bookstore. I don't really know what it is because if I stare too long I might draw the attention of its smarmy keeper. He is tall and slender and wears kind of blousy silk shirts with one too many buttons undone. He has sholder length black hair kind of slicked back and he has sort of an Eastern European accent. He beckons women to his kiosk by outstreaching his hand and saying "Come heereee daaahhhling...." and holds women's hands he explains whatever product he is selling at his bright pink kiosk.

I've seen him many times and decided under no circumstances would I get caught in his web. My general strategy is to blend in with the crowd and get as close to the other wall as possible. Today, I'm strolling along and there is no one around! No crowd! I'm alone and exposed to smarmy kiosk man who is moving toward me!! F**k! I picked up my pace considerably. Sensing his prey was making a break for it, smarmy kiosk man pivoted quickly and said "Heeelo daaahhhling..." To which I put up my hand in a stopping motion and said, "Sorry! No! I'm in no way interested in any products" while scurrying quickly into the safety of the bookstore.

Anyway, I'm not fit company for anyone these days, especially crunchy granola petitioners or suave beauty products peddlers.

Goodbye furry friend

Sadly, Milo passed away Friday night. It was a bit of suprise since he appeared to make a comeback on Thursday night- eating plenty of seeds and even scurry around on us and in his globe. We will miss him.

Not a good sign

A bit of a health crisis at the homestead. Milo, our intrepid hamster has some sort of eye infection and he is losing weight, and he's not his usual wheel running self. He's a bit sluggish.

It all started Monday, when I noticed Milo's right eye looked a little more closed than his left. I figured it was the copious amount of seeds he had packed in his right cheek. When I picked him up on Tuesday, his eye seemed even narrower and he seemed sluggish. Since I have had these bouts of insomnia, if I'm up at 3:00 am I almost always hear Milo running in his wheel, I haven't heard it this week, his wheel has been untouched. We also changed his cage out and put new shavings in, and generally Milo is frantically re-arranging his space and building a mountainous bed of shavings to sleep in. Sadly, when we put him back in his cage he wandered about aimlessly, did not create his mountain of shavings for his bed, but just lay down after apathetically nibbling at a few seeds.

Yesterday Allie called me at work after she got home from school, and said, "Mommy, its worse. Milo's eye is completely closed shut with some gunk on it"

J. was the hero of the day, getting home earlier than me he washed out Milo's eye, which was really pussy and got it open again. Poor Milo sqeaked and sqeaked but seemed relieved to get his eye open. His head was completely soaked with water, because it took quite a bit to get him cleaned.

Milo is a dwarf hamster. He fits in the palm of my hand and weighs maybe 2 or 3 ounces, so he doesn't have a lot of body mass to spare.

This morning we all peeked in at Milo in his cage, he was sleeping peacefully, although he had not built his usual mountain of shavings bed.

If Milo is not on the mend, I think Monday I will take him to the vet.

This is is stressing me out. We can't lose our Milo, nor do I think Allie would do at all well with this. She's a very sensitive girl.

Your own personal Mary

I must be feeling better, because I feel like writing a little bit.

Since we are pulling out of the Easter season, I thought I would put down a few semi-religious thoughts. I have had a hard time focusing lately on any kind of contemplative spiritual or prayer life. I consider myself a Christian, although the word has been co-opted to such a degree by a certain group of unsavory people I almost prefer to call myself a Jesusist. I like the teachings of Jesus, I think they are wise, profound, good words to live by. My favorites are to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, because when we do these things to the most in need we do them to Jesus. I also like the other rebel side of Jesus, like throwing the money changers out of the temple or telling the Pharisees what massive jerks they are. (Actually, if you consult a Bible, Jesus never says, "Pharisees, you guys are a bunch of massive jerks"- he's a little more hardcore in his criticism- he calls them "sons of hell" and a "brood of vipers") Why Jesus, who kind of has a rep as a blissed out hippie in some circles would call the Pharisees these names? Well, there are a few hints- the Pharisees love their status, the best seats in the temple, their garments, and they make a show of tithing (giving) what in biblical times were valuable commodities, 10% of mint and other valuable items. And Jesus basically says, "Yes, I see you tithe these things when you really should be dispensing the really valuable things, like justice, mercy and compassion"

So, I like that. I also like Jesus' mom, Mary. I'm reading Sue Monk Kidd's book "The Secret Life of Bees" and the heroine ends of staying with a bee keeper who has a kind of an odd little cult devoted to Mary.

Mary and I go way back. When I was very little, my Grandma insisted on the afternoon nap, covered with a mountain of blankets....in August....I had to lay down for about 45 minutes whether I was sleeping or not. On the bedside table was a statue of Mary about the size of a Barbie. She was wearing a light aqua robe and her eyes are partially closed and her arms are outstretched in kind of a loving, welcoming way. Laying there sweating my way through nap time, I had a lot of time to look at Mary until I fell asleep. I liked having her there. Sometimes I would talk to her, and in my little kid mind I always thought it was nice that Jesus had a mom, after all he had so much to do, and moms are quite helpful. Grandma and I always had nighttime prayer with the Hail Mary, I like the part "full of grace." It sounded nice.

The other statue of Mary in my memory was the statue of Mary in the "Pietas" (sp?) Its a sad statue, of Mary cradling her son after he is taken down from the cross. She again looks contemplative but sad. This statue was in my elementary school library. I used to look at it and think "poor Mary" the statue is famous and I remember seeing it again after I had my daughter and it actually kind of filled me with horror to think of a mother witnessing this brutality done to their child.

I have two statues of Mary in the Madonna and child mode. One is a regular white small statue and when I went in to labor with Allie, I accidentially knocked it over and baby Jesus head broke off. Its glued on now. My other statue of Mary is kind of modern art in a Southwestern style.

My husband merely tolerates the Marys. But I like them. Something about her makes me feel peaceful.

P.S. Here is a link to the Pietas statue via "faux mable classics" (!) http://www.marbleclassics.com/michelangelo-pieta-virgin-mary-statue.htm

Happy Easter

Happy Easter. I hope the holiday finds everyone well.

I was going to bravely post the pictures of the before and after of our terribly messy home, but alas, I didn't take the "after" picture in time. Now its back to status quo (almost- it is still shockingly clean for us) so that the contrast would not be as great as I would like.

I was quite proud of myself though, when I went shopping for new vegetables, I actually threw out the old rotting ones before they became complete science experiments.

I haven't been sleeping well and have had two major league migraines in the past two weeks which has greatly impaired my ability to do anything interesting or creative. The fact that I am functioning minimally at work and at home is about all I can manage. So, while my intention and desire is to write a clever and entertaining post, the well is dry my friends.

Dustbunnies and green mossy spaghetti

Let's just say our approach to keeping our house clean is "casual"- we are not burdened with the desire for things to be superclean, or even moderately clean. Once our house reaches the level at which we may face some consequences from the State Health Board, or if we have someone coming over for a visit, we will clean.

This past weekend, however, we had our annual "spring cleaning"- where we deep clean. Meaning we move the furniture and vacuum, we give the shower more than a light swipe with a sponge. We use heavy duty chemicals and wear those yellow rubber cleaning gloves. We actually look at what is in the closets and cupboards. We clean all day.

Friday night I reminded my husband J. and Allie that Saturday was cleaning day. There was much moaning and gnashing of teeth.

Saturday morning we awoke and procrastinated until about 10:30 am and then the cleaning commenced. We shreded old mail- why we felt the need to hold on to a pizza coupon mailer from June of 2005 is a mystery, yet we managed to save all of our useless mail in piles from 18 months ago strategically perched on shelves, counter tops, on the desk and entry way table. Other key finds in the bathroom cupboard revealed about 16 bottles of bubble bath we will never use, expired drugs, empty medicine boxes, and my inspired Costco buys- we have a pallete of Dove shower gel and shaving gel. I may need to buy more when Allie leaves for college.

The area of cleaning that was most shameful, and actually provided Allie with a feeling of vindication is the cleaning underneath J's and my bed. There we huge dustbunnies, the size of a fist and a layer of dust about an inch thick. Additionally, we found 4 sticks of J's deordorant- I was always wondering why he was asking me to buy more, a little perplexed about how much of the stuff he used, when in actuality they had fallen under the bed. I was not spared shame. I sometimes stack clean, folded clothes on the dresser. Apparently these had fallen under the bed. Joyfully, I found my silky, yet dust infused underwear- three pair! And a little bounty of dusty socks. Weeee!

As usual though, the refridgerator provided the most interesting and "mad science" finds of the day. I was wrap and refridgerate our leftovers- even though we never, ever eat leftovers...its a little ritual of mine. Stow the leftovers in those plastic Glad containers and shove them to the back of the fridge on the bottom shelf. Three months later unearth said leftovers. Pop open the lids to exciting new smells and thrilling new visual discoveries. See the green moss growing on the spaghetti from February? Wow, that's exciting...our spaghetti is growing its own little bacteria colony. Its kind of like when you order Sea Monkeys off the back of the Archie comic book, and you add water and watch it grow, except in this case you cook up some food and refridgerate it for a couple of months and let rotting food and moisture do it's thing....

Now that I'm reading the Bryson book about science I realize that Saturday represented a massive holocaust of sorts to the millions of bacteria in our home. I'm sure our place was like a resort to them- resting undisturbed- we lulled them into a false sense of security.

Sunday morning we actually rented a steamvac from Fredy Meyer and steamvac'd all of our carpets. We then went out to lunch and bowling. Over lunch we vowed to keep the house clean and not have to endure hard core cleaning day at this level again! We make this pledge every year, only to have our vow fade by the end of May and the dust regenerate, and the penicillin grow anew in the refridgerator.

However, we did have one unforseen bonus- in the deep, deep reaches of our cupboard we found a brand new food processor! A wedding gift from '02.

I'm very anixous to use the processor to chop up food for a meal, then take the leftovers and pop it in the fridge....and you get the idea.

P.S. I may post a before/after picture. I'm still debating, my shame may be too great to allow this.

The number of atoms will freak you out!

I know nothing about science. Really. Nothing. If my daughter asks me about scientific phenomena of any kind, I usually say "Magic" the "ice cube fairies" and electricity comes "from Portland General Electric, and Mommy pays a pretty penny for it every month!"

I know a vague amount about geology, the science classes I took to satisfy my science requirement for my college degree, and the reason I took it was that everyone said it was the easiest science class and was called "rocks for jocks" - so, I thought, cool, an easy science class and cute athletes- sign me up! I thought the section on volcanos was very interesting, and I a little disturbed by the plate tectonics concept- we're floating around on a very unstable "crust" here people, and not only that-- the crust is either colliding or pulling apart. I find this aspect of our planet unsettling.

So, other than cool volcano footage from Hawaii and a vaguely upset feeling about living on "crust" I have no other science knowledge.

This is changing now because I'm reading Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything"- which is all about great science information in a readable fashion for non-science people like yours truly. It really is a great book, plus I really love Bryson's tidbits about how, oh, how shall I say this- many great scientists are also bat-shit crazy! Like Sir Isaac Newton- clearly brilliant, but one of his experiments was to jam a needle used for sewing leather into his eye socket! You know, just to see what would happen! Which lead me to think, how does this happen, you're sitting around, maybe refining your thoughts on gravity and you see a big sewing needle, and think, hey, I what if I jam this in my eye?

Perhaps that is why Newton is a great scientist, and I am not...I'm unwilling to jam a needle in my eye in the interest of science or for any other reason. If I were in charge every natural phenomena would be described as magic or caused by tribes of fairies.

Much of the stuff in the book blows my mind. Like atoms. They are incredible, they are tiny and they are everything. I love the portion of the book where Bryson explains that atoms go on probably forever. When you die your atoms will break up and turn into something else, we may have little atoms in us from Ghengis Khan, Ben Franklin or any other long dead historical figure (Bryson disappoints when he reveals Elvis hasn't be dead long enough for us to have a few Elvis atoms)

I'm made of atoms and so are you and so is the chair I'm sitting on. I'm still freaking out over the atom thing, but in a good way.