Oh my goodness, blogs are too much work. Half of the time I am convinced that I am wildly clever and quirky and every passing thought I have is hilarious and worth publishing for the world to see. The other half of the time I think that no matter what I do it will be less polished than 99% of the internet and anyone who wants to know anything about me can just Google things like, "lack of time management", "yellow", "sleep deficiency", "spider solitaire", and "do it (cut your hair, make your own (clothes, lotion, smoothies, laundry detergent)) yourself" and come up with a reasonable approximation of me. Good luck with that.

Otherwise, it is Spring and I am spending a large portion of my waking life trying to be healthy. For serious. Just when I think that I have kind of gotten a handle on something, something else crops up and I think, yeah, that probably is because I've been sick for X amount of years (the X might be a million), and my body is crapping out on me in any and every fashion available to it. It is kind of awesome. But not really.

Yesterday my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came to visit. They live about an hour north of me and rarely have time off or choose to leave their circle and life and home. I felt totally honored that they would choose to spend a day off with me.

I love this little man.

This is a busy month at work, with special events every weekend (not the least of which is Holy Week), and I feel busy. D's brother gets married in Little Rock, Arkansas this weekend so we will be driving there on Friday. I hope we get to hit up the Bill Clinton Museum. That would be amazing.

Also, we went to see both Hanna and Arthur this weekend and both were awesome. Way to go movies! AND, we finally are going to go see Jane Eyre on Thursday night when we drive up to Dallas. I am so excited I feel the need to write in bold.

In other news, since the passing of Brian Jacques I felt the need to read the Redwall books. I never read them as a child and our library helpfully carries all of them. I am loving these books. They are fabulous. They are deep, and gritty, wonderfully funny, full of community and hard work, accepting of all kinds, sizes, and types of animals. So worth reading. Especially if you are a seven year old boy.

Buh. The end!

Yoga Thurs . . . er . . . Tuesday!

I recently found a copy of Yoga Journal in the bathroom of the house that I sit (I house sit sometimes). I like yoga. My friend, Heidi, and I were reminiscing recently about that one time, four years ago, when I lived in an apartment that was perfect for nothing except being a yoga studio. We didn't have any furniture, and the rooms were large, well lit, poorly heated, and with beautiful wood floors. We were avid fans of yogatoday.com, back when it was 100% free for a new one hour lesson every day. Heidi assures me that they give one free lesson a week now, and that that is plenty (and considering I don't even do that much, my bitterness at their sell out is totally misplaced). We really did get pretty good at yoga.

Which is a hilarious statement.

Regardless, I miss doing yoga. I miss being headache free, back pain free, and flexible. So, I am going to start doing it again. The yoga journal website helpfully lets you plan your own yoga sequences, which I am currently doing at work. I like this.

I am not such a big fan of the chakra mumbo-jumbo, but some things just go together. Yoga and mumbo-jumbo. I suppose this is a little amusing considering that I am a pretty big proponent for acupuncture and acupressure. Also, I just took this chakra test online. I have very under-active root and heart chakras, apparently, both of which have to do with feeling safe, grounded, able to love freely (I am supposed to chant LAM to open up the root chakra and YAM for the heart). Isn't that interesting? Mom, are you nervous about my spirituality yet?

The issue that I happened to pick up also has an amazing recipes for dosa, sambar, and potato masala, which are maybe the best foods in the world. I am going to photo copy them, and then go on a hunt for all the strange ingredients. Chances of finding them in my town? I'd say less than 20%. Still, I can make a spicy lentil soup and call it "sambar" or "dahl" or really anything I want. And I can make dosa from the packet that I secreted back from Malaysia this summer, and worry about finding split gram beans to ferment at a later date. YUM.

D and I have started to going to church together. After dating for a year and a half we thought we would broach this landmine of an issue. We decided to go to the church that he went to all through college. I have always kind of hated this church, though that is perhaps too strong of a word. I have issues with church all around, though I don't feel like going to go into all that here. I have many issues with this particular church, but kind of feel like I would be faced with similar issues no matter where we chose to go, so I might as well not fight about this. Issues. Key word here: Issues. However, there is also this small group that we are going to go to, or, more accurately, have gone to once. It meets tonight. Blerg. I can't bring myself to want to go! I need to think about this some more. Perhaps it has something to do with my under-active chakras.

Maybe tonight I can stay home, make dosa, and molasses custard (wonderfully gluten free), and do yoga. That sounds better. Did I mention I have issues?

I suggest

Sometimes I do crazy things. Like drink several cups of coffee the day after I was miserably sick to my stomach because I drank too much coffee. At least, that is why I think I was miserably sick. It might of been because I was licking the salt lamp. Some friends of ours were gifted a lamp that they didn't like. They gave it to us. I think it is very pretty. It is also made of a giant piece of Himalayan salt. Yeah, so I spent some time licking it. Whatever.

Anyway, the coffee drinking. I get a bit worked up when I drink that much coffee. The words coming out of my mouth, though words that I would say, are not the words that I meant to say. I find myself giving in to that secret inner belief that I am the foremost authority on anything and everything that could possibly come up in conversation. I am a talker. And I've had several cups of coffee today.

I wanted to expand a little on one of the books in my "what you should read right now" column. Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow is just one of the best books ever. Like, ever. It is set in "the future" (2019? The soon-to-be-upon-us future) and it is wonderful, intelligent, reverent sci-fi. D is reading it right now (sort of) as a result of one of those conversations that go, "You never read female writers. What are you? Sexist or something?", and then he points to the Zadie Smith books on his shelf (two), and says that women don't write the kinds of books that he likes (sci-fi). Mary Doria Russell is a physicist, and adult convert to Judaism. The protagonist of the novel is a Jesuit priest/linguist.
I am the child of a linguist. I will admit to having a bias towards linguisticy-smarts. Sandoz is a wonderful, brilliant, loving main character.
The book follows the linguist/priest Sandoz as life is discovered on Alpha Centauri and the Jesuits decide to go. I want to quote the prologue to you here, just because it is so good I don't believe anyone could not want to read the book afterward.

"It was predicatable, in hindsight. Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient action, exploration and research. During what the Europeans were pleased to call the Age of Discovery , Jesuit priests were never more than a year or two behind the men who made initial contact with previously unknown peoples; indeed, Jesuits were often the vanguard of exploration.
The United Nations required years to come to a decision that the Society of Jesus reached in ten days. In New York, diplomats debated long and hard, with many recesses and tablings of the issue, whether and why human resources should be expended in an attempt to contact the world that would become known as Rakhat when there were so many pressing needs on earth. In Rome, the questions were not whether or why but how soon the mission could be attempted and whom to send.
The Society asked leave of no temporal government. It acted on its own principals, with its own assets, on Papal authority. The mission to Rakhat was undertaken not so much secretly as privately - a fine distinction but one that the Society felt no compulsion to explain or justify when the news broke several years later.
The Jesuit scientists went to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God's other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater glory of God.
They meant no harm."

Go read this freaking book. I just, oh, it gives me chills and I want to read it again. There is a sequel, which is important and equally wonderful. I have lately started finding them cropping up in used bookstores. I don't know what was wrong with their previous owners, but I suggest you profit from their imbecility.

Also, this woman is my current favorite person on the internet. I've been reading a lot of blogs lately and people are - how do I put this delicately? - mostly humorless bores. Or prigs. Or preposterously self-obsessed pretentious people. Which doesn't mean I don't subscribe to their blogs and eat up every bit of ridiculous advice on (insert appropriate topic here) as if they really are the experts they think they are. Shauna, at glutenfreegirl.com, however, is lovely. And normal looking. And a really talented writer. And genuinely not trying to be anything she isn't. And she makes amazing gluten-free everythings. Gluten-free everythings that I feel capable of reproducing in my own kitchen. And I like her. She is today's internet crush.

Do it yourownself, dammit.

Hi. Again.

So I spend a lot of my internet time looking at DIY wedding sites. It is a hobby of mine which I have indulged in for years. I also like to read the wedding magazines in B&N whenever I find myself there.

I love this one.

I really like weddings. Really really. I will go to almost any wedding if I can snag an invitation. I'm not entirely sure of my motives for the wedding loving. The obvious is probably true; that I am a wedding-craving girl-loony. I hope that there is more to it than that. I like to think that I am incredibly crafty and that plumbing the depths of the wild world web will help me to perfect my craft.
Confession: I am not actually crafty.
I'm not sure what I am exactly, but it isn't crafty. I think I am more . . . spontaneous. Or dauntless. Whatever word means recklessly optimistic. Like cutting my own hair, or turning some clothing into other clothing. I'm 100% certain I can do it, regardless of the end product. Hair grows, you know. Always. I have bins full of half completed attempts at turning pants into skirts. Does this stop me from starting another pant/skirt transformation? No. No it does not.

However, true crafts thwart me. Case in point: damn paper cranes. Oh sure, they are crane-like, completed and replete across the back of my printer, but are they crisp and clean looking? Would you want them anywhere where some-other actually had to look that them? No. No, most definitely not. Of course, I am using recycled printer paper from my recycle drawer. I like to think that origami paper would slide into its corners in a much more graceful manner. Don't you think?

Regardless, weddings. Weddings are wonderful. I was glad to learn that Drew likes weddings too. We're actually totally snobby. We sit and critique choices in music, food, colors, flowers, blah blah blah. Which is a little bit hilarious, if you think about it. We are unmarried and snide. I think we would make a wonderful wedding planning team. We are eclectic and strange. So, I guess, if our wedding should ever roll around, you all should strive to be there. Because it will be awesome. I will make thousands of paper cranes, just promise not to look at them too closely.

This is my favorite new thing on www.soyoureengayged.com. Click it. I think I would get married just so I could get a nice letter from Obama. That might be an understatement. I might sell my kidneys for a nice letter from Obama. You know how that goes.


EDIT: I mentioned my "crafting" tendencies to Drew, namely the skirt/pants/skirt/pants cycle, and his response was, "Isn't that one of the clear definitions of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting the outcome to change?"
So. Yeah.

As a part of my work I maintain a website. I've been working here for almost five months and just learned how to do this last week. I feel like Mark Zuckerberg, only sans the genius and math parts. We watched The Social Network the other day and I came away with two major observations:

1. Mark Zuckerberg is an evil genius,
2. Justin Timberlake is one seriously homely fellow.

I guess I'd never really looked at him before when he wasn't doing something else really well, like dancing or being hilarious on SNL. When he is just standing there his mish-mash of a face is a little disconcerting. In many ways, I find this hopeful. Americans buy fame with their faces so often. It's nice to see someone whose talent merits the hoopla.

Website management and (sigh) newsletter creation are awful. I am thrilled, of course, to have something of the "work" variety to do here, at my desk, on my refurbished computer, in my cave of a crowded, windowless office (redundant so you get it). Considering no one calls me (except for Kevin. Hi, Kevin!), visits me, or needs me, I was starting to go a little nuts. This, at least, is a reason to be chained here and strongly discouraged from leaving. It feels wuuuuuuunderful.

These endless preceding months have enabled me to develop my mad-savy intertube (that's my cutesy nickname for the world wide web. We're close like that.) sifting skills. I find all sorts of interesting crap on the internet! I have my websites, mostly humor based, which I frequent. For a while I had a contest that I entered every day (and I am considering entering the search for contests into my daily intertube routine), and I, of course, am incredibly versed in which celebrities have various deformities. That's an incredible use of the internet right there.

I am starting to wish that I had a digital camera. I've never really wanted one before, but I live alone now, and have been convinced by everyone else's blog-led lives that I am at least as clever/artsy/snide as anyone else. I just need a camera to prove it. Also I want to learn how to make marzipan. And fabric flowers.

You are probably wondering why blog posts have been so few and far between if I am spending as much time as claimed swimming the internet. I have no explanation for you. As far as I can tell, I am lazy.

Since acquiring a boyfriendother, my productivity has plummeted. I'm pretty sure it is his fault. I used to do . . . something. Stuff? I had friends, maybe. I am sure I did. Whatever, regardless, yesterday I decided to make good on my time. Things I did yesterday:

• sewed a button on D's shirt
• hemmed a pocket
• swept my apt.
• did some dishes
  
• tore the seam out of some pillowcases (they will eventually be a skirt)
• sorted my laundry (thought it all ended up back in the same basket since I only have one laundry basket and I didn't actually do laundry yesterday).
• made up my mind to go swimming today.

I will go swimming today.

If anyone still reads this, I hereby promise to be here more often, waiting for your visits.