Becca's Blog

Sometimes it suuuuucks to be a grownup.

I got a nice bonus a few weeks ago, and ever since I've been fantasizing about how to spend it: A real, grownup bedroom set? Yeah, I've wanted that for a while. Down payment on a new car? Yes indeed, I want that. Long overdue big vacation (destination of *my* choosing)? I think I want that most of all.

Here's where the money's gone so far: Teeth cleaning for Tina (damn); deposit to IRA (double-damn); extra credit card payment (triple damn). The majority has gone into savings, and the secret, childish part of me believes I'll never see it again, and certainly not in the form of fun. I don't believe I'll get to choose how the money gets spent; I believe I'll get told.

Oh, this just tears it.

The world is really going to hell now--the Ivy Room is closing!  Next I'll hear that the Albany Pub is closing, and I'll just have to move. So I guess that next Monday will be my first day at my new job and the last day that I get to see Chuck Prophet at the Ivy Room.  I have to wonder whether Kitty's in Emeryville has something to do with the closure, since they have the same owner. 

Blogger's Block

I've got a bit of it. I have been working and knitting, but today I have no work, so here's a bit of catch-up.

Josie's had surgery on her toe, to remove a benign growth.  Now she's stumping around on a giant lumpy bandage and still wearing her giant collar.  We'd really like to leave the collar off, particularly since we're taking the two dogs to the mountains next weekend, but between the bandage and the hot spot on a back leg, she has to wear it. I'm thinking she needs a super, all-terrain foot bandage for the weekend. The vet says she should really only go outside to eliminate and otherwise stay quiet. Fat chance.

And our back steps must be replaced, because they are rotting out from underneath us--and so far the only contractor we have on the hook is the superthorough pest control guy who will inform us that the whole house and garage are falling down around us and we should really spend a hundred thousand dollars to tear the whole thing down and start again. Looking forward to that estimate.

I had a chance to visit with Rachael (and her sisters Bethany and Christy), plus some knitters I'd never met before, and Lala and Maia at the Whoreshoes show in Bolinas last weekend. Jane and I drank too much, stayed up past our bedtimes, and generally behaved in a raucous manner. Jane was shocked to hear me roaring the chorus of "Fat-Bottomed Girls" when the Whoreshoes played it as their encore. Her youth involved a little too much John Ford Coley and not enough Queen. At the show I was knitting on this: the neverending cotton stole. I still have four freaking skeins left! I took it with me to a proofing gig this past week, and while wearing black pants realized how fuzzy and linty the yarn is. Doesn't promise that it will wear well. Here's a closeup of the stitch pattern: which I think is quite elegant. I love the lattice-y symmetry. This is one of the "It's a Wrap!" free patterns on the Garter Belt site, and I'm using Shine worsted in Wisteria (a nice pale lavender). This one is Elizabeth Morrison's Take 2. But sheesh, I'd like to be finished now.

We stayed in a very Bolinas B&B on Saturday night after the show, and Jane got up early to surf. I got woken up shortly after 8 because the proprietors had made a special trip in just to make us breakfast. So I sat in a lovely glassed-in porch eating breakfast alone, wondering whether I was hung over and choking on guilt. (It couldn't be the kind of place where they just leave a bagel and some juice outside your door--nope, breakfast cooked to order, regardless if you are the sole guest in the place. I asked them to box up some toast for me to take to the beach for Jane, and she got a box of scrambled eggs, bacon, english muffin, jam, and hash browns. Which sat in the car for an hour or so after being in a warm oven for an hour or so.)  Eccentric service aside, it was a lovely overnight, and no one took it out on us by losing their, erm, composure on the living room rug during our absence.

Sunday afternoon I got to socialize with Janine and Maia again, plus Lolly and Hope, who was visiting from the East Coast. Janine was down in the Bay Area for a quick visit, and it was nice to catch up, and to see John and Ginkgo again.  I took the beginnings of a yoga mat bag that I'm kludging together for my sister's birthday at the end of this month. No pics of my current progress, but here's the yarn (plus a bit of my foot, and my back yard): The stitch I'm using is a very simple fishnet-looking four-stitch repeat, and I have about a fifth of the total needed length done. Then I need to figure out how to attach a drawstring/shoulder strap, and what to make it from. Here's a progress shot of the top-down mock turtleneck that I set aside in midJune--I'm ready to get back to that second sleeve:

At my proofing gig for a glossy magazine, on Friday I scored two tickets to see Light in the Piazza in the city. It's not a show that we'd pay to see, but free tickets to a Broadway musical is too good to pass up. The score is lovely (the singing was terrific), and it reminded me happily of our trip to Florence and Rome. The plot, however, is slighter than that of Oklahoma! On Saturday we saw the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" installment.  I'm sure the art director and set and costume designers had a rollicking good time. Us, eh.

That pretty much brings us up to this morning. Any interest in what I had for breakfast? (Flax cluster cereal and fresh blueberries.)

It's all begun.

The in-law onslaught starts within the hour (Jane is at the airport picking up SIL #2); the hummingbird flying of the coop has begun; the photo and video testing has started. I have a sinus headache.

No whine for me tonight.

Well, OK, maybe just a little.  I feel I have to apologize for being such a big baby in my last post--I didn't mean to pull an "I'm going to go eat a worm" but I guess I did exactly that.  I'm back to having some sense of equanimity about life; it's some good, some not so good.

I would have liked to say by now that my knitting got me a job, but I didn't get the job, I found out Friday. I'm both a bit humiliated by the rejection and OK with it because it wasn't my dream job. But it was the first time I've ever been asked to show samples of my needlework as part of a job interview. It was for a craft-oriented magazine. I'm dying to know who got the job, which I will know eventually, and why, which I may never know. I wrote an effing novel for the cover letter and spent time I didn't have to put together a little scrapbook of photos of my handknits. And now I have frigging scrapbook supplies. Come your birthday, you're getting a handmade card from me, be forewarned.

On the other hand, I've spent some of this week and last working on some rather glamorous publications, which is an amusing distraction and reminds me that I left employed servitude in order to free myself up for such opportunities. And if I've netted barely enough to pay my cable bill from it, that's OK--valuable contacts, right?

Orange Boy has begun to spray in new places (in my closet, on my shoes). There's kitty Prozac in his future. And if that doesn't work, he's spending his sunset years outside.

Not the worst week ever, but far from the best.

Argh. I haven't abandoned the blog (not that the world would miss it, considering that my family, friends, and significant other don't find it worth reading, let alone the world at large), I've just been plowed under by a deadline that I spent 2.5 weeks dreading and 1.5 weeks flailing on.

I have to drop the fantasy that I'm willing to work superhuman hours and stop doubling up on jobs. In the bleary-eyed light of morning after staying up way too late trying to make up time, I actually disencumbered myself of some assignments that I'm not enjoying, security and high pay rate be damned. Having finished with the dreadful thing, I'm merely a bit behind on something I'll actually enjoy reading while editing -- feels like a vacation.

In the meantime, I've been checking in on the usual knitting blogs and feeling very sour. All the knitblog superstars out there are going on expenses-paid trips to Tuscany with star chefs or gallivanting around the continent on book tours, or else touching wrists to their foreheads about being "just a knitter with maybe a book deal" or "a real working artist too complex for you proles to understand" and oh btw I'll see you at MDSW. And I have *nada* going on in my life. If I have a book in me, it's not a knitting book, and I'd have to poke at it pretty viciously to cause it to swell into anything more than an idea. And I can't develop it while I'm busy avoiding copy that doesn't deserve to ever see the light of day.

And said miserable fucking copy is so repetitive that doing what needs to be done hurts my wrists and fatigues my hands, meaning that even if I had time to knit, I wouldn't, because freelancers don't have no worker's disability insurance.

The capper for the past 7 days has been that my GP's office called to tell me that my Pap smear showed "some inflammation" so they'd call in a prescription for metrogel, and I'd have to come in for a followup Pap smear. Awesome. I've never had an irregular Pap smear before, and I have had exactly one lady infection prior to this. I used to feel rather smug about it, attributing my hoo-hoo's clean bill of health to abstention from sex involving penises, but really, it could just be infrequent sex. Anyhow, my theory hasn't seemed to hold up--now I'm blaming the current dubious lady problem on stress throwing my body chemistry out of whack. "Fine, whatever," think I, "I'll deal with the inconvenience and nastiness of inserting cold gel in my hoo-hoo for 7 nights and have another Pap smear." What I did not know at the outset was that this particular drug reacts like antabuse in some people, so unless you like being prostrate on the bathroom floor, drinking alcohol while taking it is not advisable.

And all week Jane has been asking me, "Do you feel better, not drinking?" And I have to say "No, not especially." Which is comforting, in a way--knowing that my regular (as in like clockwork) alcohol intake is purely a psychological crutch and not a physical addiction.

You can damn well bet I'm drinking tonight.

Friggin' rain.

Now, I'm a native Northern Californian. I am old enough to remember many, many years of drought, just like Celia. I'm actually having a "fuck, am I old" moment right now, because I thought her post was describing the drought of the late '70s, not the one that happened after I graduated from college. (Does anyone else remember Dr. Don Rose bellowing "Rain! Raaiiiin!" on his morning show on KFRC?)

Aaaanyway, like a good Northern Californian, I superstitiously never say "I've had enough rain." Not even when apartment buildings start sliding down cliffs, because if you say that, the cosmos will stop giving you rain, for a number of years.

But dammitall, the reservoirs are all full, the snowpack in the Sierras will keep the entire state hydrated for the coming year, sodden hillsides are giving way. The rain can stop now.

Technology, sheesh.

I tried to check out some audiobooks at my local library the other night--I couldn't find them, but I did find the music section, where they are apparently still circulating cassette tapes. I bet they sound great, too.

So I was trying to be casual and find out where they keep the audiobooks without having to, you know, ask anyone, so I checked the online catalog.  And I find out that you can borrow electronic audiobooks remotely--cool! But, in a world where almost anyone who has an MP3 player has an iPod, the NetLibrary service that checks out the audiobooks works only with Windows Media Player and players that support its PlaysForSure digital rights management. Doesn't work with iPods, doesn't work with Macs. And I bet it won't work with my ancient Rio MP3 player. After the 6 hours or so that it will take to download a novel to my uncool-o PC, I'll find out whether I can load it onto my player. You can't keep them indefinitely, either. The DRM wrapper makes the file unusable after three weeks, so you're really just borrowing it, just like any physical media you'd take out of the library.

I also found out that if you don't use your library card in several years, it expires and doesn't work anymore, and you have to get a new one.

Goooood riddance, 2005.

The year concluded with rather a lot of sleep deprivation for me. Jane arrived at the airport very late on Dec. 28, and on Dec. 29 there was a semi-spectacular car accident in front of the house next door, which resulted in our neighbor being taken to the hospital for observation. She's back home and as OK as she ever is. A woman drove her small truck into the parked taxi my neighbor was sitting in, and the driver may have been unconscious at the time. The firefighters had to break into the truck to get her out, at any rate. My neighbor is nocturnal, so this happened at 12:30 in the morning and woke my entire household out of a deep sleep. But it's just that kind of neighborhood. On Dec. 30 I stayed up late trying to meet a deadline.

And last night we broke with tradition and actually went out for New Year's. We had dinner reservations and tickets to a show--but because of a screwup on my part (show was at 7, I thought it was at 8), we traded in our tickets and ended up with 2 hours to kill before the 10 p.m. show of "Kiki and Herb: Resurrection." So we walked through the Tenderloin to Kimo's. The hem on my long skirt came out, leaving me walking Polk Street looking a bit ragged. Totally appropriate. Kiki kissed off 2005 with her usual existential dread, cynicism, romantic bombast, and of course pathos. It was perfect.

My only New Year's resolution is to find an undereye concealer that actually does the job.

Why do thrift stores smell bad?

Presumably they only accept clean things, so why do they have some sort of stale people odor? There's a Salvation Army store near my house that's been open barely a year, and it has that smell. Junk stores, in contrast, may smell dusty, but not nasty. I'm deterred by little obstacles like this, so I'm not a good thrifter. I also don't have the patience and determination needed to score big, or maybe it's just a lack of imagination.

I've stopped in the couple of thrift stores closest to my house recently, looking for sweaters made of recyclable yarn (maybe I should start with the Manos I already have, you say)? I also had the idea that maybe I could find cheap, discardable windbreakers or sweatshirts to wear at the start of road races, but so far no luck. The racks of unworthy, unlovely things just depress me. But I like to collect old cooking utensils and serveware, particularly silver trays. My kitchen is pretty full already, though, and I've been trying to heed the mantra I devised not long ago: "I have enough. In fact, I have everything I need." A lot of the time it does keep me from buying things that I really don't need. So usually I leave thrift stores emptyhanded--and fine with it.

This morning I made a cool thrift store discovery, though. I live about two blocks from one (it's painted magenta and has a neon sign and funds AIDS services). I didn't know this, but they accept books--which is unusual, I'm pretty sure. I'm so accustomed to bookstores rejecting my used books that I figure no one wants them. So great, a place to recycle used books--but even better, I perused the shelves and found that other literate Berkeleyites have been dropping off some pretty non-doggy books. Among the old mass-market paperbacks and diet books were several novels I'm pretty interested in. I exercised moderation and only bought The Book of Salt, The Master, and an old copy of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, since a hawkwatching colleague and I were discussing the tyranny of the majority last week--and I had to say that I hadn't read On Liberty. So it was fated for me to come across a 50-cent copy of it. In all, I spent just $3.25, so I think I was pretty moderate.