Days of Shades

It's been an eventful few weeks.

After a whirlwind trip that went from the Olympic peninsula (Fiddletunes!) the Eugene, Oregon (Oregon Country Fair!), I took a week off to work on my house, learn that my neighbor is a socially mal-adjusted raging asshole with issues, and throw a giant and awesome yard party. Since then I've been ill, been late to a Great Big Sea concert, and (temporarily) added four kittens to my household.

The Incident With The Neighbor was an emotional hell that I was definitely not prepared for, and it's taken a bit of the rosy glow off of my home-owner status, but I think we've settled back down to a civil status quo.

The yard party was great, and really helped me reclaim the "this is MY place" feeling after the Neighbor Incident. In fact, the nastiness served to really underline what wonderful, amazing, supportive friends and family I have, and so I'm thankful for all of them.

The work-on-the-house I'd started to do is still in progress, and I'm becoming overwhelmed, which is mostly due to the complexity of trying to prioritize and order projects. I have Learned Things about cabinet doors, though.

At the GBS concert, I saw someone with a Cascadian flag, and introduced myself on the chance that they were solarbird. They were! I forgot to say "I'm from the internet", though. Opportunity wasted!

Somewhere in here I went to meliz113's wedding. Later we had a chance to catch up and drink tea, which was nice.

I'm fostering kittens for my co-worker Nancy, who has a feral barn cat problem. They're from at least two, possibly three different litters, but they all seem to be eating and sleeping and poo-ing just fine, which are the only job requirements for 'being a kitten'. In the 36 hours in which they've been resident in my master bathroom they've gone from hiding together in a hissing ball of fur whenever I open the door to charging it, climbing on any available part of my anatomy, and attacking my braid, so I think we're making good progress there.

Really, the cuteness of kittens probably deserves it's own LJ entry. Everything here could make it's own long winded entry, in fact, but people are most likely to read about kittens than about my adventures in kitchen cabinet repair.

Recently I've read Ocean by Warren Ellis and Zorro by Isabel Allende. I've (mostly) learned Patty Fahey's #1. I've been kicked out of a festival, ridden in a bike-rickshaw, and been paid in radishes. A rat sat on me. I have wanted to write and haven't had time. I have seen friends that I haven't seen in ages, won a battle with a cake, and left far too many unwashed dishes.

I spent Monday evening in Seattle, schmoozing at the IACA* conference, which included a boat ride to Tillacum village and lots of ego-patting. I practiced my French and everything. The drive back down was miserable - must keep eyes on road...so tired - but I got home alive and spent the next day recovering. I liked listening to people from all over talk about one of MY towns. I was sad about the environment, though. Beautiful weather, but far too much smog for mid-May.

IACA has a rotating presidentship, and the president hosts the conference. This means that if I'd been a better little businessgirl I could have targeted each president for the next twenty years. Instead I just talked to whomever seemed willing and/or interesting, and was accosted by the rep from Maine. By handshake deal, I'll do the emblem for him when he hosts in 2013, and they'll fly me to Maine.

Damn. In six years I'll be thirty.

None of my future plans really go past my mid fifties. I always kinda figure I'll have started to really break down by then, so I'd better have accomplished most of what I want to have accomplished. When I wrote my obituary I was killed by rhino attack at age 54.

Today I have Tai Chi class and possibly dinner with my always-unpredictable Grandparents Reilly, but what I really want to do is go home, clean the darned house, and read or draw or something. Something could be laying out the program for the OHS baccalaureate as a favor to Trik's mom and Joan Healy. I'm pretty disgusted by the whole IDEA of baccalaureate (I prefer bachanalians), but I decided that personal preferences were moot in this case, because it's a simple favor and they're both nice people.

Also, we said goodbye to my TRL boss today. She's headed down to Portland, and the new guy has been chosen and starts June 18. Perhaps we can take the opportunity of being sans-boss to repaint the office or something.



*International Assocation of (Corporate Administrators)(Consumption of Alchohol)(Consenting Adults**)

**Heard that one rather late, after the consumption of alchohol, naturally.

Tugboats don't cut through the water. They aren't hydrodynamic. They just push, and all that white foaming water spills up in front of them and gets shoved out of the way. There's a foss tugboat which only has a little speed reduction when it stops going forwards and starts going straight sideways. They are dependable, super strong, and slow as mud, and in my much-loved home town of Olympia we race them every year.

I'm not sure if at the moment I feel more like the tugboat (pushing through work in a slow and determined fashion) or like a tugboat race (a lot of stress and power and $50 barrels of crude being harnesed to do absolutley nothing). I'd say I smell better than a tugboat, but being a water-child born and bred I actually really like the smell of clean paint, saltwater, and tar. My Daddy loves tugboats - maybe I should tell him he has one.

Last night I went contra-dancing. There was an almost salacious hip thing, and a whip cream incident - what more could one ask for? I couldn't actually dance much thanks to my cantakerous physical form, but I got to chat with people, enjoyed the pot-luck before hand, and went to Archer's with Virginia, Marlin, and the caller George afterwards (there were some other contra folks there, too, and we got our drinks after last call - go us). This morning I'm trying to work off the current goal, finishing my art history paper before I leave town for turkey day. That'd leave me clear to do grad school work over break and webpages when I get back. So it's a dull tugboat-y kinda day, shoving my barge of a paper into shape, wishing for the phone to ring and distract me, which gets less and less likely as the afternoon progresses. So I spose I'll just belt out some more vile black smog and keep on goin'.

Nove 2nd - Nov 3rd early, early morning:

I really did start out hopeful. Spent the evening completely and utterly useless as I watched religous groups decide the fate of the world. Called Daddy dearest and asked him to make it all better. He gave me a nice, reasonable, mature bit of reasurance about how I could survive another four years. I pointed out that a lot of other people couldn't. Still, calmed down a tad. Derryck and I eased the pain with a little alchohol and chocolate chemical aid. At 1:30am or so I called J in Paris and said I'd try to keep my country from invading his. Y'know, just to be nice.

Nov 3rd, a more reasonable hour:

I went swimming alone. Technically zair99 didn't stand me up this time, but since I didn't get his e-mail 'till I got to class, I thought he had. S'okay. The pool was chilly, I was feeling chilly in more ways than one, but I did manage to come to a few conclusions. The first goal was to exercise myself into apathy. It didn't quite work, but I did do a whole 10 laps.

My plan is to take stressors one at the time. I don't mean it quite in the normally producitive way, but all will come clear.

The first step is to skip Audio. Since the only difference between going to audio and not is one of location (and whether I get to talk with ribbitkisser and Kat) its the first to fall by the wayside. This will allow me to get an earlier start on my 8-10 page art history paper draft. It's not so much that I need the extra two hours as that I need to start before I've used all of my daytime energy on class.

So, wednesday-night to thursday-morning will be devoted to paper related stress. I will not stress about the election, web design for either class OR contract, applications, or my other more personal stressors.

Thursday afternoon I'm heading down to Seattle, seeing a Liz Carrol concert, staying the night/next day with Trik, meeting Mom and Doozer for dinner, then heading to Oly for Doozer's B-day and to see the laid-up Pop. During this time I will stress about two different web-designs and a few personal issues.

Basically, I'm rationing my tension. I figure I'll have the next four years to stress about the country, so I don't really need to get an early start on it. I don't have nearly as much opportunity to stress about papers, so I have to work with what I have.

Oh, I did reach a 2nd conclusion. Ever heard the phrase "Ye gods and little fishies!"? Well, I've decided that them gods are fickle (about everything, up to and including their existance!). For the foreseable future, I'm putting my faith in the Little Fishies.