Thursday, December 21, 2006

pics on the web
I have been cleaning up my laptop and got some pics on the web that needed to be out there.
So far they include Brewfest 2006 and Lawrence Brewers guild 2006 Holiday party at our house.

You can view them at www.lawrencebrewers.org under "Gallery".

Since Xbar-ranch.com has been down due to issues with the domain name, the rest will have to wait until we buy the domain back.

I DO have pics of Shay's graduation party and Mark's visit while he was on leave this summer.

And super exciting news!!!!! For the first time in 17 years... I went to the optometrist and did not become even more nearsighted!!!! This is HUGE! Of course, I can't really get much more nearsighted than I already am, but this now means that I could be a candidate for lasik surgery. I can't imagine mysyelf having that done, but the fact is, I could and that is what matters.

Have a marvelous holiday or whatever it is that you do this time of year while other people are celebrating Advent, Hanukkah, Christmas, Yule, Boxing Day, Winter Solstice and the other myriad holidays that get celebrated around now that I can't keep track of because I can only be so PC and inclusive. Be well.
posted by Rosie @ 12/21/2006 04:19:00 PM 0 comments
 
Monday, December 18, 2006

Things I learned today....
1) Fat Free Cheddar cheese is a disgrace to cows everywhere.
2) Hydrogen peroxide burns real bad in your eyes. Trust me on this. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!
3) My son is blind as a bat. Yeah, I know, bats aren't blind, but Kiddo practically is. He could not read the top line of the eye chart this morning. And glasses for kids cost just as much as glasses for adults - that blows. To quote Moonshine Willy "Every time I get ahead, it's got another mouth to feed."
4) Going to the chiropractor makes me feel better - mentally and physically. My metatarsals are purple and when she pulled my toes this morning it hurt, but is better for me in the long run.
5) New Scooby Doo sucks. Boomarang has not been showing the old ones lately and this bums me out. Sadly, they have been showing all of these terrible new movies that they cranked out cheaply that my niece LOVES and they make me wanna hurl.
6) Mondays in Larryville are fabulous. It is the one day of the week that I try not to do any work that I am paid to do. This lolling about and/or running of errands is usually followed by an evening with pals at FSB for cheap beer night. Tonight should be especially fun since KU has started their break and maybe we will be able to move around inside without being crushed by the throngs of students.
7) The only way to properly medicate anxiety disorders is by smoking pot. At least that is what it said on wikipedia today. While I was registering so that I could go in and remove this information, somebody beat me to the punch, and changed it back to the serious and accurate info that needed to be there. It did get my hopes up for just a second though.
posted by Rosie @ 12/18/2006 04:31:00 PM 2 comments
 
Friday, December 15, 2006

Bang Your Head
Let's get something straight from the get go - I was NOT a metalhead. Not a glam rocker, either. A lot of music happened and I had no idea it was even going on. I have watched VH-1 specials about the top 100 metal songs ever and Hubby cringes as I ask with every new song "who is that?" or "is that Black Sabbath?" I tried to like metal. I had a friend from work in HS (Dairy QUEEN!) who was a metalhead, and she forced me to buy a Ratt cassette on a shopping trip. I am sure I was reaching for Thompson Twins when she shoved my hand in the R's and made me pull out fourteen dollars worth of one-hit-wonder. Sigh.

Currently, I listen to the mostly drivelschlock of modern adult alternative (105.9 - favorite of cool mom's everywhere) and bounce around all the stations near those numbers, often pausing on 106.9 Country Legends (Dolly singing Jolene gives me the shivers), and I have noticed a song that has come back into rotation. "Come on feel the noise, girls rock your boys" I scream at the top of my lungs with the volume well past 11. I am transported back to a HS dance in the gym where I was dancing with a boy from Buhler and we were rocking to Quiet Riot's Cum On Feel the Noize. I danced a slow one with him next and he asked me what music I liked. My response was "Quiet Wiot". I had just developed a speech impediment AND lied in the same statement.
Metal health will drive you mad.
posted by Rosie @ 12/15/2006 08:56:00 AM 4 comments
 
Monday, December 11, 2006

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Xmas
I am so excited I can hardly contain it. I have to tell it somewhere, so you all get to know.
I got kiddo the bext Xmas present ever!!!! I ordered it last night online (why would I go out to shop when I can get nearly everything I need right here in my big purple chair?) from Discovery channel and I can't wait until it arrives! Then I have to wait until Xmas for him to open it. Then I have to wait for him to get bored with it before I can play with it!

I ordered him the new Lego Mindstorms kit!!! You know, robots you get to design and build and program!!!! What? You're not as excited about this as I am? Then you don't know how much fun you can have with these things. When I worked in the hood in KCK, one of my pet projects at the school was running a robotics club for middle schoolers. I had never before seen these kids be excited about school. Of course, it took a thousand dollars worth of high tech toys to get them excited, but that's cheaper than more social workers/cops in the schools and a better use of our tax dollars (says the MSW).

I view this purchase as an investment in my future. And I am not thinking of the kind of future that has Kiddo making millions as a robotics engineer so that mommy can fly to Chicago for every home game at Wrigley Field and drink all night at the Cubby Bear. No, I am thinking much more short term - this is something that we can do together and work on our problem-solving skills. We can learn, have fun, and grow our relationship at the same time. I can also practice not being a control freak and learn patience from my son. I tend to over-engineer solutions at times, so children's inate abilty to keep it simple will counter my natural tendency to make things too complicated. Technology is melting the ice around my scrooge-touched heart. I am starting to look forward to Xmas.

P.S. At 10 o'clock tonight, I will have not smoked ANYTHING for 2 weeks. That's approximately 280 cigs not smoked, 3 days added to my life, and $50 saved. I should get some new shoes for that.
posted by Rosie @ 12/11/2006 11:01:00 AM 5 comments

Why do We do What We do?
Driving across the Midwest for three days and logging more hours behind the wheel than I did sleeping can make the mind do strange things. Sleep deprived and numb from looking at vast expanses of dead grass and plowed fields, my brain begins to wonder why I do this to myself. No one made me drive to Fairfield, Iowa and spend time with my co-worker who believes more in sustainable living (read: no car, doesn't like them) than in the church for which he works, so that I could be trained on how to manage my section of our website. He said he could have told me everything on the phone. He has never seen me try to learn without doing, but I have, and I am confident that the phone would not have worked.

I could have skipped the meeting in Des Moines and let 25 teens and adults argue amongst themselves about how much harrassment is OK and whether our "traditions" are really institutional hazing in a party dress. "Why do I love my work?" I wonder as I drive all over my district which consists of eight really big states that are sparsely populated and suffer from inclement weather nearly year-round. I work part-time, have no benefits per se, and sleep on cold, hard, concrete floors in buildings that seldom have wifi so that I can tell teens not to play baseball in the church with oranges while the bruised oranges cover the smell of their leaking pheremones and stinky feet.

This does not sound like a dream job, but I love it. I wish I could articulate why. In all honesty, I wish I knew why so that I could then explain it. I know it is the teens that really keep me going back. The adults I work with are pretty cool, but older than me for the most part and their kids are on their own. I learn from them and they welcome my presence as district staff. Volunteers are the heart of any organization, and I heart them. The teens are total weirdos - they are obnoxious, have hair of unnatural colors in dreadful cuts and styles, full of angst and self-conciousness hidden behind snarky comments, go to alternative high schools, and I really heart them.

We don't get the mainstream kids that play sports, shop at Abercrombie, or wonder if anal sex counts as sex - thus maintaining their "virginity" if they only take it up the bum. We get the kids who are in band, theatre, dropped-out, homeschoolers, geeks, not popular (at least not with mainstream parents), gay, bi, trans, straight, hypersexual but most likely abstinent. We get kids who are dying to prove to someone that they are individuals and can't be lumped in with anyone else. They are amazingly independent and incredibly in need of some care. They are just like I was when I was a high schooler, and I was in desperate need of a place where I could go and be my weirdo self and not feel bad about being so left of center. A place for weird people to fit in, like when carnies all live in the same trailer park.

I guess that is why I love my job. I get to be for someone else what I needed so badly for myself at that age. It's some sort of payback, or pay forward for Kiddo's future, so that safe spaces are perpetuated and we weirdos never have to feel alone.
posted by Rosie @ 12/11/2006 08:42:00 AM 0 comments
 
Thursday, December 07, 2006

Beigeville
Yesterday the Princess had a play date with a classmate after kindeegarten and I retrieved her at 3:00 with just enough time to say hello, how are you, was she good? before shuttling off to pick up Kiddo at 3:25. I was lured into staying with presspot coffee and ginger snaps. Not just Archway ginger snaps, but the really thin crisp kind that a friend sent my hostess from Sweden, from whence she hails. And coffee so strong that my eyesballs were vibrating. Yummmmmmm.

Called the school and got Kiddo sent home on the bus with her older kids and kicked back and talked about a broad menagerie of topics: The use of color in homes, rostra bricks for pool construction, the mixed messages that young girls are bombarded with in our society, and her experience as a foreigner in the good ole USA after 9/11.

She and her American spouse had just relocated to Kansas from Sweden and were living in Overland Park while their house was being moved (yes, picked up from Lawrence and moved to Vinland) and had gone to a party at a house that was beige, surrounded by other huge, nondescript homes that were ecru, mushroom, and taupe. No one would speak to them about their opinions, their lives, the things that define who they are as people. She felt that no one wanted to know in case she and her husband weren't beige too. When people who aren't beige step into a beigehorhood, they might bring crazy notions with them - like putting up basketball goals in the driveway, or sitting on the front stoop to wave at folks as they zoom by sealed up in their SUV's. They have a volvo wagon that looks like a fish. Really. It is covered with scales and has a metal fin on top and has words on the side with a pictogram that represents a Swedish tongue twister that is something about six fish in a fish box. They are fabulously strange!

Please don't think that I am knocking everyone who lives in one of these subdivisions that has a big stone plaque at the border announcing to all that they have reached Stoney Glen or Fox Point. These places are just not for me, nor were they for my friend from Sweden. Her bright orange dining room with a kelly green table and low slung leather chairs that look like they were swiped from the Anchor Inn in Hutch just wouldn't go with beige. Nothing about her goes with beige.
posted by Rosie @ 12/07/2006 09:33:00 AM 3 comments
 
Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Mixed Metaphors
I was discussing with Sandusky the fact that I can't keep metaphors straight. I mix em up all the time. I understand what they mean, I even had to explain en espanol for a class what "two peas in a pod" was getting at. In Spanish-speaking countries in South America, you don't pull someone's leg if you are teasing them, you "take Mary by the hair". I really goof up the ones with birds: A bird in the hand should be killed with one stone. The early bird gets to sit in the bush.

As I was driving home from FSB Church last night, I was pondering the Baker Wetlands to my right. I often drive home on Haskell/East 1500/Douglas County 1055, which runs on the east side of the wetlands and has a frighteningly deep ditch full of murky water on my right. Yesterday during the daylight a backhoe from the county was pulling a snowplow out of the watery depths of the ditch, sending chills down my spine as I have great fear of this soggy canyon between me and the wetlands dyke . I am convinced that I will be dead in that ditch, drowning in the water that so many people are willing to fight for. In Summer, I think about how cool that water looks. I could just slip down into it like a baby kitten slips from its mama's womb, experiencing a sudden shock as my body gets jolted from the 90 degree heat to a comfortable yet chilling death bath. I am more scared of it in Winter, because I am convinced that if I didn't drown, I would slowly freeze as my fingers scratch at my seatbelt and door handle, trying to free me from the icy numbness.

Morbid obsession aside, I think alot about what kind of metaphor would describe my interest in this ditch. Gypsy was pushed to the edge of her patience with me a few years ago after I read Siddartha and obsessed about rivers as metaphors for life. "They are just rivers! you don't have to make them represent something!" If I attempt to transfer the river metaphor (flowing, changing path, always the same river but not the same water, blahblahblah) to the wetlands, it doesn't work so well. Maybe it represents life on an evolutionary scale: nothing exciting happens for centuries, the water slowly drains and is replaced at an imperceptably slow rate, diversity is healthy, bird shit accumulates.

I really like to look at the long legged water birds that spend their time at the wetlands. Gracefully picking their way thru the reeds with knees that bend the wrong way, they stretch their necks beneath the surface and gorge themselves on frogs and tadpoles. I took a quiz once in which I had to identify my favorite kind of animal. My choice was supposed to represent how I felt about myself as a sexual creature, but I did not know this until after I had identified my animal. I said birds because I like how they hop around, they are quirky, and fun to watch. How on earth would my fascination with birds have anything to do with my sexuality? I hate those stupid quizzes.

It has been over a week since I had a cigarette, and the smell of the smoke that wafted in to FSB last night was nauseating. I promise I won't become one of those self-righteous non-smokers who nags smokers all the time and thinks I am better because I no longer step outside every half hour to take care of my addiction (which I greatly enjoyed). I do have to practice some self preservation for awhile and remove myself from the temptation, so you won't find me on the porch on Mondays nights. I'll be inside staying warm and nic free.
posted by Rosie @ 12/05/2006 07:38:00 AM 2 comments
 
Sunday, December 03, 2006

130 hours and counting
Yesterday was really hard. I tried to grab She-ra's smoke and just have a little sumpin-sumpin off it but she was too quick for me. Damn She-ra! Quick reflexes even when she's full of Miller Lite. I passed out on the sofa and missed a faboo party but desperately needed the sleep.

The Xmas parade was lovely even if it was greatly abbreviated. Based on the program that was being distributed that listed the entries and their hometowns, my guess is that alot of people were paralyzed by the snow that shut down everything to our southeast.

Our attempts to clear some tables for our use at Johnny's were to no avail. It didn't seem to matter how many inappropriate sexual phrases we bantered about too loudly, those women just would not leave any faster. KU sucked, Sandusky double-dipped (with permission), and Rick called us mother fuckers. I like a bar where the owner calls his customers names and asks them to come in on a different day when he's not so busy. We asked him to make Buy 1 get 1 Pizza on Wednesday instead of Monday so that we don't have to choose between bargain pizza and bargain beer. Maybe he listened.
posted by Rosie @ 12/03/2006 08:29:00 AM 1 comments
 
Saturday, December 02, 2006

The End of an Era
Last night started as a pretty low key evening with me swinging by ye olde public library, getting some work done, running into friends, then parting ways to meet Goddess Going There at FSB for some beverages and to attempt to get a table in an hour. FSB was a zoo, as was the sidewalk outside since nearly every high-octane banjo lover was hanging around waiting for Splitlip Rayfield to start their second to last announced show ever at Liberty Hall, which sold out long ago. I was bummed. I had wanted to go.

Gypsy, TBI, and Sandusky subsequently showed up to join GGT and me for dindin, and in the throng of people attempting to stay warm in FSB we ran into various goddesses and their sundry menfolk. Dinner was great and we gave Sandusky plenty of shit for the cheesy precious moments wanna be picture on his blog and got up to leave. I was headed home, still not feeling SUPER, while the rest of the crew was headed to Pink Kitty for rabble rousing.

Remember how I said I went to bed grouchy and woke up grouchy yesterday? There was a direct correlation between my mood and someone else's behavior, and THAT someone knew it. That someone walked into FSB while I was putting my coat on to gimp 2 blocks to my car and stuck a SLR ticket into my face. I glanced at my friends, said "see ya later and have fun", kissed the Hubby (who had just then dropped way down on the shit list) and told him that I might even have sex with him when we got home (rainchecked it - I was exhausted and he had a Burrito King bag).

What a show, even with the absense of Truckstop Honeymoon who had been thwarted by the snowstorm that blanketed the Midwest. Found Hussy and her pal, lots of LBG folks, lots of people on whom tickets had been wasted, since they were so wasted they couldn't STFU or stay awake to enjoy the show. The mj was being pumped through the HVAC ducts - I swear. Ran into The Lovely Heather who said they had sold 950 tix for the evening, but it felt like more. And at one point pretty early in the set, when Eric asked for lauds for Kirk, everyone stood and cheered and I almost cried.

There is one more SLR show scheduled and sadly I will be in Iowa and can't head off to Wichita to take it in. At some point though you have to say goodbye and let go. The retirement of SLR feels kind of like an early movie screening, where the producers have put together several endings and run them past audiences to decide which one to really use as the final ending when they release the movie. Splitlip Rayfield may have several alternate endings - we'll just have to be patient and see which one they use.

107 hours with no smokey treats. I can do this!
posted by Rosie @ 12/02/2006 08:55:00 AM 2 comments
 
Friday, December 01, 2006

Border Wars
I woke up very grouchy. Perhaps this has something to do with me going to bed really grouchy.

The lack of nicotine in my body is taking its toll, and the weather only adds insult to injury when it come to my mood. At least the sun is shining today, and the Kiddo's dad is coming to get him at 1:30 since classes at Ottawa U got cancelled for the day, and PeeWee snottily said she didn't want to come to my house today. I can possibly get something done around here besides cook for children who complain constantly and clean up after cats who are having territory wars.

Hubby felt bad for the kitties because of the snow, so they all came in and could not share a catbox, so they took to the rest of the house, leaving treasures for me to clean up. Blake came in last night while I was nestled under the under the down comforter, enjoying my own bed and pillows rather than crappy hotel pillows and polyester sheets, jumped up on the bed and proceeded to bleed and leave ice chunks all over the damn bed.

This morning, after a decent night's sleep, I found yet another cat treasure delineating their turf, so all the cats got picked up and THROWN out the back door into a snowdrift. Mandy had ripped open a bag of garbage that had not migrated to the dumpster and left gnawed up bits of trash everywhere, but at least it wasn't the tampons she dug from the trash and savored like last week. Out she went, along with Walker who peed in the beanbag chair that he has claimed. I then went into the kitchen where I still can't find anything because someone else moved all my stuff, when all the tupperware lids leapt off a shelf and began attacking me. I threw them. I threw them all over the kitchen. I slammed them down and screamed at how much I fucking hated them for not being where they used to be and how dare they stick together and fall off the shelf. I felt better immediately. I am a thower; Not really a door slammer or much of a yeller, but throwing things feels good. It's the Passive-Aggressive aggressor in me.

I have now finished my pot of coffee and had my fill of The Weather Channel. Harley's bedding has been washed (he had an accident and goes to the MD on Monday to get checked out) and mine is in there right now. I have something to do tonight that does not involve people I work with OR people I am related to, and hopefully will not involve too much temptation to smoke. If I can get thru this weekend without smoking, I think I will be free and clear. Now if I can just stop the deluge of bodily eliminations from sending me over the edge...
posted by Rosie @ 12/01/2006 10:25:00 AM 2 comments