buzzz buzzz

okay, the baby-prep bug hit. i wandered into a section of town yesterday to pick up futon covers, and came across a children's furniture store. saw a crib i really like, although i can't quite decide on a finish - i like white, but this will turn into a full size bed later, and maybe the kid won't want white when she's a tween/teen? but, they had a crib bumper set with bumble bees on it, so i had to get it. and a little beehive toy set....



i'm trying to resist the urge to cover the nursery in pink girly froof. which is weird, i mean, i don't like pink girly froof for me, and i would be surprised if my kid would like it either. and let's face it, babies probably don't worry too much about home decor.

i did a lot of gardening today, getting 10 plants into the ground and removing weeds, a dead clematis, and several deadly nightshade (!!!) plants from around the yard. i plucked some deadly nightshade from my neighbor's front yard, too, as i don't want their young kids getting sick from them. it turns out that while the sellers did a nice-looking landscaping in our yard, they did nothing to improve the soil, so i had to prep the soil for every plant with compost and fertilizer. what's really bad is that i'm already plotting (har har, pun not intended) what plants to get next.... the landscaping that was done included very little color, and i'm pretty much a color addict. i'm having to tone down my temptation to throw lavender all over the garden because i really need some reds, yellows and oranges around the place as well.

let's see... my parents visited last week. we saw a good number of things, although we were slowed by another 100 degree heat spike. on the third day of the heat i couldn't stay out of bed. i'd get out for about five minutes, and then i'd be back down. my mother also had more mobility trouble than she's had in a while, so while we got her to the rose garden, she didn't want to walk around it. after they left i thought of a million things that i wish we had seen, but that's the way, isn't it. plus, they'll be back, and we'll be here.

big. big and tired.

i think i'm almost halfway through the pregnancy? it's funny how with the first, you know exactly how many weeks and days you are, and for the second you're thinking, hmmmm, 17 or 18 weeks, maybe, whatever let's call it 4 months.

in any event, i'm feeling big, and the recent heat spike isn't doing much for my energy level. i'm having a hard time doing more than lying in bed. i need to pick up some maternity tshirts, which is annoying in a way because i know i'm not going to use 'em again after the next 5 months. hooray for cheapo foreign-made clothes, i guess.

haven't been into getting the nursery stuff yet. probably because we need to put the basement in order so i can move my office stuff down there, clearing out the back upstairs bedroom for the baby. actually the only thing i've seen while out that i wanted to snap up immediately for the nursery were paintings that were only display at a yarn shop. but they're very pink, and although i'm about 90% sure i'm having a girl i kinda think i should wait until ultrasound #2 happens before plunking down a couple of hundred on paintings.

algie's simply good, simply awfully good, at al-l-l-lgebra, at al-l-l-lgebra

sometimes songs get stuck in my head.

today's mix has been malcolm mclaren & the bootzilla orchestra's 'something's jumping in your shirt', seguing into 'algernon's simply awfully good at algebra'. both from the 1989 album 'waltz darling', which mixed house and, yes, full orchestra waltz.

and since i was in the basement, the b52s' 'legal tender' was running through my head as well. stocked it full of jelly jars, and heavy! equipment! we're in the basement.... learnin' to print....

so in playing 'guess what's stuck in my head' with a friend, i gave him the clue "cult adult pop". fits, eh?

congrats!

congratulations to my friend tony, who has just been hitched!

(actually, tony and eric have been married longer than boodad and i have. and finn & charlie are NOT tony & eric.)

bead show = danger

yesterday i went to a bead & gem show at the oregon convention center. four hundred dollars later, i walked out with oodles of stuff. and yes, most at better prices than i could find elsewhere or more interesting that i can usually find. but now i'd better get cracking on making more pieces to justify this....

saabalicious

husband's car is finally here. it's saabalicious. (really, GM, drop the 'born from jets' marketing and hire me. i've already given you 'saab luust' and 'saabalicious'.)

i measured my belly yesterday, and it's already 7" bigger than prepregnancy. woah.

another dream, another post

last night's dream was that after driving my husband to work (yep, we still don't have the saab, maybe tonight??), i somehow goofed off and didn't come home until 8:30 pm. this freaked out my husband, of course, but also my kid and my cousin who is visiting from connecticut and who has an interview and tour at reed college this afternoon. oops.

surfaced a little, went back to sleep, and then dreamed that husband and i went for lunch in a pub. he wanted a beer (it was brewed by amazon.com?!) but couldn't get the bartender's attention. i went up to the bartender, asked for the beer, and he told me they were out of it but would be getting more in a few hours if we wanted to wait. i said no, and could i try the copper ale instead. the bartender thought the best way to deliver a sample was to dribble it from the tap onto his finger and have me suck his finger.... eeugh.

insomnia might be better.

like i needed a dream to tell me this

last night i had a dream in which i went to a friend's house. she was a journalist and had lost her mother in 9/11. (this is an imaginary person.) for some reason she had a copy of ann coulter's book 'godless' was getting all in a twist about it. i picked it up, flipped through it, and found the following passage:

'my editors encourage me to conflate fiction and fact, and to do so at my own discretion to drive home truths...'

there were little bits surrounding it that basically said, she's a deliberate liar.

now, i'm not going to touch that woman's book with the proverbial 10-foot barge pole, so this is not an actual quote.

like i needed a dream to tell me this, anyway.

you know this makes me happy

new ryuichi sakamoto album!

bricolages is actually a remix album, with tracks taken from last year's wonderful 'chasm' album and remixed by cornelius, alva noto, fennesz, taylor deupree, steve jansen and others. i was kinda surprised by this, as there's no mention of the project on his website (http://www.sitesakamoto.com) and i only learned of it through a music store ad in the local weekly alt paper.

it's interesting to hear the interpretations, even if in some parts they seem to go completely against the music/lyric cooperation of meaning that was present in the originals.

bumper sticker idea

inspired by being pissed off at the "marriage = 1 (man symbol) + 1 (woman symbol) stickers, which thankfully i pretty much only encounter in the suburbs here in portland.

how about:

marriage = 1 (heart) + 1 (heart)

um..... anybody reading this any good at graphics?

boo song

"i don't like it,
i don't like it,
it's for grownups,
it's not for kids."

song inspired by PBS changing from kids' to adult programming.
who said tv can't inspire creativity?

sad

on the phone with my mother this afternoon, she said she had something to read to me from the local paper.

it was the obituary for someone i went to school with. in fact, i went on my first-ever date with him. (not a big chapter in my romantic life, but you tend to remember that first date.) i lost track of keith after high school; i knew he and his brother headed out to san francisco for a while. i knew he had returned to the hometown area when a bizarre story cropped up in the paper - his wallet had been stolen; he hadn't reported it because it was apparently during a drug purchase. the thief committed a major burglary and since he had been using keith's identity, the real keith wound up in jail. he later returned home. i tried looking him up a few times on trips home but never found him.

the obit mentioned a life partner/caregiver. one assumes AIDS in this case. i'm glad he wasn't alone. i feel sorry for his partner. the obit was written with a lot of tenderness and love, and mentions lots of family support. i'm glad the local catholic church isn't shutting their doors to his family for the funeral service.

after getting this news, we went out to run errands this evening and wound up in a food court. i watched a pair of men there; both probably the same age, one was noticeably thin and frail and in a wheelchair, the other gently assisting. they were watching the ice skaters in the center court. it was while seeing them that i began to feel the small good things in keith's situation: he wasn't alone, he had support, he was loved. things diseases can't steal.