Post Traumatic Paint Disorder and Other Things...

I think I'm sleepier this morning than yesterday, if that's possible. I blame it on the fact that I actually had a semi-relaxing evening last night. I refused to go to my house and work just because I knew if I did, it would not be a fun experience.

The sad thing is even when I don't go to the house, I can't seem to stop thinking about it. I dreamed about painting last night. That was not terribly relaxing. Yesterday, I went on a walk at lunch with some coworkers and we happened to pass by a man who was carrying a paint tray and roller. I felt a cold shudder run up and down my spine. I think I might be suffering from a little Post Traumatic Paint Disorder.

Still, here I am, somewhat alert and ready to start my day. Well...ok, so I'm ready to start the day. I'm hoping the alert part will come later.

It's funny how easy it is to follow a morning routine without being really alert. From the moment I stumble out of bed, shutting off the annoying morning radio show since it did it's job and woke me up, I'm usually in a bit of a stupor. Then I turn on the morning news on the TV and start the process of getting ready. I've started to like the news in the mornings; its good company. Today there were no bears in the news. I was quite sad about that. Lately, it seems like there's always a black bear somewhere or other, stumbling into someone's back yard. I like bear stories. Yesterday, the news was featuring a local beef jerky manufacturer. Well, actually, it wasn't the news as much as the weatherman. He was doing an on-site visit of a local beef jerky company that's been rated one of the best in the U.S. I was quite happy for the weatherman since, lately, he's been wrong about the weather almost every day. At least there's not too much he can screw up by talking to someone about beef jerky. On the plus side, they didn't show us how the beef jerky came to be but just showed us the finished result. That was a relief. It's one thing to enjoy the taste of something; it's another thing to actually see the nasty process of how it comes to be. I prefer ignorance with some of my food. That way I can still love a good hot dog, enjoy bacon with my breakfast and eat at KFC.

Still, it was nice to see the weatherman out and about yesterday. He really is a terrible meteorologist. He was the one that promised a nice, sunny, hot and humid 4th of July only two days before the actual day. Then we had a cool, wet and dreary 4th of July. I find it hard to believe that with the amazing live Doppler 10 Thousand or whatever we're up to now, it's so hard to predict the weather two days ahead of time. However, this is why weatherman is the...the weatherman and I am Captain Monkeypants. Maybe it's like one of those mystery novels; weatherman deliberately misleads us so that we keep tuning in to guess whether he'll be right today.

Probably not though. As always, I find my best option is to stick my head out the window and see what the weather's doing. I keep an umbrella in the car. I keep sunglasses in my car. I have a snow shovel, just in case, in the boot of my car. So....I think I'm covered. Though I'm not counting on using the snow shovel for a few months. As much as I love snow, there's a season for that and it is not now.

Clearly, I'm feeling rambly today. I didn't really have a topic in mind when I sat down to write this. Life is a little busy at the moment. I mostly like it that way. I do miss the leisure of sitting down, tapping away at my computer and being able to write whatever I feel like. I have my "office" picked out in my house; I'm planning on furnishing it with a lot of books and my computer and that's it. It'll be my hideaway and hopefully that will push me forward in my writing. I've been at a standstill too long. I've blamed Amazon.com and I've blamed Publisher's Weekly. To some extent, I still blame them but there comes a point when you have to move on. Although I'm sure both Borders and Barnes and Noble are quite happy with my Amazon.com grudge. I've made a firm point of doing all my bookbuying from those two stores. Given my latest obsession with the Sookie Stackhouse novels, I'd say they've both done rather well. It's my private way of sticking my tongue out at Amazon.com. I hold no illusions that they care but it satisfies me to have to work a little harder to shop rather than relying on the old standby of Amazon. Hey, Barnes and Noble offer free shipping too so there, Amazon.com.

Ok, now I'm really babbling. Which means it's time for me to wrap this up for the day. Sometimes it's nice just to write whatever's on my mind. Thanks, as always, for bearing with me and reading.

Happy Tuesday.

The Saga of the Cranberry Paint...

It's back to work after a long weekend today. These are some of the worst days to have to get up and go into the office. Mondays themselves are bad enough but after a three-day weekend they're worst. They loom like an unwelcome guest, their arrival inevitable and when the alarm goes off to wake us from sleep, we experience a moment of loathing, of hating that the weekend is over.

Of course, I say that after having one of those weekends that didn't really feel like a weekend. I had three days off but ask if I had fun and I'd have to answer with an honest, "not really."

You see, I painted my living room this weekend. I've mentioned in prior blogs that I wanted to do that before I moved in. I had my colours picked out: Cranberry and sage. I liked the samples, I knew I'd like the colour.

I still like the colour which, given the ordeal it put me through, is an amazing fact.

You see...I've never painted a room before. I've been either a parent's-house dweller or an apartment dweller my whole life. Painting wasn't really an option. So I was overjoyed to realize that now I own a house, I could paint it. I knew there'd be a learning curve, a series of trials and errors that are inevitable with each new experience. And, oh yes, believe me, there was a learning curve.

Last weekend, I happily went to Lowe's to obtain my cans of paint. I bought a can of "Cranberry" and a can of "Meadow" which is a pretty sage-green. My paint-mixer was a young man who expertly hit the right buttons to mix my paint and seemed to know what he was doing. So I asked him, "Do I need primer for the cranberry?" He looked at it and squinted and said, "No. It's our signature brand paint. It's one-coat coverage." I double-checked, he assured me it was one-coat coverage.

Let me tell you...it is NOT one-coat coverage. As soon as I finished my masking and prepping and started to roll that paint onto the wall, I realized I was going to have a problem. In my inexperience, I wondered if I just needed to wait for the paint to dry and it would work its one-coat coverage magic. Nope. Coat after coat and it finally began looking like a cranberry. It took three cans of paint to give me an almost-covered room. I could still use another coat but for almost $30 a can, I've overstretched my budget considerably. Ironically, when I was buying my third gallon of paint, another man waited on me and when he handed me my cranberry paint, he said, "has anyone talked to you about this Cranberry?"

"Why, no," I said, through gritted teeth.

"Well," he said. "You're gonna need a primer. Most reds do."

I glared at him which made me feel a little bad because he was being nice. "That would have been helpful to know YESTERDAY," I said, politely. "This is my third can."

He looked a little pitying after that which made me feel less bad about glaring.

I did get my room painted. I realized I'm not adept at detail work and while the green goes nicely with the cranberry, I didn't do so well at making the edges of the room trim look that tidy. At this point in time, I don't really care. I had planned on doing two rooms in three days. I barely got one room done. I worked from about 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. It was not the most relaxing of weekends but it was productive.

In the end, I have a mostly-Cranberry room. As a messy Monkeypants, I managed to get rather a lot of paint on me. I painted barefoot so as not to mess up my shoes. This meant each day, I had rainbow feet and had to go home and scrub them off in the bathtub to return them to their non-painty state of being. There's nothing better than relaxing in the bath after a hard day of painting with a beer and a Sookie Stackhouse novel.

Of course, also as I am a messy Monkeypants, I made a bit of a splattered mess on the ceiling tooeven with my masking tape efforts. So I ended up painting the ceiling too. I worked hard on that, edging it properly and using an awful lot of muscle rolling above my head. I covered every surface but when I left the house yesterday to return to the blessedly unpainted walls of my apartment, I noticed it was looking a little patchy. I'm not going to pay any attention to that. I will say that to Lowes and your "Signature" paint by Valspar, it is not one-coat coverage in most cases and you probably should note that on your cans. After all, I used basic off-white ceiling paint and I made absolute sure I didn't miss a spot. Yet...somehow....it's still looking like I did miss spots. However, I do like how the good parts of the ceiling look with the cranberry and sage paint. So at least I'm mostly happy with the final result.

The irksome thing is that when people ask how the painting went and I tell them the Saga of the Cranberry Paint, the majority of people are very much, "Oh, you didn't know? You ALWAYS need primer for red paints." Um, yes...thank you, that's very helpful. Even when I asked some of the same people point-blank if they could offer tips and I told them my colour was cranberry, none of them piped up and said, "You'll definitely need primer." Why is it that people are only experts after the fact? It's like when you date someone and you have a nice time and then he dumps you because he's getting back with an ex-girlfriend. Everyone says, "Oh, you didn't know that he and Ms. X were almost engaged before?" or "Well, he only broke up with X a month ago." Naturally, he never told me and neither did they until after it's all over and you're left standing in the rubble feeling rather stupid and naive.

That's the part I hate: The feeling dumb. I know that, truthfully, I'm not dumb, I just didn't know. But as with everything, in hindsight, you realize you should have known better. I should have realized with my cranberry paint that I'd had to use a lot of paint when I did the edges of the room. Yet I was using a paintbrush; it's different from a roller.

I'm not holding anyone responsible for my snafu. The only person I'll hold responsible is me for not researching more deeply. I should have realized. However, I learned and future painting projects will be done a little more carefully. I have a colour called "Mulling Spices" for my bedroom. I don't think there's any red in it but you better believe I'm going to test out that colour first before I go nuts and try and paint the entire room.

Still, as I've said before and will say again, each day as a first-time homeowner is a new experience. I've now painted a room and can safely say that there are things I would do differently next time I paint. And since I have a whole can of "Mulling Spices" paint ready to go, that time is going to come sooner than later. I just hope that it's truly one-coat coverage. Hey, what can I say...I'm mostly an optimist. But I have a can of primer on hand...just in case.

Happy Monday.

An Economy in Winter...

Even though it's Friday, it's technically the weekend. It's nice to have that bonus day. I slept in this morning and reveled in that fact. Of course, my idea of sleeping in is to just not have to get up for an alarm. Try as I might, rarely can I sleep past 8:30 a.m. anymore. I really don't mind that fact any more. I like to go to bed a little earlier and get up a little earlier. That's the way my body clock works and there's no point in fighting it.

I think it's a marvellous thing we have weekends. While I was being lazy in bed this morning and ignoring the million things I should do if I got up, I wondered what life would be like without weekends. We're a spoiled bunch if you compare us to the workers of yore. Back a few centuries, people used to get Sundays off as it was the Sabbath. That was it. They started earlier, worked later and didn't get time for much frivolity. One of the most depressing books I've ever read, Jude the Obscure, details working life during Thomas Hardy's period and, let me tell you, it was not fun times back then. Poor Jude always fancied himself an academic and dreams of going to University. When he finally does, naturally, being a Thomas Hardy book, it goes wrong and Jude ends up married with a lot of children, poor and miserable.

What I like about that book is it puts you into that time period; the first half of the book is Jude's early life in which he is manipulated into marrying a local girl and you get a feel for his working life. A stonemason, Jude's life is hard, exhausting and not the life he dreamed of as a young man. Reading the book, the simplicity of the hard lower-class life Jude inhabits, you can see how hard it must be. Daylight hours are spent working to provide a way to feed your wife and inevitable child.

It sounds weird but on weekends where I'm allowed to be a little lazy and not follow a schedule, I often think of Jude and his hard working life. I complain about my job but I have nothing to really complain about. I have a job; it's a white-collar one. My hands don't get chapped and blistered from manual labour. The worst that happens is I have carpal tunnel from working on computers and our office is always way too cold because we have to crank the air conditioning up to keep our computer servers cool.

I'm spoiled in more than one sense of the word. As I've mentioned before, I'm truly lucky to have a steady job. Each day that I watch the news, more and more factories and businesses are closing their doors and with the shutdown comes an enormous loss of jobs. It's already affected my family; my brother and brother-in-law have both been laid off. It's tough times. I hold out hope that this is just the darkness before the light comes trickling back in. I read someone's criticism of President Obama on Facebook yesterday. They want to know why his efforts to stimulate the economy aren't working. I say let the man be. It took eight years of George W. Bush in office to bring the economy down to the pits in which he left it. Obama's been in office less than eight months. Give him a chance.

That's the problem, I think. We're impatient. As a civilization, we have moved away from the slow and plodding times in which Jude the Obscure lived. Those were days in which horses pulled carts and ploughed fields, in which people went to bed when it got dark because there was nothing else to do. They were slower times. These days, we get frustrated if we don't get our instant gratification. Online shopping has become popular because there's no waiting in lines, no waiting for that annoying lady who decides to write a check in front of you and then can't find her driver's license to prove her identity. These are days when we scoff at people like her because who uses checks anymore? We connect to the internet like lightning, we cook our food in the microwave because it's quick: Who cares if it's soggy and doesn't taste that nice? It's nourishment and it's quick and yes, we forget that it's still hot and try to eat it before it's cooled down enough to put in our mouths and inevitably, we burn our mouths. We drive fast, the speed limits slowly increasing on the roads over time to accomodate the increasing speed of life.

So why, when we expect speed and instant gratification in everything else, should we expect to have to wait for President Obama to fix everything? I mean, shouldn't he be able to work magic? We elected him to fix things, to make the U.S. a better place. What's he doing? Twiddling his thumbs?

Yes, I'm being fascicious. When I read that comment on Facebook yesterday, I was irritated. I wouldn't want to be the President of the United States for anything in the world. No matter how popular you are when you're elected, unless you make everyone happy, that won't last. We tend to forget that sometimes, we have to take time to do things, we're still humans, after all. We can't yet teleport nor can we control the world by the touch of a button. For that matter, I'm glad about the button-thing. Though teleportation would be nice.

I think the economy is terrible now. It saddens me to drive by stores, factories and restaurants that were once busy and teeming with life fading in the sun, their windows taped over, the signs identifying them removed or sitting their sadly in the grey light of day. Yet I know it'll take time for things to move towards an upswing, to start to improve slowly. In a way, it's like we're in a Winter Phase of the Economy. The bright, sunny days of success and extravagence we had in earlier years have faded away like summer and now we're caught in the barren, yellow-and-grey frozen stage of winter.

Yet, for every Winter there is a Spring to follow. I firmly believe that. I'd like to think that Spring will come sooner than later but, as it was back in Jude the Obscure's Day, when there was no Weather Channel or local news to tell him whether it was going to warm up, I'd like to think it's just a question of waiting for the storms to pass. It may take months, it may take years but eventually Spring will come and our economy will improve.

So, on days like this when I get to be lazy in bed, knowing that it's a long weekend, I take pleasure in that fact. I take pleasure in the fact that even though the world outside my apartment is one of a winter-economy-landscape, we at least don't have the long, dark life of Jude the Obscure. It's all about looking at the small pleasures in life. Sometimes that's all you can do.

Happy Friday (and Independence Day, to all my U.S. readers).

Potluck Day in the Office...

It's the day before a holiday today and we're having a potluck for lunch. Over the years, I have learned to embrace the potluck. This may sound like an easy thing to do but as a former picky eater and a person who is apprehensive about 'eating other people's food,' I had a bit of a worry about potlucks.

I know. I sound rude when I say that I didn't like to eat 'other people's food.' . I'm talking about those random coworkers/people who you don't know who bring in dishes to potlucks that, well, frankly look...a little scary. I'm also talking about people I do know whose kitchens I have seen and have been scared to enter. For example, I knew a woman who loved to bake. She also loved her cats. She would keep the litter box in the kitchen. She only cleaned it once a week so, inevitably the kitchen smelled very bad. I did attempt to eat her baked goods since she was a friend and, sadly, I got a mouthful of cat hair as did several of my other friends. Needless to say, I learned my lesson.

There was also another former coworker of mine whose food I learned to avoid. She was one of the people who just attracted disaster, no matter what it was. She would drop things on the floor and quickly shovel it back into the bowl. I saw her doing this once. I also heard stories about a time before I began to work with her in which she brought turkey for a Thanksgiving themed potluck. She apparently dropped the turkey onto her lap where it rolled down her substantial thighs and then proceeded to scoop it up and serve it.

So, you see, my fears about other people's food aren't too unfounded. As I said, if I know the person, I know they're sanitary and hygenic, I will at least attempt to try their offering unless I find that it is something I simply don't like. Potato salad, for example. I just can't get behind cold potatoes with mayonnaise or mustard. I also don't like those mixed together things like seven-layer dip. I tend to like my food...simple, no mixing.

Still, as I said, over the years, I have become more open-minded. I try new things now as long as I can identify all of the ingredients in them or at least the visible ones. That way, I'm not taken surprise when I bite into a plate of coleslaw and find that someone's secret ingredient is raisins. I love raisins. I enjoy coleslaw, as long as it's not sweet. I just don't like raisins in my coleslaw though, ironically, in my first home economics class in England, we made coleslaw...with raisins.

The one thing I enjoy about potlucks is that it's a good way to enjoy home made cuisine with a regional flair. For example, the potlucks I had in L.A. were always heavy on the salads along with Mexican-type dishes and fancy desserts. Somoene would always bring in El Pollo Loco chicken, a California/Western U.S. restaurant which specializes in juicy seasoned grilled chicken. It was a diverse group of people and they brought a diverse offering of foods.

In the Midwest, potlucks are quite different. They're much more 'homemade'. I used to shy away from some of the dishes such as smoky links in barbecue sauce, simmered in the crockpot. Then I tried them and, unhealthy as they are, they're horribly tasty. The same goes for the buffalo chicken dip someone always brings. Someone always brings chili in, also but as a non-chili lover, I usually shy away from those. Crockpots are a much bigger deal in the Midwest and when we have an office potluck, there's usually a fight to try to find an outlet into which the crockpot must be plugged. The food is...heavier. I hate to support a stereotype but in my experience, the Midwest, at least this corner with its Germanic influence, likes their food hearty, tasty and nurturing. People are getting better, using turkey instead of beef, using low-fat ingredients but the truth is...that just doesn't taste the same. In L.A. there was always some healthy person who made sure that there was healthy options.

I'm not complaining though. There's no better way to get a feel for an area of the country than to go to a potluck. For example, while I tried cerviche for the first time at an L.A. potluck, here in Ohio, I tried strawberry pretzel cake which sounds revolting but actually tastes quite nice. I was shocked, to be honest. In my mind, strawberries and pretzels don't go together but...they did. Yes...I found that weird too.

Normally, for potlucks, I like to bring in something I know will taste good to others. Sausage rolls are a popular option; they're relatively easy to make and everyone likes them. Today's is supposed to be Independence Day-y, sort of a summer celebration. Someone's bringing hotdogs, someone else pasta salad....everything falls neatly into the summer picnic category.

For me, since I'm in the process of moving and my apartment is sort of in an upheaval, I asked the potluck coordinator what to bring. With a look of glee, the coordinator told me to bring in...Smoky sausages in barbecue sauce in the crockpot.

How Midwestern for me.

Happy Thursday.

From a Wendy House to a Real House...

It's a short week at work for many people this week, me included. I can't tell you how happy this makes me. I could use a long weekend. I need time to get things done and get organized. I keep waking up in a cold sweat, thinking of new things I have to do or have to get for the house.

I think I'm taking it all a little seriously and it's time to step back and realize that I'm never going to get the house perfect before I move in so I should just do what I can and shut up about it.

The sad thing is, aside from the house, there's not a whole lot going on this week. I'm not complaining. After last week's conference, it's nice that things are quiet. It's July the 4th this weekend. As a Brit, it's hard to get terribly excited about that. It makes me feel a little guilty because I've enjoyed the hospitality of living in the States for a long time now. However, there's still a tiny bit of me saying, "whatever!" This is not to say I don't enjoy fireworks, hot dogs, and corn on the cob which is pretty much July the 4th to me. Well, it's also in my mind as a holiday in which cakes are baked and are decorated by the U.S. flag made out of berries. Seriously, check out any Independence Day-themed baking/cooking/home magazine. Someone always has one of those cakes and how to make it in there.

Aside from cakes, fireworks and food, the holiday is just a nice day off, I think. It's a time to spend with family being lazy and doing the most summer-y things like swimming, playing baseball and camping. It's actually usually the time in which I would fly home from L.A. every year and spend a week with my family. It was often the first time I'd been home since Christmas and it was always hard to wrap my mind around seeing my parent's house and garden resplendent in summer flowers and trees instead of being barren and snow-covered as it had been when I'd left a few months before.

This year, I'm not going to be spending it with my family. I find that ironic that the first year I'm actually close enough to drive there, I'm not going to go. This is not to say I don't want to but it's just going to be the perfect time to paint my living room, get a lawnmower and do summer-y things around my house. I had a bit of a minor panic-attack yesterday when I realized that I only have two weekends before my furniture is to be moved in which also means I'll be moving in. That's not much time when you want it to look decent by the time things arrive.

I hate having those stress-attacks. They usually result in me calling my mother and taking it out on her. I did that last night and I feel horrible. I'm just so muddled about what I have to do and what I should be doing. Fortunately, upon my realization that it wasn't that bad, I managed to get hold of my stress. I think it came upon the fact that I went to make rice for dinner, only to realize that I had taken my rice tub to my new house and thus couldn't have rice. I realized then that my over-avid packing/transporting of boxes was under control. Probably too under control.

The bottom line is that I knew it was going to be a lot of work to move to my house, I just didn't realize quite how much work the place needed. Fortunately, I have two rooms that I don't need to paint and those rooms can store my boxes for now. I don't have to be unpacked before I officially move in. I have time for that.

I just hate getting overwhelmed but the older I get, the more that seems to be happening. I should be finding things easier, not harder. I suppose it's because I'm well and truly an adult now and the decisions I make are decisions for life. I hate being a grown-up at times like this. Part of me wants to revert back to being a child in which I had the luxury of picking-and-choosing what I did and relying on my parents to fill in the gaps that my choices left. Nowadays, I can't do that and occasionally I forget. Yet, ever onward I move forward and if it means my living room doesn't get painted immediately, so be it. I'm declaring this an Independence Day from stress and I'm going to attempt to not let the burden of being a homeowner overshadow the fact that I own a house and that's a cool thing.

When we were children in England, our classrooms would often have what we called Wendy Houses in the play corner. They were little tents or structures in which we would play house, pretending to cook dinner and doing all sorts of domestic stuff. Primarily the girls played there but occasionally boys would come in and try out the feel for domesticity. I think we all just assumed that one day, we'd have a house of our own and we wanted to practice.

Now, that experience seems quaint but hopeful. To look it at from that point of view means my dream came true. I have a house, not just a Wendy house. So that's the view I'm going to take and let the excitement seep in and not be drowned out by reality-tinted dread.

Of course, in true Monkeypants fashion, I truly used to like to spend my Wendy house time pretending the house was haunted and pretending it was a castle surrounded by a crocodile-filled moat rather than pretend to be making dinner. Now I look back, I realize I probably should have focused more on the domesticity element.

Oh well, at least there aren't any crocodiles at my house.

I hope.

Happy Wednesday.

Death to Mosquitoes!

I haven't blogged about writing in a while. I haven't really had time to write and I hate that. What with the conference last week and now moving into a new house, there's been little time to just shut myself away with my computer and let the ideas flow.

The ideas are still flowing but I just haven't had time to sit down. I'm hoping that by the end of July when I'm ensconced in my house, I'll find time to do some writing. The wonderful thing that I'm realizing with each box I carry that this is my house. I never have to move again unless I really want to. This is a permanent place; no more will I have to worry about rent increases or noisy sex above me.

At least I hope not, as far as the noisy sex goes. Considering my house is a one-level ranch style with only a crawl space in the ceiling to get to the heating ducts, I'd be really worried if I heard sex sounds coming from up there.

Then again, that might give me some mighty good fodder for my imagination when I do get time to write again.

I'm starting to hate that the house is always on my mind. I dreamed about it last night. That's how I know I'm stressed; when I can't escape, even into the land of dreams. I dreamed that I was trying to mask up the living room to paint but people kept moving furniture and wall fixtures in when I wasn't looking so I no longer knew how I was going to get started or what I was supposed to do.

In actually, I think I finished masking last night. I had to do some re-masking. I bought two types of tape, one two inch thick pack from Big Lots and a pack of standard inch-thick masking tape from Lowes All of my Big Lots tape decided to come unstuck overnight so I had to reseal it yesterday. It was rather frustrating. I'm hoping the Lowes tape holds because aside from laying down my drop cloths, I'm ready to start painting.

The thing about things like painting is, for me, I find them relaxing. The actual work itself isn't relaxing but once I get going on a project like that, it's like my mind just opens up and lets me think of whatever I like. It's sort of a free-flow time as far as my thought processes go. If I'm alone, I usually do my best thinking when my body is occupied in the manual labour. It's why I like landscaping. I love being able to shut down and just focus on the task because, by doing so, it lets me relax into whatever thoughts I like. It's a good time for problem-solving, for coming to terms with things.

Of course, I say this before I start painting. In my mind, it goes smoothly. In reality, I'm a messy little monkeypants and I think I might have to contend with drips and messes rather a lot.

I'm actually not going to the house tonight though. I'm going to spend some time organizing the next load of things I want to take from my apartment. The moving is a slow process but it's steady.

In some ways, I wish I could fast-forward so that the moving/painting/preparation is done. Yet if I did that, I'd miss out on many things. July is a month of birthdays, of weddings, of a trip to Comic-con. It's a busy month for sure but I think it's going to be a fun month. At the very least, it'll be a productive month.

I feel bad that all I'm blogging about is my new house at the moment. I'm going to try to taper off about it so that I don't become a one-note blogger. It's just all so new at the moment and every day reveals something new. Usually it's a spider. I try to rescue them and put them out the back door in lieu of killing them. I've only had one slight-casualty: Bert. I name each spider. So far I've had Bert, Sid and Fred. Bert accidentally lost a leg as I tried to trap him in a container to carry him out. He managed to crawl away though so I have to assume that though he's now a seven-legged spider, he'll be ok. I'm not a big fan of spiders but as I always say, it's not their fault they were born a little creepy and I think they have a bad reputation. This is not to say that they don't make my pulse race a little and occasionally make me squeal but I still try to respect them. Or at least not kill them.

There are other creepy crawlies in my house. I've met a couple of crickets and a mosquito. The mosquito died. I do not regret to inform you of this. I am anti-mosquito. Mosquitos must die. I know they, too, have a purpose in life but given that they attack me in droves whenever I step outside, I'm only repaying the favour. They're out for blood and so am I.

That's the only part of the Midwest of which I am not excited to re-experience. We have mosquitoes in California but not too many; it's too dry. Not so here in the Midwest. They thrive here on the humidity. They also thrive on me. I can be out with someone who might get a couple of bites that are piddly little things. Me, I'll be bitten about eight times and they will swell up into these horrible itchy welts of heat. I hate mosquitoes. I can't figure out what their purpose is in life. I'm sure they have one in the mosquito/insect world. Maybe that's why I like to save the lives of spiders too: They trap and kill mosquitoes for dinner and I salute that.

Still, mosquitoes, spiders or crickets, they're invading my turf and I think I have the right to prosecute them as I see fit. It is my house. I can kick them out/kill them. I never felt quite right doing that in an apartment because though I live there, it's not mine. Actually, I always wondered about that: If a vampire shows up to my apartment, could I invite him in? I mean, yes it's my home but it's not my building. Doesn't the owner have to do the inviting? That's always been fuzzy in my mind. Of course, I do realize that vampires don't exist and they're not going to really show up at my door. It doesn't mean I can't wonder. Spiders just don't have the same allure and, besides, they come in, invited or not.

Just something to ponder, I suppose.

Happy Tuesday.

Monday Musings: Tetanus Shots, Houses and the King of Pop

I don't care if I blogged yesterday. I'm blogging today as well. I want to get back to my regularly scheduled blogs, even if no one is clamouring to read them. I haven't been able to write for a while and if blogging is the only way to fulfill that need in me then so be it.

It's strange to be back in the office today. We were out for the entire week last week. It's almost like that strange week that follows Christmas: You know that the big event has happened and it's a little bit of a letdown at the same time as a bit of a relief.

At the moment, as much as I need that ever-important paycheck, part of me is annoyed that work is interfering with my new house. I want to be down there, finishing up the masking so I can get started on the painting. I want to be taking another load of boxes so I can see that slowly, but surely, I am actually moving.

That'll have to wait until tonight or tomorrow. I haven't decided if I'm going to drive down tonight or wait until tomorrow evening. I think it just depends on how I feel. I managed to have a nice "welcome to your home" event on Saturday night. Even though I had vacuumed the carpet in my family room a couple of times and shampooed the carpet, I managed to find a sewing needle. With my foot. I was barefoot. I figured the triple hoovering plus carpet shampoo would have unmasked all the hidden dangers and rather than risk getting my clean carpet dirty with my shoes, I'd take them off.

Bad idea. The needle broke off into my foot. It hurt. As much as I try to avoid doctors unless absolutely necessary, the inability to find the needle on my own led to a trip to Urgent Care, a tetanus shot, a course of antibiotics and a rather painful digging out of the needle. Still, it's out. It was a rusty needle, of course, because if you're going to step on a needle in your new house, it's best to make it as dramatic as possible.

I'm very grateful that it went into my heel; it means I can still hobble around. It doesn't actually hurt much unless I try to walk on it. Fortunately, it didn't inhibit my work on my house yesterday. It's hard to keep a determined Monkeypants down.

I think I'm experiencing House Obsession. This means all I can think about is the house. I keep thinking of things I need to do, things I need. Sadly, most of it will have to be purchased in phases since my cute little salary doesn't allow for too many extraneous purchases. Not that I'm complaining. I have a cute little salary. That's definitely something to be grateful for in this economy.

Still, I have to work today so the house will have to be filed away in my mind until I'm ready to pull it back out and afford the time to think about it. It's been a week since I was in the office and what a long, strange week it's been. I'm not even talking about the conference although having seen some of my coworkers in photos, dancing in a cage on the night I missed was a little strange.

I'm talking about the week in which we lost Michael Jackson. I don't think there's a person in my generation who doesn't have some connection with the King of Pop. For me, it was my childhood years. I had a very enthusiastic P.E. teacher who had a thing for dancing. Every school play we did in my junior school years in England had some element of dancing in it. It never really fit but it was there. My year, we were doing "Harlequinade," which was an adaptation of the classic Commedia dell'arte piece. There were ghosts in the play. I think they were supposed to be the classic "boo!" type ghosts but not in my year. Nope, our P.E. teacher took it upon himself to choreagraph a dance to Michael Jackson's, "Thriller," and teach it to us. Because I could actually sort of move to the beat- this was prior to my chair-boogie flail-dancing years- I was chosen as a ghost. We didn't do The Actual Thriller Dance. No, we did a sort of stiff British School Children version in which we tried to do parts of the Actual Thriller Dance but given that we were nine, it wasn't exactly what you'd call....coordinated.

Yet, every time I hear "Thriller," I think of that play. I also think of my neighbour across the street, a year older than me, a year younger than my brother and a friend to us both. He was a big Michael Jackson fan, even having the gloves and jacket. He swore that when he grew up, he'd be Michael Jackson's friend. He had the singles on the day they came out. He knew the words to every song. I haven't seen him in many years and I won't lie and say I don't wonder about him and his little brother from time to time. When you grow up on a suburban street full of kids and you play with them almost every day, they leave an impression.

I think Michael Jackson left a big impression on us all. If we forget the weirdness of his most recent years, what's left standing is a man who could make music that gave us memories. I hear "Bad," and I think of a summer in which my dad blasted the album while we played volleyball and badminton on our garden set after eating barbecued steaks. There are artists that make noise and there are artists that make music. Regardless of his personal choices, no one can deny that Michael Jackson was not a true icon, the Elvis Presley of the children of the 1980's.

Last week was a strange week. This week is just starting. It's hard to tell what it has in store but I'm sure I'll let you know. Thanks, as always, for reading.

Happy Monday.