Park That Car, Drop that Phone, Sleep on the Floor, Dream About Me

This song wasn't around yet when I was 17. I really, really wish it had been. Because me at 17 was a solid mix of the hope and hurt and wish and despair and dreaming that this song embodies, and I really could have used a song that summed up everything I didn't have one recognizable, assignable emotion for.

At 17 I was pretty sure there was some sort of solid line delineating the youth from the adults, and that, though I didn't know quite where it was, or when I'd find it, I'd know with certainty when I crossed it.

I'm 32, coming up on 33 really, and I have to say, most days I'm still not sure I'm there. Sure, I have a job, I pay rent, most of the time I remember to deal with bills and garbage and laundry. But I am still every bit as filled with wonder and want and ache for something more that I was almost half my life ago. And while sometimes I fear it an unsettling harbinger of failure at this being a grown up thing, or at fulfilling my potential, whatever that may mean or be, it also gives me a profound sense of peace and calm.

Because I don't ever want my heart to stop hunting.




Note: I'm not in love with the video, but all the live footage was crusty.

Count Your Blessings

1) This is as close to a backyard as I have.

2) This is how I get there.

3) This is my reading nook.

4) This is how I feel when I've been there a while.

Mix Tape #4 - Lessons We Haven't Learned Yet

This mix has been ready to go for a while and should have been posted at the beginning of June, but, what can I say, I've been a busy girl.

It was born out of an On-The-Go playlist created on a Victoria Day road trip with a new, ahem, friend, but some songs were subbed in to replace tracks that have appeared in previous podcasts. It's peppier (read: less of a suicide soundtrack) that usual, but whatthefuck, it's summer. A girl can have fleeting moments of peppiness, without having to turn in her Cure card, can't she? There is a little Bob Dylan and Beth Orton to take it down a notch though. And speaking of Ms. Orton, yes, the title comes from Sweetest Decline. It's a song I go back to a lot, and that little lyric, (despite it's whiff of Oprah / Maya Angelou-ness), resonates a little too familiarly/often with me. I'd like to think that at 32 I'd have my head around the bad habits, behaviours and relationships that I should know better than to indulge in, but sometimes there is comfort in the familiarity of knowing how something is going to turn out, even if it is destined to not turn out well. It might not be good, but at least I know where it's heading.

Silly, I know, but while I'm pretty sure I'm heading into another of these future regrets, at least it's with a head shake, a grin, a self directed 'oh sweetie .... why are you getting yourself into this again? ' and a dose of curiosity about whether I know myself well enough to be right about the outcome.

1. June Evenings - Air France

2. Paper Planes - MIA

3. Before And Again - Akron/Family

4. Sweetest Decline - Beth Orton

5. Hysteric - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

6. Tunnelvision - Here We Go Magic

7. Furr - Blitzen Trapper

8. I Was A Landscape In Your Dream - Of Montreal

9. Kids - MGMT

10. The Wonder - Figurines

11. Modern Saints - The Von Bondies

12. Sex On Fire - Kings Of Leon

13. Marching Bands Of Manhattan - Death Cab for Cutie

14. Most Of The Time - Bob Dylan

15. There Is No Such Thing As Love - The Dears

16, Wish I Was Dead - Shout Out Louds

17. Bruises - Chairlift

18. All We Want, Baby, Is Everything - Handsome Furs

Cover image is being a douchbag and not linking to a downloadable, print-size ready file. However, you can get it here. The Photo was liberated here.

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I Wanna Be A Sedaris

It is no secret that two of my greatest pleasures are reading David Sedaris and watching Amy Sedaris. Though listening to David Sedaris read David Sedaris beats trying to read David Sedaris in David Sedaris' voice to myself. It's hard to replicate in my own head, and damn, if his voice isn't the wire edged ribbon adorning a gift wrapped box filled with kitten.

Amy though, Amy ... two words. Girl. Crush. I actually came to Strangers With Candy late, introduced to Amy and her fat suit through one of David's stories, and it's been a mental lesbo love affair ever since. She is a girly girl with a penchant for shoes and vintage dresses, has an impressively filthy mind and shares my passion for all things domestic. She is also BFFs with Todd Oldham, which pretty much makes me want to go all Single White Female on her. I bet her fake boyfriend Ricky was a looker too, though he's A) fake and B) supposedly been murdered, so it's a selling point I can't prove.

Anywhooo... this is probably my favorite Amy Sedaris moment ever. They should show this to high school girls. Because vaginal cleansing is very important. And sometimes we all need a good demo one how one tugs back the hood.

Pretty Pretty

I think calla lilies have over taken white tulips as my official happy flower.

Simple. Elegant. Classy. They're like the anti-me.

Slacker

I'm a little horrified that it's been almost a month since my last post. While I've been slacking on the blogging front it's because I've been anything but in the rest-of-life front. I just wrapped a redonkulously busy sixish weeks and damn, am I happy to have a little down time. And by a little down time I mean I have a couple of free hours one night this week because I friend I was going to help with some stuff didn't return my call, relegating him to the doghouse but freeing me up to fingerbabble.

So what's been keeping me so busy?

1) More school. This time a class called Painting: Creating a Surface. It was perfect for me because I am still a little scared of / very much suck at painting, but there was high-level collage-type business, which I'm all over.

2) A friend who works at the Art Gallery asked me to gussy up as the Queen of Hearts for their Mad Hatters Tea Party. We looked at borrowing costumes from a local theatre company, but damn, costumes meant to be viewed from a stage are not so good up close. And by not so good I mean bad puffy waisted gathering, and dammit, I wanted to be a purty queen. So I decided to make it. And I say goddamn, it looked good. I look dorky, but it looks good.

Tragically I don't have any detail shots, hopefully some will roll in. The only thing I didn't make was the hoop skirt giving it the width at the bottom. That was borrowed from the theatre. The skirt is the same embroidered taffeta as the top, which is lace trimmed at the neck and arms and has mad cute heart buttons. The bustle and apron are taffeta with little gold ribbon knots, and the apron is trimmed with black beading. It's sort of scootched up in the photos, should be pulled down more in front. The corset is a rather lovely silk brocade. It's three layers thick for added stability, and, because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get steel boning at Dressew, is boned with wide cable ties. That's right, I went hardware store Gigyver all over that shit! It worked really well, and saved a chunk of change.

The headpiece doesn't really show in those. The veil part shows a bit here, it's come of my face a bit though. Probably trying to escape. Unfortunately the photo makes me want to get a facelift.

The gloves and choker were total last minute additions, which I think lean a little towards Deadwood era madam, which, let's face it, is probably what this is going to morph into. Hallowe'en is so taken care of.

Hey, check it, Griffy agreed to model the hat! Totally adds to his Puss n' Boots appeal.

Anywhoo, that little sucker sat just over the top of the veil, which Griffy didn't model as veil + claw = sure disaster. It started it's life as a dollar store cookie cutter. See.... Gigyver!

So, that's a good deal of what's been tying me up. There's also that whole annoying job thing that both cuts in to and funds my ability to creatively dork out. Le sigh.

Oh, and yes I did use patterns, though they were modified pretty drastically. The bustle, apron and skirt are from Simplicity 2851, the corset and top are from Simplicty 9769, which for some reason isn't on the Simplicity website. The top is a chopped and de-volumed version of the nightgown thingy, and the corset has been modified to remove the busk and make a flat front.

So (or sew ... get it?), I haven't really been slacking. And I've been multitasking in GarageBand while writing this post, so the Podcast that should have been up weeks ago is almost ready.

Oh yeah, Mama's back.