Square Meets Circle September 27, 2008
Someone told me last night to make a web comic, so I set out to make an infrequently posted, pun-filled comic that purposely looks like I have but a loose grasp on the Creative Suite. Low-tech is fun-tech, right? Also the characters are shapes. Welcome to my brain. I apologize in advance.
WARNING September 23, 2008
This is my blog. I am not happy. I do not feel well. My blog reflects that.
I am not complaining at all on this blog. I am writing about how I feel. And real things that happen.
Which have not been good for me in quite a long time.
So if you don’t like it, I don’t want to hear about it. Go elsewhere. This is an outlet. This is a reflection. This is a recording. You can’t have a “wrong feeling.” Otherwise, what is the point of having any at all?
Thank you for your time.
-Unsubtlety Management
Another List September 23, 2008
Remember my list of things I’d rather do instead of work? No? You should look it up. It’s back a ways and right now I’m too tired to go find it for you.
Sorry.
So here are a list of things that require more creativity from me, in varying degrees, than my job:
Finding food that agrees with my stomach.
Deciding where to throw my walking clothes when I get back from walking… basket, hamper, or floor… gosh life is tough.
Picking my nose just right b/c something way up there is totally annoying me.
Speaking of walking and noses… deciding which pocket gets the clean tissue(s) and which gets the dirty. B/c I walk in the cold mornings I need them, but no one was to grab for the dirties.
Deciding what I’d say to my neighbor that stanks up my apartment if I run into her (current option: head down/ignore or empty “hi”-because-I-wrote-you-a-sincere-letter-and-you-don’t-care).
Choosing a granola-to-yogurt ratio.
Walking so my sandals don’t squeak.
Finding certain things in the new Facebook, then deciding I don’t care. And calm down people, it’s just Facebook. Gosh. Don’t freak out about a website. Also, if you freak out about a website, you have bigger problems, amigos.
How to do everyday things so they don’t hurt my ever-crippling hand.
Getting out of bed.
Putting full trash bags in my outside trash can so I don’t get slapped with that trash can smell.
Petting a cranky barn cat without getting swatted.
Finding reasons to smile.
Believing in commonalities.
Remembering how I thought all this was a good idea.
Dreaming about my car being a flying awesomobile that will shuttle me into any place I want to be at any given moment like a place where everything just once just this one time is just fine.
Rotating my plants so they don’t get lopsided.
Plunging the toilet. (And I have a Super Plunger.)
Thinking about rocks.
Dodging politics.
Wiping. Anything.
Not what I had hoped… September 15, 2008
…but what ever is?
I did some disappearing this weekend, hoping it would be uplifting like my road trip. However, I ended up coming home a few hours earlier than I had originally intended because it just… wasn’t working. I did have a few nice hours where I didn’t see another person while out hiking, then right back to them crowding around waterfalls. Screaming on the beach. Laughing in tents. Playing games.
Great.
How nice for you.
Thanks for not even allowing me the chance to sleep in.
That was pretty much my only goal for the weekend.
Or even to the end of quiet hours.
Thanks.
Don’t get me wrong, I wish I could enjoy the relationships they have. I guess it’s my fault for choosing that place. For just wanting some peace and quiet and anonymity. Just three more things I to add to the list of Things Carrie Is Not Allowed to Have.
I wish I could have left my brain at home. I didn’t even get a break from being a mental and intestinal wreck.
I DID, however, see some nice sights and neat shapes.
I was also extremely proud of not breaking down during or after 8 miles of hiking. And then getting up and doing two more the next morning.
I have a $100,000+ education and all I want to do is shovel poop September 9, 2008
On Labor Day – sweet, wonderful Labor Day how I love to to the ends of the calendar – I went down to the farm fairly early in the morning to go riding. I showed up early enough to help with the morning feeding.
The horses talked to me, their ears straining forward and nostrils shaking, on my way from the parking lot to the barn, because they are quite smart enough to know that us two-legged things mean food. It was music to my ears.
The smell of molasses-tinted sweet feed almost made me want to dig in. Or roll around in it.
The old or over-pampered horses’ special mixes of pellets, supplements, oils, etc. didn’t bother me at all. I have trouble being that caring for another human being.
Tote hay around? SURE! Yeah, I know I’ll have that weird rash for a few hours. But I really don’t care.
And of course, when you let the horses in, they have this look like, OH MY GOSH YOU JUST SAVED MY LIFE because I never ever stop eating! They’re just so full of power and personality. Having known a few horses as they approached death, you can tell when they are ready to go – they aren’t themselves. They either cease to be soulful, or just turn into a horse-shaped monster.
I went for a wheelbarrow to hear the barn manager chime in, “Nope! The stalls are all done!”
And I felt disappointment. I miss my callouses from wooden fork handles and hoisting water buckets and stacking hay bales and dumping wheelbarrows. I will trade constant back and shoulder pain for those callouses any day.
Squeaking girly shoes for smelly, comfortable boots.
Slacks for jeans or ancient cut off sweats.
The expectation/pressure to look nice for a fine coating of sweat, dirt, and accomplishment.
A hardly-meant mechanical “thank you” for a horse licking your hand and standing by you.
The chance to move while working… is just… mind blowing. I can’t believe I used to do it. I know that the reason I used to get to disliking barn work every now and then was that it’s repetitive (oh look so is my current job) and that it really doesn’t use much of your brain (I’ll have to say just holding in my anger uses the old lobes more than poo removal). And, that I always ended up doing what at least felt and seemed (and sometimes legitimately was) more than my fair share (some things never do change, and now I have numbers to back it up).
So, I have a $100,000+ education and all I want to do is shovel poop. If, for nothing else, to do something different, that I know I’m really good at, that does not equate to churning out cleverly disguised lies.
Dreams, sometimes you feel so far away.
Voice, er… Life Lessons September 9, 2008
So, I realized that I didn’t learn to sing until I first learned to listen.
Not that I would dare sing a solo… yet… or even with a performing group. Even having been a musician since I was 10, it wasn’t until I started playing the cello just under 3 years ago that I was really forced to THINK about what I was hearing, to be sensitive to it.
To make it perfect.
To practice it.
I hear it in my sleep.
Hopefully this will be a nice metaphor for life. Like, I’ll stop sucking at it once I know what I’m actually supposed to do.
Ups and Downs of “Art” September 6, 2008
I took serious offense to suggestions and even just misused terms insinuating that I hold a creative job this week.
Of course, I hate lying.
So, that’s my excuse.
Anyway, while my talent wastes away into the bowels of redundantly repetitive dry tasks of machine-like levels of interest, every now and then I find or am sent something that reminds me of two things:
1- True, I could have it worse… right?
2- I could have to draw stick figures of toddlers getting it with lawn mowers.
This spurred several thoughts. Here they are:
Hahaha this is the first time I laughed in over 12 hours.
Oh.. that’s sad…
That is an enormous window.
Hold on to those tube-shaped arms, Mom. Daddy just made Billy a perfect 1 and five-eighths inches tall!
Mommy doesn’t go outside. She stays inside in her housedress alllll day. Of course she should be the one mowing the lawn because Mommy would never even let her kids near the mower.
Daddy seems pretty focused straight ahead when he’s running over his kids. But what you don’t see in the second frame is that he hit the car while showboating for Mommy and the kids.
Those poor children have no elbows! NO ELBOWS!!!!
Stay inside and take your allergy medicine, kids. No grass for you!
….oh wait. That’s what my childhood was like… minus the equilateral triangle hoop skirt deal. And the brother who was ever remotely smaller or near my size.
The first frame would make horribly sick coasters. But the kind that get funny after you’ve had a few drinks. And, and, and then, and then you can SPIN ‘EM! Weeee! Dude now I’m dizzy (hiccup)…
The straightness of their legs made me momentarily jealous, until I realized they don’t have the joy of being beaten into shape by a chiropractor.
Who WATCHES the lawn be mowed? That’s almost as bad as watching the grass grow in the first place.
In case you were wondering, this image was found on a large national (international? don’t know/don’t care) turf equipment company’s website while looking for product photos.
Memory September 1, 2008
Most people seem to agree that I have a ridiculous memory. It served me well in school, where I all I had to do was go to class and absorb, take half decent notes, and do anything that would require points in order to get my easy A. I still use it now to memorize music. I even memorize things I truly care less about, like anything from work. I still remember that I liked the volume on my old car’s stereo to be at 48 with the windows up, or 42 with the windows down. When I smell a certain tree I have flashbacks to a horse show grounds that I have not been to in at least 7 years.
If I have told you something of any significance, or you have told me something of any significance (or humor), I would probably be able to tell you at minimum, when and where it happened. Or, perhaps the exact location, what we were/had been doing, what I was wearing, and what happened immediately before or after. And most likely, a fairly detailed account of the surroundings and weather.
When I get superbored, I’ll even count. There are 20 posts in the big stadium in town. 10 rafters, 9 sections of roof. 128 ceiling tiles in the practice room. 25 in our last performance location, plus 23 lights in the front-of-stage deck. 13 + 3 steps in college dorm #2. Between 70 and 90 steps, depending on my motivation and amount of snow, between my parents front porch and the dreaded compost heap.
While this is handy, I’ve recently had it slap me in the face a few times. Just coming across a piece of paper, even worse – a photo, can usually grip me with the strongest emotional response I’ve had all week (depending of course on the week). As someone who deliberately will cut out people and places for my own sanity and well-being, yet having a ridiculously photographic and observant memory, sometimes it gets…. weird.
And of course, having such a good memory of those people and places makes my sanity and well-being often difficult to keep.
