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1. I've posted this Hemingway quote before, but I'll post it again because it is SO TRUE:When you work all day with your head and know you must again work the next day, what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whiskey? 2. I need to learn about real estate (Thing #2) sooner rather than later. Maybe I'll start that online course this weekend. 3. I must make something with this fabric. Cat heads that look like flower? Yes!
My sister-in-law has been in grad school for the last two years while managing to work full-time, train a dog, maintain her yard, and keep my brother happy. (Kidding...mostly!) Tonight is the MBA ceremony and Saturday is the university-wide graduation, so congratulations to my sister-in-law! You did it!
This week I got an office AND a writing intern started, so there's been lots of talking about words and training going on. I thought of this poem that I found when I posted about the poet's other featured poem last year. I was missing English one day, American, really, with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu, because British English is not the same, if the paperback dictionary I bought at Brentano's on the Avenue de l'Opera is any indication, too cultured by half. Oh, the English know their dahlias, but what about doowop, donuts, Dick Tracy, Tricky Dick? With their elegant Oxfordian accents, how could they understand my yearning for the hotrod, hotdog, hot flash vocabulary of the U. S. of A., the fragmented fandango of Dagwood's everyday flattening of Mr. Beasley on the sidewalk, fetuses floating on billboards, drive-by monster hip-hop stereos shaking the windows of my dining room like a 7.5 earthquake, Ebonics, Spanglish, "you know" used as comma and period, the inability of 90% of the population to get the present perfect:I have went, I have saw, I have tooken Jesus into my heart, the battle cry of the Bible Belt, but no one uses the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions, in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says, "Dude, wake up," and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie mummy, "Whoa, I was toasted." Yes, ma'am, I miss the mongrel plentitude of American English, its fall-guy, rat-terrier, dog-pound neologisms, the bomb of it all, the rushing River Jordan backwoods mutability of it, the low-rider, boom-box cruise of it, from New Joisey to Ha-wah-ya with its sly dog, malasada-scarfing beach blanket lingo to the ubiquitous Valley Girl's like-like stuttering, shopaholic rant. I miss its quotidian beauty, its querulous back-biting righteous indignation, its preening rotgut flag-waving cowardice. Suffering Succotash, sputters Sylvester the Cat; sine die, say the pork-bellied legislators of the swamps and plains. I miss all those guys, their Tweety-bird resilience, their Doris Day optimism, the candid unguent of utter unhappiness on every channel, the midnight televangelist euphoric stew, the junk mail, voice mail vernacular. On every boulevard and rue I miss the Tarzan cry of Johnny Weismueller, Johnny Cash, Johnny B. Goode, and all the smart-talking, gum-snapping hard-girl dialogue, finger-popping x-rated street talk, sports babble, Cheetoes, Cheerios, chili dog diatribes. Yeah, I miss them all, sitting here on my sidewalk throne sipping champagne verses lined up like hearses, metaphors juking, nouns zipping in my head like Corvettes on Dexadrine, French verbs slitting my throat, yearning for James Dean to jump my curb.
Today is the first day that I'll be working from my new office (!). Just like Peggy Olson, I'm moving up as a copywriter. Unlike her, I don't have booze and paper cups in my desk drawer. Yet.
1. On this day in 1932, Amelia Earhart took off for her solo flight across the Atlantic. She was the first woman--and the second person, period--to do so.2. Toby has been getting more comfortable on his daily jaunts outside, which means he's getting more adventurous. Last night he discovered that he could run really fast up and down the lawn. He's still being good 90% of the time, but it's nerve-wracking. My nerves are wracked.3. You know how I sometimes link to the Big Picture photoblog? There's a new blog puts funny captions on pictures from there: The Big Caption.
The week's almost over, right?
I still need to get a picture of the blouse I talked about last week (which is also polka-dotted), but it's dark AGAIN this morning so here's a picture of the project after that, a polka dot skirt.
I found this fabric at Yellow Bird Fabrics and used a vintage pattern from my mom's collection. It's not a really fitted pattern so I had no problem riding my bike in it.
Toby, as you can see, is unimpressed. He just wants to go back outside. (That's the story here Chez Meowing at any given time, actually: at 8:00 last night, 9:00 last night, 11:00 last night, 5:00 this morning, right now, etc.)
1. Since it looks as if the last frost danger might be behind us, I stopped at Western Garden yesterday and got some heirloom tomato starts and some non-toxic methods of snail control. Then I was nearly overwhelmed by my own smugness--good thing I wasn't driving a Prius.1a. I am riding my bike to work today, though. 2. It was Irving Berlin's birthday this week, and the Writer's Almanac told us this about him:
He came to New York City with his family when he was five, and when he was eight his father died. That was the end of his formal education. He never learned to read or write music, and he never learned to play in any key but F sharp.Incredible! This is the man who wrote just about every showtune I know (other than the score of The Music Man).
My work friend "Josie," who took the wine class with me and is all kinds of awesome, has QUIT (slightly less awesome, although it was to move) and is now taking the summer to travel Europe with her husband. Follow her adventures on her awesome blog. She started her travels in London this week, and guess what? She got to go to T.S.Eliot's grave in East Coker! I am very jealous.
I started thinking about Raymond Chandler yesterday and all the women's outfits he described. They're really fantastic--"a brown linen suit with a pimento-colored scarf," a white suit with delphinium blue gloves and hat--but this one is the clear winner:She was searing a white wool skirt, a burgundy silk blouse and a black velvet overjacket with short sleeves. Her hair was a hot sunset. She wore a golden topaz bracelet and topaz earrings and a topaz dinner ring in the shape of a shield. Her fingernails matched her blouse exactly. She looked as if it would take a couple of weeks to get her dressed.
I have a finished project for this week (a blouse from this pattern, to go with pencil skirts), but it was too dark last night to get a good picture with my toy camera. So instead, let's talk about pants:That blouse pattern is very 40s, which is an era I love only for Raymond Chandler, but it and some sewing blogs I've found have had me considering a pair of high-waisted 1940's button trousers.I have avoided making pants because of difficulty fitting two curved tubes (vs. one mostly straight tube for a skirt), but I'm also fairly confident that Simplicity patterns fit me well. With that in mind, there's this re-print:
Except it uses a zipper closure instead of buttons, which as I understand it is a modern tweak (it was considered unfeminine to have pants that zipped--and a fly was definitely out!). I could also go full-on vintage, with something like this...
...but I think the potential for fit issues goes up exponentially. I'm probably only considering pants because of the STUPID WEATHER, which should be warmer again by the weekend. So maybe I'll stew on the pants idea for a fall project.
Toby will be three in less than a month, so in cat years that means he's anywhere from 18 to 28 (the internet has no clear answer on this). It also means that he's suddenly decided he wants to go OUTSIDE. He's been an inside cat here for two years and his foster mom said that he had been inside before that, but he caught the call of the wild last Monday and started charging out the door whenever I opened it. In an effort to control the situation a little, I started putting a collar on him and letting him out for short bursts. He LOVES it. [No picture because I am terrified of leaving him unsupervised for even 30 seconds.]I am all kinds of conflicted--I always planned on letting him out (with supervision) when I had a yard with a secure fence, but the apartment is open in front and back to cars and other yards and more scary things. He's being really good about staying close, but I think this tiny taste of freedom is going to go to his head. But I don't think there's any going back now....
1. The Writer's Almanac was all about Hemingway earlier this week. It talked about his life in Cuba and how "The Old Man and the Sea" was originally going to be part of something called The Land, Sea, and Air Book. I wish I could have seen that. 2. Meowmania! Visit the link and start clicking.
I am FINALLY instituting my spending freeze...it's a little sad that I meant to do it for three months at the beginning of the year, and here I am a week into May hoping I can make it a month. (Why a week into May? The local fabric store had an anniversary sale and, um, so did J. Crew.)So from now until June 6, I will not buy shoes, ready-made clothing, or ANY fabric*, nor things for the house that I want but aren't essential (a desk chair is the exception, if I find one, since it's on the list.) I hope I can do it! And that is definitely a first-world worry...*I had originally said "no really expensive fabric" but I have enough yardage stacked up to be sewing through July without buying any more, expensive or not.
It's not health food...do they think...whose idea...that URL...I mean...just NO.
(This came in the mail yesterday with the grocery ads. It was so inexplicable I had to take a picture of it.)
Here's the third variation on a pencil skirt, with a shaped waistband. (I love the fits of that Burda pattern; can you tell?) This is an orange pique that I bought thinking it would be a top, but then I caught Skirt Mania so now it's a skirt.
(My legs really aren't blue in real life, I promise. This camera is really temperamental in low light and with the color orange.)
I probably think about the end of the world more than is healthy. I remember seeing Mad Max as a kid and obsessing over what I would do in that situation. (I still cant watch disaster movies.) Between unseasonable weather, bomb attempts in New York, oil spills, etc., I was thinking about it again more than I probably should. So I had to remember this poem:Yes, by William StaffordIt could happen any time, tornado,earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.Or sunshine, love, salvation.It could you know. Thats why we wakeand look out--no guaranteesin this life.But some bonuses, like morning,like right now, like noon,like evening.
