My Dreams

(The day dream type, not those weird exercises of my sleeping brain.)

This is the sort of house I'd like to have/build/live in. Particularly the cob construction.


I was fantasizing last week before the megamillion$ lottery drawing about what I'd do with those bazillion dollars. I don't want a big elaborate house. I want something cozy and earthy. The combination of mud and stone delights me. Regarding the megamillions, we did not win the jackpot. Neither did we buy a ticket. Sometimes one just likes to wonder.

An Explanation: The previous post was, as its title suggests, a sample post. I was telling somebody about my blog and she didn't understand exactly what a blog is, so I whipped up that little example and posted it.

I have been reading Butch is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman. It's a collection of essays about hir queer transgender experience. I've had the book for a couple of years but am only now reading it. These readings bring up unsettling questions about my own gender identity. Here's where we are currently, for those keeping score: I am a woman with a few feminine gender expressions and more than typical masculine gender traits. I am emotionally/psychologically uncomfortable with the idea of being feminine, and consequently more comfortable with my personal idea of masculinity. I don't want to be a man, necessarily, but I don't want to be much of a woman, either. My femininity embarrasses me. When I try to discuss this with Superman he becomes very uncomfortable. He is very secure in his masculinity, much more so than I am. He is secure in my femininity, again much more so than I am. It all gets very confusing. Until we're in bed together. Then the masculine/feminine thing expresses itself with body parts and that works very well.*

Speaking of Superman, he poisoned himself Sunday afternoon. Ya' know, for as smart as he is, he does some mighty dumb things sometimes. He has been working on the kitchen (praise be) to good effect, and Sunday was painting polyurethane on a bunch of surfaces. Without opening the kitchen window, or wearing one of those ventilator thingies, or even turning on a fan in the room. When I got home from taking Twitch back to school (Twitch was home last week on spring break), Superman complained of dizziness. When I walked in the house the stench of polyurethane overwhelmed me. I opened the windows and turned on the attic fan to pull the poison out of the house. He sat beside an open window for a couple of hours but was still fuzzy-headed. Then Monday morning he got up and fell down. He came back to bed and slept for a little while longer (he was dizzy and tired) then had me take him to work. The man was at least smart enough to not drive in that condition. At my "suggestion" he went to the nurse's office. After hearing his explanation she gave him "that look" and asked why he was even at work. She then made him call our family physician to make an appointment. He worked for a couple of hours, then called me to pick him up. He was very dizzy, somewhat nauseous, and kept breaking out in a sweat.

I took him to his afternoon doctor's appointment, and the doc confirmed that he'd inhaled too much solvent from the polyurethane. The symptoms are typical. Said he'd probably feel better in a day or two or three. This morning (Tuesday) he was still pretty dizzy, but not so nauseous. He keeps having those sweaty hot flashes, though. That part amuses me, seeing as how in my state of peri-menopause I'm having regular hot flashes myself. I don't usually break into a sweat though. Poor Superman. He's such a silly thing. Anyway, he was home this morning but I took him to work early this afternoon. It's 5:00 now and I haven't heard anything from him, so I assume he's OK.

Wow, time flies when you're living your life. It's now 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. I should be asleep. When I'm supposed to get up in 4.5 hours I will wish I had been asleep now. Oy.

Superman was feeling a lot better this evening, so much so that he went downtown to one of the local bars to play trivia and drink beer with C and the gang of young men and a woman. He had a marvelous time. I stayed home with the children because they can't be left alone after dark. But I went out Monday night and Superman stayed home, so it all evens out. One of these days we'll go together for an evening out.

I'm working on another post that will update you on the local gay drama. Expect that soon. I'm not going to define "soon" though. You know me.

*(she says with a big grin on her face)

This is an example

This is what a blog post looks like.

And look! You can add pictures!

I found this picture last night. I immediately thought of Light. She loves to lie in bed and read. Well, actually, so do I.

Hair, mostly

I got a haircut today. As I have noted previously, haircuts freak me out a little bit. It seems such an intimate, personal activity, not one I want to share with just anybody. Unfortunately I don't know any beauticians/barbers well enough to entrust my hair to. (bad sentence!)

This song keeps popping in my head when I sleep. It's been the song in my head when I wake up recently. I don't know why.



So I went to the beauty college this morning to get my hair cut. It's cheap but takes a long time. I told the gal I want it short. Yes, short. No, shorter than that. Cut all that part off. I explain it's been a long time since my last haircut, it's grown out a lot longer than I want it. But these sissy bitches don't take me seriously when I say short. I sat in the chair while the instructor, the student assigned to my head, and one or two other students with more experience chopped on my hair for a while.

The chatter was about children. I'm not in a good place regarding children these days. They's all crazy. Babies are OK as long as they're someone else's babies and I don't spend too terribly much time with them. Babies and toddlers are cute. Anything approaching teenage is terrifying. These ladies in the beauty chop had misbehaving children on their minds. I hate it. My kids are crazy bad. Maybe it's my fault they're so bad, maybe I take them too seriously. Maybe I don't take them seriously enough. Comparing my kids to those of others is depressing. Hell, just bringing up the topic of my kids is depressing.

Eventually I accepted my gal Brenda's work on my head. Yes, that's good. Thanks so much. I left a small tip. I came home. Kept running my fingers through my hair. Looked in the bathroom mirror. The top of my head looked square. It parts on the left, and the hair on the right side of my head was bumped up, squaring the form of my head. It needed to be shorter there. Hell, it needed to be shorter in lots of places.

Yes, I did.

I scooted a few things out of the way, then put a towel-sized piece of fabric (towels have too much nap and catch and hold loose hairs) over the sink and counter in my bathroom. I got my small sharp sewing scissors and started cutting. Clip-clip here, grab a chunk and snip away at it there. This seems longer than the other side. No, wait, I thought she shortened that bit more. It needs trimming. More snip-snip, clip-clip. Covered all over with short hairs. I hate that part. Itched like crazy. Finally figured I'd better stop clipping before it got too ugly.

I shook out the hair-covered fabric off the back patio, then took of my shirt and shook it out, too. I dazzled the neighbors' back yards with my fat body in nothing but my undergarments for a minute there. Don't think anyone saw me, don't care if they did. I came back in for another shower and shampoo. The head didn't look too terrible when wet, and now that it's dry it looks, well, not too terrible I think. Maybe. But I can't see it well.

Superman came home for lunch. He noticed my haircut, but didn't notice that I cut it myself. That's a good sign, but not proof that it isn't butchered. Diva's case worker says it doesn't look too bad, and I trust her opinion about hair more than I trust Superman's.

Diva got her hair did last weekend. She's all kinds of proud of it now, and wanted me to take her picture and post it here for all to admire. So here she is.

My doctor sent me to a physical therapist for my back. I've never done PT before. Had my first appointment this afternoon. It was relatively painless, but took a long time. The feller says we're going to work on strengthening my back muscles and stretching (gently) to increase range of motion. I have simple exercises to do throughout the day. Twenty seconds at a time every hour or two. I can handle that, methinks. I see the physical therapist tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. and Friday at 9 a.m.

My kids are home from school now and are irritating me. Sproing is springing and clapping loudly and yelling and arguing. Diva is quiet, but Sproing is arguing about her. He's been mouthing off to her and her social worker. "I'm just kidding." No, son, that behavior is disrespectful and annoying. But he won't hear me. He's too busy yelling at me to listen, and blames everything on others.

I'll write more about my crazy in another post. I felt very very crazy when I started writing at noon, but now I'm too distracted, too numbed by over-stimulation. And I wanted to try to write about it. I need to figure WTF it's about.

hand dancing

Have you seen this?



It has 8.4 million views on YouTube, so chances are pretty good that you may have seen it. I saw it this evening for the first time and just had to share it.

I have found a new blog in which to get lost. if it's hip, it's here. Art and design and weird and interesting stuff. And I've been clicking hip links since early this afternoon (with a mid afternoon break for errands and other important things). Found the above video on one of her posts. I'm in design-geek heaven!

Spring with a Bang

 We have an ornamental pear tree in our yard. We used to have two, but the really nice big one in front of the house died a couple of years ago. The one that's left is much smaller, and closer to the neighbor's yard on the small side of the driveway. Until this morning it was bare. Naked. In winter shut-down mode. Even more bare than the neighbor's tree is now, as you see on the right.

Her tree is also small, and on the small side of her driveway. They look pretty nice together, actually.

This morning Superman went outside to do whatever it is he does on Saturday mornings and Ta-Da! The tree was in full bloom! Just like that. One day bare, the next day full of flowers. There's our tree to the left. And that's the next door neighbor's house. It looks very nice, much nicer than ours. Which is why I framed the shot to show her house.

 Below is a shot of the two trees beside each other. 

It isn't good photography. The light was bad today. (Bad light! Go stand in the corner!)

It's been wet. The big bad storm that's been making its way across the south finally got here overnight. There was a very big, very loud, very close bolt of lightening that struck at about 2:30 this morning, waking everyone in the house. My very unscientific theory is that the big bolt shocked the pear tree into blooming. Put the fear o' Thor in it, perhaps.

In other news, my back still hurts. Still in the tenderloin district. It's been, what, three weeks or more since it started bothering me. I have an appointment Monday afternoon to get the doctor to reevaluate things. The "duuu-u-u-u-u-d-e" drugs, I'm still taking them, but they no longer "dude" me out. Make me a bit sleepy sometimes, and I have a bit more trouble concentrating sometimes, but I feel pretty normal-ish when taking them. And they do help the back a lot, but not completely. I just took a dose about an hour ago and now I'm getting kinda vacuous.

I read a very good book last night. Do you know how I read books? Especially novels and such; fiction. Non-fiction doesn't have quite the hold on me. I start a good book and don't find a good stopping place. Hell, a lot of times even the end of the story isn't a good stopping place, you know? So I read until close to 5:00 this morning. In doing so I also monitored the storm. The tornado sirens went off at 4:15, though I doubt many people besides me heard them.

But I was telling you about this book. Or I told you I read a book. Changing Tides by Michael Thomas Ford. If it had been illustrated, this is what the pictures would be:

These are nudibranches, also known as sea slugs. One of the main characters was a marine biologist who's specialty was these guys. Nudibranches were not integral to the plot, really, but the author wrote fascinating descriptions of them. I wish there had been pictures in the book, but at least we have Google, you know? Google image search "nudibranch" and ta-da all over again. Pages and pages of colorful fellers like these.

The point I'm pretending to make is that the book was very good and I recommend it. There is a bit of M/M intimacy in the story, tastefully written and not gratuitous.

I have some deep thoughts concerning the subject of my previous post, in which I shared the Roderick Thorp quote: "We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies."

But I haven't sufficiently processed the thoughts for comment here. Right now the "dude" drugs have my brain too sleepy and fuzzy to make sense of much. And this post already has enough stuff in it. 

Quote for today

"We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies."
-- Roderick Thorp


Because heaven knows I play the role of my own enemy often enough. 

Duuu-u-u-ude

Warning: this is going to ramble something awful.

So I did something to hurt my back. Strained a muscle or something. My right tenderloin ...

Website for this image

The beef tenderloin runs along both sides of the spine.

cher-homespun.blogspot.com

 is affected. It started hurting last week and I figured it would ease up in a couple of days. It still hurts, though, sometimes pretty bad. At Superman's suggestion I saw the doctor today. I had tried some of his (Superman's, not the doctor's) muscle relaxer, but it didn't do much at all. That's what I told the doc when he asked what I'd tried. So he gave me a prescription for a different muscle relaxer. This one does the trick! Ran by the pharmacy to get the scrip' filled, then took it when I got home. Bye bye see you next Tuesday, dudes! I slept from 11:00-ish until after 4:00. Took another pill about an hour ago and I can't seem to concentrate very well. Had to get spell check to help me spell "muscle" because I couldn't figure it out. 
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I'm supposed to be getting a job or something. Have I mentioned this before? It's so long between posting that I can't remember what I've said. Anyway, I'm looking for a job, but not very hard. The student loan payments have started, and without me making any money things are really tight. I need to make some money. Want to do something useful and meaningful, and want to work part time. I have many skills and talents. Haven't got a good resume, though. Don't know quite how to write one. I should put some effort into that, huh? Hey, maybe working from home would be a good idea. 
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The kitchen is coming along, though of course slowly. Superman has the big hole in the floor all covered up. Got the subfloor and underlayment down. He needs to take up the old vinyl in the undamaged areas of the kitchen so we can have new vinyl installed. Superman and I went to the home improvement store last weekend (I actually don't remember when, but it was within the past couple of weeks) to get plywood or something but discovered that the cabinets we want were on clearance sale. So we got them instead. I think we have all the cabinet we need. He did his measuring and figuring. There will be some spacers or something. I don't know. Anyway, the cabinets are sitting all cockeyed in the kitchen while we paint primer on them. I was going to help with that, because it is something I can do, but damn if my back doesn't hurt like hell. Maybe tomorrow.
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I didn't mention it in my last post, but I had a birthday last month. Am now 50 years old. It seems kind of old and also not so old, depending on how I think about it. Right now I can't think real clearly, so I won't. And I'm still 50. Yep, that's a big number.

And speaking of birthdays, what was formerly today (Feb 14th, when I began this post) is Twitch's 21st birthday. Boo-yah. I talked to him earlier. He has an early class tomorrow, so he didn't do anything special tonight, but he says he plans to tie one on (is that phrase still in use? I'm old, folks) this weekend. I'm pleased and proud for him, attaining the 21st anniversary of his birth. And also, I think mothers should be honored on their children's birthdays. Know what I mean? (Mothers who read this probably will.) I carried that boy for 9.5 months (I was about 2 weeks past my due dates giving birth to both of those babies) and suffered unaccountable miseries in the process. Woe is me. (I wish you could hear me say that. My Grandmama taught me how to make that phrase sound so woeful.)
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More about the kitchen: Superman decided that we want granite counters. We can't afford the solid one piece chunks, but we can swing the 12 inch tiles. Which he ordered. They look great - in the box. Of course we don't have the cabinets installed yet, much less the underlying counter support things (there's probably a name for that) upon which to affix the tiles. But I picked out the granite. There wasn't a whole lot of choice, and I want the kitchen to be fairly light, which narrowed the choice down to two. Eventually there will be pictures. Don't hold your collective breath.
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Earlier today (Tuesday) I contemplated writing this post. In doing so I had a few ideas about what to write. Most of it I cannot now remember.
Reducing the rest to bullet points:

• Still having some trouble sleeping, but it's better. This muscle relaxer will both help and hinder the process, if you know what I mean.
• I feel sort of artistic, but frustrated also. I'm not good at self motivation or self direction. Don't know what or how to do art right now. Possibilities abound, but here I sit. 
• Been struggling with depression a lot recently. That's one reason I haven't posted here much of late. Feeling a bit better this week, so far. 
• This sore back prevents me from driving in two ways. When I drive it aggravates the condition, and when I'm medicated, oh HELL no, I am in no condition to drive. Wooo hooo... I drove to the doctor's office this morning, though. Probably shouldn't have. eh. Not gonna drive tomorrow (Wednesday)
• This changing of the day in the middle of the night is annoying when I stay up this late. Wednesday is my tomorrow because I haven't gone to bed yet, but you are reading this on Wednesday (or much later, since no one checks my blog anymore, since I update so rarely). 
• There seems to be some profound realization lurking under the surface. The surface of this post?? I doubt it. The surface of my current existence? Yeah, I think so. As if I'm looking through a glass darkly. Ephemeral half-visions of something that looks vaguely like Truth. Or maybe it's the drugs. 
• It's getting weirder in here. Time to go to bed.  

As seen on Seismic Twitch:

-1 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Evidently I'm not a good wife. At least from the 1930s perspective. But I put out, so it's all good. Right? 

-6 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Is it good or bad that I'm an even worse 1930s husband?

I couldn't sleep last night, even though I tried. Didn't get to sleep until about 8:30 this morning, then only slept four hours. I'm tired now (10:30 Wednesday night), and when I'm done with this post I'll lie down and try to sleep again. I did well to avoid napping any more this afternoon.

I have nothing to do, nowhere to go these days. I'm supposed to be looking for a job. I am, sort of, but not with much gusto. No surprise, but I've been struggling with depression. Hasn't been too bad today, but late last week was a bitch.

We've had lots of rain recently. The area is officially in a drought, so the rain is a good thing, but damn, my yard is a soggy mess. And there's a leak (of course) through the foundation wall (just above the foundation, actually) bringing water into the crawlspace under the kitchen. It's very obvious now that we don't have a kitchen floor. Superman figured out the whys and wherefores of the leak and has stuff to stem the tide, but hasn't had a chance to get back under the house to plug the leak. Maybe this weekend. Then maybe he can start nailing the subfloor onto the joists. This damn kitchen mess is one contributor to my depression. It's such a disruption of the normal flow of life around here. And expensive, too, what with convenience foods (frozen, prepackaged, etc.) and take-out, and disposable cups, plates, bowls, forks, knives, spoons.

Yesterday was Sproing's birthday. He's 14 now, and will be the same age as Diva for the next 10.5 months. It feels like a disturbance in the force for the month and a half that she's "older" than him. He got a pull up bar for his birthday. The thing rests at the top of the door frame without having to be clamped in or anything. Cool, really, and the kid can pull himself up on it, too. He did two reps for me last night. I don't know many he can do. He also got his own cell phone. Actually bought the thing with his own money. It's a pay as you go plan, and he has 100 or 150 minutes (I forget) a month, but unlimited texts. That's what he mostly wants, the texts. The darling hasn't given me his phone number yet. Oy.

OK, it's 11:00 now and I'm going to try this sleep thing again.

More kitchen drama, update style

It's been a while since I gave you an update on the kitchen. The demolition is complete now, and Superman has begun to do what's necessary to put it back together. Things are progressing slowly once again after a hiatus. 

The hiatus was necessary because Superman is... well, not the most graceful of all creatures. The floor was gone, all the way to the joists in the primary kitchen-y area of the room. 

The room is shaped like a fat L, the upright portion being fattest, and the horizontal bit more like a wide hallway that leads to the laundry room. The fat corner connecting the two lengths is where we have no floor. Therefore, in order to get from one side to the other one must levitate above the hole, or something. Walk on the joists. Jump really far. We have to cross it in order to do laundry (unless we want to use the laundromat, which we don't, since we don't need to, since we now have a working washer, thankyouverymuch). 

 Superman had a couple of space heaters blowing toward the joists to dry them out completely. On the Thursday between Christmas and New Years he went in there to check on things before going to bed. Only he forgot to activate his levitate function, and ended up here:

... after a brief visit to the ground under the joists. He cut a big gash on the top of his head which the ER doc stapled together. It's the first time I've seen staples applied. It was fascinating. Since Superman's scalp was numb, it more or less fascinated him as well. He was not amused before the Lidocaine took effect, though. In addition to the gash in his scalp he got lots of bumps, bruises and scrapes from the adventure. Oh, and also a concussion. And of course it hurt his delicate back. He was on prescription pain meds for a couple of days, but healed fairly quickly, all things considered.

Here is his stapled head before he'd had a chance to wash it. You can still see the Betadine in his hair.

The staples are out now, and the wound looks amazingly good. I can barely see the scar. It was a very clean cut and the doctor did a good job with the staples. Also he's no longer in pain from the fall (though he's currently suffering some shingles pain) and has gotten back to work on the kitchen.

Last week he sanded the damaged wood, scrubbed it with bleach water, then painted an anti-mold concoction on it. This weekend he sistered all the joists. When he fell into the hole he squished part of the air conditioner duct and has to repair that. He will also reroute the drain pipe, hopefully this week. After that he can begin to reconstruct the floor.

One might wonder why the joists were left exposed like that. 'Cause come on, Java, some planks or a piece of plywood would cover that gap and make it safer. Yeah. Wouldn't it. He laid some plywood down after he fell though the floor. When he was working in there this weekend he removed the plywood and put down a couple of planks, but that isn't very safe either. I carried a load of laundry across it this afternoon - kinda dicey. I am not strong enough to put the plywood back down, though he says he'll do it this evening.

In other home improvement news, Superman finished the bathtub area in the hall bathroom. That bathroom has been an ongoing project for a couple of years. He retiled the walls around the tub and replaced the fixtures. It took him a long time to get the tiling done (a year or more) and over the holidays he finished the grout and calk and applied sealer. When Twitch was home for the holidays they put up the shower curtain rod.

 (Twitch needs a haircut.)

 That was exciting!! And he accomplished that with a concussion and staples in his head! Superman, indeed!

He also gave us a bathroom door. There's been an old sheet hanging over the gap for a long time. There's still no cabinet or sink, but the toilet, bathtub, and door all work. It's all very exciting, let me tell you.

And that's all for now. This is only a home improvement update, and there is other stuff (not much, actually, and that's the point) that I'd like to ramble about. The kids are doing fairly well, all things considered. Sproing is actually doing very well, and Diva is not being outrageously bad. I'll post again, hopefully later this week, with more adventures from Java land.

And now for something completely different

Because sometimes $hit happens.

From Retronaut