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Saturday, August 29, 2015

Viva la repeticion


The Growlers ~ Big Toe
etcetra

two things

1) I gotta say, sometimes my least favorite thing about the world is a certain middle to upper middle to upper than upper middle class self-righteous sanctimonious motherhood sentiment...Yes, you are a superior human being because your ovaries worked grandly, and congratulations on being able to afford a nanny, and kudos for your higher-earning potential and I feel exhausted when I think about my mom going on business trips and collapsing in an airport from pneumonia and BLARGH. (like, sometimes do I even dislike it more than the fact that people who pick my food are suffering constantly? do I? do I? HOW BOURGEOIS AM I!) 2) Sloth-bear-type stuffed animals look freaking cute as hell...

Friday, August 28, 2015

Millions of berries...

berries for me...(and you...)

"The story is similar at a nearby migrant camp. Aracelli Fernandez and her children dig through donated piles of clothes strewn out on a dusty lawn."

~~~

"It's a hydration issue: Cells in the fruit won't enlarge if they don't have enough water."

~~~

"The lines are blocks long," McCann says, "and yet the supermarket is empty. So that's a pretty simple visual example of the effect economically."


~ http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/27/434763709/farmworkers-see-jobs-earnings-shrivel-in-california-drought 




The Presidents of the United States of America ~ Peaches


"But first, the prosperity."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/27/434649587/despite-the-drought-california-farms-see-record-sales

Walking down the street this evening

passed a parcel of pain in the form of firetruck, police officers, a man gesturing under a picnic table, and an ambulance. (He was a baby once, I thought.)

Down the street, the folksong quintet was playing something just a bit ominous. "Clap your hands, everybody, you'll feel better!"

There was a good crowd there. Not many were clapping. I joined them, also, not clapping, all immersed in a cloud of bad feeling / anxiety, but helped by the sight and sound of the musicians. Some tears came and went without spilling over.

The crowd watched firetruck come by and sound it's siren mournfully.

Then the mood lifted, just a bit.

What I do in traffic sometimes

I turn on the radio and listen to a song and think about how so much of the music I grew up listening to centered on a male fantasy of what a woman wants / thinks about...

(as opposed to what a woman actually wants / thinks about)

This reminded me of that...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/29/hollywood-sexual-fantasies-female-journalists-sex-lives

"Whereas male journalists in movies work by using their malicious minds (Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole, Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler) or unimpeachable morality (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men, George Clooney and David Strathairn in Good Night and Good Luck), their female counterparts use a part of their anatomy that has nothing to do with their brain. Sometimes they do it to get a story, sometimes it just happens because, well, that’s what it’s like being a female journalist: you go to the office and, next thing you know, your knickers are around your ankles."

~~~

"... in Three Kings, Cathy (Judy Greer) trades sex for stories with Clooney – which, to be fair, is an experience all female journalists have had..."

HAHAHAHA 

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Books and backpacks

Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is really good so far... The protagonist just met his nerdy "tautologies" farm boy friend. The bf and I just had a conversation about how I've worn out his treasured backpack. "I picked it up the other day and was like, man, this is a lot more threadbare than it used to be." Well, you know...
~~~~~
"Dallas morning news is looking for a research librarian."
"So?"
~~~~~
"I don't want to live in Dallas."
(And I am planning on attending a meeting of Underearners Anonymous.)
"Don't like Texas?"
"No, it's not Texas."
"Aren't some of the most anti-woman laws in Texas?"
"Yeah, but I've been to Texas, and I could live there."
~~~~~
I think I will show some youngsters the Elegy for the Forgotten Oldsmobile poem sometime soon.

You!

Album of my youth that I hadn't listened to in ages but want us to reconnect!



And all because of the scary-good "Mabel" song.*

*It's still scary.

GRASSGRASSGRASSGRASSGRASSGRASSGRASSGRASSGRASSGRASSGRASSGRASS

Dear baby

How cute you are!

Did you know you will grow up and encounter certain....

belief systems...

yeah....


:-P

SSSSSSSS

is for Sarcasm.

Sarcastic fertility thought of the day:

Oh, I guess when you're the gender who's most important role in life is to get pregnant / give birth, you're just not as valued...

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/08/26/434616512/selecting-boys-over-girls-is-a-trend-in-more-and-more-countries

Monday, August 24, 2015

Wacky

Have to move soon and dreamed neighbor said "maybe you should have the cat" and today cat is being nonchalant and not hanging out around me and have to move soon and wtf...

Cinematic

I mean, I'm thinking I might try to see The Hateful Eight when it comes out in the theater, if it seems like I won't get nauseated in my special super-sensitive way, but this demonstrates that old saying about movies being made mostly for young men because they have the most money to spend on them, unlike the young pregnant woman who was asking for $$ outside the 99 cent store...

That was my time. I was in my 20s and would have been just like the guys at Comic-Con now who go see every DC and Marvel movie.


http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/quentin-tarantino-lane-brown-in-conversation.html

I mean, I just had to mention that I saw a pregnant woman panhandling outside the 99 cent store today...

Huh...might have to move soon...

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Cat wish for the universe

Dear universe,

It wasn't so bad last night when we broke down and let the kitty in at 1 a.m. And when I came out later and she was contentedly grooming herself on the papasan, it put a bit of light in my heart.

HOWEVER.

I would feel much better if she seemed like she wanted to go in her own home and if they seemed like they wanted her in her home more. I hope that she and her owners will get more enjoyment out of each other. That would be nice!

Cat Deva! Can you not work some magic? I have worries. As it turns out, I'd feel better if she was in her place more...especially at night...the world has many different types of pet owners...what is best here? Light-filled well wishes...to the angels of cats...and their humans...

By Jen Niles

Feeling weird about the 90s

It was evening and we were walking back and the sun was bright and there was this realization about living in a time of life that is just in between youth and...not youth...

Read this!

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/09/you_can%E2%80%99t_tame_grief_helen_macdonald_on_her_bestselling_memoir_h_is_for_hawk/

It definitely has some darker elements.
Then couldn't get the 90s song "Mabel" out of my head...
(Which brings back mingled memories of bad teenaged reactions to Prozac...)
And it's been a few days and the lyrics still creep back...
Fine, look it up. Exorcism time ~ So, it's just a song now.
(Is it???)

This is one of those that's weirdly soothing at times...

Needle in the Hay ~ (Juliana Hatfield cover)

Sugar something

This fascinated me, not only because the daughter could articulate a moment of pain, but because I was also imagining better alternative realities for the woman who was her mother...

"My mother clearly had wanted children; as a somewhat brittle diabetic, she had them even knowing that pregnancy and birth could endanger her life. But at a certain point--once we acquired wills--she had no idea what to do with us. I must have heard her say a hundred times, whenever she saw or held a baby, 'Don't you wish you could just pickle them at this stage?'

I was ten when my sister and I went into her room to see her stretched out on the bed, refusing the sugared orange juice my father urged her to drink. She was 'low': a sudden, unpredictable infusion of insulin had sent her blood sugar plummeting. 'Who are these goddamn children?' she cried to my father, slurring her words as if drunk. 'Make them go away. I don't want any children. Get rid of them.'

I heard this not with surprise or even deep pain, but with a sense of relief." 

"Amateurs" by Michelle Huneven in Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed

Sunday reading

Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed

I am only halfway through the book...and I think that the title does not fit!  I wouldn't have minded if it did, but it really doesn't (in my mind.) The essays and thoughtful and the essayists come from many perspectives. Some never wanted children, some really did and it didn't work out, and a lot are in between....but of all I've read so far, this, I thought, this is something:

"But my sister and I did not need to hear our mother acknowledge how much parenting~much of it single parenting~limited  her life; we saw it every day."

~ "Mommy Fearest" by Anna Holmes

This.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Nice

I really didn't feel well but I made myself go to my last yoga class and I was glad I did but then I felt a bit ill again and so went to make tea and readjust and get acclimated and into the "heal thyself" mindset and such, and then I was drinking tea and on my phone and I saw something, and went, damn, that's cool.

~~~~~

Ha, behind the scenes...

~~~~~

This would be a nice teacup.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/155374631/hedgehog-in-fog-teacup-pottery-cup-with
 






Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Someday

music to seafoam stitch by....

James ~ Skindiving

Monday, August 17, 2015

ba da boom ba da bing


If you're healthy, you probably don't get as sick as much. I believe the girls that do get sick, they're trying to detox their bodies and that's why they throw up more. I didn't get sick. One time I got sick and it was at night and that was pretty much it.

http://www.eonline.com/news/686795/coco-s-pregnancy-blog-i-lost-10-pounds-while-expecting-and-my-boobs-are-getting-even-bigger


That's an interesting perspective!


I thought I might be pregnant when my boobs started to swell and almost any food drove me to severe nausea and vomiting.


http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a44409/cvs-pharmacist-stood-in-the-way-of-my-abortion/

The real story?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson

By 1931, Florence was pregnant with her sixth child when her husband Cleo died of tuberculosis. Florence then worked in the fields and in restaurants to support her six children.[2] In 1933 Florence had another child, returned to Oklahoma for a time, and then was joined by her parents as they migrated to Shafter, California, north of Bakersfield. There Florence met Jim Hill, with whom she had three more children. During the 1930s the family worked as migrant farm workers following the crops in California and at times into Arizona. Florence later recalled periods when she picked 400–500 pounds of cotton from first daylight until after it was too dark to work. She said: "I worked in hospitals. I tended bar. I cooked. I worked in the fields. I done a little bit of everything to make a living for my kids."

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson 

~~~

Though Thompson’s 10 children bought her a house in Modesto, California, in the 1970s, Thompson found she preferred living in a mobile home and moved back into one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson
 

Mmmm

“That’s just an awful question. You know. It’s like, if Oprah says it’s a powerful movie, and we know how she feels about how women are depicted in film and entertainment and things like that — I feel like you’re digging. We should be focusing on how the police are treating innocent American citizens. What about that? Let’s talk about something as important, if not more important, if you really want to go there.”

The interview ended abruptly after that. Though, to his credit, Gray didn’t lob a “Bye, Felicia” at me when he hung up.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/08/byefelicia-gets-an-uncomfortable-origin-story.html 

Lord knows why this made my mind sarcastically quip: The Joan Jett that laughed at Jackie Fuchs could team up with the Rihanna that made her her summer hit for a career topping special directed by Bill Cosby...

But...

http://pitchfork.com/news/60336-joan-jett-issues-statement-on-jackie-fox-rape-allegations/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/3hdnu9/why_dont_feminists_carry_handguns/

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Tune

Too Many Kids Finding Rain In The Dust ~ Nicolas Jaar

This is just to say

This was a great day to re-watch Sideways, you slow old computer. 

http://www.popsugar.com/food/Japanese-Film-Producers-Remake-Sideways-2998602

"Pinot noir, mid-size car..."

Lol, cupcakes...

""I am one of those people who knows about the yeti and UFOs. I always tune into TV shows about that stuff because I think they're so much fun. Anyway, I did this thing called the Law of Cupcakes. I decided I would only think about cupcakes and then I wrote down the word 'cupcake'. Lo and behold, they began to appear everywhere. I got out of a cab and there was a grand opening of a cupcake place. I turned on CNN and there was a story about how cupcakes are now all the rage. I got a present from my agent when I started this film: a basket of cupcakes. And then, best of all, the first day on the set there was actually a crew guy walking round wearing a T-shirt with a cupcake on it. With a big arrow pointing to the cupcake."

Parsley

To self: you spent a day making a lot of starchy food choices and now you are going to force yourself to eat a mouthful of parsley, drink ginger tea, and drag yourself into the shower monster faces in the mirror for good measure time passes (hour later) ah, the parsley must be kicking in

and YOU

stroller lady with cat and an Elmo doll the cat looked content that was nice

How low can you go?

Well, low might be necessary sometimes. Glad to stop that steroid I was taking. Insurance wouldn't cover a chiropractic treatment. Sometimes PCOS people take low doses of it, found that out.

Another discovery: "Non-Classical CAH." Did I hear of that before? Don't remember.

I think I wanna go to a TCM doctor and get pulse-tested and eat herbs. Maybe that would be a good thing???

Wanna read about what pollutants do to fishes?

Irritability brings up this message:
Stop f---ing up the environment for your children. 

Clearly, not the most positivity you've ever expressed...

This is pretty. 

Woman reading with Mother in Law's Tongue

Fishing

http://asianchristianart.org/art_he_qi.htm

 "According to a 2015 Bloomberg News report based on labor department statistics from 2006 through 2013, fishermen have the deadliest job in the nation. In fact, fishermen are eight times more likely to be killed on the job than cops. After fishermen, the other top ten most dangerous jobs in America are: loggers, aircraft pilots, extraction workers (which include explosives workers and oil drillers), iron and steel workers, roofers, garbage collectors, farmers and ranchers, truck drivers, and power-line installers and repairers."

 ~ http://m.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/cops-are-not-warriors/Content?oid=4443632

Friday, August 07, 2015

nuevo producto alimenticio

MAPLE WATER

At first I thought I didn't like it
but drunk it up so fast
frosty and cool
what is going on?
so many conflicting feelings!

Thursday, August 06, 2015

Uh-oh spaghetti-0

Seattle restaurants.
LA restaurants.

~~~

"'To tell the truth, I don't think there's any hope for us,' Pablo said. 'Even if they were to raise the minimum to $20 an hour, they don't guarantee us anything. The minimum wage is $9 an hour, but there are people who earn $3 an hour.'"

"Workers like Pablo and Heriberto are common in the minimum wage ranks. By some estimates, unauthorized immigrants make up close to one-tenth of California’s workforce."

~ How will LA's new minimum wage ordinance affect immigrant workers?

Theory

nights of political debates just rile up latent snarkiness
and
BAD MOODS

Coincidentally

Indulged in a craving for tacos! Even though I haven't watched the debate.

CAL OSHA wants these people who pick a lot of food (and actually exist, even though most of them probably aren't friends with anyone on twitter???) to NOT DIE OF HEATSTROKE

http://kvpr.org/post/central-valley-farmers-adapt-new-heat-protection-rules-farmworkers 

"Under the new regulations, employers have to place water closer to workers and provide shade that would shelter all employees. And when it reaches 95 degrees they must provide 10 minutes of break every two hours for agricultural workers."

quite possibly

you know you know true love
when mom texts you about the debate
and you reply with this
http://time.com/3988178/yelp-eat24-donald-trump-mexico/

Queen Mary

She's my friend...


It may seem strange that a Bob Dylan song should play in my head...

I have been on a mission! Last night, I e-mailed libraries in four different states to recommend The Female Assumption: A Mother's Story even though all I've read so far is the Amazon previews.
Today I got three thank you replies...all from libraries in Virginia!

From the previews:


“The beautiful title of Mother brings visions of heartfelt greeting cards and the sweet giggles of babes. That life-altering, all encompassing title reflects a role revered by many. But there I was on the date in question, dreaming about checking out because I was so completely burned out by all the responsibilities places on my shoulders.”

“I do not blame motherhood. I am simply describing a reality. To put it bluntly, motherhood is damn hard. That’s a sentiment that won’t sell many greeting cards.”

“My own mother devoted many years at home caring for five children…I don’t remember any dialogue with my mom about the challenges, sacrifices, or heavy-lifting of motherhood. I guess you could say that my mom passed along the proverbial ‘rose-colored motherhood glasses’ to me; the ones she received from her mother before her.”

“In this book, I am going to say some things that I wish I’d heard while growing into the woman that I am today.”

“Motherhood should not be treated as a mandate; something to be checked off the to-do list in order to be successful. Women are complete beings. Period.”

http://www.amazon.com/The-Female-Assumption-Mothers-Motherhood/dp/1500933058#reader_1500933058

Dualing Memoirs!

With charming titles! The Folded Clock & Spinster

Earth manuvers

~ Zucchini fries do not help you lose weight

~ Her friend is having complications and probably will have to deliver prematurely

~ His daughter is four and wishes to be a boy because "they can do everything"

~ Ovaries

Sunday, August 02, 2015

I like sausage

I really like sausage
I'm sorry I'm thinking about sausages again
I can't read every book...

Why aren't women more successfuL

Maybe because they care more about their abs than about keeping 12 year old undocumented workers from picking peppers in fields http://news.yahoo.com/zoe-saldana-shares-photo-flat-post-baby-abs-221917225.html Sorry, almost a quarter to four, belligerence is rearing it's head!

It's vacation...vacation time...

Those it's 3 a.m. but it doesn't feel like it's 3 a.m. thoughts.

After Derrida, watched this old 80s documentary because, why not? And then, looked at this blog I hadn't read in a while...the first Magic Mike movie has been lying around, unwatched. I sort of wanted to see the second one (because I thought being around a bunch of women screaming in the movie theater would be kind of a fun experience) but DIDN'T.

Hours fly by and the day is over before I know it.

If there is an older song that would be deemed "good" IF it hadn't been played on the radio a zillion times and also remindful of those years sullenly spent working next to a smoky bar (whoo, the restaurant biz) maybe this would be it...



Incubus ~ Drive

Anydayz

Today I decided to off/on watch Derrida b/c dbf has succumbed to an Amazon Prime subscription.

Hmmm, I think, the beginning is quite boring, but Derrida is likeable.

I leave to buy snack grass at the pet store for a cat that is not mine.

I return...the cat is not very interested in my snack grass.

She bolts for her own home when the owner opens the door and calls her name...this makes me very happy...I thought about getting catnip, but I don't want to distract her from going in whenever she's called, so I'm holding off on that for now.

She has been out less lately...I asked about the fleas, was told she's allergic to conventional stuff, but they try to use an expensive organic product that "doesn't work very well."

I hope it is not my imagination that she also seems less bothered by those lately!

I go out to buy gas and explore a street I used avoid because a chiropractor I don't trust (and gave too much money to) used to be located near it...now that person has relocated...hooray!

I turn down the street and I can't believe this, but I can see a girl feeding a cat. The cat is nervously gobbling something down. The street is otherwise deserted. As I turn the car around in a parking lot, I see the girl cross the street disappear into a building. It might be an apartment building, but it might be a place for offices, too. It is so bland-looking.

I drive into the parking lot next to a small and charming shop that is closed...the miniscule sign reads "Heche de Mano"...I think I will try to go in there this week if it is open.

When I come back again, I see that the girl is standing in front of the building...there are two cats across the street...I bet they are strays...she is watching them...I am touched.''"She is a bit like me," I think.

I go to stores, and return to my house with groceries.

I shower and then settle on the couch to eat inferior cheese and artichoke spread on crackers. I drink so-so chardonnay, which is the best part of this meal. Derrida's food looks much tastier.

At 57:07, pausing to note that Derrida is attempting to articulate the concept of forgiveness in South Africa.

I have days off and I made a list so that every day of the work week I should exercise, clean, and do something that is medically necessary.

I feel like the wine and cheese is an indulgent setback.