in the trenches

i feel like i am awaiting rifle fire. it's less than two hours before
my first client in this placement, and i am quite nervous. i don't
really know what to expect. i spoke with her briefly on the phone,
i've seen her intake information, but none of that really tells me
who's going to be sitting in the waiting room and who's going to be
sitting here next to me in a matter of hours. am i going to be able to
help her? will we be able to connect in a meaningful way? will she
like me? will i like her? it's almost like a blind date -- though
she's probably better than most folks you meet that way because at
least she's admitting that she needs help. anyway, it's rather
nerve-wracking not knowing what to expect, so i get hung-up on things
like agency protocol and paperwork. will the client be billed
properly? how soon do i need to draw up the treatment plan? silly
stuff that has very little to do with the great unknown which is what
happens in this room when it's just the two of us.
**
in other news, we've had a couple of friends staying with us the last
couple of nights. it's been great catching-up, but given our insane
schedules (and the ridiculous number of people they have to visit while
in NYC), we've really only seen them for a total of about two hours.
it's impossible to catch-up on a years worth of stuff in two hours...
so we had to make do with discussions of family guy and the utter
hopelessness of the situation in new orleans. since doodle-bug and i
are both from houston, we made numerous comparisons with the great
hurricane of 1900 that bulldozed galveston and created the thriving
metropolis of houston, texas. surely, the only constant in life is
change.

oma's house

occasionally i just get overwhelmed by nostalgia. this morning as i was in my morning stupor i had this vague sense of having re-visited my oma's house at some point in my sleep. as my senses returned, i was reminded that the house was now owned by strangers and oma and opa were long since buried. lately, i've been thinking a lot about that house. it's the only physical structure i feel a strong emotional attachment to, the only place i visited consistently from birth till age 16, the home my mom grew up in and where she lived when she met my father -- and i imagine that today it would be changed beyond recognition. there are certain scents that exist in new york that bring to mind with clarity moments in that house. a waft of moth balls and oak, and i have visions of playing "restaurant" in opa's basement bar. crisp, fall air makes me think of helping oma with the gardening (or at least searching for fresh raspberries while she did so). i can easily imagine myself sitting on the red, vynil bench in the kitchen watching as oma shuffles about the stove cooking various wursts and tarts -- or if i was really lucky, spetzle. i can sense my feet not anywhere near reaching the floor. i can see opa sitting next to me with the paper while 1010 wins plays on the radio. it's not difficult to imagine myself lying in my basement bed, staring at the radiator on the cieling, waiting till i heard the creak of footsteps overhead to roust myself and see what's cooking. i remember thinking that the aqua toilet paper oma bought to match her aqua bathroom must have been as old as the house because where else could you buy aqua toilet paper except in the 1950s. my heart breaks a little when i realize that i'll never be able to share those experiences with my husband or my kids. that those experiences exist firmly in the past seems to require regular reminding. i feel like i should be able to go back and visit whenever i want, but i guess that's what memory is for...

sleep blogging

i think i might be dream blogging. my eyes are not really open and my body seems to be sending me messages that i am in bed. i think i'm really on the couch though because i just watched a pretty crappy episode of six feet under. i hope it gets better. mil and i are slowly catching up as the dvds come out. we're on season four i think. they just had some law and order type of episode where instead of doing anything interesting, david gets himself kidnapped by a hitchhiker. lame. i feel gypped. i don't watch six feet under to be like "no! stupid david! beat the sh*t out of that guy! friggin' drive away, you idiot!" i watch it to be like "jeez, clare, you knew he was an idiot in the first place, why are you sleeping with him?" "ruth, can you shut up already about the shit and the kyle? it's not winning you any points!" and "nate, come'on you barely even liked lisa, what are you doing moping about for a year. get over it. sleep with brenda already!" see? very different.

anyway, clearly this is a boring post. even i don't know what it's about, so i will end it with this, a quite from poi:

And you who say that in death we will pay,
The dead they can't hear a word that you say
Your words are not kind, sober or giving,
they only put fear in the hearts of the living
So put away your tongues and roll up your sleeves,
and pick up your shovel and bury me deep.

awakening

*

well, i may not be pretty (or showered, for that matter), but i made it through the majority of my new and improved schedule. since i am done with class and field for the week, i feel like i'm home-free. namely, i can once again wear shorts and not worry about offending anyone with my stench (purely because there's no one here in the lab to offend). though one week is far from a thorough analysis, i think i might, in fact, survive this year. i don't want to get excited -- well, because who the h*ll knows what will happen, say, next week, but this whole working & going to SW school seems almost doable at the moment. then again, i haven't had any papers to write or clients to see, so i really have no ground for that statement at all. i guess i'm just feeling good because my boss didn't freak out at all this week about my new schedule which i had been fully anticipating. so, anyway, yay!
**
i'm not sure how mil is doing because i only saw him for a few minutes this morning, and most of them were spent berating him for not waking me up in time. ("ung, honey, what time is it?" "8:20" "what!?!? i'm supposed to be at work at 9! why didn't you wake me up!?!?" "um, i didn't know." "oh, yeah, right....") maybe i should read his blog.
**
bird's not dealing with the new schedule well at all. she's started angrily plucking feathers from her back. she prefers to do this while she's on my shoulder, so i'll be sure to see how pissed she is that i'm not around during daylight hours. i'm not sure what to do about this whole situation. i love the bird (despite her many flaws), and i made a commitment to her when i bought her. at the same time, is it really fair for her to live in a home where she's by herself 80% of the time? i dunno... i dream of someday having a big aviary where she'll have friends and she can stretch her wings, but right now we don't have the money or space for either of those things. perhaps, she'll just have to suck it up like i am -- one year of hell for a chance of a better future. hmm.

happy 101st post, moosk!

so right now i feel like soup... full of liquid, vegetable-y soupiness... i guess that's what twelve hours of work feels like. it was actually a relatively easy day because it was my first. for instance, i got out at 7:45 instead of 8 (but, shh, don't tell my boss). i had my first supervision and got the full tour of the office (these are the filing cabinets, bob, key to the bathroom, jeff, your office, sally, etc.). i even called two clients to set up appointments for next week (i love having a waiting list!). last year i felt like a salesperson trying to unload useless wares on unsuspecting passerby... "don't talk to that lady -- she'll try to get you hooked on some time-sucking, non evidence-based, free psycho-mumbo-jumbo" i wouldn't have talked to me either. anyway, this new place has a waiting list -- meaning that people actually want to be there and want to pay for my psycho-mumbo-jumbo. well, not necessarily mine but someone at the clinic... and i happen to be the only one available. so there you go!

anyway, with the new schedule sleep is at a premium, so off i go...

it begins...

well, it went by fast, but i enjoyed my summer. i enjoyed having a flexible schedule and getting home before 6. i especially enjoyed waking up at 8:45 in the morning... i took full advantage of my boss's absence by bringing my bird to visit and meeting friends for lunch. i enjoyed being able to make doctor appointments and have weeknight cocktails without fearing for my job. needless to say, all of those fun and games are now over. classes began last week, and this week i start my internship (or "field" as we social work students like to call it). additionally, i have finally heard from professor #2. apparently, he is ready for me to start working for him this week. i guess this means i'll start looking forward to these days when i'm only working from 9-7 because they will be my short, quiet days. woo-hoo!

i know i don't have it too rough. i think mil has it worse. his classes are definitely more painful, and his schedule requires him to go back and forth between times square and the upper east side multiple times a day (with a backpack full of orgo and physics books, no less). i'm also beginning to see the glimmers of the end in sight. i now have less than a year of this work + school foolishness. (for all those twenty-somethings who are getting to that itchy place where you feel like school is the answer to your 9-5 drudgery, come talk to me, i will knock some sense into ya. school is not the answer, job change, perhaps, but not school.) my professor last week made mention of our impending job search (hallelujah!). i must admit it made me a little giddy. of course given my work situation, i have to wait a little longer than most students for that joy, but at least i've been given permission to think about it. (ah, life with a living wage... imagine that...)

the reason i mention this whole ridiculous schedule of mine is so that my two loyal readers will understand my growing absence from the blog. i will do my best to keep it going, but i make no promises. i'm even planning to hem down my blogroll to the mere necessities. scary, isn't it?
**

anyway, i won't bore you with any more school nonsense. who really cares about that anyway? we were blessed with a gorgeous weekend in the city. it was in the 70s with the sun shining and a pleasant breeze -- a little fall was in the air. while mil grew paler in the library, i joined some friends at the bronx zoo. after ten years in the city, i figured it was about time to see what all the fuss was about. it is actually quite beautiful. the sheer size of the place was astounding, and all of the animals had beautiful natural-looking habitats. the high point of the day was when my cheapness won me a free full-park pass. seeing how small moosk's entertainment budget is, it's easy to understand why i opted for the $12 "limited pass" (which apparently doesn't get you into much) versus the $21 full-park pass. unfortunately, all of my friends had purchased the extended pass, so i was s.o.l. when it came time for the gondola ride across the park. i was actually happy to walk, but my friends figured that they'd find me a way on via one of their tickets. when we got up to the ticket-taker and tried to explain why she should allow me to ride on my friend's full-park pass, she just handed me a full-park pass that had fallen on the ground. from that point on, no clever shenanegins or pitiful stories were needed, and i got to experience the pleasure of the gondola (and gorillas, and butterflies, and tigers) on the back of someone else's misfortune. the moral of this story is not to be cheap like me and hope that a full-park ticket falls into your lap, but to buy the full-park pass in the first place, so you can see more than a couple of monkeys and a camel.

yay spam!

sad that i'm leaving these little spam comments up because they make me feel like this place is happening...

btw, why "spam"? what happened to plain old
**
two lessons learned today:
1) email blogging works
2) html tags don't work on email blogs

oh, well, it's still pretty cool.

email post

let's see if this works... can i really send an email to my blog? that would be so friggin' sweet.

i've also added mil to my "blog team" in case he ever feels like adding to my blog. could be fun...

does anyone know how you can add the books you're reading to the template? i think that's really fun, though mine would get boring because i'd be showing the same book for years and years. for example, i am currently reading the source. so you ask, when, moosk, did you start reading the source? well, i think it was sometime around august 2003. yeah... you read right -- 2003. sad... but true. fortunately, i have read other books while the source has sat collecting dust underneath my nightstand, so it's not as pathetic as it seems, but most normal folks would give-up after two years.

if you could see me now...

you wouldn't stick around for long. i just went to the bathroom and i noticed that i have that lovely, i've-been-sick-for-days pallor, and that glassy-eyed look that comes from every orifice of my body leaking, not to mention the beauty of the red, swollen rudolph nose. yeah, combine these with the limp, scraggly nap hair, and you have a good image of me right now. a modern-day audrey hepburn, that's me. i'm now wishing i had that woman on the subway's shirt: brown-eyed beauty.

i think that sh*t's kind of funny, don't you? i mean if she were such a looker, would she need to announce it on her shirt? i mean unless she were wearing a bag over her head? makes no sense. at least those "flirt" shirts might be telling you something you don't know. i need a shirt that says: i look... and feel... like sh*t. yay!

anyway, i need a nap, so this is all i've got.

here's a photo from a better day... don't look too closely.

(sniff)

well, i have returned from the land of the midnight stars. yes, they have stars in vermont, and they are gorgeous. i had forgotten about those little lights in the sky. we don't get to see much of them around here.



i survived the wedding, and the bride had the wedding of her dreams. well, almost. the weather was beautiful despite early reports of weekend storms. the food, the music, the setting were all perfect. unfortunately, the bride's grandmother who has been confined to her home for the last couple of years but made the four (plus) hour trip to vermont anyway went into the hospital shortly before the rehearsal dinner. her declining health cast a shadow over the otherwise beautiful event, and i know it was hard for bride to leave for her honeymoon not knowing whether her grandmother would survive till her return. hopefully, her fears will prove unwarranted.

Here's a little peek at the gorgous garden bride chose for her wedding:


the best part of the weekend (for me) was the day after the wedding when i got to go down to the quarry and swim around in a swimming hole. (we don't seem to have those here in new york either.) i've now decided that if mil and i every get enough money together to buy a country house, we're doing it somewhere near a swimming hole. those things kick *ss. better than a beach because you can dive off cliffs and the water feels clean and clear. better than a pool because there are little fish swimming around and no chlorine to dry you out. anyway, i'm now an advocate for swimmingholes.org...
**
so, now here i am back at work. no stars to gaze up at or swimming holes to plunk down into. to add insult to injury i have a doozy of a cold that just started early this morning. blech. AND i had my first class of the fall semester... ooh, am i in for it.

though, as we've all been saying for the last week, it could be worse... so much worse.

gracias, damas

so first week of singlehood seems to be going relatively well thanks in large part to my lady friends. tuesday, astrophysicist, came by to make burritos with me, and last night, cat and crimson swung by for some yummy cheap eats. (thanks, metsfan, for parting with cat for a few hours there!) a good time was had by all, catching up on all things work, love, and family related. hopefully, this will remain ongoing throughout this sure-to-be-painful school year. lawd knows, i'll need it!
**
so, this weekend is the second to last wedding on my calendar. (woo-hoo!) it should be quite nice... vermont in september. no colors yet, but we should be in store for some brisk, breezy evenings -- a n ice break from the city humidity. in ncase your feeling a bit green, just remember that this is what i get to wear.

speaking of which, has anyone sold a bridesmaid dress on ebay? what's that ebay process like? not that i'm thinking about it for this dress... of course not. but you know, it might someday come in handy.
**
also, in moosk news, starting next week, my visits to the blogworld will likely be decreasing thanks to the commencement of the fall semester. fun, fun, fun. i'll do my best to substitute quality for quantity, but don't get your hopes up. i haven't managed quality yet, so i don't know how i'd learn now. old dog, new tricks, whatnot.

n'awlins

can ya'll believe what's happening in new orleans? it just seems to be going from bad to much, much worse. the reports from the area are staggering. in our little consumerist, gadget-loving paradise, it's impossible to believe that something like a hurricane can destroy one of america's great, historic cities. how quickly civilization devolves in the event of such a disaster is also mind-boggling. i still cannot believe that our great nation cannot cope with the displacement of half a million people. we can't feed our own people. we can't offer them a safe, sanitary refuge from the flooding. who are we? what the hell are we doing? i thought after 9/11 our country was supposed to be learning how to deal with large-scale national disasters?

listening to randi rhodes while i write, she makes a very good point. so, sunday, before the storm came, new orleans had a mandatory evacuation, but the question remains: how do you evacuate the poor people of new orleans when they have no cars and no access to an automobile of any type? hmm? how 'bout the sick people who are bed-ridden and can't leave their homes? planes and trains were diverted away from new orleans long before the hurricane struck leaving thousands tranded? anyway, obviously, i -- like most -- am still trying to get my head around what's happening down there... i'll let you know if i come up with any answers.

today's grunts

a) birds who insert themselves between me and whatever i'm doing
b) birds who track honey all over the apartment (and my clothes for that matter) due to grunt (a)
c) people in cars who yell curses at feeble-looking elderly folk as they're crossing the street
d) presidents who "fly over" a national disaster area (i remember when he did that here -- i knew we were in good hands from that point on)
e) bosses who get noticibly irritated when i prove unable to read their minds
f) conference calls

well, that's it for now. not too bad, really. any grunts you'd like to share?
**
on my way home from the grocery store today, i noticed this guy walking toward me. he was not a particularly attractive guy, late thirties, early forties, dark-ish complexion and the most icy blue eyes i've ever seen. the effect was quite creepy in a deranged killer sort of way, but i found that i couldn't look away. i was more than a little unnerved when he noticed my attention and looked back directly at me. i quickly averted my gaze and sped up my gait, leaving the scene quite perplexed.
**
i'm re-reading one of my favorite books, veronica. at first i couldn't recall exactly why it was at the top of my list. it moved a little slow, and i wasn't sure i was following all of the subtle little clues, but now that i'm more than halfway through, i am reminded. the plot is engaging -- a story of a young man who gets pulled into a dangerous world of magicians by a enigmatic woman named... well, you guessed it. the characters in this, his first novel, are a little flat, but what's most unique about the book is not the plot or the characters, but the way the author (primarily a poet) describes the magical landscape of new york. you get sucked into the fantasy in a very subtle way that you don't realize until you put the book down. anyway, i'm going to get back to it... if your reading list is needing some perking-up, though, i highly recommend it.

taking the cheap way out

so, for now, i am going to steal a large chunk of hilzoy's post from obsidian wings. it's one of my favorite political blogs because not only does it lean in my direction (though not fully), but the level of the discussion is so much higher than on most. no name-calling or cheap shots -- just facts and intelligent discourse. usually, i'm too much of a wuss to comment because i know most of the commenters are better-versed in the political discussion than i am. this post was particularly intriguing because it spoke of the historical events that shaped hilzoy's perception of foreign policy today -- interesting to me because most of these events happened prior to my birth. i am quoting the part where she discusses the lessons she learned living in israel during the 1980s.

before i quote hilzoy, though, i'd like to take a moment to offer up a link to the red cross in case anyone can make a donation on behalf of victims of katrina. though nothing close to what happened last december, this is still a loss of epic proportions.

ok, now onto the post:

living in Israel taught me a lot. First, I was there during the war in Lebanon. When I arrived, I concluded more or less instantly that I had to throw away all my previous thoughts about the entire region and start from scratch, so I just shut up and observed. Probably because of this, I went through one of those periods in which everyone decided that I was the person to whom they had to pour out their life stories. And some of the people who did this had come back from Lebanon. They hadn't been killed or wounded, obviously, but most of them had been horribly damaged psychologically. I also listened to people, both Israelis and Arabs, to whom something unforgivable had been done by people on the other side, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out how so much bad blood could ever be overcome. Lesson: war is always worse than you'd think. Always. No casualty figures begin to hint at either the damage or the long-term poison.

Second, I came to believe (rightly or wrongly) that there was at least a decent chance that if Israel had, from the outset, treated her Arab citizens as equals, and had not taken over the West Bank and Gaza (or, alternately, had taken over some small bits and given the rest back), that things might have worked out. But who could possibly blame Israelis, during the 50s, when they were dealing with survivors of the Holocaust and assimilating Jews from the Arab world, for not stopping to be that prescient? Not me. But I did conclude: always, always try to get things right at the outset, even if you have every reason to be preoccupied with other stuff. -- I didn't get anywhere near blaming the Israelis for this, as I said, but I thought: this is a lesson I want to try to bear in mind, for my own future use.

Third, I also believed that the Palestinian leadership had made a horrible mistake in choosing to engage in violence against Israel. A Gandhian approach, I thought, might very well have worked; at any rate, it would have been as likely to work in Israel as anywhere, especially since choosing it would have made the Palestinians seem a lot more likely to be good neighbors. Violence, by contrast, was attacking Israel at its strongest point, while throwing away the Palestinians' greatest asset, their moral case. As I saw it, the decision to engage in violence and terrorism was due partly to a lack of imagination and partly to the fact that when you feel aggrieved, you want to strike back, and anything else can feel like "being nice", or appeasement, or a failure of nerve. The lesson here was: do not trust those feelings, and do not assume that what looks like the most extreme solution to an extreme problem is in fact the best one. That Palestinian terrorism was wrong went without saying, to me; that it was also pragmatically stupid was an important lesson.

Fourth, I tended to think that the Palestinian leadership had been absolutely disastrous, and one of the disastrous things I noticed was this: that they had been running refugee camps (e.g. in Lebanon) forever, and yet instead of trying to raise kids who could actually be citizens of a country, they had raised them to be soldiers, and to settle things with Kalashnikovs and RPGs. This relates to the third point: one of the things I like about Gandhi is that he thought of political struggle as necessarily involving preparing yourself and others to be moral people, and citizens in a functioning country. One of the things I hate about bringing kids up to fight is that it makes the transition to their being ordinary citizens who settle their differences peacefully much, much more difficult than it has to be. I thought this was both immoral and desperately short-sighted. As before, I could see how people might think: this should not be our priority now; but I thought: oh yes it should.

Fifth, I came to believe that it was impossible to understand the Middle East without understanding the depth of humiliation of the Arabs. And not military humiliation, but cultural. I said something about that in a comment that was promoted to a post, long before I joined the hive-mind, here.

the stink

it's here. and, ooh, is it nasty. turns out, it is indeed "not the heat, it's the humidity." the stink on the streets of new york is at its most pungent. let's hope that fall is on its way, because i won't be living here much longer if it isn't. i need to start wearing perfume or something to mask the street stink. sometimes it's a urine-ish waft; other times it is just an unidentifiable, humid funk. blech. i'm hiding out in my apartment just to escape it (well, a/c doesn't hurt either).
**

izzy pic of the day
**
not much to say today. sorry. here's a funny little post from random_speak.

au revoir, mon amore

so, starting today, i am a single woman once again -- well, single in effect, not in spirit. mil starts his fall courses today, and that means between work and school i will probably only see him as "that lump" sleeping beside me. this semester he gets to enjoy the glory of physics, calculus II and... hold your breath now... organic chemistry. yes the unbridled joy that accompanies a whole semester of carbon-based compounds. i can sense the jealousy from here. anyway, even though i am really glad that i am not him, i am a bit sad to be me, too. because, as those who know him are well aware, mil is fun. he's entertainment in man-form. fortunately for him, i have a few friends... though most of them either work too hard, live too far away, or are busy making babies (or all three at once!). perhaps i will re-join my other single-lady friends, trolling the bars. then again, these days i seem to have more of an eye for cute toddlers than cute men (johnny depp, notwithstanding). sad, isn't it?
**
in other news, the class of 2009 arrived on campus today in all their fresh-faced glory -- four years of government-loaned goodness has just begun! i temper my disbelief that it's been ten years since i had that look upon my face with the fact that someday (if they're lucky) these freshmen will be 28, too. they too will look upon the class of 2019 with the same kind of mixture of jealousy and disbelief that i have now. (let's just ignore for the moment the fact that I will be 38 when that occurs... please.)
**
finally, here are a couple of articles i found interesting in my morning read:
- a nytimes op-ed piece underscoring how lame this "controversy" over evolution is
- an article about how differences of opinion are handled in w's army
oh yeah, and you should check out "the observatory" from last week's new york observer... it's priceless. (and a download, fyi)

thoughts on employee relations

i am starting to learn that as i age, i am not the only one who's changing. this fine saturday morning, i went to help an old friend/bride-to-be pick up her dress form a local bridal store. she hasn't asked much of me as her wedding approaches, so i was happy to help, but i hadn't spent much quality time with her in the last few years. it was fine overall, but i was somewhat surprised by her attitude toward her employees. she's still under 30, so she's a young boss with her own relatively new, but quite successful small company. she was telling me a rather entertaining story about how her friend (and other bridesmaid/bride-to-be) fell into the gap between the subway and platform while shuttling to her bridal appointment with her dress and manolo blahniks. her friend had asked her to join her at the hospital when she went to get stitches (after her fitting, of course), but my friend couldn't go because she had her own fitting, so she sent her assistant instead. granted she didn't tell her assistant that she had to go with her friend but asked if she would. if i were her assistant, though, i would have been royally peeved. you can't exactly say "no" to your boss, but you can resent her for the rest of your employ. being in the "assistant"category myself, i was quick to point out that i would have had interesting things to mutter under my breath if my boss had asked me to do such a chore. she seemed surprised... she felt that the assistant was freeing up her time which was more valuable for the company. i replied that that's fine, so should she do your laundry because that frees up more of your valuable time?

she then told me another story about another new employee. apparently, this employee was told when she was hired that my friend would be busy planning her wedding for the first few weeks but would later have a chance to train her and get her more involved. my friend was put off however when this new employee who spent most of the day cutting cards for the wedding, asked if she would be done by 6:30pm (yes -- 6:30!) because she had plans to go out with her boyfriend. i really didn't know how to respond. i was disgusted by my friend at this point. had she totally forgotten what it was like to be a grunt? i mean it's one thing if you told the employee when she was hired that she would be expected to do personal errands, but if not, then you are totally taking advantage of your situation as the employer. yuck!

so i ask you, am i over-reacting? should employees of small firms be expected to run personal errands for their boss? (i'm still bewildered by the whole idea that my friends have assistants.)

lucky moosk

i'm sure i've mentioned this before, but i'm totally spoiled rotten. i was pretty spoiled by my folks growing up, but it was nothing like the spoiling i get from good ole mr. moosk. take for example last night. last night i encountered a strange chirp coming from a tree near our apartment building. after several minutes of staring into the summer foliage, i finally notices a sweet-looking cockatoo hollering out to passerby. not being your normal bird kook, who might spend a couple of minutes whistling toward the avian in an idiotic attempt to call the bird down, i proceeded up to my apartment where i quickly gathered my pink-feathered friend and an old bag of millet (like ice-cream for birds). rushing back down, i dial mil in an attempt to get a number for animal rescue/humane society. he kindly obliges -- unfortunately both close at the ridiculous hour of 4pm. so what does moosk do? she stands on the busy street corner making painfully poor attempts at whistles and throwing handfuls of millet in the general direction of the winged miscreant. the bird of course makes no notice, so i feed a handful of millet to the obliging izzy in an attempt to show the miscreant how yummy said millet is. izzy proceeds to draw attention of all the locals (both homeful and homeless, young and old, english-speaking, not english-speaking) while creating copious quantities of bird-crap with which to decorate my white skirt and brown t-shirt. where does mil come into this whole insane moosk picture? well, not only did he provide useless humane society contact information, but when he came home (an hour after i took up the "escaped cockatiel rescue mission") he actually didn't pretend not to recognize me, but offered a quick peck and stood on the corner with me long enough to convince me that it was a lost cause -- and that we were both hungry. he rocks, doesn't he? funny ending to the cockatiel story: the bird was still there this morning, but as soon as he spotted me, he flew off to parts unknown. hopefully, he's not hawk food.

another reason mil is awesome, is that he cleaned all of the dishes after i decided i had to make an extremely messy version of asparagus risotto. fortunately, it was quite yummy as well.

the third example of mil's beneficence is from this morning when he woke up at 7:45 to start clearing the corner for our new piece of furniture (kindly dedicated by those other moosk-spoilers, my folks). moosk meanwhile was still well esconced in various shades of sleep. mil has also spent the last hour and a half waiting for said piece of furniture to be delivered and is now spending the last few minutes before his hospital stint reconnecting computers, modems, printers, etc. yeah, he pretty much rocks.
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i am currently enjoying:

did you know that there are precisely seven squggles on hostess cupcakes? i didn't.
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the ever-expanding list of places that i want to visit... someday:
- vietnam
- australia
- new zealand
- vancouver
- toronto
- seattle
- amsterdam
- hawaii
- buenos aires
- st. lucia
- japan (tokyo very briefly, mostly countryside)
- hong kong
- panama
- spain
maybe i'll make virtual trips to each once a week... what do you think?
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final note for the week: what do you guys think about mil and i combining blogs? i think it might be fun, but who knows? weigh-in here.

so, lately i've noticed that there's this weird phenomenon where some blog readers give some blog writers gifts. is it just me, or is that really weird? i've never been looking for new people to give gifts to? between all of the weddings in the past year, i'm lucky if i can give gifts to people i actually know. why is it now customary to send gifts to fellow bloggers who happen to be having a baby? i just noticed last night that one of the bloggers i read got a nursing stool (or some such thing) from another blogger i read. doesn't that seem a bit much for someone who refers to you as "miss doxie"? i guess it's just me. (needless to say i will be posting my baby registry on my blog as soon as i get knocked-up -- you know... just in case).
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you know how i started this blog because i was starting to feel old. well, some things just make me feel even older. i mean these are the people i'm going to run into on the steps or see in my hallway. mere babes...
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things i still like even though i'm old: poi dog pondering, veronica, u2, rollerblading, birds, showgirl (friends since preschool), msjudo, (elementary school), and garnet (high school).

tardiness

sometimes i bug myself. i am habitually late, and i don't always like it. i want to be one of those people who can wake up at 7am and feel happy and refreshed. instead, i'm one of those people who rolls out of bed at 8:45 (though really closer to 9am) only because if i don't i will pee in my precious bed. once i'm out of bed, things are slightly better, but i still don't move quickly. first, i go to the bird's cage and let in the first rays of lilght. i'll pop open the door and invite izzy out to stretch her wings. after that five minute affair, i'll head to my laptop where i'll proceed to check my email and the weather. if there's nothing interesting in the inbox, this will usually only last a minute or two. where i am most preternaturally slow is the whole shower thing. i usually bring my bird into the bathroom with me where she has her own special shower perch. this means that throughout the shower and drying off experience, i am sprinkling her with water or scratching her fuzzy little head. after the shower itself, izzy will hop onto my towel in hopes of getting dried off (not that this is negotiable, as she will scratch my eyes out or shriek until i'm deaf if i don't). fortunately, it is incredibly cute -- though quite time-consuming.


once she is satiated that i have adequately dried her, i am allowed to dry myself, but this does not mean that i can do so in peace. while i go through my assortment of toners, moisturizers, and hair gels, izzy is often pecking at the floor mat or knocking items into the sink. mil often wonders why i even let the bird into the bathroom while i shower, but i tell him that it would be cruel not to. on weekdays, she only gets a few hours of freedom a day -- how can i take some of those minutes away from her? the truth is that, i love the distraction. distraction is my favorite thing. if i didn't have the bird to distract me, i'd probably bring a book into the shower with me or at least a wet tunes radio. it's my innate ability to be easily distracted that makes it so hard for me to be on time. usually, i'm quite accepting about this not-so-good part of myself, but today, i was not. i had totally forgotten that despite the fact that my boss would be out of town, the copier guys was coming to do maintenance on our machines -- at 10am! i of course didn't remember this until 10:05, when i was still at home goofing around with my bird! aragh! anyway, after sufficiently brow-beating myself, i called the maintenance guy and rescheduled for this afternoon. i hate eating crow...