morning time.

i am a morning person. not an early morning person, but i tend to wake up around 8ish without the aid of an alarm clock. this is assuming that there has been no debauchery the previous evening, and now that i'm nearing my 30's my debauchery has been limited to cooking and crafting with a glass of wine before hitting the sheets at midnight (or ten-thirty). i go out (like out-out, to a show or out of town) maybe once a month. and now that i think about it, i feel a little depressed that i only do things like that twelve times a year. but not depressed enough to give up my cozy nights in with my boyfriend and kitty-love. i have truly fallen in love with age. with the exception of my body not bouncing back with it's usual youthful elasticity, i have found growing up to be a gift. bridget bardot said "it is sad to grow old, but nice to ripen." i have to agree.

back to all this morning person business, i am also currently unemployed, which i may have repeatedly mentioned. that means an excess of free time and a strong tendency towards going insane. i think the only thing that keeps my on the good side of the asylum walls is the fact that i have a few hours of quiet time in the mornings. my boyfriend sleeps until noon (or later if i would let him) so the mornings are all mine and zed's. this morning i ate cherries, worked on my valentines that will be finished by next saturday, discovered pandora.com (i may have mentioned that i'm slow to catch onto things sometimes), and nursed two bigs mugs of earl grey with soymilk. this is why i haven't flung myself off the roof of my house yet.

a few things that i have learned over the past week or so:

-do not make a 9x13 pan of lasagna when you only have two people in the house that eat it. i have eaten lasagna for breakfast more often that i care to think about.

-the beauty of yo-yo's. they reminded me of country crafts (ew) for so long, but i have a feeling i can make something lovely and modern(ish) with them.

-the flaw in looking for flaws in your own work. (oh, irony. you taunt me.) you truly are your own worst critic and it rarely gets you anywhere but scrambling through the bathroom cabinet, searching frantically for those last two xanax saved from some dental procedure 8 months ago specifically for an occasion such as this. sigh.

-you can tell the age of a whale by how many layers of ear wax it has. really, it's like the rings of a tree.

speaking of trees, i have fallen in love with these pillows. fabric woodiness? fabulous! if only i could crochet. and read some dearoldlove.com for a shot of vengeful or wistful nostalgia. just in time for valentine's day, right?

how the mighty have slackenered.

it has been a week or more. my faithful boyfriend has asked me repeatedly if i have updated my blog (he is so good about keeping me on track). i have been slack and not in a mood to share and write. the other day he said that the keyboard and screen looked as though someone had eaten off of it. oh no, that is just my sneeze shrapnel. spit and snot from my morning allergies sprayed all over the electronics. not the most attractive thing in the world. but my dearest pamela is sending me a neti pot that will cleanse my passages and renew me like the golden calf. or whatever kind of newborn that gets renewed. buh, i took lots of benadryl today. and also! i learned the blanket stitch from future girl's lovely tutorial i created something that looked a little too gothic lolita for my taste, but at least i can use it for other craftiness. no pictures, please. it's a little embarrassing.

i've accomplished quite a bit over the past week however. making lasagna (the dear boyfriends request), getting over the neon nasal sinus infection, catching up on my season 5 top chef, and refreshing my facebook every five minutes. i've been busy.

and since today is letter writing sunday, i mailed a letter to my bff, scooter (though he prefers to be known as zack these days). he has been my big brother, my savior, my counselor, and my designated driver more often than i can remember. though there have been those few times when i have had to bail him out...it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

and also, a letter to my dear friend julie. the most intelligent and gung-ho lady i know. here's (a letter) to you!

and since i am on facebook way too often, i have received many of the "list twenty-five random things about yourself" requests. i already did one (on facebook) about a month ago, so i thought it might be nice to let you other peeps in on who i am. wrote a survey about it, like to hear it? here it go.

1- i have not had a "real" haircut in over six years. i was spending way too much on my hair and had an obscene breakup in which i decided to go diy in all aspects of cuttery. i get compliments all the time.

2- every time i hear my cute boyfriend cute talking my cute cat i smile so big it breaks my face. i'm glad he adopted my baby.

3- i am thoroughly obsessed with my cat. he is my life and my snuggs.

4- most mornings, my breakfast is fruit salad with yogurt. i mix grapes, strawberries, orange segments, raspberries, blueberries, and whatever other fruits i have in the house with vanilla yogurt and sunflower seeds. every time i eat, the first bite has to have one of everything in the spoon. it can be a very big mouthful sometimes.

5-i collect vintage robes and nightgowns. i don't get to wear them very often, but i like that "valley of the dolls" feeling i get when i wear them.

6- i don't have a real job. my boyfriend gave me the most flattering review of my constant unemployment when he told a friend that my profession was learning.

7- i cannot walk in heels. i love them, especially t-straps and mary janes. but i am a weeble wobble.

8- i do not capitalize. it is a waste of pinky time and also i think that it is an elitist movement, much like mister and miss. plus i just do not care for it.

9- i am the most unorganized person ever. but i have a lot of lists, so i fake it well.

10- i am left handed, though i have adapted to a right handed world. i only write sinisterly. everything else goes the way of people who are not serial killers.

11. my allergies are epic. and also an epic fail. note the previous mention of my mac screen looking like a snot board.

12- i loathe talking on the phone. i will not answer it at any point in my day.

13- this is awful, but i hate the youth of today. they just don't get it and they try too hard to get it. it is probably the same way the older cool kids perceived me when i was younger.

14- i don't mind people talking about me, positively or otherwise. at least i made a mark in somebody's book.

15- cooking is my favorite form of art. it is the creation that is meant to be destroyed.

16- i want to go to school for my masters in library and information science. i just have to decide where.

17- if i eat a steak it has to be bloody. like still mooing bloody. and i will never be a vegetarian, but i want my carcass to have had a good life before it enters my mouth.

18- i have not have coffee in over three months. earl grey with soymilk is where it's at.

19- i'm a big fat tyrannosaurus mess snob when it comes to interior decor. i thought about going into that field but i realized how much i would loath my clients if they disagreed with me.

20- i collect vintage typewriters, rotary telephones, bread boxes, and radios. they have to be pastel toned though.

21- though i deny it, i am a snobby elitist. i'm sorry.

22- i have tried to use a sewing machine five times, but fail every chance i get. hand sewing is the style for me.

23- i love being from the south. i know a lot of people are ashamed and believe that it a lower class area, but i believe that southern girls are feisty and independent and much stronger than people give them credit for.

24- back to number 2, really. i love my cat. i love my boyfriend. i think we have found our happy family.

25- fucking michael and janet. the jacksons. weren't their 80's and early 90's videos just the fucking best? really, i don't like nasty food either. she was a goddamned dance nazi. i would hate to have fucked up on her set. "off with the clumsy bitch's head and on with the show!" and check out the whoo! rhythm nation video if you want to (my friend donet dillon wore the one key earring every day of fifth grade.). and there is always this choreographed classic. and yeah, he's not endorsing the occult. ahem.

and isn't isabella blow so tragic and beautiful?

simon says suck it up.

in times like these (times of destitution, of sinusitis, and of undesired weight gain) i try to find humor wherever i can. i may have mentioned that most of my reading material has consisted of books on food ethics and nutrition. they are informative, provocative, and challenging; but sometimes all i really want is to read something that would make me laugh at the trials of life and remind me things aren't always as serious as they initially seem. kind of like the literary version of teen wolf or romy and michelle's high school reunion. i picked up a copy of ant farm, by simon rich, a year or two ago and loved it. i was on the floor laughing at the soon-to-be-divorced man who comes up with the names for crayola hues. or the man who tries to impress a girl when he lists his three desert island items and then wakes up to realize he was hitting on a government researcher who puts him to the test. most of the stories are between one and four pages, so it is the sort of life intermission that won't deter you for too long. i passed ant farm along to a friend who needed it more than i did at the time, and he returned the favor by picking up rich's second collection, free-range chickens for me as a christmas gift. it's the same sort of dark humor; concise, relevant, and hysterical. i finished it the same day he gave it to me, even after a few too many lively pints at the bar (he lives in alaska and we rarely get to see eachother anymore). there are a few excerpts on the ever watchful mahschpace for your previewing pleasure, but i have a feeling that you will not be disappointed.

and my musical ear says that the new dungen album 4 is not nearly as good as ta det lugnt. more pansy, less psych. i'm not digging it. but on a bright note, goblin cock will be coming 'round next month! huzzah!

and also, today was my kitchen triumph day, yes. and triumph i did with my homemade enchilada sauce. and again, yes, i forgot to take pictures. but i will be posting the fabulous recipe soon! and keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow, i have a job interview. i even dyed my hair back to a normal color so i don't look so much like a gutter punk.

it's a beautiful things.

i've been lax in my communications, apologies all around. a bit financially stressed and snotty. between that and this weather? yuck. i've been doing nothing but eating butterfingers and neglecting to brush my teeth. oh, but i am moving on up and out of these depths! i am planning on buying a neti pot soon and have a job interview coming up. huzzah! to make it up to myself and both of my faithful readers, i will post my rants and raves this week (a day late) on my scheduled day of rest. and where was my craft on tuesday? what did i make? i'll tell you: i made it through one more week without decapitating myself or anyone else and sometimes that's all you can hope for. so here we go, my foray into hate and happy:

this is old news, but there is a remake of ayn rand's (lengthy but mind blowing) novel atlas shrugged in the works. i may be in the minority when i say that reading ayn rand made me the person i am. people either love her or loathe her, but most people i have talked to cannot stand her. that isn't the point of this, though. what i really want to know is who the dumbfucks are that decided to cast angelina jolie in the role of dagny taggart. really? isn't it bad enough that every reporter that interviews her strokes angie's ego like it's the head of baby jesus? and yes, we all know that you're beautiful, brad is beautiful, babies of every color are beautiful, your family is better than all of us, and you give great bitchface. but do you, saint angelina, veiny armed goddess of orphaned children everywhere, have to accept a role in which the character you are playing is, for all intents and purposes, a selfish bitch? you may have the bitch persona down, but selfish people don't become UN ambassadors. ayn rand has just died another death. angelina says she is a fan, but i have to know if she has ever read any of rand's novels? a hedonist and an objectivist are not the same thing.

and i'm so excited about this future rant, so here is a little preview...why does a woman's (or man's, though much less often) body have to be used to sell something? is that all she (or he) is really worth? coming soon, it's going to be a biggie.

and just a few of my favorite things this week, most of all being my friggin' awesome star trek TNG action figures (pictured above) that my lovely beau spotted for me in the salvation army earlier today! they were mint, still in the box, but i had to take them out and accessorize them. yes, geordi looks like he's sporting a murse, but check those dilithium crystals! and i got a borg! two borg actually but michael grabbed one for his studio. and how huge was my crush on data? infinite, and still is. ahhh, middle school. and look at what else i found! way pricey but perhaps we can band together and find a suitable facsimile? also, these altered books, which i would use as bookends if i could make them. i have neither the patience nor stamina to maim books in such a way. i respect them far too much, but aren't they pretty? and also, these magical rainbow undies! i'm ordering mine when (and it's only a matter of time) i get this job. buy yours too, and we shall have a slumber party! ther are a few other things i saw on the interweb that made my heart all fluttery, but i'm going to try to make them myself. prepare yourself for a brand new episode of "triumph or learn from desiree's mistakes" on tuesday!

alcohol, broccoli, and the correspondence of one f. scott fitzgerald.

i'm feeling a bit out of sorts today. it was probably the pitcher of amaretto sours that i (over)indulged in last night or perhaps the tequila shot i had (my first ever!). when i woke up this morning i was feeling great and was laughing in the face of a hangover threat. you will not defeat me, alcohol! fast forward about four hours and a cheeseburger later. my stummy is rolling, and i feel like the ice pick we used last night got lodged in my frontal lobe. but what fun i did have! air hockey and guitar hero and knitting and the company of some very lovely ladies. since this is my day of the week to reflect on correspondence, i decided to check out a collection of letters from a very talented alcoholic, f. scott fitzgerald. a life in letters consists of fitz's writings to editors, ernest hemmingway (another of my favorite bottle battlers), his daughter, and zelda. he was a much more productive drinker than i am. (i'm still in my jammies. it's 8pm.) and it's edited by a guy whose last name is bruccoli, which sounds a lot like one of my favorite vegetables. i'm sold.

also, i fail at guitar hero but rule at air hockey. yes.

the sad scone debacle of 2009: or how i learned to stop estimating and love the blob.

yet another jobby job i had a very long time ago was as a barista at an evil barnes and noble starbucks. i cried hysterically on my way home every day for the month that i lasted there. serving soccer moms their half-caf double skinny extra foam sugar free caramel mach-cha-chito (AT 157 DEGREES) and high school girls whose speech consists of 70% giggles made my life a living hell. the only bright spot, the only thing that made this torture bearable, was the blueberry scones. delicious little flaky rounds of soft and not-too-sweet fruity perfection. starbucks has since changed their blueberry scone to some sort of hard and oatmealy thing that is a sad reminder of the impermanence of beauty. no longer sweet and light, it is something that looks like it would come out of my own oven, which i should have realized before i tried to actually make them in my own oven. i'm not going to hypothesize on where exactly i went wrong here, only assume that when the recipe says that the dough should resemble biscuit dough that they are not playing some sort of april fool's joke on you. you cannot always eyeball your cups and teaspoons. or perhaps i should have cut my fruit into pieces rather than having golf ball sized strawberries in there. but none of this explains why the whole damn thing had the consistency of a bready pancake and tasted like a fruit cobbler. maybe the pancake thing, but damn. aren't recipes, like rules, meant to be broken? sigh, the search continues for a bakery that holds the perfect scone.

so distraught by my baking disaster, i could only boil up some store bought gnocchi and toss in in some vodka sauce with chicken for lunch. i am not sure that i have ever had homemade gnocchi and am terrified of making my own, having heard so many defeated tales of an afternoon's worth of effort dissolving in a pot of water. but i think i'm going to try it anyway. this recipe and this one look forward and fool-proof, though that doesn't necessarily mean anything. if i get truly ambitious and brave i could try the sweet potato gnocchi over here. if anyone had any gnocchi advice (or anecdotes), send 'em on this-a way. stay tuned.

rants and raves, first edition.

some people call me a professional bitcher. i don't really think i confine myself to bitching really, because i am just as vocal about the thing i adore. i just happen to be very, very vocal. and why the hell shouldn't i be, right? so maybe by getting my gripes out on a weekly and anonymous basis, i will save my friends some eye rolling.

something i've noticed lately is the absolute travesty that is considered fashion. there are hundreds, thousands even, of blogs dedicated to documenting what amounts to a 15 year old girl's overambitious daily outfits. i wanted to put a few links in, but hated to call anyone specific out. some people don't understand that wearing one trend (as long as it isn't incredibly ugly in the first place- put down the neon animal prints! put down the uggs and the jeans that double as leggings! ) can make you look chic and polished, while wearing all of them at once just looks a little sad. kind of like you got lost on the road to making your own fashion choices and threw your hands in the air as a decision to not decide. and really, are drop crotch pants flattering on anybody? is it now a goal to look like a diaper-wearing penguin? i'll stick with my straight leg jeans and chucks, thanks.

oh, there are so many reasons i am glad that we are saying goodbye to george bush. however, some of his idiocy will remain. such as his midnight hhs rule that allows healthcare providers to not only deny access to information and services, but will also let them redefine abortion to include several common methods of birth control. really. this means that a doctor or nurse who does not agree with a woman's right to use birth control can refuse to prescribe it or give her a list of doctors who will provide it. i'm not going to get on a pedestal about any of this, but if you want more information or an opportunity to get involved, visit the planned parenthood website.

also, i loathe driving. and i hate cars.

but on to better and shinier things. i adore the above picture. it, and others like it, can be found at the lovely fotos de almanaque. lately i have been wanting to learn to crochet or knit or sew (all three are beyond me), and it is all because of these dolls and this little guy. they have warmed my heart lately. and beadboard ceilings! actually, i love beadboard on everything! and for when you are feeling bored and hungry but indecisive, there is the noodle oracle. i've already tried a few of these ideas and love them, now if they could just develop a rice oracle...