ha ha ha

before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. that way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them. and you have their shoes.

- jack handey

yay

sometimes there are things you are so excited about that you can't even talk about them.


so it is.




somebunny is coming to visit me this weekend.

the buff club

ok so there is this thing i have been thinking about for a long time and meaning to post about and i keep forgetting.

this is a thing that really bothers me.

well, it doesn't bother me so much as it bewilders me. and grosses me right out.


the thing is this.

i go to the gym a lot. we actually belong to a pretty nice place, full of the weathy and bored, one of those places that the members refer to as "the club."

anyway.

what bothers me is the nudity.

now i am no prude, no stranger to the female body (having possessed one for quite some time, and all). however. there is a LOT of nudity at "the club." i mean, a lot. i don't know what it is like in the men's locker room, but in the women's, wow.

the thing is, that you cannot walk into the locker room without being confronted by the naked bodies of at least 5 different women. to some of you, this may sound like heaven. however. the female body, while admittedly inherently beautiful, is not so great when it is all sweaty, or being contorted into spandex, or being flopped about between the showers and the changing area. it's really quite unpleasant.

one thing about a shi-shi club is that a lot of these people are young and fit, or old and cosmetically altered, or what have you, but generally good looking. i say a lot of these people. i do not say all.

why do old people especially feel so free to hang out with no clothes on? at what point do you say to yourself, forget it, covering these girls up is a waste of energy, i think i'll just sit here on the bench and relax?

and another thing. why do you have to dry your hair, completely naked? you have your earrings on, is it too much to ask to put some underwear on, too? and even if your body was all that, who are you trying to impress? i really get quite irritated.

so that's about all i have to say about that.



(what is also funny about this post, in case you didn't catch it, is that there is an actual club here in colorado called the buff club, only it is a club of fans of the university of colorado buffaloes. as far as i can tell, there is no nakedness involved)

song for the day

i'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be
you're gonna give your lovin' to me
i'm gonna love you night and day
you know my lovin' won't fade away
you know my lovin' won't fade away

my love is bigger than a cadillac
i try to show you but you drive me back
your love for me has got to be real
for you to know just how i feel
a love for real, not fade away

i'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be
you're gonna give your love to me
a love to last more than one day
a love that's love and not fade away
a love that's love and not fade away

- rolling stones

if you're wondering...

why i moved back to colorado...

this is it:

taken on saturday, september 9, 2006. from the top of guanella pass, down the rosalie trail, and down the abyss lake trail.

once again, i am reminded of the name of this blog, and for those of you who might not have started at the beginning, i will repeat it here.

living

the fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer

the wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

a red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily
moves his delicate feet
and long tail. i hold
my hand open for him to go.

each minute the last minute.

- denise levertov

pink

one thing that i love, is pink. another thing that i love is finnish design.

the stars have aligned, dear readers, and if you could only step into my office...

so let me tell you a story.

once upon a time there was a finnish textile manufacturer called marimekko, which had its inception in 1951. perhaps you have heard of it. back in 1964 they employed a designer by the name of maija isola. probably you have not heard of her. however, you most certainly HAVE heard of her most famous design (well, you probably haven't heard of it, in that it is a finnish word and would mean nothing to most of you, but you have undoubtedly seen of it). it is called unikko. it is basically big stylized poppies. crate & barrel recently did a series of towels and shower curtains and whatever have you in this design, which is where i suppose most of you to have seen it.

anyway.

the original design, as i said, was released in 1964. it was red on white, and blue on white. over the subsequent years, due to the design's unprecedented popularity, it was released in black, camel, green, yellow, purple, red-on-red, blue-on-blue, etc.

now we're getting to the good part.

maija isola died in 2001, but her daughter kristiina isola continued to work for the company. as they say, she now designs printed fabrics and other interior decoration products for marimekko, while also being responsible for the new colour schemes and adaptations of maija isola’s fabric designs.

ah ha!

so it is now 2006, and it has been 40 years since maija came out with the unikko design. you would think, wouldn't you, that they would want to do something celebratory for the occasion? well darlings yes in fact they have. they released unikko in pink.

(brief pause whilst we observe the heavens opening and the songs of angelic choirs floating down)

i'm smitten. i'm addicted. i can hardly stand it.

i bought some, of course. three fabric panels in the small pink print, one large (i mean, this sucker is HUGE) panel in the original light pink print. they hang in my office. well, the three small ones do. the big one, well, it's big. it's 48 inches square. right now it sits on the floor leaning against the wall. but soon, it will also hang.

people come into my office now and say 'wow! pink!' actually, what happens is, they walk past my office, glance in, take another step, stop, come back to the door and stand there, and then say, wow, pink.

i love it.

anyway, just to assuage your curiosity, here is what it looks like:



i love it, i truly do.

(for those of you who are really paying attention, i must edit some of the above statements, in the interest of professional accuracy. marimekko claims to be issuing the pink design in honor of their 50th anniversary. but i can't figure out the math on that one. so i made up my own.)

here's the deal

so i'm trying out being a vegetarian.

it's been about a month. meat-free with just one notable exception, namely, the camping trip this last weekend, wherein we had steak and chicken, cooked over the camp fire. how can you say no to that?

anyway i am still eating fish, mostly because, it is so good for you (except for swordfish. you shouldn't eat that guy. i mean it.), and also i love it so much. the thing about fish though is that i love to eat it but i hate to cook it. not crazy about that fish smell that hangs out in your kitchen and thus your curtains and apron and probably hair and clothes for hours or days. and actually i prefer it uncooked, if you want to get technical. anyway, eating fish thus generally requires going out to eat it, which is nice but gets expensive. anyway i eat yogurt with honey and almonds for breakfast (protein and good fat), a frozen vegetarian meal for lunch (if you're interested, i HIGHLY recommend the palak paneer by ethnic gourmet. that's some tasty cheese), and whatever we can scrounge up for dinner. last night, it was waffles. snacks of string cheese and fruit, maybe a pria bar thrown in when i need something sweet.

so.

what is the point of all this, you ask?

well, i'm not a vegetarian because i love animals, if that's what you're wondering. no, i am a vegetarian because i hate plants.


haahhahahahahahah!!! that one completely cracks me up.


seriously though, and some of you may know this, but i have this inexplicable crazy-high cholesterol, and i feel like at my age i am a bit too young to go on a statin for the rest of my life, and can't i make some dietary and lifestyle changes, and perhaps undo some damage and maybe avert a heart attack for a few more years? yes, yes i can.

so.

pretty much not eating red meat any more. or white meat. or the other white meat. (or the 'other' other white meat, for that matter). not doing the full-fat dairy either. trying to have lots of fiber and some of those tasty omega-3s and 6s whenever i can.

also, i am trying to get my butt to the gym a few times a week, get that heart pumping, give the bones some weight-bearing exercises.

the thing is, i'm not getting any younger, and i kind of feel like, how pissed am i going to be in 20 years when i am fat or dead or something, and all i had to have done was to eat a bit better and work out a bit more and everything would be different?

so. that's the deal.

big day

the woman who gave me life almost thirty years ago was herself given life exactly sixty years ago.

she's such a super lady. really, she's a great person. and a great mom, incidentally. you really should meet her.


happy birthday, mommee.

friends

i learned yesterday that two more friends have found this blog- thanks for visiting! it's nice to think of you, pieces of my heart and soul, sitting out there in places of my past lives, visiting my present life.

one thing that i have found, and i will echo jen-nay's sentiments here, is that it is harder than you think it will be to keep in touch with people you love after you no longer live in the same city. it's strange, and sad, that people who once formed the core of your life, whose lives were woven together so intricately with yours, be that in school or work or whatever have you, so easily slip away, if you don't actively and intentionally and continually move to keep them close. but that's just part of it though, right? because even though i don't see you or talk to you every day, you still live in my heart, and i still think about you, and i hope you think about me.

there are my girls from chicago, contact with whom is intermittent at best, but whose faces and laughter are frequently in my thoughts, and whom i think about with such deep fondness and affection and longing, but whom i seldom call or even email, and i wonder, do they think about me? some of them, obviously, do, as presumably at least two of them will read these words at some point. to you i want to say- i miss you. i love you. you are very dear to me.

then there is the crew from the lou. again, people who i spent countless hours with, sharing frustrations and happinesses (can you say that?)- work people who moved apart unintentionally after the Man fired them or encouraged them to leave or drove them away. but still, we stayed in touch, had lunches together, emailed, had sushi... but then i moved away-away, and i'm left with this feeling of loss, and this feeling of, are they having lunch without me? does anyone remember me? or bring me up in conversation? once again- obviously a few of you remember me, or else you probably wouldn't be reading this. i love you people too, and i miss you.

(if you find yourself left out of this abbreviated list, please know that it was intentional. there are a couple of people out there who i can't really categorize. you probably know who you are. our bonds are genetic, or metaphysical, or whatever, and they are very stong.)

you people out there, close to my heart, far from my physical location (i was going to say, far from my body, but that starts to sound creepy and sexual, which is not at all what i am getting at here), and i think you know who you are, whose geophysical location does nothing more than pull the bands around our hearts all the tighter. how am i so blessed to have such friends? it is comforting, out here in the new life where there really aren't any friends yet, to spend a few minutes now thinking of you, and being grateful, and remembering how fortunate i am to have you in my life.