Archives for April 2009

Lala has been blogging. She should have time off more often.

So many things are running around in my head, and I can't seem to grab one right now to put it on the page.

I cut my hair.

There! Caught one! A thing running in my head, that is.

Back to the hair –I just chopped a couple inches off. It had reached that way-too-long point where nothing worked but pulling it up, and while I was thrilled by this suddenly long hair I had, I was also BORED out of my mind with it. It was great for curling and going out. However, more than going out, I go to work, and ponytails only go so far.

Oh, you want a picture? Okay, but it's not a good picture.

See? I'm not even wearing lipstick. Bet you've never seen THAT before. I've barely seen it myself. That's what I look like in the morning when I'm writing. I would like to say I'm usually in a handknit, and I DO often wear my sweaters while writing, but as often as not I'm in an old sweatshirt or just a tee, and it's not that glamorous, is it?

I like to chop my own hair. My hair stylist hates it (don't tell Carol!)  but I had scissors right there. It's cheap. Also, it's just fun, that snipping sound. (And if you don't have massively straight, heavy hair, if it has any wave at all, no one will ever notice if it's not perfect. No one except your stylist, who will NOT be amused the next time you go in. Fair enough.)

It didn't stop right away, either, that feeling of good-snippery. I grabbed Clara, who had some crazy dreadlocks behind her ears and on her chest, and she quite good-naturedly sat there while I pulled and cut. I got enough hair off her to start another dog, were I to plant it in the garden, which I didn't. We are at capacity, I don't know if you noticed.

Speaking of the garden and animals, some DAMN CAT (not our indoor kits, of course) shat in my garden, tearing up one of the squares. Bastard. Any easy solutions? I already have a little white fence up around it, so hanging netting (what kind?) wouldn't be hard, but what about when the plants get tall? Any and all ideas are appreciated.

Me, today: We're going rock-climbing in a little bit. I haven't been in a while so I expect to be puny. Then I have some writing to do. I'm THISCLOSE to finishing Book Two, which is great because I can't wait to edit this puppy.

Oh, DID I TELL YOU? I have a name for Book One. Remember, back in the day, when it used to be called Love Spun? It's so much better now, people. Thanks to Marketing at Avon, my book will be called:

How To Knit a Love Song
(A Cypress Hollow Yarn)

Okay, that could change yet again, but I'm told it probably won't, that this is what will be on the shelves come next spring (OHMYGOD STILL SO FAR AWAY). I love it. I love the rhythm of it. HOW to KNIT a LOVE song.

My book. It is still so thrilling.

Yarnago, Yarnagone. Get it? I love. Yay!

Okay, that was teh awesome. Really. Neither Lala nor I had ever been to a show on that scale, let alone a Britney Spears anything. We didn't own a whole album of hers between us in our vast iTunes library.

But it was so exhilarating! We went to In'n'Out for dinner beforehand, and for a moment, when we saw the line, I was worried about timing — would we make it to the show? Then we noticed that the ENTIRE restaurant was full of teenaged girls, some wearing handmade Britney 2009 puff-painted tee-shirts, most sporting gold or silver lame of some type. I tell you, I've never seen In'n'Out like that. The level of excitement almost lifted off the roof and we weren't even at the Coliseum yet.

We took our hamburgers and drove to the BART parking lot, which is just a raised walkway away from the Coliseum. Free parking, yo. We ate our dinner in the car and chased it down with Brooklyns from the flask (there are a few different cocktails named this, but I named our cheap Costco brandy Manhattans this, and I'm sticking to it).

Outside the Coliseum, I almost lost it, cocktail-buzz notwithstanding. We were CRUSHED in a thirty minute wait to get in the doors. So many teenaged girls, all screechy, and their bitchy mothers. Also, lots of lovely gay men, who made it all worth it. (Favorite overheard saying of the night: "Look at all these hot moms! I might go straight for a night! Get a cougar! Yow!")

But inside — amazing.

The noise of thousands and thousands and thousands of screaming little girls is truly painful, but exhilarating. Everyone danced. It was mostly a standing-up show. Britney gave only the slightest pretense of singing at all, but who cared? The dancers were great! She said Oakland and meant Oakland (she has a track record of greeting the wrong city, which I kind of wanted to happen).

And I have to say, she's so COMPLETELY  fun. I've spent time listening to Circus recently, in preparation for the show, and I LOVE IT. Really. The other night, when it was 90 in the house, the only thing that made feel better was cranking Mmm Papi, soaking my dress in the sink,  and then dancing in front of two fans. (I mean the blowing kind, not Digit and Clara, although they were duly impressed from their heat-flattened positions on the floor.)

I'm so glad we went (thank you, Martha! You are the BEST!).

(The usual.)

Do you know Sarah Haskins? If you don't, you should. And now that she's done her thing with my favorite commercial, the ad for the Schick Quattro, I would like her to run for president. Or move into my house or something else fun like that.

Please, do yourself a favor and go watch her piece on Your Garden (and then get time-sucked as you have to watch everything else she's ever done). It's completely safe for work, although suggestive enough your boss might think otherwise, just so's you know.

Now, I'm going to turn on Freedom to get some dang work done. Fighting an alpaca of a migraine, but I will WIN!

It's FREEDOM, people.

No, not that kind of freedom. It's the freedom from the evil internet (o, Internet, I loves you, don't be mad). It's a free program for the Mac (sorry, not for the PC) that disables all connectivity to the outside world. You set how many minutes you want to be offline (up to eight hours — but that's just crazy talk), and then it pushed you off the internet. You can't get back online until the time is up, or if there's an Internet Emergency (as if), you can restart your whole computer, but we wouldn't do that, would we?

It's awesome. I've used it three times this morning, for 45 minute bursts of writing, free of the siren call of email-checking/twitter-posting/facebook-browsing. I usually try to write for 45 minutes at a time, and then I give myself 15 free minutes, to get more coffee, to check email, but it's SO easy to get frustrated with a sentence or a word, and flip out of the document and over to the promised land of immediate gratification and wasted time.

But when the document is the only thing in front of me? Then I write. I just sit and write. I know, I know, I could simply turn off my AirPort connection, but then it's only a simple flick of the wrist to turn it back on. Freedom doesn't let you do that. You simply have to sit there and work (or stare grumpily at the clock) and wait for the internet to turn back on.

It's really good. I recommmend it. (Found via VSL, although Lala swears she had already told me about it.)