Back on the balance beam

I do my best to balance my life but man, it's hard! It's like I'm built to be completely absorbed by something and do nothing else for months, and then move onto something else that invariably builds on a tiny component of the thing I just finished with.

Sadly, indulging such preferences does not lend itself to cooking, cleaning, socializing in any way, or partaking of much exercise, and then I get run down and subject to colds and flu and let's face it, that's not fun either. So I decided it's time to throw myself back into Healthy Living Mode.

Yesterday, I:

cleaned out about a year's worth of debris from the kitchen and pantry so there would be sufficient space for my triumphant return to bread baking

went to the gym for 35 minutes of perky music and Dr. Phil, who was Not Lecturing some poor 18 year old girl with an abusive boyfriend she thought was just soooo dreeeeamy she was bound and determined to marry him stat, even though she had just miscarried their baby (which reminded me why I don't watch much TV and also, how nice it is not to be 18 any more and also, how tragic it is that so many otherwise sensible women, 18 or not, are totally taken in by emotionally abusive men, GRRRRR) and

hit the grocery store to buy such chocolate and chip replacements as pitted dates and oven roasted beet slices.

And then I took acetaminophen for the knee I put out on the elliptical trainer. Now that's balance.

Make a friend date

Over the weekend, I ate some of those delicious candies whose wrappers have messages printed inside - you know the kind; the ones that are meant to simultaneously uplift and distract you from the calories you are consuming, so you will eat more and buy more etc.

(Not that I'm cynical.)

I dismiss most of these messages. I mean, "Be high maintenance?" How is that a recipe for peace and contentment?

But the 'make a friend date' wrapper is sitting with me. I think it means 'spend time with friends', but two days later I'm still wondering which buddy I could coerce into a romantic evening with some attractive person or other. And how to complete said coercion.

They really are very bossy candies, aren't they?

Where I would be if I couldn't be here

I would be in England.

Unfortunately I really REALLY don't enjoy flying (or perhaps it is better to say I don't enjoy being reduced to a quaking, weeping wreck before so much as boarding the plane; I've been known to burn off sedatives from the stress while rocking back and forth in the departure lounge.)

But if I could do it

(or had the money to sail on the Queen Mary 2)

I would be in England on a walking tour, stopping for cream teas and allowing some lovely days for London and its beautiful parks and museums and then back to the countryside for tours of estates and their gardens. I had an amazing year doing quite a lot of that shortly after I finished university, and an amazing holiday doing far from enough of it many years later, before the whole flying thing became impossible. Where I live is pretty, but the English countryside is... well. Yum about sums it up, especially at this time of the year.

And now that I've said that, I will return to more realistic holiday planning.

(psst - check out this vacation rental site and, oh dear, this one. If only Harry Potter were true and I could just Apparate.)

Siberian traffic signage

Ian Frazier has another article in The New Yorker this month, which is always good news to me because I loooove his writing and know absolutely nothing about what he writes about until I read it. This one is about driving across Siberia and here is a new thing I learned:

Stop signs in rural Siberia look just like the ones in the rural U.S.

except for not having bullet holes.


(Why this is noteworthy: though I definitely do not live in Siberia, I have never in my life even imagined the possibility of a stop sign with bullet holes in it. Apparently I have not traveled enough.)

Playing dressup

I've been wanting a little pinafore dress for a while - the kind you can wear on its own or over a T shirt and short pants as a kind of big apron - and I was actually considering sewing one which would have been

DISASTER

since I do have quite a bit of writing I do want to get around to in the next six or so weeks.

Then the other day, having recovered from a the worst imaginable 24-hour headache, I went out for supplies

to a grocery store that recently introduced a line of clothes

and spotted just the pinafore dress I had been thinking of right on the end of an aisle

(in my size!!!!)

and bought it.

It is made of black cotton jersey and reminds me of the mangled up lump of little black dress Kinsey Millhone used to keep in her car in the early entries of Sue Grafton's alphabet series (does she still have that? I stopped reading around M... really must catch up.) Like Kinsey's dress, this one will do about anything - even bathing-suit cover-up-age, which will come in handy as I expect to be swimming a little in the coming weeks.

And it looks downright pretty with this little embroidered pin from tinyhappy.

Music Mix(up)

Problem: Long Car Trips = Potential Mood Disasters

Solution: Fresh music mixes.

Problem: I always volunteer to be the one to pull these together, a task to which I am suited because I am focused and persistent enough to spend days on the job and not at all because I ever listen to the radio anymore - at least, not to the kind of stations that cater to drivers lulled to sleep by classical recordings or mellow jazz.

Solution: iTunes, where you can trawl through user playlists and popular song charts and get recommendations based on what you used for the last car trip.

Problem: iTunes is stingy with its sound clips.

Solution: YouTube, where you can look at official videos or - forgive me but HORRORS - somebody's upload with visuals of the lyrics or a photo montage or their own version of a video.

Problem: Funny or perplexing or otherwise engaging videos often make me want a song I might not otherwise ever get past my travel buddies.

For example - with all due respect to Mariah Carey - there is no way Touch My Body would fly, unless maybe Jack McBrayer was singing on the track as well as acting in the video.

Another one that did pass muster once they saw the video - it being too ballad-y in isolation - is Fallin' For You. Again with a comedian being cast in the video to good effect.

I myself enjoyed After The Love Is Gone well enough, especially what I think may have been the cameo by That Guy (is his name Bruce?) who writes everybody-in-LA's jokes, but the song kinda stands on its own.

Come to think of it, dance music is pretty good in a car. I'd forgotten about liking Saturday Night - old enough to be new again really - and got some good hair ideas from the video.

100% Pure Love is a catchy tune at a good pace for running, if for some reason nobody else likes it in a car... not that I'm too worried about them putting me out of same - for my music selection, at least.

(in fact, sometimes I throw something in even after the driving member of our little crew shudders through the teeny tiny iTunes clip. I have faith in the lengthier version of I'm Not Your Toy, for example.)

Other times I follow instructions, as with the very clear one to acquire Boom.

Also, Paper Planes, which is a pretty broad break from all the love stuff, what with the gunshots and all.

A less drastic break is Little Secrets. This one isn't a video, but it's such a fun tune - I liked (and bought) a lot from Passion Pits and think it will all sound especially fine driving over hills.


And now I will stop, because I have 16+ hours of playlist to get me through a month's worth of minibreaks, and I expect you have other things to read today than what I think of all the others, yes?

Civic holiday

Today is an official holiday where I live, which means I can hear the birds singing on this clear morning (and not construction vehicles or buses.) The sun is shining through the leaves on the trees surrounding my yard, brightening the greens of some and leaving the others dappled, or dark. And the air! it's cool again, with just a breeze to carry it to you so you barely have to raise your head for the kiss.

One must begin such a day with a freshly-baked chocolate croissant, of course, and the hot morning beverage of one's choice.

So I am.

Later, I will bid goodbye to my finny friend Bruce, who has been such good company in the kitchen. Isn't it nice that rain won't fall into his bowl as he makes his short journey home?