Things which seem interminable but which (hopefully) produce positive results:
1. Job hunting, also known as: (a) the art of tweaking & fine-tuning resumes for each application, (b) not getting cover letters mixed up, (c) finding jobs that one is actually qualified to apply for, (d) not admitting that to be qualified for one’s dream job is often a dream.
2. Weeding a garden, or rather, persevering through: (a) the bugs and the bees, (b) the sun and the sweat, (c) the aches in the back from bending over.
3. Practicing the Piano—“torturing the siblings”: (a) chopsticks, (b) heart & soul, (c) the opening five bars of Fur Elise, (d) the first two lines of Moonlight Sonata (e) freedom to play whatever! (Note: I never did get this far; I never even properly learnt my scales—see next entry.)
4. Learning theory: the endless vis a vis marker ‘erasing’, the constant scales, sharps and flats
5. Reading Numbers in the Bible: benefits include: (a) math skills improved (b) concentration span is broadened (c) nap time provided.
6. Listening to CCR: the only bright spot I see in this cloud is perhaps the fact that the next ten airtime minutes are free of the stuff.
7. Scrapbooking: one page, even in the bare-bones version that I do, seems to take forever! But if my kids get a laugh out of it, it will be worth it.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Everyone Knows it's Windy
and Windy has wings to fly/above the clouds...
this is how I feel about the air in LA and the ingenius, if elementary, scheme I devised to survive the hot weather here while my A/C is broken.
the brownish yellow haze, hydrated, leaves a caramel colored glaze
on the rolls of Beverly Hills, and Valley choc-smog pools o'erspill
their contents on the drab, dry flats of downtown, which lingers for days;
obscuring views, clouding moods, choking jobbers like me with workdays to fill
i join the throng of worker bees hovering on the interstate
to give their honey (worktime) to the Queen of Life (the Industry),
while our lifesource (petrol) drains, we perpetuate the smogful state
our vehicles are streams of large black beetles, glaring painfully
teamed with eastern sun, the brackish air robs me of my vision--
my ventilation's busted; hot sun boils me as I inch forward
I must choose between inhaling laden air and suffocation.
Overheated, I inhale and push the the window buttons downward
Front and back, passenger side: two three-inch vent cracks should do the trick
suddenly the traffic breaks-- I sigh, relieved, then accelerate
at sixty, traffic peaks; the odometer starts its quiet tick
the physic phenomenon starts its workings-- cooling down can't wait
The roaring road noise is eclipsed by airy, cool, pleasure tendrils
as a swirl of softserve ice cream (air) begins to lick my elbow
No wind-whipped hair for me today! I crow as my lungs start to fill
Genius! I will drive my faithful, ailing car until tomorrow.
this is how I feel about the air in LA and the ingenius, if elementary, scheme I devised to survive the hot weather here while my A/C is broken.
the brownish yellow haze, hydrated, leaves a caramel colored glaze
on the rolls of Beverly Hills, and Valley choc-smog pools o'erspill
their contents on the drab, dry flats of downtown, which lingers for days;
obscuring views, clouding moods, choking jobbers like me with workdays to fill
i join the throng of worker bees hovering on the interstate
to give their honey (worktime) to the Queen of Life (the Industry),
while our lifesource (petrol) drains, we perpetuate the smogful state
our vehicles are streams of large black beetles, glaring painfully
teamed with eastern sun, the brackish air robs me of my vision--
my ventilation's busted; hot sun boils me as I inch forward
I must choose between inhaling laden air and suffocation.
Overheated, I inhale and push the the window buttons downward
Front and back, passenger side: two three-inch vent cracks should do the trick
suddenly the traffic breaks-- I sigh, relieved, then accelerate
at sixty, traffic peaks; the odometer starts its quiet tick
the physic phenomenon starts its workings-- cooling down can't wait
The roaring road noise is eclipsed by airy, cool, pleasure tendrils
as a swirl of softserve ice cream (air) begins to lick my elbow
No wind-whipped hair for me today! I crow as my lungs start to fill
Genius! I will drive my faithful, ailing car until tomorrow.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Time in a Bottle
I've been thinking about time lately, and how time means absolutely nothing to most of us until we don't have enough of it...just like sugar when you're making cookies, or air when you're at the bottom of the pond. For example, if I'd been even a half second faster on August 9, 2007, my car would not have been totaled by a garbage truck.
But it's come to my attention recently that timing is everything. Example: two months ago I went to the beach with some friends. It was a zillion degrees out, and I was super hot and sweaty, and looked horrid by the time I got home. While I was fishing all my beach junk out of M's trunk, a car pulled up behind us, and a couple guys jumped out. I thought nothing of it, and went on piling my towel, bag, book, and other beach necessities onto the lawn, and I waved at my friend as she drove away. The guys approached me, and said, "Are you Mormon?" which I thought was totally weird, but I nodded, and they said, "Oh, we saw the BYU license plate holder, so we pulled over."
Turns out they in town for the weekend, and were looking for a place to live, and there just happened to be a vacancy in my building. They wanted to get a feel for the building, so I (foolishly?) let them in and showed them my apartment, and they called the manager and got a quick show-through of the empty unit. They flirted it up, and said since we had 3 apartments of LDS girls in the building, we needed some guys to protect them, blahdyblahdyblah, which I thought was an odd stab at a pickup line, but whatever. In the end, they didn't get on the stick, and the place was taken...end of story.
Or so I thought. A month later I had just parked my car after getting home from work, and I was totally amazed because the same guys were sitting on the side of the road, doing nothing. I walked up to them and said, hey, fancy meeting you here (was tempted to add "Judith Tremaine", for those of you familiar with Thoroughly Modern Millie, but refrained)! They were STILL looking for a place, as all the others they'd looked at had fallen through. So I recommended some places to look...none of which worked out, by the way. I was beginning to think that they were (a) cursed, or (b) had no idea how to lock in housing. (Notice it didn't even occur to me until just now that I might be giving them bad advice.)
However, through the grapevine, I heard they found a place in Inglewood (better them than me). On Sunday, I was invited to dinner, and couldn't get in because the doorman said the inhabitants weren't answering the phone, so we (two other girls and I) decided to wait around for ten minutes. Ten minutes expired, and lo and behold, as we were walking out the door, starving, who is standing there, but those guys! Turns out by some weird fluke the guy whose apartment we were having dinner at had only had met those three dudes in LA, and no one else...so I randomly had dinner with them.
If I'd gotten home from the beach a few minutes later, I never would have met those guys. If I didn't take so long deciding what to wear in the morning, I would be earlier to work. And if I don't take time to say "I love you" to the people who matter most, it may be too late. Because you can't keep time in a bottle to save it for later, as if it were a jar of home-canned peaches, so I'm going to stop blogging and go tell them how I feel, because if I don't, it might be too late.
But it's come to my attention recently that timing is everything. Example: two months ago I went to the beach with some friends. It was a zillion degrees out, and I was super hot and sweaty, and looked horrid by the time I got home. While I was fishing all my beach junk out of M's trunk, a car pulled up behind us, and a couple guys jumped out. I thought nothing of it, and went on piling my towel, bag, book, and other beach necessities onto the lawn, and I waved at my friend as she drove away. The guys approached me, and said, "Are you Mormon?" which I thought was totally weird, but I nodded, and they said, "Oh, we saw the BYU license plate holder, so we pulled over."
Turns out they in town for the weekend, and were looking for a place to live, and there just happened to be a vacancy in my building. They wanted to get a feel for the building, so I (foolishly?) let them in and showed them my apartment, and they called the manager and got a quick show-through of the empty unit. They flirted it up, and said since we had 3 apartments of LDS girls in the building, we needed some guys to protect them, blahdyblahdyblah, which I thought was an odd stab at a pickup line, but whatever. In the end, they didn't get on the stick, and the place was taken...end of story.
Or so I thought. A month later I had just parked my car after getting home from work, and I was totally amazed because the same guys were sitting on the side of the road, doing nothing. I walked up to them and said, hey, fancy meeting you here (was tempted to add "Judith Tremaine", for those of you familiar with Thoroughly Modern Millie, but refrained)! They were STILL looking for a place, as all the others they'd looked at had fallen through. So I recommended some places to look...none of which worked out, by the way. I was beginning to think that they were (a) cursed, or (b) had no idea how to lock in housing. (Notice it didn't even occur to me until just now that I might be giving them bad advice.)
However, through the grapevine, I heard they found a place in Inglewood (better them than me). On Sunday, I was invited to dinner, and couldn't get in because the doorman said the inhabitants weren't answering the phone, so we (two other girls and I) decided to wait around for ten minutes. Ten minutes expired, and lo and behold, as we were walking out the door, starving, who is standing there, but those guys! Turns out by some weird fluke the guy whose apartment we were having dinner at had only had met those three dudes in LA, and no one else...so I randomly had dinner with them.
If I'd gotten home from the beach a few minutes later, I never would have met those guys. If I didn't take so long deciding what to wear in the morning, I would be earlier to work. And if I don't take time to say "I love you" to the people who matter most, it may be too late. Because you can't keep time in a bottle to save it for later, as if it were a jar of home-canned peaches, so I'm going to stop blogging and go tell them how I feel, because if I don't, it might be too late.
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