Jade & Sequin take a trip

You become somewhat normalized to oddities when you live with an artist. I imagine this is true when it comes to living with anyone because let's face it, we're all strange in one way or another. But when was the last time you walked into your living and came face to shoulder with a purple (supposedly "african american") mannequin?

I can safely say that for me, it was 2 days ago. The sauce was offered a nice chunk of change to paint 2 mannequins for a local real estate company. Apparently this company uses mannequins as part of their marketing strategy (their "living community" mantra) and they want to have representation at this year's Gay Pride festivities. Driving home from Buckhead with a backseat full of mannequin bits was just the beginning of a very strange 36 hours. Charrow was kind of creeped out by them (especially when I grabbed a hand and tried to stroke her cheek with it), but I found the additional roommates, which we named Jade & Sequin in light of their destination, to be very accommodating. There were no sour faces or snide remarks when I took their pictures, and they were more than happy to sit in our 90 degree apartment while we ate popsicles right in front of them.

In all seriousness, it was disconcerting to walk into the room and see extra bodies laying around. Both Charrow and I would wander around the apartment for various reasons and whenever one of us walked back into the living room there would be a frightened grunt or an overcompensating "hello!" My cat ("Fatty") wasn't exactly thrilled with their presence either.

But having Jade & Sequin (figured out which one is which yet?) around did make me wish I had ongoing to access to a mannequin warehouse. The possibilities for creepy photographs are endless! But Charrow had to give them back, so I'll have to find some other way to get my own lifesize Ken & Barbie. I wonder how much they cost...

ring around the fridge

I was just in the kitchen pouring myself a nalgene of water from our ice cold Brita that came from our brand new ice cold fridge. The sound of the water made me realize I was overdue for my own water expulsion, something I classified as "loin nectar" on one of our dog walking trips. Now, I like to condense movements when I'm doing things around the house. It's a fun little game that I pretend is related to "behavioral economics," but which I'm pretty sure is just a manifestation of a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. So as I waited for the Brita to refill, I went through a mental play-by-play of my next moves, much like this (in a run-on format, just the way it limped through my dehydrated, sleep deprived brain):

okay, so I'll take my nalgene into the bathroom with me because I don't want to have to come back into the kitchen, because I could forget to get my nalgene on my way back to the living room, which means I'd have to get up from the couch to come back into the kitchen, which I might not do because I'm so lazy that I waited over an hour to get up and use the bathroom in the first place. When I get back to the couch, I'll write a new post about how the maintenance guys came yesterday and gave us a new fridge, but they did it while we were not home, so everything was moved around when they put all of the food back into the new fridge, which screws up my ENTIRE system of efficiently getting things in/out of the fridge because I have to go rooting around for things that are on the wrong shelf and then when I put stuff back into the fridge I have to figure out whether to reassign the item to it's former imposter position or take the time to shift things around so that I eventually, item by item, get the fridge back in "order."

By this point the Brita is full, and I've put ice cubes in my water, so I'm ready for the next step (loin nectar). I pick up the Brita pitcher, and, with great intent, walk towards the bathroom.

Clearly, I have a few problems to work out. Here they are in bullet format:

• I have a photographic memory AND a compulsion to keep the contents of the fridge in the same place at all times, also known as the "put it back where you found it" method. It's not original. My mother does the same thing and we like to commiserate about how no one GETS IT.
  
• I'm functioning on about 4 hours of sleep, which apparently translates into taking water pitchers to the bathroom.


• I haven't posted in 10 days, and I feel rusty.


• I found an open safety pin in my pocket this afternoon. The hard way.

It might be time for a 10 hour nap.

sweatin to the indies

It's too hot for me to write a full blown post (currently 97 according to my alarm clock thermometer), but it's not too hot for you to check out the pictures from this weekend's Indie Craft Experience (also known as ICE, which is beyond laughable considering the 95 degree temperatures and the outdoor venue). Charrow was a vendor this year so we made a sweaty home for ourselves in booth number 79 from about 8:00am to 6:30pm on Saturday.

Note: If you arrived at this post via google in hopes of finding booth pictures, you should head back now. After a vendor responded to my request for a few snapshots with "Sure, just don't steal my work!" I figured it would be wise to switch subjects. So the majority of the pictures are of the never ending stream of patterned outfits. It looks like patterns are the new black, at least in the skinny jeans community.

virtual chamber pots

When we got home from walking Dixie this afternoon, I grabbed a frozen novelty and sat down on the couch to listen to the rest of a Radiolab show (specifically "So-called Life"). Then I was slumped on the couch chewing on the stick. And then I woke up to the show credits with the popsicle stick still hanging from my mouth.

Shortly thereafter, we fled to the coffeeshop down the street to salvage a few hours of productivity. Charrow is currently muttering about masks and other sundry Flash terms, and I'm trying to ignore the woman who's wearing a t-shirt with the words "I Piss Excellence" on it.

We've been listening to a lot of talk radio lately, consisting mostly of Ira Glass's nasal (yet comforting) voice as he unravels the latest This American Life story and the geeky antics of the Radiolab duo. If you've avoided podcasts, as I had up until about 2 months ago, at least consider giving these two shows a gander. And if you're feeling adventurous, check out The Moth and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I consider each of these shows to be a good distraction from the rabbit hole of blogs that I have in my bulging favorites folder. I can't listen to talk radio and read at the same time, so it forces me to either clean and listen or simply stare off into the windows of our neighbors.

I'm so susceptible to losing hours of my life to the ever growing forum of verbal diuretics that I had to set up folders for viewing priority (e.g. "morning coffee" and "time suck central"). Yet again, it appears I need to grease my social skills and step away from the womb like warmth of my laptop.

human squeegees

The heat will make you do funny things. Like sit in the dark for 2 hours because it somehow feels hotter when the CFL light bulb is buzzing overhead. (Okay, they don't buzz, but the heat makes my head buzz, so it's basically the same thing). I'm even typing in the dark because I'm one of those people that doesn't look at the keyboard when they type. I also take free typing tests for fun, which could contribute to the reason I'm always at home typing. The broiler known as our apartment caused a mouth breathing episode earlier in which I sat on the couch for a solid 20 minutes, unable to get started on any of the projects on my to do list. All I could do was stare at the little boxes beside each task and fantasize about making big fat checks in all of them without actually peeling my ass from the couch cushions. I finally made some progress after eating dinner and basking in the 2 minute chill of a sugar free Lifesaver popsicle.

Apparently some people react to the mugginess by throwing plastic bottles at cars, which is what happened to charrow on her way home from that place this afternoon. I hope it was full fledged Coke because if the guy thought he could do damage with a Diet Coke bottle, he really has been touched by the heat.

Damn I wish we had some watermelon right now.

Project Divestment

There's a post on the Unclutterer blog that I've been trying to channel lately. It's about playing a game with yourself where you pretend that you have to drastically downsize your worldly possessions because you're moving overseas. I am not, in fact, relocating to a quaint Swedish village or a New Zealand oasis any time soon, but I have been trying to play the game because in a few months we will be moving to NYC, which may as well be its own country if you adopt the attitude of some New Yorkers. The size of our apartment will most likely be halved, so I've been trying to slowly weed through all of my so-called necessities.

To help me through the process, I went to the library and checked out Peter Walsh's book It's All Too Much. This has caused some ribbing from the peanut gallery, but I assure you it's a fast and effective read. It's going to make it easier to part with that bag of Magic Hat bottle caps and the electric guitar that I've played a total of 3 times.

One of the overriding tricks to downsizing, short of just getting started, seems to be creating emotional distance between you and your stuff. Gifts are the hardest for me. Well, that's not true. My extensive baseball card collection is the hardest and will be left mostly intact because it's a mere 3 boxes worth of memorabilia. But getting rid of gifts creates a tremendous amount of guilt for me. Someone (usually my mother) spent good money on that ceramic butterfly ashtray. Someone saw that rainbow candle holder and thought especially of me(!) (Let it be known that I do not smoke or burn candles, and I have long since given up the rainbow aesthetic). How can I knowingly throw other people's money down the goodwill drain? The short answer is, I can't afford not to. Unless the bestower is willing to contribute a monthly allowance to my rent fund to pay for the extra square footage needed to house their generous treasures, I am most definitely going to rid myself of the cluttering chaff (sorry mom).

The only gifts I have no qualms about redistributing are travel t-shirts. If you ever go to some exotic country and buy me a thick, shapeless, gawdy tourist t-shirt, I will pin you down and suffocate you with it immediately upon receipt of your "gift."

(No, the fridge pictured is not mine. It's my grandmother's, and I won't even get into how much stuff she has hiding in the corners of her historic 4 bedroom house)

tropical safari

The picture for today's post was taken last night at 11:38pm. It was approximately 69 degrees outside at the time. This evening, after our dinner guests leave, we will pack all of our clothes into tupperware bins and pull out the grass skirts and bikini tops. No more broil inducing cotton t-shirts. And socks? Forget it. Those won't see the tip of my toes until at least October. I'm not sure how this utility strike is going to work for the duration of another Atlanta summer, but we're going to give it our best shot. If you would like to host a grass skirt event at our apartment, or if you would like to conduct any self-exploration experiments where you recreate an impoverished tropical environment, please contact me. We can provide you with a guarantee of 85 degree temps and little to no creature comforts. Sadly, the only wildlife you will be exposed to are hyper-shedding domestic cats, one bionic (but tropical!) fish, and an array of slightly chewed fauna, including 2 non-blooming orchids and assorted greenery.