Write About The TIme You Broke...

I've decided to start an experiment where I take a writing prompt from a book I got called "642 Tiny Things to Write About" and then expand on it here. Hoping this leads to inspiration to write on at least a semi-regular basis.

Write about a time you broke...

A bone: "I haven't broken one yet! I came close recently when I slipped on a stick and fell on my hand. Doctor said it was just a contusion, they gave me Norco anyway." It happened in September, just when the sun was starting to set a little earlier. The trees must have been shedding because there were sticks all over the streets and sidewalks, those short but fat ones. This one blended into the street. I was wearing my Danskos and when my shoe rolled over the stick, I did the most spectacular pratfall, where I tried to catch myself by running a few steps, but fell over anyway, bracing myself with my left hand. Of course there were people around, and I heard a couple across the street say, "Ouch!" Another guy asked if I was okay, and I just got up and laughed it off. When I got inside I definitely felt achey. I wrapped my hand up in a bandage and took some Advil. Trench was worried I broke it because that's how he broke his hand years ago. We went to the immediate care center and they xrayed it. They said it was a contusion, which is basically a bruise, gave me a brace to wear and a prescription for extra strong Norco, which floored my pharmacy tech husband. I work with my hands at my job, and really should have taken a week off, but figured I didn't have to because it was my left hand and I'm a righty. All the same, it didn't heal completely until a few weeks later when I went on vacation for a long weekend. Next time I'll just stay home so it can properly heal, but hopefully there won't be a next time because I've had my eyes glued to the sidewalks while I walk home ever since it happened.


A heart: "Pretty sure it was L. In the phone call that ended it, he said he knew he was a rebound. He was right." I recently re-read my journal from that summer I dated L. I was definitely kind of a jerk to him. L, if you're reading this, I'm sorry I was a jerk. I was 20, had just gotten my own heart broken from my first boyfriend, and just enjoying dating someone where things weren't complicated. Until it got complicated. We broke up the day after my birthday. I was mad at him because he was trying to blow off hanging out with me that day. He was mad at me because I had spent my 21st birthday with my best friend instead of him. No regrets on that. He said, "I know I'm just your rebound." I said, "Then maybe we should end this." Because I couldn't say, "No you're not."

The law: "When I worked at a beauty supply store, I discovered I could shoplift without consequence, and I did. Inventory didn't even catch it." That entire job was a cluster of crazy, and I have no regrets about anything bad I might have done there. One coworker was a guy. We were so far away from each others types that we were able to become good friends without any sort of attraction to each other. We'd close together and smoke pot in the back office. When I turned 21 he called me days later and asked if I'd buy him a keg...not just beer, but a whole keg. And I did. We laughed our asses off when we found out we'd both been taking whatever we wanted from the store when we closed by ourselves. This is why you don't hire 18 year olds and then leave them unsupervised! I've never done that at any job since, but it was fun to be bad just once.

A promise: "I honestly can't think of one, but there must be something. I do try not to make promises I can't keep." I'm still thinking of this one, but except for kid stuff, I really can't come up with anything. Maybe the promise to not shoplift from your job? I try hard to practice "radical honesty" in my life. Not just for my own morality, but that's also where my dry, blunt humor comes from. I'm sure that there are people out there who might not agree with this, and have distinct memories of me breaking a promise to them. If you're out there, I'm sorry.

The Stages of Sickness

Monday: Hmm. My chest is tight and I'm coughing. I'd better have an Emergen-C and drink lots of tea today. Green tea has antioxidants!

Tuesday: Cough, cough, hack, wheeze. Not feeling good, but still mobile. I cancel an appt I had with a friend so she won't catch my gross germs, but still meet her for lunch and Christmas shopping. Drink lots of water, Emergen-C and more tea. I schedule a haircut appt for Sunday because surely I'll be better by then!

Wednesday: Go to my internship where I'm transcribing an oral history. Keep sipping on my water bottle, and push through. The library is freaking cold! Go home and take a hot shower that feels so good. Trench makes chili that I douse with Sriracha sauce. I will burn the bacteria out of me!

Thursday: Drag my sick ass into work. Decline going home early because it's holiday time and I need to make some money. Take a Sudafed, drink lots of water, order spicy Thai food, and drink a hot toddy.

Friday: The virus has moved up into my sinuses. I'm off today, so I hole up on Couch Island with my cat, a box of tissues, and endless cups of herbal tea. I celebrate 12/21/2012 by watching every apocalypse themed episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After a day of rest, I should be better by tomorrow, right?

Saturday: Drag myself to work again. Take a Sudafed and it does absolutely nothing. Barely drink any water because what's the fucking point? Same with tea and Emergen-C. Antioxidants have failed me. Fuck off, hydration. Go home, eat some dinner, try to sleep and fail. I have my haircut appt tomorrow and I really want to go.

Sunday: Cancel hair appt. Today shall be the hunt for antibiotics. Minute Clinic, here I come.

product junkie

Wow, haven't posted since my birthday. Not surprising since that was also the first day of school for me. This semester has been a challenge. I only take two classes a semester, but one of those classes has proved to be a huge time-suck, including a shit-ton of reading that we have to discuss in class (so I can't get away with not reading it, although I still try), and an internship in which my teacher wants us to complete 60 hours in eight weeks. I have a paper to write today, but I figure that some blogging will get me in the right frame of mind. I do have lots of ideas for posts that I jot down sometimes, but trying to do anything creative during the school year is difficult.

So I'm going to turn my brain off and post about something fun that is the polar opposite of archiving and library management. Beauty products! In my day job as an esthetician, I get to play with products all the time. These days it's makeup, but I do miss working with skincare products, and have recently signed up for Birchbox so I can feed my inner product junkie without shelling out tons of money for the full sizes. Here is what I'm using these days.

Miss Jessie, where have you been all my life? After trying a generous-sized sample from Birchbox, I immediately bought the full size (which I swear I will only do if the product is REALLY REALLY AWESOME). To tame my curls I've always had to use a bunch of products...leave in conditioner, mousse, cream, gel. Not exaggerating at all. I've never been able to use just one product in my hair, and have that be it. Miss Jessie's Pillow Soft Curls is officially the Hair Product To Rule Them All. After a shower, I'll put a nickel-sized amount in my wet hair, and then plop it into a t-shirt. My curls have never looked better, and it never looks frizzy anymore. I just wish I had learned this trick back in July when it was over 100 degrees every day!

I also recently purchased a Clairsonic Mia 2, after years of wanting one and not being able to justify the money. Thank you birthday gift card!

Such a great buy! The brush head is soft enough for my sensitive skin (although I think I want to get the "delicate" one for the winter), it gets off makeup like nobody's business, my skin is soooo soft and smooth after using it, and my pores really do look smaller. And all these years I've been washing my face with my hands like a sucker!

In all my years of working with skincare, I have one cleanser that stands out as my absolute favorite. That would be the B. Kamins Vegetable Cleanser.

I used to use this for almost every facial. It incredibly gentle, takes off makeup easily, and makes the skin feel clean and soft. I'm out of this right now, and every other cleanser I use just isn't the same. Might need to make a trip to the spa I used to work at to replenish.

As for face cream and eye cream, I'm using some stuff, but I haven't found anything I'm crazy about in a long time. My skin is starting to change, so I'm on the look out for products with more heavy duty ingredients like retinol and peptides. I generally just use Cetaphil in the dead of winter because my environment-activated rosacea flares up, but I still want something I can use during the rest of the year. If anyone has suggestions, or if you just want to dish about your own favorite products, leave a comment!

birthday musings

Today is my birthday. I'm turning 36. Meh. I'm not doing very much today besides collecting all of my birthday greetings on facebook, then later I go to my first Management class at my university's campus in the burbs. Yawn. But there is a party planned in a couple of weeks. Trench and I have our birthdays five days apart, and in our 20's, we threw giant house parties at the end of every August. Good times, but now that I'm in my 30's, I just don't want to spend the whole day cleaning anymore. And everyone leaves by midnight anyway because booze makes us sleepy now. So this year's party is going to be at a swanky bar, but is on a Sunday night and starts at 7 so people can be in bed by ten if they need to. This is how we party in our 30's. But at this point it's more of an excuse to get all our favorite people together in one room.

The parties in our 20's used to be raucous affairs. At the very first one a friend of ours brought over the two baby kittens she found abandoned in her garage, who were destined to become Puck and Elle. Random people from different groups of friends would hook up (sometimes in our basement). One time a whole posse of teenaged punk kids descended on us uninvited, and we finally kicked them out when we saw the 10-year-old drinking a beer. A friend of ours did "psychic backrubs", in which he would tell you things about yourself and deduce your future by rubbing your shoulders. Perhaps he regretted showing off this skill when every year people would descend on him with cries of, "Give me a psychic backrub!" and he would spend entire parties at work. One time Trench and another friend took off their clothes and went streaking in the rain at four in the morning. Another time a friend (the same one who brought the kittens) brought a jug of Peach Schnapps that no one drank. The next morning Trench tried giving it to a homeless man who was crashed out on the stairs next door to us and not even he wanted it. There was dancing and hugging and laughing and people passing out on our couches. I wouldn't exactly say that things have changed that much since we left that particular stage. Just that some of us have an earlier bedtime now, and hangovers can't be chased away with a couple of Advil and a glass of water.

No matter what goes down every year at the end of August, I'm grateful for the amazing friends that I have who bring joy and light to every occasion, whether it's a manic house party in our 20's or a tea party at the nursing home when we're in our 80's. I've carved a pretty fabulous life out for myself, and it's something I need to remember when I fret over whether I should have done this or that differently years ago. That is definitely something to toast. Cheers.

A Gentle Read

Recently I needed a new book to read before bed. Something simple that wouldn't be too gripping that could ease me to sleep. I have a shelf dedicated to old favorites from childhood/YA years, and I saw Madeleine L'Engle's Meet The Austin's. "Hey, that would be fun!" I thought. "I haven't read that since I was a kid!"

Oh my.

Um, it was kind of annoying. The Austins were L'Engle's concept of the perfect family. Two parents and four children in New England, with strong morals and high intellects. They spend their evenings singing psalms and quoting Shakespeare. Sometimes they fight, but gosh darn it, they love each other despite it all! The oldest one is building his own space suit. One of the girls wants to be a doctor and performs operations on her dolls. Their grandfather lives in a stable that he converted into a library (okay, that part is cool). They call their parents "Mother" and "Daddy", even the sixteen year old son. But when a young orphan named Maggy comes to live with them, she disrupts everything with her spoiled, selfish ways. Oh noes!

I loved the Austin books when I was younger, and read them over and over, but  I read them all out of order, and when I finally picked up Meet The Austins I distinctly remember not liking it as much as the others. This is the one where the narrator, Vicky, is thirteen, and doesn't do much more than talk about her awesome family, complain about Maggy, and crash her bike. In the other books she's a teenager, and there is Romance and Mystery and Intrigue. This book is merely the introduction of the world's nicest family, who always say grace before dinner and listens to classical music. My Reader's Advisory class at library school would probably classify this as a "Gentle Read."

A small part of me wants to re-read all the Austin books and blog about them, but I feel like snarking on L'Engle crosses a line somewhere. I have a feeling that even re-reading the books I liked might cause great amounts of snark, because I'm pretty sure that although Vicky gets more interesting and has Love Triangles, a lot of her teenaged angst has to do with whether God really exists and if we're just alone in this crazy universe. Just to be clear, I identify as an agnostic (I don't know what's out there after we die, and I don't think anyone else does either), but the heavy Christian overtones don't bother me too much since this was written in the 1960's and I consider it to be part of the time period. That said, goddamn, this one is preachy!

I grew up loving L'Engle's work, so I might leave the Austins and revisit the Murrys. The Murry/O'Keefe family traveled through time and space and even biology (the world of mitochondria!). However, I still might write a snarky review of Meet The Austins if there is popular demand for it.

Living With An Attack Cat

My brother in law is visiting from California, and so far my cat Puck has not tried to attack him. Puck is usually pretty good with immediate family, but he's been so unpredictable lately that I was nervous. Puck has always been the tough guy of my two cats, and as he's getting older, he's getting worsel.

Puck and his brother Elle were found in my friend Diane's garage when they were wee little babies. Puck had a gash on his back so something must have attacked them. As Diane and her posse were en route to our birthday party (Trench and I are five days apart and threw massive parties all throughout our 20's), she brought them with in case anyone wanted to adopt them. Of course the minute I picked up Puck, it was love. It was our other friend Michelle who took both newborns home and nursed them to robust health with a combination of kitten formula and an eye dropper. I took Puck home when the time was right.

As a kitten, Puck could be a little terror, but he was also pretty chill. He was friendly and liked to be around people. He'd jump in laps and want to play, and we were very proud of our sweet little guy. I'm not quite sure when that changed. It might have been when he had his first vet appointment to get shots. He had his first kitty melt down and had to be held down and wrapped in a blanket. Perhaps it reminded him of being held down by whatever it was that attacked him when he was a baby in a garage? After that he decided that anyone who wasn't me sucked and deserved nothing but wrath.

Most of our friends are aware of Puck and his evil tendencies. Our other cat Bowie doesn't care much for people either, but he hides under the dresser like a proper cat. Puck still has to be out in the mix, and does this incredibly sneaky thing where he rubs up against people (trying to get their scent), then viciously attacks when they try to pet him. A lot of our friends have suffered at the claws of Puck over the years, but we learned to warn people when they came in to just not pet him. "Look," we'd say, "when you come in, Puck is going to approach you and act like he likes you, but he doesn't really like you, so don't try to touch him." It was always the "cat people" who ended up injured, because they had such a hard time understanding that they aren't the Cat Whisperer that All Cats Adore.

Most people would probably wonder why we'd keep a cat like this around. A dog that attacked so many people would have gotten put down by now. But Puck is a mama's boy who is a marshmallow around me. He follows me from room to room, cries when I leave the house, pushes past the laptop and any book I'm reading to get in my lap, and swivels himself around to put his front paws around me when I pick him up. He's absolutely my baby.

The "don't pet the cat" trick worked for a number of years, until recently. Puck's more territorial than ever before. He's learned he can freak people out even more if he combines hissing with a growl that turns into a scary yowl as he advances. I've had to fend him off with a pillow while guests race to the spare bedroom and slam the door. It might be scent that gets to him. Immediate family seems to be safe...they must smell familiar enough. Dog owners also seem to get along better with Puck...he must smell a bigger animal and decide not to mess with this one. If he can smell cat on you? Forget it! Sometimes even guests who don't have cats can get their leg pounced on if they do something alarming like drop something or laugh too loudly. One recent guest spilled a pitcher of coffee in the middle of the night, and said it was like a cartoon attacked him. So I've had to resort to keeping him separated. If people are just coming over for an evening, that's not a big deal. It's less stressful for everyone involved, including Puck. When people are visiting for a weekend, it's harder because I feel so terrible to keep my cat locked in a room all the time.

I'm trying to do research for answers. Trench and I started watching My Cat From Hell, and I even bought the host's latest book. So far I haven't seen a cat quite like Puck. Once money is flowing a little more freely, perhaps I'll splurge and get a cat behaviorist to give us answers on why Puck does what he does. (Stop rolling your eyes, dog people! You're the ones shelling out big bucks on obedience school and day care!) But right now he's chill, so the world must be alright as far as he's concerned. For now.

being a grown up

When I was eighteen, I had a job at my mom's office that I really shouldn't have even had. I made lots of mistakes and was bored all the time, and the only thing I learned from it is that I don't work well in offices. I endured it much longer than I should have because the pay was better than the retail jobs that my friends were working, and when I got laid off due to budget cuts, I had to force myself to keep from breaking out into a big smile.

I remember one night I was sitting at my desk, waiting impatiently to get out because it was my one year and four month or whatever anniversary with my boyfriend, and we were going to go out for dinner somewhere fancy. We were kids in the suburbs so "somewhere fancy" meant Red Lobster, but it was at least a step up from Dennys. I had my outfit all planned out and I couldn't wait to wear it...I think it was a silvery A-line dress with silver shoes, very Clueless-inspired. A couple of my coworkers asked me what I was doing that night. They were ones I kind of liked...one was a single mom and the other was in his mid-20's and very sweet. I talked about my outfit I had planned and they laughed good naturedly about how I was like a little girl, excited to put on a pretty dress. Then they suddenly switched gears and started telling me how eventually I'd grow out of all that and I wouldn't care about what I was wearing anymore. I protested that yes, I would! They did the world-weary adult thing of, "No you won't, you'll stop caring, you'll have more important things to be concerned with."

Way to ruin my evening, coworkers! I remember that I went home, put on my cute dress and shoes, and went out with my boyfriend, and not even tasteless, rubbery lobster could cheer me up. I was in a funk the rest of the night about the death sentence that just got put on my youth...how grown up life was going to be gray and joyless and I would be too worried about bills and kids and my crappy office job to enjoy putting on a cute dress every now and then.

I'm 35 now, and putting on a cute dress still makes me smile. Yes, there are plenty of more important things to be concerned with, but that doesn't mean I can't still get excited about planning the perfect outfit to wear to a friend's wedding or a restaurant that isn't part of a nationwide chain. I actually like being a grown up, and quite frankly I wouldn't trade the problems I have as an adult for the problems I had as a nineteen-year-old for all the John Fluevog shoes in the world. I married a man who doesn't leave the house without putting on a fedora and knows how to rock pinstripes. I'd say everyone in our circles upon circles of friends are a fun loving bunch who know how to dress with style (from crunchy granola to librarian chic), and I'm relieved to see that parenthood hasn't changed that for any of them. I'm happy to say that getting older doesn't mean your personality has to change. It can deepen into something much better and much more you as the years go on, but it doesn't mutate to fit a mold of what society thinks an adult is supposed to be.

I wish I could take credit for this next quote, but it's something that a friend of a friend posted as a "happy birthday" on a facebook page, and I loved it so much I copied and pasted it so I wouldn't lose it. "My 20's were pretty interesting, but my 30's turned out to be even cooler, and my 40's even cooler still. Life seems to be like some kind of self-renewing plant - as long as you keep adding water and re-pot now and then, the darn thing keeps turning out flowers and getting more beautiful."

Little Old Ladies

At the train station about a month ago when it was still cold, I saw this little old lady buying a ticket, and by that I mean she was exactly the image conjured when you hear the words "little old lady"—headscarf, old wool coat, thick beige nylons, white nondescript sneakers. She saw a couple pennies that had been dropped on the ground by the machines, and made a noise as if she had found someone's lost engagement ring. She approached a CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) employee, and tried turning them in to her. At first I didn't understand what her little-old-lady logic was. Did she think someone was going to come back to the Jarvis station and check the lost and found for the two pennies he or she had dropped? It can be confusing and slightly irritating when little old ladies do stuff like that. It's something my grandmother would have done, but she grew up in the Depression, so somehow that makes it understandable. Remembering that made me wonder what this little old lady's story was. Perhaps she had lived through some time in her life where every penny counted?

In any case, the CTA employee refused to take the pennies, explaining that they weren't allowed to take money from people. Little Old Lady's voice was too soft for me to tell if there was a language barrier, because she didn't seem to understand. She tried putting the pennies on the counter and the CTA employee got all snappish and said, "You can't do that! You can't put those there!" That was even more irritating. I wanted to get involved and say, "Come on! She's not giving you money, she's a little old lady trying to do the right thing by turning in dropped pennies. Do you think you're gonna get fired for taking them? Just take the fucking pennies and say thank you and throw them out afterwards if you want!" But I'm fairly certain that would have just pissed off both parties even more, so I just let it go and walked upstairs to catch the train.

Moral of the story: When a little old lady hands you something, just fucking take it.

just say "red" to this book

Yes, it's been awhile since I've posted. Even two classes doesn't leave a lot of room for fun writing. I really enjoyed my classes this semester, and would encourage anyone looking for a good book to check out the blog that my classmates and I all contributed to for my Reader's Advisory class. It covers almost every genre, so there's bound to be something in there to appeal to anyone.

So after a semester of reading good books, I decided to turn off my brain and read the book everyone is reading right now. Do I even have to say it? Yes, I read 50 Shades of Grey. I was expecting it to be bad in a cheesy so-bad-it's-good way. In the words of Enid from Ghost World, "This cycled past good and went right back to bad again." I know it started off as Twilight fan fiction, but it didn't even remind me much of Twilight, except for the obvious bits about Christian and Edward being so handsome, and Bella and Anastasia being clumsy. To me it felt like reading a Sweet Valley High novel. If Francine Pascal had thought to get Elizabeth Wakefield and Bruce Patman  together and throw in some S&M (well, technically she did, but it was much more vanilla), it would have been this book. Although the writing would have been a lot better. Think about what I just said.

To give everyone who has resisted the lurid song of 50 Shades a taste of what they've been missing, here's my take on a typical 50 Shades scene.


"Anastasia, I'm going to fuck you fast and hard," Christian muttered as he thrust his enormous penis inside me. At least, I think it's enormous. I've never even had a sexual thought in my life until I first laid eyes on Christian Grey, so it goes without saying that I've never seen a penis. Holy cow! I gasped and bit my lower lip. "Don't bite your lip, you know what it does to me!" he murmured. My subconscious looked up from her copy of "The Feminine Mystique" and tutted at me while my inner goddess did naked cartwheels around the room, the slut. "Okay, you can come now," he commanded. I gasped and immediately had fifteen orgasms in a row.

That's pretty much it. The rest of the book is mostly text messages and emails. Seriously. Henry and June it ain't. In fact, as far as S&M goes, it's pretty tame. The first book is just spanking. There are two sequels, so maybe it gets more intense. I hear the next book has butt plugs.

I happen to know a thing or two...not very much, literally just a thing or two...about the fetish community, which might be why a lot of this seemed far fetched to me. First of all:

1. Men like Christian Grey who are very rich and very powerful are rarely doms. It makes sense that they would be right? He's a control freak so that means he needs control in every aspect of his life, right? Nope. It's men like Christian who go to dungeons and pay women good money to stomp on their testicles while wearing stilettos. It's very rare to want that sort of control in all aspects of your life.

2. Which is probably why so many middle class moms are eating this story like candy right now. When you're spending your days changing diapers, herding the kiddos to school and soccer practice, making sure all homework is done, cooking three meals a day, and all those other things that moms are expected to do, it isn't a surprise that the idea of being tied up and blindfolded while someone else does all the work sounds enticing.

3. Safety words exist for a reason. There are a few times Christian goes over Anastasia's boundaries. This isn't hard to do because Anastasia, despite bragging about how high her GPA is for the entire book, has the communication skills of a rock. I kept yelling at her in my head, "Say 'red', Anastasia. Just say 'red.' He told you to say 'red' if things got out of hand. How about 'yellow'? Oh never mind, you just had ten orgasms anyway. Stop crying."

4. One thing that the book got right? Anastasia emails Christian (half the book! I'm serious!) and simpers about how he scares her sometimes and makes her want to run away, but she can't because she'd miss him and blah blah blah. He writes back, "What I think you fail to realize is that in Dom/sub relationships it is the sub who has all the power. That's you." Yes! Finally, the book gets something right! In other words, JUST SAY "RED", ANASTASIA!

The School for Dangerous Girls

I haven't written too much about grad school, but I'm currently enrolled in the Library & Information Science program at Dominican University. I've generally liked all my classes so far (except for cataloging, which I hated), but I'm really loving my classes this semester. One of the classes is Reader's Advisory, which is teaching us how to recommend books to people. How do you not love that? Every week we read a book in a different genre and post about it on a class blog. Check it out at RA763 if you want to find something new to read. The stuff posted there is mostly about why the book would appeal to someone looking for a book in that genre, so I figured I would write broader reviews on this blog. Warning: thar be spoilers.

Last week we had to read a suspense novel. Think John Grisham and the like. I'm not a big fan of that genre...I mean, I like suspense, but not the OMG THE CLOCK IS TICKING AND THE BAD GUYS ARE CLOSING IN GO GO GO variety. I asked Trench to lend me something, so he gave me an Elmore Leonard book. I was bored in two chapters. I only had a week to read something, so I decided to look for a YA novel with suspense in it. I found "The School for Dangerous Girls" on Novelist, like a good library student. It was perfect for the assignment and I breezed through it on my Nook in a weekend.

Fifteen year old Angela is troublemaker  and her parents have had enough of it. To get her away from her older boyfriend, she gets sent to Hidden Oak, a school for troubled girls hidden away in the mountains of Colorado. Angela makes two very different friends...Carmen, sweet and quiet, and Juin, loud and brash. After the first month, girls begin getting sorted into different groups. The gold thread is for girls that show hope of changing their dangerous ways, while the purple thread is for the girls the school deems to be lost causes (but don't want to just expel because then they would lose their parents tuition money). Carmen is put into the gold thread and Juin is put into the purple thread. Angela walks the line, but ultimately is thought to be just smart enough to go gold. After finding herself with the "good girls", Angela can't stop asking about what happened to the purple thread, which is a big no no, and she's severely punished for it. This just makes her more curious, until she finds a way to contact Juin and finds out that the purple thread girls have been left to fend for themselves Lord of the Flies-style in an abandoned gym, and are punished harshly for trying to escape. Angela, Juin and Carmen figure out the school's dark past and find a way to stage a rebellion and bring down the school for good.

During Angela's counseling sessions, her psychiatrist tells her that her problem is that she only acts on what she wants that minute rather than what would make her happy the next day. If Present Angela wants to run away with her boyfriend, she will do it without a thought to whether Future Angela will be as happy about it. At the end of the book, Angela has to choose between the quick getaway with Juin, which she knows will end badly because there's nowhere for her to go and Juin is kind of crazy, or staying behind with Carmen and helping to bring down the school (or possibly stay trapped there if things go wrong). Angela's arc is complete when she chooses Carmen.

What goes wrong: (SPOILERS HERE!) The girls are winning! Incriminating tapes have been found! The evil staff is outnumbered! Angela takes off for civilization with her sexy love interest (sigh...there had to be a love interest, even though it was unnecessary and lame), and he warns her that this still might not go well. The authorities rarely listen to girls like her, and they might side with the school no matter what's on the tapes. The final chapter is the epilogue, which takes place two months later. Angela and the dude return to the school, where the rest of the girls are.

Angela: It all totes worked out, just like I knew it would! How do you like my haircut?

Seriously, that was the ending. Everything wrapped up beautifully with a big fluffy bow on it, and no one even mentioned what happened to Juin after she escaped with the teacher she seduced (yup).

If I have to give it a grade, I'll give it a B-. If you like YA novels that are fast paced and suspenseful, give it a read.

Valentines Day: What I've Learned From Seven Years In the Beauty Industry

• Everyone knows that February 14th is Valentine's Day...but February 13th is V-Day for the mistress. Good to know that as the wife, you retain all rights to the 14th, but if you're ever feeling suspicious, find out what your husband is doing February 13th.
• A popular service at the spa on V-Day is a Couples Massage, where you and your partner get massages in the same room together. Massage therapists hate the couples massage because rather than being romantic, it's just a way for control freak couples to make sure their partner isn't getting a happy ending. One partner will keep craning his/her neck to make sure his/her significant other isn't enjoying the massage too much. Also, massage therapists will usually spend the whole time making goofy faces at each other and trying not to crack up. 
• Also, if the couples massage you are booked cancels at the last minute or doesn't show at all, it's safe to assume that they broke up.
• As an esthetician, you are almost more likely to work on ladies who are single and decide to treat themselves to a facial or a waxing.
• (Please, I beg of you, don't snicker at the word "facial". The joke is less funny when it's your profession. How would you like it if I snickered every time you mentioned that you had a "conference call" or "power point"?)
• V-Day only registers for the newly in love. Those who are married or have been in a relationship for a really long time are all, "Huh? It's Valentines Day? Whatever. I guess we'll order in sushi or something."
• If you are a gentleman booking a day of spa services for your girlfriend, please spare the staff the embarrassment of booking her name as "Dreamgirl." And then forcing everyone to call her "Dreamgirl" the entire day. Yes, that happened.
• Tip generously. Your esthetician has had to look at a lot of vagina all day, and your massage therapist's hands are going numb.

magic onions!

So recently I learned through the Power of the Internet that if you put the white parts of green onions into a glass of water, they will magically regenerate and you will always have green onions. I figured it was worth a shot, so the next time I used green onions (for miso soup), I put them into a small glass of water. And lo and behold!

 I took that picture last week so the onions are even taller now and ready to be sliced up the next time I'm peckish. Never ending onions! Thank you, Internet! Now I have to ask...do those of you who have green thumbs have any other tips like this? Is there another vegetable that will magically regenerate if I put it in a glass of water? As crafty as I can be, I've never been able to get into gardening because I make plants die.

In other cooking news, I managed not to succumb to the siren song of sushi takeout, and made myself a quick soup. Can of white beans, onions and red bell peppers that were already chopped up and leftover from another dinner, a whole head of garlic (yeah, that's right), can of green chiles, veggie broth. Boil, simmer, eat. I like it when it's simple.

let's add some teal

The Great Moth Infestation has finally been handled. Any yarn that wasn't thrown out was put in the freezer, thawed, microwaved, rinse and repeat several times. Sweaters were taken to the dry cleaners. Blocks of cedar/lavender sachets/cedar and lavender sprays were purchased. The salvaged yarn (mostly acrylics and cottons) were re-wound with my swift and ball winder and put into ziploc bags. Take that, you little fuckers.

Quite frankly, my knitting corner was asking for it. I had yarn hanging out in baskets and boxes. Even with all of that gone it was still a mess. I had knitting/other crafty books spilling all over an end table.

Yes, they were filed away neatly at one point. Shut up! Know what else is a mess? Your mom!

Trench and I took a trip to our favorite little gem in Chicago, Nadeau, which sells furniture from India and Indonesia for WHOLESALE PRICES! We combed through the warehouse and finally settled on this beauty.

We moved the table off to the side and will most likely be getting rid of it. You can't tell under all those books, but it's an antique that I grew up with. I'm sad to part with it, but I'm hoping someone in my family will take it back. Otherwise I'll try finding it a good home elsewhere. Here's how the cabinet looks filled up with books and yarn.

It would be prettier if the yarn wasn't stored in ziploc bags, but unfortunately ziploc bags are now an indispensable item. I did try to organize by color (which wasn't hard because I mostly have purples and reds). I was shocked that almost all my books fit on the bottom shelf.

I don't think this would have held even half of what I used to have, but I think I was due for a purging anyway. I've decided not to add anymore to the stash until I get through some of what I already have. I haven't done much knitting in a long time, mostly because the old light fixtures we had were so dim, but we're replacing those too so things are better. I just cast on for a new project and I'm falling back in love with the craft.

Besides that, we also found this little table that we couldn't resist getting.

We almost always watch TV by hooking it up to the laptop so we can watch Hulu. The laptop would sit on a dining room chair. It was such a fixture that we decided the laptop needed its own table to sit on.

I'm liking the way this corner looks now, although in its natural state there are a lot more wires and such hanging about. Next on the agenda...a new lamp, ditching the old end table, and replacing our not-very-old purple chair that our cat Bowie decided to turn into a scratching post.

entre-vu

Trench and I moved into our condo almost two years ago. We had a fit of decorating/organization, threw a housewarming party, then promptly gave up. We're finally picking up where we left off and doing projects like putting our CD collection on itunes so we can sell the CDs (except for a few sentimental favorites), and organizing areas that have gotten cluttered. Today I fixed up our front entry way. We did a good job of decorating when we first moved in, but it's been starting to look a little shabby. I had a couple of nice pictures that were just sitting out without any frames. I decided to finally go buy some today. I went to the closest neighborhood with cute boutiques and couldn't find a damn thing until one furniture shop owner recommended that I check out Equinox. I did, and it became my new favorite store. There were shelves of cute frames! Big enough for my 5 x 7 pictures! Huzzah! It has all sorts of cute items for the home as well.

So here's a shot of my now much more put together front entry way:

The large picture on the wall is actually a stick-on decal from Blik. We've named her Matilda.

Blogging about blogging

I haven't updated this blog very much. Why is that? I love writing and when I do update I feel accomplished and proud of what I put out there. So why am I posting once every few months? And promising to post more, then not doing it?

The simple answer is that between work and school, I have a lot going on. Which is true...when school is in session there's a lot that I need to get done and anything creative is put on the back burner. On the other hand, I always have the time to check facebook. Why is it so hard to find the time to do something enriching instead of something passive?

It isn't that I don't have ideas. I love reading design blogs and craft blogs and food blogs and fashion blogs. I'm not opposed to incorporating a little of each of those into this. I've probably written more about food than anything else, so why not turn this into a food blog? Trench and I are getting back into the swing of decorating our place and have bought some new fixtures for it, so why not post some pictures of my new light fixture or new dishware? I love dressing up and I'm attempting to break old habits (like only wearing black and red). Why not post some pictures of outfits? I think that with each of those ideas, I get worried that no one would want to read about it. I worry that posting about trying to eat healthy would make people roll their eyes and think of me as an HTTH (Holier Than Thou Hippie), or if I posted pics of outfits that people would think I was bragging or vain. Suddenly the challenge becomes how to incorporate some self-deprecation into what I'm trying to say. There's also a fear of putting too much personal stuff out into the public.

It's all so silly, because the only people even reading this thing are my friends, who are the most supportive people in the universe. It's not like I have an audience. Then I get depressed because secretly I would love to have a blog that went viral and had a large amount of people reading it (or so I think anyway...the reality might not be as fun as I think). Years ago I started a blog about working in a spa. It was a really good idea, and the type of thing that probably could have gained an audience because there's nothing else like it out there. The flipside is that it meant writing about my job on my off hours, so it languished until I couldn't even remember what my password was to get in.

So I'm going to make the promises again about posting more. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be self-deprecating, it doesn't have to be that interesting even. It just has to be out there. I can even make a game where one week I pretend to be a design blog and another week I'll pretend to be a fashion blog. Who knows, eventually maybe something will stick. Till then, I'll just keep throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Review: Vapour Organics

Since I started working in a Major Cosmetics Boutique a few years ago, I have amassed a large quantity of makeup. In my teens and 20's, I used as much makeup as most girls that age. I even worked for a Major Cosmetics Store in my early 20's and had access to makeup and skincare that no girl that age should be able to afford. I fell off the makeup wagon while I was working at a spa, but now my makeup bag is bursting with primers and highlighters and liquid tints and powder blushes. However, my one consistent love has always been red lipstick. On days that I'm too lazy to wear anything else, red lipstick gives the illusion that I'm wearing a full face of makeup, even if I'm not.

One thing that the Major Cosmetics Boutique is not is organic. I'm the type of person who is concerned about what I put in my body, and as an esthetician I'm very concerned about what goes on my skin. So even though I love my products from the Major Cosmetics Boutique, I'd like to find a more natural alternative to it. Not to replace all of it, because I don't think you can get cancer from a cheek tint or an eyeliner. But seeing that I am a lipstick addict, and lipstick is the one cosmetic that gets ingested, I should probably be more concerned about what I'm putting on my lips.

And that is my quest. To find an organic lipstick that doesn't SUCK. My big problem with organic makeup in general and lipstick in particular is that it is mostly made for hippies. Girls who don't want a whole lot of color on their skin and think that pale pink lipstick is too much. Not to mention these companies usually brag about how moisturizing their lipstick is, which basically means that the color fades in two minutes. If I want my lips to be moisturized, I'll use a lip balm. Give me a lipstick that LASTS.

I discovered Vapour Organics by doing a search on Pinterest for organic lipstick (how on earth did I ever find anything before Pinterest? These days I almost prefer it over Google). They offer sample packs for $15 so I figured I'd try it out. You can get whatever you want, so I chose their Siren lipstick, their Atmosphere Luminous Foundation, an eye color, and a cheek/lip stain.

When I got their samples, I was a little disappointed at how small they were, just scrapings inside of small plastic sample packs. I just reminded myself that not every company has the cash to make travel sizes the way Major Cosmetics Boutique can. Also, it turns out the samples are so concentrated that I still have enough a week later.

Out of the four, I probably won't buy the eye color or the stain. Both were good, it's just that the eye color creased really bad. I have a couple different eye primers that would help it stay on, but what's the point of buying an organic eyeshadow if you're wearing it over a primer that has chemicals in it? As I said before, I'm not too concerned about using non-organic eye makeup anyway. I was "meh" about the cheek and lip stain too. It's good. In fact, if you're looking for an organic cheek and lip stain, I recommend it. I just like the cheek and lip stain my company sells better.

I really liked the foundation. It isn't cakey, it blends well, and it gives my skin a nice glow. I'll definitely buy a full sized version. And the lipstick? It's my organic lipstick dream come true! The red is perfect, it isn't too slick or too dry, and it last longer than any other organic lipstick I've ever tried. Hell, it lasts longer than the lipstick my company sells! I'm still using my sample, but I can't wait to buy the full size, and will probably get some other colors as well. I might even become a Vapour convert, because I know I'll try more. Other organic cosmetics company take note...it isn't enough that your products have natural ingredients if they aren't sexy.

For anyone interested in skincare/cosmetics that don't use toxic ingredients, here are all the companies listed in the Compact For Safe Cosmetics.

The Knitter's Nightmare

Years ago, in the few months of unemployment I had between esthetician school and my first esthetician job, I learned how to knit from Debbie Stoller's Stitch and Bitch. Like an army of other young women that summer, I fell in love with it. I bought plastic needles and soft acrylic yarn from Joanne's Fabrics and knit my little heart out. It especially came in handy when I started working, because I could knit a scarf in between clients. As the years went on, I bought nicer needles and pricier yarn made of natural fibers and worked on more complicated projects, like lace and cables and sweaters and socks. Knitting is a great hobby because it's portable enough to take anywhere, and it makes lazy nights in front of the TV productive. ("I just watched four hours of Buffy re-runs, but now I have a hat!")

The last year has seen a sharp decline in my knitting. We moved to our first condo, and even though one of the reason I like it here is because there is a lot of natural light, there is an unfortunate lack of unnatural light. Basically the light fixtures the developer put in are very fancy looking, but suck. They require expensive little spotlight bulbs that burn out in less than a week. So once the sun goes down, it gets too dim to do anything crafty. So I haven't really picked up the needles in a long time. I tried working on a sock over the summer, which was nice and reminded me of how much I miss knitting. Then I stopped when I realized I had messed up the number of stitches cast on, which is such a newbie mistake I was disgusted with myself. So I put it down and didn't pick it back up.

The other night, Trench asked me if he could borrow some yarn for the Halloween costume he was putting together. I went into my long-neglected stash to see if I could find something. As I delved in, I realized that something was wrong. All my little rolled up cakes of yarn looked rough, like something had been nibbling at them. For the last couple months we had seen tiny little brown flies around the apt. I didn't think much of them because it was summer, and bugs happen in the summer. I thought they were coming from the drains so I'd been pouring bleach down them. Could they be...moths? My suspicions were confirmed I saw a worm crawling on MY PURPLE MERINO.

I had Trench throw the entire basket out immediately. I rescued a sweater that had still been a work in progress...I only needed one more sleeve. Once the infected basket was gone, Trench and I went through the other boxes. (What, you thought I only had one basket of yarn?) All the natural fibers were toast. Acrylics and cottons still looked okay. I went into the closets to see if they had gotten any of my finished knits, and yes they had. I lost hats and scarves. Luckily the scarf/shawl that had taken me two years to finish was fine because I'd been wearing it. Same with Trench's gray scarf with the intricate DNA cable pattern I had made him years ago. We tend to throw our outerwear on the bed in the guest room rather than hang them up in the closet like we should. Laziness for the win! Sweaters that I've made didn't have worms, but did have webbing (re: cocoons) on them. I stuffed them into the freezer. From what I've read (and you know I was doing research as this was happening), freezing temperatures kills larvae. Heat kills eggs. My sweaters, half-finished sweater, and whatever yarn remains of my stash (because those little fuckers don't eat acrylic but could be hiding in it) have been in the freezer for a few days now.

Dry cleaning kills moths, larvae and eggs so I'm taking my finished sweaters, as well as a couple of coats from the closet that have traces on them, to the cleaners today. My almost-finished sweater is sadly going to be a casualty. I threw out the rest of the yarn that went with it, so there's not much point in keeping it, and it had been in the most infested basket. Tonight the rest of my yarn is going to get baked in the oven. Seriously. 110 degrees for 30 minutes (under careful watch, of course). I don't like the idea of insecticides, so I'm going to douse my closets and drawers with eucalyptus and lavender. (Thank the gods they didn't hit my wardrobe! Except for my knits I mostly wear cotton and acrylics.)

If you knit or crochet and have a stash of yarn hanging about, be aware of what's flying around your home. Clothes moths do not look like the normal moths you see flitting around light bulbs in the summer. They are tiny, about the size of a fruit fly, and look like a fleck of wood when standing still. From now on, my stash will be kept in ziploc bags. Once we get a new light fixture for the living room, I'm hoping to return to my knitterly ways, but now I'm slightly terrified of natural fibers. I might just knit with cotton blends for awhile.

Snowpocalypse! (old buried post)

Things To Do When You're Snowed In

* If you've had enough warning about the snow...like hearing about it three days in advance, down to a starting point such as 3pm on Tuesday afternoon, you'll probably want to hit the grocery store for essentials. Don't buy the entire store out in a panic, just get what you need...toilet paper, ingredients for food and some snacks, batteries for the flash light just in case, and most important of all, booze.

* Don't worry too much about your husband driving home that night. He will power that beat up little Honda Civic through the worst blizzard since 1967, screaming, "THIS IS AWESOME!" through the white out. That is the man you have married.

* However, when parking in the indoor parking garage nearby (good idea!), open the door to get your ticket because if you roll down the power window? It might not roll back up, and then your car will get filled with snow during the night.

* Nature can be awesome. THUNDERSNOW!

* If you work from home, my apologies. No snow day for you.

*If you're a student, you don't get an extra week to do your homework. Get it done, and email it in. Thanks technology!

* When you're snowed in, you will want to bake. Hopefully you bought enough ingredients to indulge this. Blueberry cinnamon muffins, mmm!

* Sure, there's two feet of snow on the ground, but that's not an excuse not to go out in it! Go explore. You'll find the happiest dogs and kids ever. Poor adults will all be shoveling out their cars. Sweeping snow from the interior is no big deal at all compared to that!

* Take pictures. Especially if you live by the lake.

Wow! I remember trying to publish this blog when the blizzard happened, but I thought blogger ate it. Turns out it was just hiding as a draft. No reason not to post it now, although I doubt anyone wants to think about snow at this point.

music and madness and some laziness too

It's my day off today and I'm being entirely too lazy. Laziness is my fundamental problem in life. I just missed yoga class because I got caught up in looking at pictures of tattoos. I woke up a little late today, so yoga probably wasn't going to happen anyway. Oh well, I'll do some yoga at home and then go jogging. It's gorgeous out and I won't be able to do that soon. It's still shocking to me that I've started running since I hated it so much when I was a kid. Then again, jogging by the lake is a whole different animal than jogging in my loathsome junior high gym. I'm not interested in gyms or running on a treadmill so I'll stick with yoga classes over the winter.

Despite my inherent laziness, October is always a big month here in the robot-pixie house. Tonight I'm blowing off class going to be really really sick, and the only way to cure it will be going to see Portishead play at the Aragon. Then next week we're taking a quick trip out to the Quad Cities to watch the Indelicates play in a small intimate setting, then the last Friday of the month we'll see them again in Chicago at a much bigger venue, which should be interesting. And of course I already took off the weekend of Halloween, cuz that's our holiday. Why do I love Halloween so much? Besides the fact that it isn't very hard to convince me to dress up and put on a costume? I consider it the perfect holiday because it's not about spending time with your family and eating a big meal and breaking the bank on presents for people. It's about throwing on some fake blood and having a fantastic time with all your friends. Not that I don't like spending time with my family or buying presents for people, but that does pale in comparison to finding the perfect costume and dancing your ass off in it. I love the rampant creativity this holiday inspires.

So that's what's on the agenda this month. Music and madness. Now I better go take a jog so I look good in my slutty Halloween costume.

Nook Review

Yes, it's been months since I've posted. Yes, I've been a bad blogger. I think I'm going to try and post every Tuesday since it's a pretty easy day for me. In November I'll try to post every day again and see how far I get. I think that I get blocked because in my public blog I like writing about something instead of updating about my day to day life, like, "This week I worked a bunch of days, and then I went to class and it was pretty boring, and then I went out to dinner with some friends." No one wants to read that.

About three weeks ago, I finally joined the future and bought an e-reader. I decided to get the Nook instead of the Kindle, because you can download library books on it, and also you can buy books from other stores, not just Barnes and Noble. I got the latest one, which is smaller and has a touch screen, and so far I love it. I was one of those people who hated the idea of an e-reader when it first came out. "Nothing will replace books for me! You'll have to pry paper books from my cold dead hands!" But e readers have advanced since then, and now I love the idea that I don't ever have to be in between books till I get to a bookstore anymore, the entire world of literature is at my fingertips. Also, I'm a very bad library grad student who never uses the library. Now I can download library books, and not worry about late return fees if I'm too lazy to bring the book back on time. Another perk is that I can download pdf files onto it to read instead of killing more trees by printing them. This makes it very handy for the mountain of journal articles I have to read for school, so I can write the Nook off on my taxes, woot!

So far I've waded in slowly. Trench recently got me sucked into the first season of Game of Thrones, so I bought the first book and have been reading it on my Nook. I didn't know if I would like reading fiction on a screen, but if you are a person who likes to read, you will read anything as long as there are words printed on it. I like that the Nook is so slim, so I never have to leave it at home, like I do sometimes when I'm reading a fat book. I've even been reading in bed, although in a fit of sleepiness the other night I reached up to the corner of the Nook to turn a page instead of swiping the screen.

All the same, when I finish this and go to read the second, I think I'll get the paper book instead. As handy as the Nook is, at the end of the day it's still another screen to stare at. I'm excited to use it for non-fiction, and even for hardcover fiction that is too difficult to carry around everywhere, or silly chick lit that I don't want people to catch me reading. As for really good fiction that I can barely put down, I think I'll stick to paper.