Lighten Up, Hon...

Okay okay, here's some chili con carne for us all.

Mr Torso and Aqua Girl were at the pool this morning, outdoing each other in the fast lap lanes, lots of camaraderie and coaching. (oh brother) He had been there Friday with one of the other Betty or Veronicas he shows up with now and then, which is more shy teasing and wow, you're greats. (yech)

As is his wont, after finishing his 90 minutes of laps, he emerges fully formed from the azure depths and relaxes his godly form in the pit of fiery waters, more to converse with we mortals that are his pitiful subjects. (verily) As surely he is omniscient and omnipotent (stop) Mr Torso, God, steps slowly down the tiled stairs, adjusting the strap on his tinted godly goggles, finally reaching the floor of the turbulent flaming pool, he takes a deep breath, and stands there glorious. Not moving. For an interminable time (like 20 or 30 seconds). As the water ebbed to the top of his loose fitting, low-slung swim trunks, my gaze worked slowly up the Elysium Fields of his heavenly torso like the hands of a newly blinded sculptor. Held captive by his loveliness, he stood there immobile before me in more humbling magnificence than the Monolith of 2001: Space Odyssey (cue soundtrack) The chatter of the other mortal subjects fell silent. Then, he lowered himself to the benchseat, the whirlpools of Charybdis overtaking the golden fleece in a temporary victory. His eyes closed in elegant repose. (breathe)

What is up with this guy??? I veer from "Thus Spake Zarathustra" to the acoustic guitar intro of Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs Robinson" in less than three seconds. Someone suggested he reads my blog and is jerking my chain. Well, he is definitely jerking my chain, I doubt he reads this blog, but I don't doubt that he is fully aware of his affect on women of all ages and is juicing that to the max. Why oh why (but thank you) does he stand in front of me like that, literally 18 inches from me, and just stand there, up to his waist in hot water? When he gets out of the hot tub, we all watch him go up the steps, and turn right to (side elevation view) go to the sauna, then we look at each other and smile, roll our eyes and a few older ladies even giggle "I'm not dead yet, Ruth" so he has to be doing this on purpose, right?


Why do I care? Well, he's a beautiful man, and although has the body Michaelangelo might have made, he's not as petulant as David (who's always looked kinda 'Hey Sailor' to me) and has that amazingly perfect turfscape. And the being 18 inches from nearsighted me aspect. He's consistent, and never lets the sheilas keep him from his workout. Everyday, even on Sundays. I like that. I'll miss him, now that class will fill up my mornings, only Saturday and Sunday mornings will be my windows of breath-taking scenic vistas. Alas...

I think I saw him dressed once, wearing his little homeboy baggies and a brimmed cap on his shaved head, hoodie and silly shoes, talking to one of the very young women at the front desk. Call me superficial, but he was doing too good a job of hiding in plain sight, masking his magic. As I came in the front door, I brazenly walked up to the desk, looked him in the eye, and gave him a flirty smile. It may have been him, I don't know, he had his baggy shirt on.

Since You Asked

Thanks for the support, the waiting game is tough.

Still no word from Portland State University on my admission status.
My transcripts are all in, and I've already gotten a letter that had a student ID number on it, but it may have been regarding another student with my name and some previous PSU term grades. Of course, it arrived on a Saturday, when the office is closed, so I sent off an email asking them to please look into this ASAP so it doesn't hold up anything for me.

Classes start in 5 weeks!
Aaarrrrggghhhh!

Anyway, that's where I am with school, and will probably be able to meet with someone this coming week to get going with Registration and Orientation, etc. Then get a campus job and get going with my new life. Yesterday I talked to a woman close to my age who had her nursing school books spread out all over her workspace at a shop on Hawthorne, her anatomy final is this coming week, and she was cramming. We talked a long time about Life, and the timeless what-happened-during-my-20s-and-30s, and how it's pointless to regret past choices and what got in the way the first time. She said her hardest problem is wanting to be too chummy with her professors, being her peers, and not being a stand-out too much by answering all the questions out loud in class. I didn't ask her about the Mrs. Robinson Issue, maybe she's happily hooked-up, so she didn't mention it either. I'll have to just behave myself.

Speaking of... Consistent Mr. Torso sightings at the gym have me doing laps like Aqua Girl. He's in training, I overheard him saying the other day to the only other person under 60 with him near the pool besides me. Whatever gets me into the swimsuit and the water, whatever it takes. He's got to be under 30, which means I really need to get a grip and just admire the scenery.
Whatever. Like I told my pal Jolie, lucky for me he has a cheap hobby like swimming, all he needs is the goggles and trunks, unlike some people I know who have to own horses, rent the barn, buy the chaps and hat and gear, pay to show the horses, and you never get to see them (legally) smiling and relaxing in the hot tub almost naked. But she does have the hunky ferriers...

Sorry, my middle-aged lady got loose again, got to do something about that.

And I'm not going to Florida for the holidays, since Betty and I do the weekend 3 hour phone calls, we're pretty much caught up I think, and other than getting her computer set-up working at optimal level, there isn't much reason to fly me out there. Earlier this year I had thought about it, but that was so long ago, and now all I care about is getting into classes and arranging a job around that as best I can so I still have a life, time to study and write papers, and make stuff to sell. I'm going to get a portfolio of my stuff together, take photos, and shop it around the Portland Craft Mafias and see who wants to hook up with me, to supplement the Etsy site and focus on some local interest, too.
The Oregonian did a nice article on the hand craft movement here in town, and how high-profile it is becoming nationally, encompassing re-use, reduce, recycle and how to support local shops and craftsters instead of going zombie-like to the mall to have your brains and wallet sucked dry. One December night a few years ago, I came home zombie-like from my store at the mall, poured a tall tumbler of Merlot, and spent about 90 minutes being Santa and took care of Christmas all at one sitting. Didn't even need to refill my wine glass. What a relief that was, all shipped, all done. Ho ho ho.
This year I took the hand-made pledge. Hopefully they'll forgive me.

While I Wait....

This waiting thing is twisting me in half.

Reading other of my favorite blogs, they write about the usual things they always write about, crafting, writing, living with non-creatives, work, family, online life, kids, politics. It's comforting to read and know that these blog-pals are forging ahead, spit to the wind, writing when they can, and knowing why they do what they do.

Talking to my landlady last night, I saw the smiling webshot of the new Brittany dog coming home tonight from the shelter, and it is heart-warming to know the house will have a big lovey dog in it again. I have been doing dog-watching more frequently, and that has eased some of my dog-envy, but it never goes away. My cats love me, I love them (little beasts), but the space in your heart for a dawg is a specific place, like for a mate, a kid, a horse. Nothing else really fits that space, and you make the best of it, and love the hell out of what you do have. My life would have to completely change some more for me to fit a dog into the mix, and I don't know how much more utter change I can handle this year. Hanging tough with what I have started in motion feels like the way to go for now, and focus on school.

And wait some more, send polite emails with a slight edge of urgency, double check my paperwork and deadlines, and wait some more. Oh yeah, Thanksgiving. Sure, happy happy, whatever. Do not tell me the admissions office is taking this week off or I will run screaming down there to lodge a protest. Since when did Thanksgiving become a week off like Christmas?
It's a one day holiday, maybe two if you're lucky, but the whole week? WTF?

I am working through some of the frustration by swimming laps at the gym, with the occasional Mr Torso sightings keeping me motivated. Sometimes it's great to be half-blind in a swimming pool, you just don't care how you look because you can't see them either, so you're invisible. Except for the Mr Torsos, they're all a sodden blur, and I just make another turn in the lane and head out for the other side, odd number out, even number back, 19 out, 20 back, 21 out, 22 back, keep going until 30 then stop counting. Collapse into the steam room, inhale eucalyptus clouds, leave the gym a new woman. Come home, still no letter or email from the admissions office, grind teeth, continue job search. My gym is open the morning of Thanksgiving, so I can go swim off the feast I will eat later, excellent! There's a rhythm to this, and it's working so far, and I look forward to enjoying my first non-retail, non-restaurant business Thanksgiving and Black Friday in over 20 years. I remember working in a family owned deli in 1986 where they closed for the four day weekend...I believe that may have been the last time I was off.

Little things...I checked out of the Multnomah County Library a series of DVDs featuring classic Russian paintings, produced by a brilliant Russian director who won an Oscar in 1996(?) for best foreign language film. His name is Nikita Mikhalkov, and he made this series for Russian television and schools, but the subtitles are poetic and he presents each artist with passion and intelligence. I had never heard of any of these painters, and Mikhalkov delves into their biography, presenting each painting with an audio setting of what the painter may have heard surrounding him while painting and perhaps chatting with the subject of the portrait. The music is haunting, evocative, and pulls you into romantic era of these artists, from early 18th century portraits through early 20th century Impressionists. Delighted to see this DVD set is available on Amazon for @ $50, now I need to find some big Taunton or Rizzoli artbooks with these painters, because unfortunately PSU has no History of Russian Painting classes in the catalog.

This morning, a break from the rain, a splash of sunshine, but the chill is here to stay. Gloves and wristmitts to keep the damp out, and my craft room is too cold to use comfortably. So it's time to move the desktop computer back into the livingroom, rearrange the furniture again, vacuum like a madwoman, toss more stuff into the crawlspace, set up an area to study for school. The cats try to help, but I wind up shutting them in the bedroom for a few hours so I can actually get something done. They always sit just where you were pushing the couch to.
One of my favorite bloggers lives in Australia and is at the "too damn hot to knit anymore" stage of summer. I am building little nests of wool sweater for the beasties to sleep in on sunless days, every old wool store-bought sweater is a potential pet bed to me, and I have the nerve to felt a sweater I didn't knit, cut it up, and make it into something new and wooly-smelling. The beasties approve and don't have to fight over who's bed is who's anymore. It's the little things...

Hot hot hot historic telenovela will be starting after Univision's Gaviota concludes the first week of December. These are great series of Colonial Mexico, with carriages, horses, swords, duels, gowns, haciendas, rancheros, chaperones, nuns and priests, Generalissimos, mysterious spinsters, etc. Should be 9pm, maybe 8pm, depending on whether they overlap it with the finish of the Gaviota novela or not, check your Univision channel. Here in Portland it's Channel 31. What writers' strike?

Friday Finds Me Still Dreaming

I was all set to go on and on about my Mr Torso sighting today, shaved head and goggles above the water most of the time, until...good god rising up the pool steps and I lose all power of speech and reason...and I finally figured out who he sounds like, Roger Davis of 1960s TV fame (it's a Dark Shadows thing, shut up!). But I've been even more distracted than that.

Early this morning, like 3am probably, I was in the midst of a family drama involving three brothers and their Philly-Italian mom, who had just moved into her very first house of her own, and they were helping her move in, and tussling like brothers in their 20s do, and I was there, one of her gal pals, but I had to get to work at my warehouse, but no one had eaten all day, so she was making all this fuss to get us all to sit down and have some kind of dinner.

Where does this all come from? I do not know, and it has been happening all my life. So all during the day today, I am just a shade away from being fully back into that dream-thing, as if it's running underneath everything else I'm doing, and if I just ease off the attention I'm paying to, let's say, driving, or talking to someone, whatever it is, I am 100% fully back into this dream. Sometimes a dream can hang on for a few days, until it is supplanted by another totally different but just as intense dream, which carries me like a flying carpet for at least 24 hours. Does this happen to everybody?

It doesn't bother me anymore, it's entertaining, unless it's one of those horrific nightmares that hang on way too long and I can't shake it so I'll write it down to try and let it go that way. I write a lot of the dreams down anyway, it's good practice, and they may as well have a purpose. They become drawings, short stories, paintings to do, things to be on the lookout for, tangents to research in the Awake World (ask me about Carthage) and some scarier than any horror film I've ever seen. So I stick to Hammer Film Horror, because I don't need any further help there. The psychics I've spoken to have a pretty consistent theory about this, as do the astrologers, and most of my friends just think it's weird, so what? It feels like an interactive film. Actual movie making is just way too complicated for this stage of my life, but I could shovel pitch concepts like gold coins.

Maybe it's the knitting withdrawal setting in. No, that's not it, but something like old wooden lace bobbins can show up in an entire grimy, smoky HBO Deadwood-type Old West dream, which revisits characters I dreamt about in that same locale 25 years ago. Seeing those bobbins at a thrift store is enough to trigger this entire immersive revisiting of this place and cast of characters that drives the slightly askew plot along a bit more---leaving me floating between these two worlds for a day or two.

We all have this---right? We just quit talking about dreams after a certain point in life, right?

Wonder why?

Bubble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble

Safely bedded in the dry, dark and friendly basement sits a rather large and active carboy of spirited cloudy mashy brew. Soon to be ale. Yet another batch of Wicked Women on the Porch IPA, with its hoppy, lemony zippiness and satisfying kick in the keester.

And before anyone thinks that home brewed beer is a scary proposition, I had the delight of sampling an Organic IPA at a local area brew-pub last night that bore a suspiciously similar taste to our very own WWOTP IPA. So how did this brew-pub get our secret recipe? This smacks of brew-espionage to me. I see more sampling and batch-tasting in my immediate future, just to determine what goes on here. And the brew-pub had an excellent wheat beer, amber ale, and then I lost track. And quit drinking other people's beer.

How do people suffer through those 24-packs of red-white-blue label cans of factory swill?


Although it appears I was lost in space for three days, I was earnestly working on The Sweater, only one short sleeve to go, taking pics for Etsy, doing some cost analysis of supplies and expenses so far, boxing up more to take to the Groovy Rhubarb space, and writing. Like, as in fiction, sort of like starting a book. A (novel) mystery (maybe?). "I'm scared, Brad, hold me!"
I hate to mention something so early-begun so early, so as to not jinx it, but I am surprised by the concept, and have to drive it a bit to see where it goes for me. And that's all I'm-a gonna say.

Speaking of trouble, Mr. Torso was in the pool with me at the gym yesterday. Sometimes he joins me in the steam room, too, and then we sometimes share the hot tub before he goes and swims hundreds of laps in the fast lane. I know he wears goggles, and wears a close-cropped haircut, but any other description would involve extensive details of his amazing torso, and I would have to admit I have no clue what his face looks like. Am I being too much like a guy here? And is that bad?
So this is where I have to confess to a torso weakness. Not surprisingly, most straight women admit in mixed company to noticing a man's eyes first, but then amongst friends, they talk in lower voices about lower anatomical areas. I notice a guy's eyes first, too, but then...how does he fill out the shirt? That sounds really bad, I know. Even if I'm not wearing glasses or contacts, somehow I have 20-20 vision when it comes to a fabulous torso. How can that be? And, honestly, that's about as far as I notice much. Obviously have not watched enough "Sex in the City" or bad soft-porn. But I did drop an entire large tray of freshly baked bread and other treats upon walking out a busy restaurant door and seeing a spectacular man in front of me stretching with his shirt completely open. As long as I worked there, I could never live that down. And now I share it with you. (I need a moment.......)
So Mr. Torso is a swimmer, and he likes steam and hot tubs, and I can't even tell you a rough estimate of how old he is. Under 35, over 20? And he forgoes that pesky chest waxing ordeal, thank all the greek gods I can think of. So...should I say hi and mention what a great swimmer he is? And not make a Freudian slip with the word lap or stroke or steamy dreamy?

And the whole world knows how I got busted at Fred Meyer's last weekend scoping on this hunky guy in the produce and natural foods department. Dark hair, tied back in a short tail, tan or olive skin, about 6'3", lean, clean but casual, probably between 30 & 35. Meaning, I have no business even looking at this guy. I was going about my usual invisible shopping errands, "Oh, it's just Mrs. Robinson shopping, don't mind me," when--- suddenly---there he appeared, reaching into the cold case right next to me for juice, and my left brain went on break. C-ya!

What the F happens here? I can see it all, my eyes following him as he browses, he looks like a swimmer, or a model, and I'm sure my mouth is hanging open, struck speechless, and I re-position my shopping cart as he circulates around the produce aisles. This sounds so self-deprecating, but pudgy women over 40 really get used to being invisible, or in the way of younger and thinner people needing your space. So I'm sure I was solidly staring at him. Good god. I pretended to look at a shopping list when another woman a tad older than me caught me scoping. She didn't even meet my eye, but she did check him out thoroughly. So, after about 7 or 8 minutes of this, and I know I'm being so silly, he's at the self check-out lane and having trouble with his card but the line to get help is three deep, so he waits, and I move my cart again, and from almost 100 feet away, he turns around and looks directly at me. Remember, no left brain function. I reach for my cell phone, and pretend to answer it. Could I be a bigger dork? (The answer is 'no')
My neighbor Steven giggled at me, and thought it was a good sign that he didn't call security.
It was only a few minutes. I had a ready excuse---"You look just like my son's friend" or, "Sorry, you look just like my sister's baby daddy," or the best--- "Wow, I thought you were the guy I shagged last night at the Bagdad". But, not needed. He was gone. So I put my silent cellphone away and finished my shopping. "No waiting in the 10 DORKS OR LESS line!!"

Always happy to amuse.