The Cuckoo Bee

1. I made a crocheted change purse out of green yarn.  It is in the shape of a circular granny square.  I had to learn how to double crochet to do it, and it was by far the most enjoyable thing I have ever crocheted.  Then I put a red and white spotted ribbon through the top as a drawstring and lined it with purple fabric so when you close it, it forms a little puff ball.  And then I put maroon pompoms all over it.  Oh, I wish you could see it, but I have cleverly hidden my camera somewhere where I will likely never find it again.

2.  I was SO EXCITED last night, and the night before, and the night before that I couldn’t sleep.  Every time I would doze off I would jerk awake again.  I think that thing with my head exploding from too much fun happened after we went out with our friends/acquaintances on Friday or whatever that was.  And also may see them again next week.  And will be seeing other people too.  Added to the short story thing and the purse issue, which I will go into next, it has been all too much for mommy.

3.  Before the purse issue I have to note that I went to short story class tonight and the teacher did in fact write me a love letter.  I am now wondering if the only reason I liked Nick Gilbert was because he used to write me love letters about my writing all the time.  I am very, very vain about my writing, apparently.  I didn’t even know that.  But there it is.

4.  Also, before we get to the purse thing, the butter dish and bird sugar bowl have still not arrived! Neither have the sewing machine needles.  What!

5.  Today on etsy I bought a vintage cigar box.  It is on the small side at 7 inches long and 3 inches wide.  I intend to make it into a wallet.

6.  I also bought an issue of Life magazine.  I wanted something vintagey, ads I guess, and I was trying to decide if I wanted 30s or 60s or what when I came across an edition from 1944 with Judy Garland on the cover.  So that was it, I bought it, and then I realized that 1944 was the year Nick Gilbert was born.  I wonder if he ever googles himself.  Ahem.  Then I realized that the person who was selling it was R. Gilbert.  Not the same person because he had a picture there (also a different name).  Well!  Who cares?

7.  I have a veritable shitload of purses I need to make soon, from the strip-pieced backpack in the shape of a dung heap to the miniature Snoopy lunchbox shaped like a popover to the vintage apron purse shaped like a woman’s ass with giant boob apron pockets on the front.  That’s in addition to the cigar wallet.  Do you see why I can’t sleep at night, reader?  Not to mention the novel and the fucking short story!  I knew once I started swearing here it would be all over!  My short story that I sent my teacher had approximately 1,000 uses of the word “fuck” in it!  One of the lessons we learned in class today was not to use swear words unless absolutely necessary because we don’t want to alienate the reader!  This is one of many instances in which I utterly disagree with the teacher, because I not only want to alienate the reader, I want to f***him or her in the ****!

That’s all.  I do like the number 8, but I don’t want to put a number 8 on this list just to have it.  Let’s just say, God Bless you number 8 and leave it at that.  God bless you number 8!

1.  Communication from dead parent regarding nature of purple sky and infinity of universe

2.  Flashback of crazy things said/did to guests over the weekend while intoxicated

3.  Horror at depth of dumbness embodied in creative writing story as recently sent to teacher

4.  Justification of crazy ideals and dumbness exhibited during intoxication/story-writing

5.  Planning other,  more crazy/dumber things to say/do next time in both drunken activity and story-writing (see #1)

So, reader, what is it all about? Is it about making so much money that I can drive to my island castle in the Mediterranean on my yacht?  Or race through the streets of Monaco in the grand prix?  Can you do that if you are super-wealthy?  Is it about thousands of adoring fans writing me love letters? Is it about Nick Gilbert calling me up to tell me he should have taken me with him to Eastern Europe when I was 15 so we could live together in various extremes of sin? These are the things that seem like obvious possibilities to me in answering the question at the title of this post.

In other news, I love homeopathic cough syrup.  God, it’s delicious!  The brand I’m talking about is Umcka and it uses a Zulu remedy to aid your coughing spells.  I’m trying to distract myself with all this because I am very jumpy right now due to the fact that I just sent my creative writing teacher the first draft of my story entitled “The Elf Upstairs.”  I am dying with anticipation and fear of what he is going to tell me, although his comments are invariably positive and pretty bland so there is probably not much to worry about.  But what if he doesn’t tell me that this is by far the best story he has ever received in his teaching life, and then also doesn’t send me adoring love letters on the half-hour for the next two weeks?  What then, reader.  What then.

Crafts I anticipate happening sometime:

1. Mosaic of pixel art octopus or something.  I ordered the tiles last night.  Still need grout and adhesive and all that.  I will keep you posted, of course.

2.  Making owl quilt throw for my mommy.  She is here this weekend and it is jolly.  Also allows me to stay out all night getting wasted.  Sorry, reader, I know you are sensitive but I have to tell the truth.

3.  Whatever hundreds of other things are on my list.  I am trying to sort and organize and edit now to get things into logical series of happenings.

Look at that.  I forgot all about my creative writing teacher and his imminent anonymously supportive comments.  I do like that about the aging process–forgetting at will.

1.  Tom Collins

2.  Tequila shot

3.  Piece of tomato

4.  Glass of water

5.  Tequila shot

6.  Walk somewhere in rain

7.  Not so good tequila shot

8.  Discuss:  “Ghosts, angels, and UFOs I have met”

9.  Second not so good tequila shot, gift from bartender

10.  End of someone’s beer

11.  Walk to somewhere far away in rain

12.  Guinness

13. Patron shot

14.  Patron shot, gift of bartender

15. Water out of faucet in bathroom

16.  Mistake name of friend sitting on opposite side of table

17.  Sit on floor of stairwell in apartment building after all drinkeries in Hoboken have closed down

18.  Three cigarettes in stairwell

19.  Call cab for guests but do not tell them, so cab comes and leaves again while guests, whose names have completely forgotten, continue to shout/remain unconscious in living room

20.  Wake up mother

21.  Guests disappear

I have been making fabric marshmallows.

More coming soon.  Much, much more.  Poor reader, you do not begin to plumb the depths of my obsession with fabric marshmallows.

Today I went shopping in New York for a birthday present for my younger son.  I always think that it is going to be an all-day event when I go through the tunnel but I always end up back here around lunch time.  The toy store in Hoboken has those wonderful old-timey toys made of genuine painted wood, or metal gizmos with intricate springy parts, or beautiful musical instruments, so of course that is totally unacceptable to the kids who only deal in plastic Disney objects.  So I had to go to Manhattan to go to Toys R Us.  I was very pleased to visit Toys R Us in Times Square because 1) it is a very special location for me since I went on one of my first dates with my boyfriend there (I have decided to refer to my husband as my boyfriend) 2) Broadway is closed to traffic for a couple blocks up there and it’s extremely nice.  I am becoming into toys in an intense way now that the kids are so focussed on them and force me to play Legos etc. all the time.  I can now see the realness of the Lego pirate ship the way I used to when I was playing with those things a long time ago, plus I am making toys all the time at home, so am becoming enmeshed in that world.  The great thing is that toys are so cheap that I can always buy some for myself, not like other things I covet such as Prada handbags.  I don’t have any of those. Boo.

After Toys R Us I happened to be walking by Kinokuniya, the largest Japanese bookstore in America, and then it all began to remind me of a blog I wrote last April where I went shopping all day and how much fun it was to write the blog and do the shopping.  I tried to walk past Kinokuniya but they kind of make it impossible and I ended up buying all kinds of cute and beautiful things for my niece. Ahem. Not for myself. Everything there is unbelievable in quality but the prices are mindboggling.  There was a plush cat which I was about to get but it was $76.  For a ten-inch plush cat.  It kind of makes you want to buy it just because it’s expensive.  I looked at the craft books and again realized how utterly superior everything in the Japanese store is to whatever is produced in the Western world–at least for crafting.  Maybe for everything.

Then I went to Lord & Taylor to get a couple things:  1. jacket 2. scarf 3. sunglasses 4. hat, but didn’t feel like looking at the sunglasses, hats and scarf once I was actually standing there in the accessories section.  There were some frightening people working in the store who chased me around with samples of Chanel perfume.  They were mostly frightening because of all the makeup they were wearing.  Also because they looked at me.  I ended up not buying anything because I figured I must have a 25% off coupon at home, which it turned out I did, and I had to process all the shopping visions first anyway.  So I went back out into the cold but sunny day without sunglasses hat coat etc., none of which I had brought with me because I assumed I would purchase them all right then.

There are always a lot of European tourists between 42nd street and 33rd street.  I watched them while eating lunch at Wichcraft, which I like, but unfortunately had to sit outside in the cold, but actually it was okay because I like to have a hot beverage with my lunch as it makes me slow down slightly and not cram and gobble.

I am going to leave you now because I have to admire the three small versions of the larger fabric marshmallow pictured above.  I have some trouble not kissing them all the time but I will try to focus on what they are telling me.  I realized this week in short story class that I am constantly detracting from what the short story is trying to tell me by jumping in front of it with things I want to tell the reader about myself, but which have nothing to do with the story.  That wasn’t exactly what the teacher was talking about but I like the class very much.  I am also right now going to teach myself to crochet hexagonal granny squares–wish me luck with that, reader!  I will need it.

Whatever that means.

I just made these.  Here they are cooling on the rack.

crunchy

Here is my recipe.

Preheat oven to 250.  Beat 1 egg white with 1 Tablespoon water until frothy.  In another bowl mix a cup of sugar and a large dash, or several dashes, of each of the following:  salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, garam masala, cayenne pepper.  Put the pecans in the egg whites and stir them around to cover, then put them in the spice mixture.  Put on parchment paper on tray in oven for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.  They do make the house smell good, or better than the mildew smell you usually have going on.  Cool.  Eat.

1.  I cut my own hair again today.  This time I used my new embroidery scissors, which are quite sharp and so (as I thought) suited for hair cutting.  I used a new technique this time.  I have been thinking about the fact that I do not own a Flow-Bee ever since the first time I saw a commercial for the Flow-Bee twenty years ago, so I replicated Flow-Bee action today by turning upside down while I cut my hair.  A hair stylist told me a long time ago that hair cutting is all about triangles, but I was thinking as I randomly chopped this afternoon that it is all, for me, about circles, because I want my hair to look like an enormous circle.  My husband came home and said “You have to go have that fixed right now” and my older son said, “Mommy can wear her hair any way she wants!” Right on!

2.  These are the years of my grown-up life that were bad years for me:  1989, 1992, 1996, 1998, 2004. I was thinking about this today because I found myself humming as I sewed a dachshund “Down By the Old Mill Stream,” and in 1992 I used to call my mother from college, sometimes three times a day, and have her sing “Down By the Old Mill Stream” for me over the phone.  That lessened the bad times, not really that, which was kind of depressing because it made her seem farther away, but the existence of my family in general.

3.  These are the years that were very good years:  1985 (that borders on not being a grown-up year but I include it anyway), 1986, 1987, 1988, 1991, mid-1994 to June 1995, 1999, 2000, 2001.  I don’t include any current years, like since 2005, because I can’t tell if they are good or bad yet.

4.  My older son calls nostrils “nosticals” and the piano “panano.”

5.  I finally bought some new sewing machine needles at the City Quilter in NYC.  Apparently there is nowhere in the state of New Jersey to purchase them.

Here we have a drawing of dogs.

Next the scary barn owl.

Then the dog parade.  I’m not sure where it’s going, either the piece or the parade.

Then we have the jelly roll wallet, culprit of sewing machine breaking.

We undo the little tie (which I hand stitched myself) and unroll the wallet:

Then we unroll some more…

Until it’s flat.  There is a little envelope-style flap holding the cards in, you see.  Let’s lift that up.

and we can stick in our credit cards etc.  Only one pocket is sewn because that was when the sewing machine broke- September 18, I believe, and the replacement needles are not here yet.  Oh, US Post Office, you’re so incompetent!

And finally, a silk screen I tried this morning.  I like it.

boston terrier says woof