When Did the Sloths Become Trained Ninjas?

if you have no idea what i mean by that, and if you don't know about the elephants currently standing on my left shoulder, let me explain...

several months ago i got fed up of talking about how miserable i felt all the time, and i can only guess people got tired of hearing it. friends and family, genuinely concerned with how i was doing, would ask how i felt, and "okay" or "meh" were not generally accepted as responses. however, logging everything that was wrong with me on a given day (because it could be many things at once, and those things could change day to day) became very tiresome and - let's face it - pretty depressing. so i developed a "shorthand": since my two biggest problems were pain and fatigue, i decide to break them down into expressions that were easy to share. and, because it's me, and i was over talking about "pain" and "fatigue", it needed to be something with a little humor.

hence the elephants and sloths.

elephants register the amount of pain i'm in, from 1-50; 10 elephants is low, everyday kind of pain (i feel like only 10 elephants have run over me), while something like 35-40 elephants means i'm in pretty severe pain. and those elephants are clever - apparently they've been taking lessons from circus trainers. some days (like today, for example) my body pain's only around 5 elephants, but there are at least 25 balancing precariously on my left shoulder. and at least one of those pachyderms needs to work on its balance, because it seems to be leaning on my neck for support.

sloths tally the amount of fatigue i'm feeling, and they run from 1 to 10. don't let that low number fool you, though: these sloths are serious about their, well, slothiness. and several of them clearly need to go on jenny craig, because when they decide to take a nap on me, i can barely move myself, even if i need to. they seem like such gentle creatures, but looks can be deceiving... i met one at the give kids village a couple of weeks ago while i was taking pictures; the people from discovery cove bring over various animals once a week for the kids to see and interact with. lucky the two-toed sloth was very sweet and docile. but when i asked politely that he tell his relatives to please lay off the junk food, he just blinked sleepily at me and pretended not to know what i was talking about. you'd think, because they generally move so slowly, that i'd have ample warning before they attack, but oh, no... apparently the sloths are also adeptly trained ninjas, masters of the sneak attack. i meant to be over at rob's nearly three hours ago, but they ambushed me and rendered me unconscious for two hours. they may seem sweet, but they fight dirty...

so should you ever hear me talking about my elephants or those damned sloths, now you understand... and be careful, they've been known to try to follow others home. we must all be very vigilant...

That's Right, I'm Classy

just an self-observation as i sit here eating my vanilla creme-centered cookies (think vanilla oreos) and a glass of 10 year tawny aged port wine...

Summer of Music

if you know me, you know that music is a constant in my life. i can't make it (well, i probably could, but i'll leave that to people who have actual talent there), but i can dance to it, sing along to it in the car, and just generally rock out to it. i do this as often as possible. and yes, i own hundreds of cds, and thousands of tracks, but my favorite way to listen to music is live and in person. i love it - i love the energy of the band, and the energy of the crowd, and how those energies flow back and forth. anyone can sound good on a studio recording after production wizards have done their stuff, but it takes true talent to create your own music and make it sound awesome on a stage in the middle of hundreds of people.

it has been an excellent summer for live music. well, for me anyway. i don't know what you've been doing, but i have been delighting in a smorgasbord of melodious pastiche. (okay, yes, that metaphor was completely ridiculous, but whatever.)

just after school let out - the day after, actually - john and i went out to tampa to see the cure. his sister denise joined us and we rocked out to a blissfully made-up robert smith and his current bandmates. rob and kristin joined me for some cowboy mouth shenanigans in july. (and, yes, i remembered the red spoons this time!) liberally sprinkled throughout the summer were shows by afterglow radio and junkierush. (incidentally, agr just released their first full-length cd, and you should definitely pick it up - awesome stuff!) but the best of the summer music extravaganza was at the (formerly star-lake) amphitheatre just outside of pittsburgh.

the police with elvis costello and the imposters.

i don't even think i have to mention how awesome this show was. i'm not sure i even have the words to describe its awesomeness, and i'm the girl who just used the phrase "delighting in a smorgasbord of melodious pastiche" earlier in this blog. it was my first time witnessing both these bands, and it was totally worth the ridiculous ticket price. (well worth the ticket i bought for dad as his birthday present, too) elvis costello is, of course, a musical

genius and he and the imposters are just plain fun on stage. the police, suffice it to say, were brilliant. it was so relaxed on stage - it was obvious they were having fun and enjoying themselves. i'm going to go out on a limb here and say it was probably better than the last tour they went on before they split. there were no egos, no tension... and since they've already stated that they have no plans to reform or recordany new music, there was no pressure of longevity. just three amazingly gifted musicians out there doing what they love. sting sounded better than ever - and the fact that i find a man old enough to be my father sexy is just a testament to his talent as a performer. he owns the stage and the audience. andy summers occasionally broke into mind-bending guitar solos, and steward copeland is simply amazing. he (with his nine-gazillion piece percussion kit) was as fun to watch as listen to.

so, yay, live music! may there be more on the horizon!

Going With the Flow

there are lots of things going not according to plan at this point in my life.  i can't say that's a bad thing, because it all seems like it's for the best (as long as i can pay my rent next month, anyway). i'm really working on trusting the universe at the moment, and hopefully it'll pay off.  i'm already glad i'm not back at chs, no matter how much i miss my kids and my department (well, some of them anyway).  i'm tutoring which is good - i get to be helpful without all the mountains of unnecessary paperwork and protocols.  it's only part-time, though, so i need something else to pay the bills, but hopefully that's just around the corner.  (and if you have any suggestions, by all means, suggest!) it's certainly less stressful and easier on my poor body.  now if i can just figure out how to get full benefits so i can go back to the doctor... 

Raccoon - 5, Parents - 1

i went home to visit the parentals at the end of july. they picked me up in pittsburgh and we headed back to the house. as i carried in my stuff, i noticed a long metal cage sitting on the deck. "what's that for?" i asked. "the raccoon," my mother answered. "we have a raccoon?" "not on purpose." apparently the raccoon had been tearing up the yard and eating the votive candles out of mom's terra cotta luminaries. "candles?" "yes, he very carefully pulls them up out of the holders and i guess he thinks they might be food. he munches around the outside, realizes he can't eat it, and moves on." all this, and he's not so much as tipped over the breakable holders. the yard, however, is looking pretty rough, so my parents decided to trap him and take him up to cooper's rock (a local state park) and let him go up there.

they had tried to catch him the night before i arrived using hamburger as bait, but to no avail. in the morning, the hamburger was gone, and the trap was still set - and almost caught the cat, who is clearly not as clever as the raccoon. according to my uncle (who lent them the trap - why he had a raccoon trap, i'm sure i don't know), the best bait is sardines. um, ok. so that night, dad set the trap. in the morning the cage held... nothing. the sardines were gone, and this time the trap was closed, as if the raccoon wanted to show us that either a) he knew how this trick worked, or b) he was the houdini of the nocturnal world. raccoon 2, parents 0.

they tried again, this time with dad fashioning a cup to hold the sardines, which would be affixed to the cage. theoretically, the raccoon would have to climb into the trap in order to get the food. this time, the cup was intact and unmoved, the trap was opened, and the sardines were gone. raccoon 3, parents 0.

on the fourth attempt - with more rigging and wiring of sardine holders - a raccoon was caught. unfortunately, it wasn't the one they were after. this was a baby raccoon, who was all kinds of scared to be stuck in the cage. he was too young to have learned the finesse of the older raccoon, who was still free. my parents, animal-lovers both even though they were tired of the raccoon shenanigans, tried to calm the poor baby before dad took him up to cooper's rock to find distant relatives. so technically, raccoon 4, parents 0; but since they did catch a raccoon (though it wasn't the raccoon), i'll give them raccoon 4, parents 1.

a few days after i returned to orlando, my mother called to tell me they had tried a new tactic. you guessed it: this time the cup and the sardines made it out of the cage, without the trap ever catching. raccoon 5, parents 1. and the battle continues...