Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

We are on the downhill slope of my second-least-favorite season and the weather has been damp and ooky and my mold allergies are killing me and apparently this happens every year in May, which probably means I've complained about it every year in May, so let this be a lesson to you: don't live in the past, you guys. It deprives you of the pleasure of complaining in the present.

Things that have been happening around these parts:

• In February I replaced my ancient clock radio with a clock that is not a radio, so I bought a cheap battery radio and I'm a little embarrassed by how much I've been enjoying it. I have satellite radio in my car and I've been listening to streaming playlists pretty exclusively when NOT in my car for a number of years now and hey, radio is a thing that still exists and that makes me happy. Also there are no Tejano stations in my XM subscription, but there are like 47 of them just on the FM band alone. So yay.
• In March we stripped C's room down to the studs and completely re-did it in a fit of "you're an adult now and your outer environment reflects your inner environment and vice-versa" and I'm not sure it changed anything for him in any substantial way, but it was a badly needed clearout so we're counting it a win.
• In April C turned 21 and P turned 52 and I did something weird to my foot that required (inconclusive) x-rays and crutches but got completely better on its own after a couple of weeks, so April was kind of exhausting. Also in April my hair finally became long enough for a ponytail, and I cast on for a Berroco Vine in Madelinetosh.
• So far in May: I got a new grill for Mother's Day (yay!), I removed the Facebook app from my phone (best decision EVER), and daughter H moved out of my house and into an apartment with some friends (OMG). She's only about five minutes away, so close and yet so far. Also in May son C got his learner's permit for driving a car (he already has a full-blown motorcycle license) and I don't have a photo of the used car P bought him earlier this year (2010 convertible VW bug because he needs to feel the wind in his hair, man) but yeah, he's learning to drive a car now. So that's happening. Maybe the room remodel DID work.

I have been reading lots of really good books and I have accomplished this by discarding books that aren't excellent within the first 100 pages or so. In the fiction realm I can recommend without reservation Erika Swyler's The Book of Speculation (especially if you liked The Night Circus), Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (can you believe I'd never read it?), Paulette Jiles's News of the World (excellent), Emily Bitto's The Strays (fascinating), and Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (which was not at all what I was expecting, in a good way). 

In the non-fiction genre, I loved Mychal Denzel Smith's Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, Scott B. Christmas's Washington's Nightmare: A Brief History of American Political Parties, Saroo Brierley's Lion, and Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Right now I'm re-reading The Handmaid's Tale for the first time in decades (I don't have a Hulu subscription so I'm not watching it, but the movie with Natasha Richardson and Faye Dunaway is seared into my mind). Next up? Probably Joyce's The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Which normally I wouldn't go near based on the title alone because I'm such a fucking elitist, but it's a companion volume to Harold Fry and now I kind of need to know.

Pursuant to the article above re: Facebook, I'm hoping my abandonment of that medium will encourage me to write more often in this particular medium, so we'll see what happens. Meanwhile I most definitely am not abandoning Twitter or Instagram; you can find me there at @saltycrunchy for my personal accounts (my personal Instagram is private so if I don't know who you are, I'm afraid you're out of luck there) or @kmshealthcoach for my professional accounts (which are public AF, as the kids say). 

Any and all food blogging type stuff is now happening on my professional Instagram account, if that tempts you at all. If foul-mouthed liberal rantings are more your thing, I recommend my personal Twitter (which is public). Or, you know, check back here occasionally. There's bound to be all SORTS of foul-mouthed liberal ranting in the weeks and months to come.

Triangle man hates particle man

I am doing this thing now where I wake up at like 3 or 4 in the morning to pee and then I can't back to sleep and it is not fun, let me tell you. My head is full of words at that time of day and I compose lengthy, eloquent blog posts for you all, but they evaporate right out of my head -- poof -- in the conversion from horizontal to vertical. So lucky for you, I don't have a lot to say today except to tell you about some things I am super duper loving right now.

1. Knitting! I still get it! I don't know why this foreign language suddenly started making sense to me at the ripe old age of 49, but it did and I am glad. I'm still working on the parallelogram wrap and also I made the Selkie Hat from issue #17 of Taproot Magazine (pictured up there just after I started decreasing and just before I had to rip out said decreasing because I lost a stitch somewhere along the way)(hey, I said I understood it, I didn't say I was good at it)(I did finish the hat, though)(and if it ever stops being in the 90s, I may even get to wear it). If you're on Ravelry and got a friend request from saltycrunchy, that's me! Hello! Please be my friend. Don't make me beg.

2. Those pants up there are the Barcelona Pants from Earthbound Trading and I have three pairs in three different colors and I love them so so much, the end.

3. Claire Robertson of Loobylu fame has a new email newsletter, the Small Batch List, and it's one of the highlights of my week.

4. Alice Bradley of finslippy fame ALSO has a new email newsletter and it's one of the OTHER highlights of my week. (Seriously, I have been unsubbing newsletters willy-nilly the past couple of months but these two are keepers. You will love them.)

5. Yesterday C and I were talking about how we both need math refreshers (calculus for him, um ... long division for me, shut up) and long story short, we re-discovered Khan Academy and holy cats is free education ever super cool. (I know that for some of you revisiting high school -- or elementary school, in my case -- math is your idea of hell and I get that but they have LOADS of other stuff, too. Art history! Computer animation! Macroeconomics AND microeconomics! Astronomy! This is good shit!)

6. I haven't managed to read many books since last we talked, but I did like the new Tana French and I'm currently reading and biting my fingernails through The Forgetting Time which is so so good. Just today I bought the Kindle version of The Good Girls Revolt because I tried watching the show but it gave me an anxiety attack and I had to turn it off halfway through the first episode just like with Mad Men, argh. (Have we talked about how I used to be a journalist and how my actual degree is in advertising and what the job market was like in Texas in the late '80s and early '90s and about Good Old Boy culture? Well, let's not. I've expended rather a lot of effort in the direction of drinking away those memories.)

7. Mostly because of the knitting I've been listening to audiobooks and other audio-type media products. Amazon has some kind of deal going now with Audible (because the former owns the latter, from my understanding) such that Prime members have access to Audible Channels and I can't figure out how to link to it for the life of me but Nick Offerman has this Bedtime Stories for Cynics channel and it's so great. Just don't play it with your kids in the room. Unless they're already jaded adults like mine are.

8. My state has early voting and it's pretty much the best thing ever. Enough said.

Okey-doke. Off to take a nap. Happy Friday, everyone!

Summer's end

The end of summer snuck up on me this year, I guess because Back To School with a college freshman (who lives at home and takes classes online) and a high school sophomore (who doesn't get her school supply lists until after school starts) is a very different experience than Back To School with littler kids. AND THANK GOD FOR THAT, MAN. It was only yesterday that I looked at the calendar and realized holy crap, school starts a week from Monday. Wow. Where did THAT summer go?

H has recovered pretty much completely from having all four wisdom teeth removed and is zooming along (ha!) with her driver's training. She drove on the frontage road for the interstate the other day! Very exciting!

C has been composing music and helping some friends with a very exciting project and looking forward to taking his very first college course so he'll finally have something to do, for the love of God.

P has been working ridiculous hours like always. Enough said.

I have been reading, reading, reading. Loved A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, liked Aric Davis's The Fort, loved Steve Martin's The Pleasure of My Company. (Yes, THAT Steve Martin. I never was a huge fan of his standup but the man is a genius, no lie.) Now I'm reading The Fault in Our Stars, which I'm told will make me cry buckets, but really I'm just biding my time until I can start reading books that take place in the fall. Because FALL IS COMING. Oh yes, it is.

And also I've been watching TV. Breaking Bad is back! Yes! Thank goodness. I'm sad that these are the last episodes, though. Do we like Low Winter Sun? I think I kind of like it. I dunno. I'll give it a few episodes to be sure. I am all in on Broadchurch, though. ALL. IN. I wish we could get more British programming here in the US. BBC America and PBS don't quite scratch that itch, do they? Nope. Not for me, anyway.

In other news I've somehow morphed into an 80-year-old honky-tonkin' Texas lady, because I cannot stop listening to the Willie's Roadhouse station on the XM radio in my car. Willie, Waylon, Merle, Lefty, Hank, Dolly, Tanya, Patsy, Tammy -- I have developed a fondness for them all that I can't begin to understand, much less communicate to you. I didn't grow up with this music so I have no idea why it suddenly speaks to my soul, but it does. So. There's that.

Hang in there, guys. We're halfway to September. We can do this.

Go home mp3 player, you are drunk

This is my new favorite cocktail for summer: English cucumber muddled with grapefruit white balsamic vinegar + gin + sparkling water + ice. So much yum. And so refreshing when it's 100 degrees out. Which it has been here A LOT. Oy.

We are mostly staying indoors and trying to remain cool, which means I have been reading a whole heck of a bunch of stuff. I liked Jenny Lawson's memoir very much, along with the fourth Armand Gamache novel by Louise Penny and Johnathan Tropper's One Last Thing Before I Go. Right now I am reading and loving Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, which is about a drug-addicted back-alley abortionist in 1960s San Antonio who is haunted by the ghost of Hank Williams. I know, right? That right there should tell you everything you need to know about whether or not you might want to read this book. I recommend it, if you like that sort of thing.

I bought one of these ridiculous contraptions after a months-long internal debate and I'm here to tell you, it has changed my life. I am spiralizing the hell out of EVERYTHING now, mostly zucchini and cucumbers but it works for other stuff, too. All those cold pasta salads I used to make are now made with cucumber "noodles" instead of pasta. All the hot pasta dishes I used to make are now made with zucchini "noodles" instead of pasta. I'm sure I'll get bored with it eventually, but today is not that day. I should note that when I bought it the price was about 10 bucks cheaper than the price that's showing as I write this; I'm not sure I would have paid that much for it. But I do love it, ridiculous as it is.

We are all kind of bored with summer, I think. P is finding it no fun to cut the grass in triple-digit temperatures, C has no idea what to do with himself given that college classes don't start until late August, H is spending her summer learning to drive (fun!) and having her wisdom teeth out (not!), and I am annoyed that it's too hot at dinnertime to sit out on the patio while the food grills.

The gin helps, though. A bit.

In other news, I think there's a ghost in my machine because there's been a whole lot of this happening lately:

My mp3 player: "Ramones followed by Simon and Garfunkel followed by Misfits followed by Johnny Cash, yaaaaay!"
Me: "What? No."
My mp3 player: "John Denver, Nine Inch Nails, Cat Stevens! Wheee!"
Me: "NO."
My mp3 player: "Metallica, Louis Armstrong, Beastie Boys!"
Me: "Argh!"
My mp3 player: "Helen Reddy! Black Flag! Patsy Cline! Judas Priest!"
Me: "QUIT IT."
My mp3 player: "Captain and Tennille, lol!"
Me: "HOW DRUNK WAS I WHEN I PUT SONGS ON YOU?!"

Yeah. I don't know. Hope your summer is going well. Or winter, for you antipodean types.

Try, try again

Hey, so remember when I said 2013 was going to be my year of trying stuff? Well I have been trying the hell out of all kinds of things already, you guys!

Wearing my hair in a bun. I can't believe I've never tried this before. I guess I thought that with my super-straight, abundant, below-shoulder-length hair it would require a couple of hundred bobby pins to get it to stay up there, but it doesn't require any bobby pins at all! Daughter H showed me how to do a really cute twisty coiled bun with just one measly hair elastic! And it stays up all day! And it takes two seconds and keeps my hair out of my face and I love it and now I don't want to shave my head (again)! I mean okay, it makes me look about 10 years older than I am. But that is a small price to pay for not hating your hair anymore, yes? Yes.
Verdict: YES. I have worn my hair in a bun every single day since H showed me how to do it, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Listening to classical music. I originally started doing this for stress management when I drive. Because I have some road rage issues, y'all. And also because OMG WHY DON'T PEOPLE DRIVE RIGHT? WHY WHY WHY?! So yeah. My car came with an XM-ready radio and I have the cheapest monthly subscription and there is this station called Symphony Hall where they just play classical music. And suddenly not only am I listening to it when I drive, but I'm downloading free classical MP3s from Amazon and tuning in to classical playlists on Pandora and Songza and muttering things under my breath like, "Hmm, that sounds like Haydn." I don't know what to tell you except that sometimes it's nice not to have to listen to words. And to hear the occasional violin.
Verdict: YES. What have I become?

Coconut butter. This is a thing that you eat. It's pretty much just coconut ground down to a paste, you know, like peanut butter. But with coconuts. Coconut oil is solid below 76 degrees Fahrenheit and it's winter here now, so my coconut butter is a solid chunk that needs softening/melting before I can really enjoy it. I DO find it very tasty. I'm just ... looking forward to eating it in the summer when I don't have to microwave it. Or spend so much energy chewing it.
Verdict: Hmm. I'll get back to you.

Sardines. This is another thing you eat, a little oily fish, I probably don't have to tell you that. I dislike taking fish oil supplements so I'm trying to eat more little oily fishes, and I put these on my salads, and I think I like them?
Verdict: Yes. They are growing on me.

Pull-ups. On a pull-up bar. In my bedroom doorway. Pulling myself up.
Verdict: HAHAHAHA!!!!

Maintaining my weight loss. Since cutting out grain and legumes on January 2nd I have somehow dropped to three pounds BELOW my ideal weight. Even without pull-ups! Which I really think is a bit too light for me. Pretty sure this calls for more avocados, bun-less bacon cheeseburgers and booze, yes?
Verdict: Whoops!

Not buying any more books, Kindle or otherwise. Yeah. I have all these books, see? Like literally hundreds of books loaded onto my Kindle. I got at least 80% of them for free, and 19% of them for less than $5 each, but still. So many books. So I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't buy any more (even for free) this year, and just read the ones I already have, but then I decided that was stupid. So I'm glad we got that all worked out.
Verdict: OH HELL NO.

Unwinding the despair spiral

Hello, I had hoped to tell you this week that our August is starting out AWESOME, that C is loving the heck out of summer band and doing great on the new meds and that everything is super hunky-dory and we are all excited about school starting later this month.

But you know what they say about hope. It's the thing with feathers that gets shot right out of the sky with a 12-gauge, or something. I'm pretty sure that's how that goes, yes? I never was a big Dickinson fan. (If you giggled when you read that last sentence, you are totally in my tribe.)

Somehow summer band has kicked C's misophonia into high gear. I've spoken with his doctor and we're going to tweak his meds to see if they are part of the problem. We've also spoken with the band director and will be putting some accommodations in place. We will deal with this. We will, we will. And I will step away from googling "distance learning for high school credit", "homeschool marching band", "distance learning for college degree", "legitimate work at home opportunities" and "house for sale with garage apartment". There, I have totally set myself up for ALL THE SPAM COMMENTS IN THE WORLD.

But hey, let's not talk about all that. Nor about the dream I keep having where thousands of tiny objects are spilling out of containers and I have to sort and count them all and put them back where they belong, nor that dream I had about the tornadoes, nor the fact that C and I arrived home from an aborted attempt to get through summer band this afternoon to discover that the dog had been Very Ill Indeed in our absence. All over my favorite rug. Yeah.

Let's talk about some things that are good. Okay? Can we do that? I'm going to. I think maybe I need to.

Here are some things I am enjoying these days, in no particular order:

1. Avocados. I seriously cannot get enough of them right now.
2. Level 2 of Jillian Michaels's 6 Week Six-Pack DVD. Holy cheezits, that is the hardest workout I have ever done. I freaking love it.
3. La Croix flavored sparkling water. I have only just discovered this product (much like Columbus discovered America) and I am hooked. No calories, no sweeteners of any kind, no caffeine, but less boring than plain water.
4. The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. A large asteroid is six months away from colliding with the earth, world economies and infrastructure are collapsing, people are killing themselves left and right, but police detective Henry Palace is just trying to do his job. Loved this book; it was quirky and weird and actually kind of sweet.
5. Clothes shopping. I have not only gone down 2 pant sizes (well, 2.5 now, which is awkward), I've gone down a shirt size as well. I no longer hate trying on clothes, which is good, because I no longer can buy clothes without trying them on.
6. Breaking Bad. It's back, and I am so happy. Except this is the last season, which makes me sad. But this is the happy list, so I'll just say that if they were to spin off a series of just Jesse and Mike hanging out in cars being badass, I would totally watch and enjoy that.
7. Popcorn. The old-fashioned kind, popped in coconut oil on the stovetop and sprinkled with a bit of seasoned salt. I'm getting pretty much all my carbs in popcorn form these days.
8. Big Bang Theory. I am very late to this party and I know everyone else is kind of over it, but somehow this show has become my comfort TV viewing.
9. "Why Am I The One" by Fun. It's not a particularly happy song, but it makes me happy. Go figure.
10. The sun is moving south. I can see it happening. This means fall is coming and my reverse seasonal affective disorder is GOING AWAY. Real soon now. I just know it.

Well, I've had so many interruptions that it's taken me about 5 hours to write this, so hey! I think it's time to publish. Talk to you later.

It's new to me

So here are some things that I've discovered/tried/liked lately.

1. This whackadoodle gift shop at my local mall. I've walked past it many times but never gone inside until today. OMG. If you're ever in Austin and need someplace to buy a fake skull that holds restaurant-style salt and pepper shakers in its eye sockets, a life-sized semi-pornographic fairy sculpture for your garden, a neon pink katana, a crapload of cell phone charms and some Pocky, I can hook you up. One-stop shopping!
2. Elk. You know, the animal? Or more accurately, the meat from the animal? I am always looking for non-CAFO animal protein to which none of my family members are allergic (P is allergic to poultry, C is allergic to beef, my body can't metabolize non-heme iron and we are all sick of pork). My local health food store had ground elk so I made meatballs out of it and we all loved it. It's very lean and tastes a lot like beef, only richer. Not gamey at all. Will DEFINITELY buy again.
3. Starbucks. Oh, I know. But see, I've managed to completely avoid Starbucks all these years. First I didn't like coffee, then I DID like coffee but couldn't handle caffeine, and I was intimidated by all the roasts and shots and pumps and whips and whatnot. However, while we were traveling over the holidays P taught me the code words to say for the drink I like and now, a couple of months later, I've got a grande decaf soy latte monkey on my back. (And he brought his friend, the cranberry-orange scone monkey.) I feel so unclean. But I cannot deny, that freaking coffee is DELICIOUS. (And so are the scones. God help me.)
4. Sherlock, the contemporary version of the classic with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson. My local PBS station shows this on Sunday nights right after Downton Abbey, which means Sunday nights are suddenly the most awesome nights of all time. I don't usually like "updated" classics but this one, I love. Cumberbatch is pitch perfect and I have adored Martin Freeman since The Office.
5. "Resistance" by Muse. This really could not be further from my "usual thing", musically speaking, but I heard it while sitting on an overstuffed ottoman waiting for daughter H to finish trying on clothes at Kohl's and I fell in love with it. I don't even know myself anymore, you guys. (Do I like Muse now? Am I ALLOWED to like Muse? Are they too young for me? OMG, THEY PROBABLY PLAY THIS SONG AT STARBUCKS.)

In other news:

1. I have a new laptop, because I keep killing laptops. I hope not to kill this one anytime soon. My old favorite photo editing software doesn't run on the new laptop because apparently the company that made it was bought by another company in 2004, which tells you how old my copy of this software is, and anyway I can't edit photos now so I'm not posting any until I get new software and have learned it. And since learning curves are my anathemata ... it might be a while. Is what I'm saying.
2. Son C fell in the shower yesterday and while he did not get hurt (apart from some bruising), WHICH IS THE IMPORTANT THING, he did somehow manage to destroy, like, an entire wall in the upstairs bathroom, and all the tile on it, and all the plumbing behind it. We picked an excellent time to replace our floors, eh?
3. Speaking of the floors, the dog is still completely freaked out by them and I am so over it. We have done everything but smear the floors with cheese and cat poop to convince him they are awesome and totally not going to kill him, but he is not having it. I think we might have to lobotomize him. Or I might have to move to another house and take the floors with me. Or start drinking more.

Yep. That's about all that's going on around here.

New year, same old me

Hello, I did not mean to quit blogging at you for so long but the thing is, I have been too busy sneezing. Sneezing, blowing my nose, throwing away tissues. That is all I do now. There's no time for anything else.

We're all sneezing really, even the dog, and the reason we're sneezing is that Phase One of our big home improvement project has been completed, and that particular phase involved cleaning out closets and clearing bookshelves that hadn't been dusted in ... well, EVER ... and also ripping out 9-year-old carpet that had been professionally cleaned ONCE in its entire life, and now we're all dying of dust poisoning. I had no idea how much dust was lying dormant in my house until it all rose up in a great big angry tsunami which is still swirling around a couple of days later, trying to kill us all. You'd think opening the windows would help, but this is what's going on OUTSIDE the house right now:

Image courtesy of Your News Now.

Do you see that second column? The cedar? That is the pollen to which I am most allergic in the world. THE CHART IS NOT EVEN HIGH ENOUGH TO CONTAIN IT. I am going to die, I'm pretty sure.

I did manage to accomplish a few things earlier this week, before the very air I breathe went on its murderous rampage:

1. Bath and Body Works put their tiny little holiday-scented candles on sale, one candle and one little glass holder for $1.50. I am not even going to tell you how many of these I bought, but suffice it to say that the next several Christmasses around here are going to be EXTREMELY fragrant.
2. The prize I won during NaBloPoMo arrived! And I was very excited. And very sad that I no longer read real books. And then I looked it up on the Kindle and it was only 99 cents, so I bought it. That's right. I WON A TOTALLY FREE BOOK and then I BOUGHT ANOTHER COPY. Please mark this down as reason #4,583 why I am not a millionaire, and reason #52 why husband P is in charge of all our money.
3. Speaking of (Kindle) books, I read Darcie Chan's The Mill River Recluse and liked it well enough, and then I intended to read Jennifer McMahon's The Island of Lost Girls because I very much enjoyed Promise Not To Tell, but I accidentally read a free sample of Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends instead and decided that I had to read that next. So I am. And it's good.
4. I took advantage of an Amazon gift card and bought a whopping ton of MP3 music, including the first album I ever bought with my own money (Queen's News of the World) and all the Florence + The Machine I could get my hands on. (Also The Head and the Heart. And some old Chicago. I know, I am so eclectic! Or maybe just weird. I'll let you be the judge.)
5. I bought a poodle calendar for 50% off and hung it in my bathroom next to the toilet. Yes. That happened.

And that pretty much brings you up to speed. More soon, I hope. If I don't die.

Busy Saturday

Hey! Lots to do today and no time to blog, except to tell you:

1. Um yeah, we got TROUNCED by my alma mater last night. Gah.
2. I made the habit blog! Holy cow!
3. I am in love with this song right now, Chuck Ragan's "Rotterdam":



Alrighty! Talk at you tomorrow, a.k.a. NaBloPoMo Day Six. Oy.

Some random for your Thursday

A cold front came through here overnight and now it is chilly and SUPER WINDY and I'm thinking about my poor boy C and his sousaphone, which becomes a 50-pound brass sail in the wind. He and his high school marching band preformed their very last marching show rehearsal of the season in their home stadium early this morning; tomorrow they ride a bus down to San Antonio for a very big competition, then ride the bus back here for the last football game of the regular season (an away game), then back to San Antonio on Saturday to see if they made (and to perform in, if they did) the finals of the very big competition. And then marching season is over for another year. Whew!

I have been reading Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers. I like it very much; the characters are all interesting, but there isn't much in the way of plot. I sort of want to just finish it and move on to something else, but I don't know what. I have so many books on my Kindle now, it's ridiculous.

I bought Zee Avi's new album Ghostbird but I'm not sure I love it, and I decided not to buy Feist's new album Metals but now I'm wondering if I should.

It does not look like fall at all here yet. In fact, some of the Bradford pear trees in my neighborhood are apparently very confused because they are BLOOMING, which they only do in the spring. So weird. The weather here in the U.S. has been crazy this year. I guess that's just how it's going to be for a while.

This is the time of year when I feel like I'm just kind of holding my breath, waiting. Waiting for marching season to end, waiting for husband P to go on and then return from a business trip, waiting for Thanksgiving and daughter H's birthday and Christmas, waiting for our annual reunion with P's family, waiting for the days to get shorter and darker and then longer and brighter again. Waiting to flip the calendar to 2012.

Yep. That's pretty much all that's going on around here.

A Halloween playlist

Hey! Happy Halloween, everyone! I've been listening to Pandora's Halloween Party genre station all week in preparation for the holiday, and while I like it just fine, it occasionally plays songs for which I do not particularly care. Or, like, 42 different versions of "Monster Mash" within a 30-minute period. Oy.

This inspired me to comb through my collection of digital music and come up with my own darn Halloween playlist for my Not-an-iPod, so I thought I'd post a little sampling from it just for grins. My pre-NaBloPoMo gift to you! Some of these are pretty obvious, and some of them are ... just because I'm weird.

"Lonely is the Night" by Billy Squier
"I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" by the Ramones
"The Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen
"Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring
"Devil Inside" by INXS
"Destroyer" by the Kinks
"Carnival" by Natalie Merchant
"The Ghost in You" by Psychedelic Furs
"Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads
"Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon
"I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow
"Skulls" by the Misfits
"Monkey Gone to Heaven" by the Pixies
"Possum Kingdom" by the Toadies
"Seether" by Veruca Salt
"Witchy Woman" by the Eagles
"Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter
"Magic Man" by Heart
"Run Like Hell" by Pink Floyd
"Killer Queen" by Queen
"Black Magic Woman" by Santana
"Strange Magic" by Electric Light Orchestra
"Bat Out of Hell" by Meatloaf
"Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones
"Runnin' with the Devil" by Van Halen
"Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival
"Space Lord" by Monster Magnet
"Drain the Blood" by The Distillers
"Zombie" by The Cranberries
"I Wanna Kill My Wife Tonight" by Mojo Nixon
"Dragula" by Rob Zombie
"Creeping Death" by Metallica
"Beyond the Realms of Death" by Judas Priest
"The Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden
"Bad Things" by Jace Everett
"My Body's a Zombie for You" by Dead Man's Bones
"Psycho" by Imelda May
"You Want the Candy" by the Raveonettes
"Friend of the Devil" by the Grateful Dead

Recent discoveries

I've discovered that I don't mind the days getting shorter, even though it means taking the kids to school in the morning while it's still dark.

I've discovered that daughter H has a stronger sense of self at 13 than I have at 45. And I am totally okay with that.

I've discovered that son C has developed a coffee habit. For 15.5 years I managed to keep him caffeine-free, and then the stupid high school went and installed a coffee shop in the new cafeteria annex. Thanks a whole hell of a lot, SCHOOL.

I've discovered that I do like oatmeal after all, as long as it's sweetened with brown sugar and has plenty of shredded unsweetened coconut stirred in. And isn't baked.

I've discovered that a bit of Dijon mustard and honey with apple cider vinegar and olive oil, shaken together in a little lidded jar, makes a quick and super yummy homemade salad dressing.

I've discovered, or rather remembered, that walnuts are delicious. Husband P is allergic to them and anyway pecan is the king nut here in Texas, but I bought some walnuts when I was on the paleo diet and have been sneaking them out of the freezer and devouring them by the handful.

I've discovered that a lot of pretty good music came out in the '90s when I was too busy getting married and having babies to notice. (I'm looking at you, Smashing Pumpkins.)

I've discovered that I actually enjoy walking the dog, as long as it's early in the morning and we're on the quiet back roads rather than the main roads (or the park or the greenbelt) of our neighborhood. Because I am JUST. THAT. ANTISOCIAL.

I've discovered that after months of walking instead, I don't really miss running all that much.

I've discovered that all it takes is a good soaking rain and a couple of weeks with no triple-digit temperatures to restore my will to live.

If by "Indian summer" you mean Rajasthan in May

Hello, as of yesterday we were still in the triple digits here. I know I said I was going to stop complaining about the weather, but that was when I assumed the weather was going to stop being stupid. I cannot ever remember it being this hot at the end of September, and indeed, the heat record we broke yesterday had been set sometime in the 1920s -- just a LITTLE bit before my time.

It is so hot that the other night we had thunderstorms with no rain. Oh yeah. Apparently that's an actual thing. Tuesday evening the sky filled with low, dark clouds and there was lightning and thunder and the middle school football game was canceled and we were all chortling with glee because we thought we were in for a good, old-fashioned gully-washer, but no. We got maybe 30 fat drops of rain over a 10-minute period, and then it all went away.

But a cold front came through last night apparently, and now it's only supposed to be in the 90s for the foreseeable future, so excuse me for a moment while I go BUY A PARKA. Sheesh.

Anyhoodle, here is some stuff I've been doing lately:

Reading Gail Carriger's Soulless, a comedy of manners set in a Victorian England in which supernatural beings (vampires, werewolves, etc.) have been integrated into society. I know, we're all SO OVER vampires and werewolves by now, but this book is a little different from most of what's out there. There's a bit of romance, a bit of mystery, and a lot of dirigibles and steampunk gadgets (also tea)(and biting). It's a little like Jane Austen meets Charlaine Harris meets Connie Willis. So fun. Prior to that I read and absolutely loved Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, an adventure novel chock-full of 1980s sci-fi and fantasy gamer geek references. If you've ever played Dungeons & Dragons or Tempest or found yourself quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail in casual conversation, you will love this book. And if you haven't done those things, you also will love this book, probably. It's that good.

Listening to the new Blitzen Trapper album, American Goldwing, which is making me super happy. People seem to either love or hate Blitzen Trapper and I guess I sort of love them. They remind me of the folk rock music my Dad used to listen to when I was a kid. Must be all the harmonicas and tambourines.

Watching so much TV, I can't even tell you. All my shows are back! Except Dexter, which won't be back for a couple of days. And The Walking Dead, which won't be back for a couple of weeks. But still, ALMOST all of my shows are back! H and I are spending several evenings a week curled up in my room watching shows while she does homework. That's our version of Girls' Night In.

Walking El Guapo every morning. We take a different route each time, because I like to mess with his head. This morning we made our way through the greenbelt and met a short, angry dog with a round, cheerful owner; a playful, hairy dog whose elderly owner did not have her leashed (argh); and a small family of white-tailed deer. Superfreak was not at all interested in the deer until the buck showed up. He was VERY interested in the prickly pear cactus that lines the trail in the greenbelt, though (argh, again)(he is totally fine, no pokes this time).

Yelling myself hoarse at high school football games. C plays sousaphone in his high school marching band, so really the games are all about halftime for me, but my brother played football for 10 years and old habits die hard. I just have to yell and scream at football games. I HAVE TO. And then I have to peel out of the stadium parking lot early in the 4th quarter to beat the rush. And maybe buy a Frosty from Wendy's on the way home. Don't you judge me.

Celebrating my birthday/anniversary fortnight. I like to combine them, because it's more festive! Last Tuesday I had a birthday, as you all know (thank you for the birthday wishes!), and it was swell. My big present from P and the kids was a huge honkin' 15-inch pre-seasoned cast iron skillet, which I asked for and LOVE SO MUCH. One of the extra things my mom and dad tossed into my bag o' loot from them was a pack of Burt's Bee's pre-moistened facial cloths, because my Mom loves them and thought I would too, and now I have become hopelessly addicted to them. And I have been spending gift cards all week long with reckless abandon. So! Birthday: awesome. And now we move into the anniversary phase of the celebration, as P and I will have been married for 18 years on Sunday. Whee!

Cooking not much of anything at all. During football/marching season there's maybe one night a week when we're all here at the same time for dinner. Ugh. Hate that.

Eating a ton of crappy non-meals. See above.

Wearing the gorgeous earrings I bought myself (for my birthday, don'tcha know). I have long been a fan of Julie's blog, and now she has an Etsy shop full of jewelry that feels like it was made just for me! Seriously, I have the hardest time describing the kind of jewelry I like to P. He knows I don't like "fine jewelry" from jewelry stores, all precious and polished, and he knows that I don't like anything too big/chunky. Now instead of trying to explain what "delicate and kind of earthy artisan pieces, but not too expensive" means, I can just point him here. Done and done. (And I love love LOVE my earrings!)

Feeling cautiously optimistic about C's new therapy cocktail for his misophonia. I am always cautiously optimistic, except when I'm positive we're all going to die things aren't working, but this time I really do have hope that we're on the right track. Fingers crossed.

In other news, I dyed my hair for the first time in like 4 years and while I could swear the label said Nice 'n' Easy, I must have picked up a box of Nice 'n' Brassy by mistake. "Dark Blonde"? Yeah, not so much.

Also, that crazy lady running through the high school lobby this morning with no makeup, greasy orange hair and sweaty workout clothes, smelling like a goat and looking like she went straight from walking her dog 1.8 miles on a dust-choked greenbelt to frantically delivering her son's forgotten Pre-AP English II homework on the last day of the grading period so he would be eligible for a UIL contest this weekend? Yeah, that was me. Teenagers! Can't live with 'em, can't sell 'em into slavery without Child Protective Services getting involved! Am I right? Yeesh.

And that pretty much brings you up to speed.

A blur

Summer is pretty much over at our house, and my brain feels every bit as out-of-focus as this photo. It still will FEEL like summer, temperature-wise, until Halloween or so, but starting two days ago and continuing until winter break in December, someone at my house needs to be dropped off at 8:00 a.m. or earlier every single weekday. And guess who's the designated dropper? Yep. Me.

So we're back to bedtime routines and early-morning wakeup routines and it's all okay, really. I kind of thrive on routine and tend to get a little weird if I don't have one. But holy cow, this getting up while it's still dark outside is for the birds. Yeah. LITERALLY.

Other stuff that's going on...

You remember how I told you that I'm in love with adorable Dublin-born singer Imelda May? Her latest album, Mayhem, was (finally!) released in the U.S. yesterday and I can't stop listening to it. It's making me so happy right now.

I've started running again! I hadn't run since the kids got out of school at the end of May. And it shows. Ooof. Since it's eleventy billion degrees out, even early in the morning, I'm just hitting the treadmill for now. But I'm very much looking forward to cooler weather and to running with the dog, who will be a year old next week and thus officially cleared for takeoff.

Husband P's sister and her husband are coming for a visit next week! Very much looking forward to that also, though I wish the kids and I weren't going to be so freaking busy while they're here. (Seriously, so crazy busy. From now until football season is over. Oy.)

I'm still loving the heck out of my Kindle. And no one is more surprised by this than me. I have found -- shhh, don't tell anybody! it'll blow my rep! -- that I actually prefer reading e-books to reading real-live books. I know! I can't explain it. It's kind of weirding me out, to tell the truth. I read faster on the Kindle, somehow. Like, I never realized how fatiguing it was to turn pages all the time! And look for my reading glasses! And carry books! And hold them open! Maybe it's a fibromyalgia thing? Or an old person (of which I am one) thing? I don't know, but I am finishing books more quickly reading them on the Kindle than I ever did reading them the old-fashioned way. Weird!

I love it so much, in fact, that I'm knitting it a sweater (pictured above, if you can look at that blurry photo without going cross-eyed). Sock yarn, U.S. size 3 needles, just a garter-stitch rectangle that I'm going to seam across the bottom and up one side. And maybe add a button and i-cord (or crochet) loop closure at the top. I do like the hard cover I bought for protecting my Kindle in transit, but I don't like reading with it on, and it's kind of a pain to take off and put back on all the time. So I thought I'd make a nice knitted sleeve instead.

You know, in my copious free time. HAHAHA.

Every day is Wednesturday

We are not quite a week into summer vacation over here and already I have taken to lounging in my pajamas until noon and forgetting what day it is. (Not to mention: sleeping in until the sun is already up! In the sky! It's weird!)

All that will change next week, as this is pretty much the ONLY non-crazy-busy week during our entire summer. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

So here is what I've been doing so far on my summer vacation, in addition to the above:

• Starting to read books, realizing I don't like them, setting them aside in favor of other books, lather, rinse, repeat. So far this has happened with John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let Me In (too much distasteful/disturbing, not enough creepy/scary) and Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World (depressing and kind of boring). Right now I am semi-happily reading Tana French's The Likeness and trying very hard not to compare it in my head to Donna Tartt's The Secret History, for which I did not much care. Sigh.
• Drinking lots of cold brew (coffee, not beer).
• Eating weird breakfasts, like Wasa bread spread with peanut butter and sprinkled with dried pineapple, or brown rice topped with baby spinach and a fried egg. I can't quite find my breakfast mojo.
• Walking the dog in the evening rather than in the morning (see above). He doesn't much care either way, but if I walk him in the morning he sleeps all day, and if I walk him in the evening he's hyper all night. What's THAT about?
• Watching Extreme Couponing on TLC. I am obsessed with these grocery-hoarding freaks.
• Listening to Gaga's new album. I know! I'm not really in her target demographic, I don't think, but this new album is kind of good, you guys.
• Grilling everything. Last night it was tilapia in foil packets with herbs, onions and lemon.

Which I thought was yummy, though it elicited not a single comment, positive or otherwise, from the other two people in my house who ate it. Ah, well. Being chief cook and bottle washer is a mostly thankless job, as many of you know.

In other news, it's already in the upper 90s here. Every damn day.

And that pretty much brings you up to speed.

A playlist for the slow

Last night daughter H and I were watching The Biggest Loser and one of the contestants was running on the treadmill and complaining about how she hates to run. This got H and me talking about how we pink-puffy-heart LOVE to run, and about how we should run together sometime (I usually run when the kids are at school) and how she is so much faster than me so ... that might not work after all.

H: What speed do you run on the treadmill?
K (that's me): Um, usually 4.2 miles per hour.
H: *raised eyebrow* RUN? You RUN at that speed?
K: Well, yeah. For an easy run.
H: *incredulous* What's the fastest you run?
K: I can do a 6 but not for very long.
H: *cackling like the 13-year-old she is* You're kidding! I run at a TEN.
K: Wow. That's pretty fast.
H: You RUN at a 4.2?
K: Yes. FOR AN EASY RUN.
H: What speed do you JOG?!
K: Go clean your room.

People, I am slow. I am a slow, slow runner and I am totally okay with that. I'm 44 years old and I have fibromyalgia -- I think the fact that I'm running AT ALL is pretty awesome, if you don't mind me saying.

I'm not a competitive person by nature. I don't run to win races; I run because I can and because I love it. In fact, the more I give myself permission to be slow, the more I love it. I'm even slower than usual right now because I'm taking this entire year to work on distance rather than speed. I plan to run a 10K in early 2012, so my goal is to work up to that distance however I can -- walking, jogging, running, or any combination thereof -- over the next 12 months.

I know a lot of runners who use their running time to let their minds puzzle over problems and decisions they might be facing. Running gives them the solitude they need to focus on stuff like that and get their thoughts in order. Or if they run with a partner, they have another person to act as a sounding board and give them another perspective on whatever is going on.

I am not one of those runners. Running, for me, lets me turn my brain OFF. Normally my brain is like a methed-up rodent on a wheel. I have a frantic monologue in my head every waking moment -- I spend ALL of my time puzzling over things and trying to sort things out. Running is my escape from that. When I am running along, listening to a song I love, working up a sweat, that recharges my mental and emotional batteries like nothing else. It hits my reset button. It gives me a break from myself and the world around me.

Music is an essential part of that, which brings me to the point of this post. I recently loaded up my mp3 player with songs that have a somewhat slower tempo than the rest of the songs on my running playlist (because as previously mentioned, I'm working on distance right now instead of speed), and boy howdy, that is working out a treat. I am plodding along at a snail's pace and having an absolute BLAST.

So if you are slow like me, or you walk rather than run, or you're fast but need something new-ish for your warmup/cooldown, I implore you to consider the following songs, which are rocking my incredibly slow world right now:

• "She's Got A Hold on Me" by Hacienda
• "Takin' Care of Business" by Bachman Turner Overdrive
• "Orphans" by Beck
• "Down on the Corner" by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• "All This Time" by Heartless Bastards
• "Dare" by Gorillaz
• "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder
• "Road to Nowhere" by Talking Heads
• "Kiss Them for Me" by Siouxsie and the Banshees
• "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC
• "Train Kept A Rollin'" by Aerosmith
• "Energy" by The Apples In Stereo
• "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Queen
• "Me In Honey" by R.E.M.
• "Whiskey in the Jar" by Thin Lizzy
• "Helter Skelter" by the Beatles
• "Can't Stop" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Alrighty. Enjoy!