Artful Scheme of Happiness

What you don't want

I woke up this morning, at 5:30 (well before I planned on getting up), to the sight of my landlord sticking his head into my bedroom. Just what you don't want to see first thing in the morning. He was going to bed (yes, at 5:30) and he noticed my door was slightly ajar, so he opened it up the rest of the way -- banging the door loudly against some shoes -- to peer in at me. And then he wondered why I was awake. Awake and screaming.

I'm not even sure I'm coherent right now. God, I need a vacation.

posted by art @ 5:46 AM

Total Excitement

In a little more than a week, I leave for a family vacation in Cozumel. I guess we'll be scuba diving every morning (and there's talk of one night dive -- that makes me a tad nervous, but we'll see). Cross your fingers that it's neither too hot nor too humid while I'm there. (Hot being anything over 74 degrees Fahrenheit.)

And then, the best news ever, at the end of June my mother and her friend (and my friend) Judy are coming to visit for an entire week! It turns out that the weekend they'll be here is the same weekend as Gay Pride in Seattle, so we're all very excited about going to brunch with all of my friends, and then to the parade and the festival and stuff like that. Plus I just think it will be fun to have them here ... one of my favorite things in life is to spend time batting around with those two.

It's shaping up to be a fantastic summer! Yay!

posted by art @ 8:58 PM

Umm, yeah

Today my landlord went to the Home Depot twenty blocks from our house (a five minute drive in heavy traffic) to buy a new toilet seat. (Don't ask me why ... he gets these ideas in his head.) Upon arriving home, he realized that he bought the wrong shape. So he said, "I'll take it back in a few weeks when I go back there for something else." We now have a new toilet seat sitting in our living room, in case anybody wants one.

After that, he realized that his cable internet was acting up. So he went outside, dismantled our cable system (thereby rendering all TVs useless -- we have terrible reception). Then he realized that he was late to go watch a friend play volleyball, so he left. Without ever reconnecting the cable. And Sunday is the only night of the week that I am inclined to watch television. So....

Oh, and yesterday I went with a friend to the Hood River/Columbia Gorge area (the border between Washington and Oregon). While there, I knocked down an old outhouse. There you go, I am now officially a Renaissance Person.

posted by art @ 8:36 PM

Manscape THIS, you #*@&$#@*&&^%!!!

This evening I arrived home to find one of our pots on the stove. A pot we normally use to cook food. Only, instead of using it to cook food, my landlord used it to melt about five pounds of wax so he could wax his damn back. So now we have a pot full of solidified back wax sitting on the stove. OH these types of things make me SO INCREDIBLY happy to live here.

posted by art @ 7:42 PM

So There

Last night for dinner I had: chocolate chip cookie dough and a glass of water. It's my new diet.

posted by art @ 8:49 AM

Glow, Little Glow Worm
glimmer, glimmer

My crazy landlord's CRAZY parents are in town this week. The father was born in Germany, raised in Chile and Spain, and educated in England and Germany. And he's some sort of world-reknowned physicist/genius or something. But I know a different, far less interesting side of him.

This weekend found him wearing the skimpiest of short shorts, walking around in our sunny backyard. In his hands was an 8-foot long 2x4, to the end of which he had tied a blow torch. We have tent caterpillars in our apple tree, you see. And he was going to solve the problem. So he walked around the backyard, flaming blowtorch in hand, burning caterpillars out of the apple tree.

Now I don't know if he thought they'd go up like little balls of cotton or what. Do you know what happens when you take a blowtorch to a caterpillar? It doesn't hang on for dear life and slowly roast to death. No. Nor does it explode like a firecracker. No, instead it just drops off the branch. So here was this genius, wearing only short shorts and wielding an eight-foot flamethrower, standing in a downpour of caterpillars. There was a little yelping and a lot of dancing, until FINALLY, after longer than you would think it would take a reasonable human being, he gave up.

posted by art @ 8:34 PM

Rejuvenation

The number of first dates peaked at four, in seven days no less. The number of second dates remains firmly at ZERO. I would like to officially retire from the dating world (bowing my head in defeat), but my friends keep egging me on. So who knows.

The whole experience, not to mention a rather stressful work environment as of late (working with lawyers sucks generally, but working with lawyers who think they each need to get a leg up so that you're laid off before they are, well that sucks more than you can imagine), has left me exhausted. So this weekend I made plans with myself. People asked me out on dates, my friends asked me to go out with them. But did I do any of that? NO. I was busy.

Instead, I kept the weekend all to myself. I slept almost all day Saturday, and read between naps. I didn't clean my room. I didn't cook anything. I did take a walk in the sun, around Greenlake, but that was as active as I got. Today I did much of the same, though I substituted yoga for the walk. I am feeling very well-rested now, and almost ready to face life tomorrow. Almost. I think I should be at 100% after a good night's sleep. Of course the bus ride tomorrow morning could throw me for a loop. You can never count on a problem-free bus ride.

(A week ago, in the relative warmth of a Seattle spring morning, one grubby gentleman decided that the bus was so hot that he needed to be completely shirtless. Attractive AND sanitary. If only HE had asked me out.)

posted by art @ 9:03 PM