Sunday, September 30, 2007

sweet as sorghum

Friday night, on my way out of town, my neighbor down the street said to me, "You're a special kind of crazy. I like that."
He said that as I was parked outside of his house, 1/2 block away from my own, sitting in my rather distinctive vehicle (not too many on this street have a "Dog is my copilot" bumper sticker) watching the thugs. They kept looking at me like, "what is this crazy bitch doing?" I actually saw a real live drug deal!
Anyway, then I left town, which probably wasn't the worst idea ever.
I headed south to meet up with my sister and a couple of her friends. After some great directions, we found the Hancock County Fairgrounds just outside Hawesville, Kentucky, which calls itself the Sorghum Capital of the World.
There we sampled a lot of sorghum (yummy) and learned much about this plant, which comes in somewhere far behind tobacco and marijuana on the list of Kentucky's largest cash crops.
At the sorghum festival, a mule named Molly walked around in a circle to squish the sorghum juice out of the cane:


That is, until my sister and her friend told Molly she was a pretty girl, at which point the whole operation ground to a halt. Molly is such a slut.


The Kentucky Department of Ag trotted out Kentucky Kate for the event. Here you can see some young men developing their teat know-how by pulling the hell out of them and trying to squirt each other. Someday, some poor girl is going to have to spend hours un-learning that behavior.



And although I haven't milked a cow (R.I.P., Girly) since I was about 4, I found it's kinda like riding a bike, only ickier. For the record, Ky. Kate was giving only water, not milk.


Because I have more work to do than is humanly possible, I procrastinated by taking the scenic route home to Indy, which effectively stretched a 2-1/2 hour trip into 4 hours. Bought some mums, though, and wandered Indiana. It really is a lovely state.

Got home and used the rest of the daylight to work in the yard. The trip must have done some good--one of the thugs made fun of my car and I just laughed. But seriously, is "I don't know who would drive that thing" supposed to scare me? I scoff at you, thugs!

Friday, September 28, 2007

what day is it??

Yeah, about that experiment.

Tuesday I went to a neighborhood thing at someone's house. They had so much wine, it seemed inhospitable to not have a glass. But, it was a tiny plastic cup. And then my friend wanted a cheeseburger, and well, it seemed inhospitable to not keep her company while she ate, and while they DO have Diet Pepsi at the Red Key, a beer really sounded good...

But, I did drink in moderation. So that's something of a victory.

And then there was Wednesday night. Geek Boy and I were supposed to be playing tennis, but he had a meeting that got rescheduled, and couldn't meet till 9. I didn't know of any public courts with lights, plus, it had been raining all day, and I hate playing with soggy balls, so Geek Boy suggested meeting for a beer.

I have known Geek Boy for a couple of months. We went out a couple of times. We get along incredibly well and have interesting, geeky conversations about subjects that would bore many people to tears. He's smart, he thinks I'm intelligent and attractive. As a bonus, we agree that we have an off-the-hook physical chemistry, as in, omg, did we really just spend an hour making out in the parking lot outside the bar, in semi-public??

Given all that, naturally (wtf?) Geek Boy decided he just wants to be friends. But "really friends, like, do stuff together."

Sex is doing stuff together.

Geek Boy didn't think that would be a good idea, for reasons that still mystify me. Something about just getting out of a serious relationship, blah blah blah.

Whatever. We do have a good time, so Wednesday we did stuff together that did not, unfortunately, involve sex. It did, however, involve darts and a hell of a lot of Bells Oberon. God, that's a good beer. And it was on sale--$2.75 a pint!! You can't beat that with a stick!

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that I should not try to keep up with Geek Boy in the drinking department. Because I can, but he's about 6' 3" and 220. I'm not, and should not drink like I am.

So I completely fell off the wagon. But, it was the full moon! Nora, I would claim that as your excuse, too.

All in all, however, I clearly didn't overindulge, because I am completely unrelaxed. Again, a small, empty, hollow, bitter victory.

This weekend, it's off to a Redneck Adventure Weekend with my sister and her friends. This installment of RAW is camping in southern Indiana (if you saw my sister's camper, you'd know there's not much adventurous about that. It has a stereo system, for god's sake) and going to the World's Largest Sorghum Festival in Hawesville, Kentucky. I'm not even going to pretend I won't drink my body weight in Miller Lite.

Monday, September 24, 2007

parched

For reasons that I won't go into, my life is stressful. I know, I know, whose isn't, but there's just some shit going on right now that I'll feel a lot better about when it's resolved.

I don't deal with stress very well. I am not, as a rule, very pleasant to be around when my nerves are a little on edge. Additionally, I bottle up stress deep inside like any good German would. And, I'm a Scorpio. Not that I'm into astrology at all, but if some sources (or here, or here) are to be believed, friggin Mount Vesuvius lurks under this pleasant, sunny exterior.

For these reasons, relaxation is very important to me, and when I cannot achieve it, bad things happen, usually to me but sometimes also to my personal relationships. Which really sucks.

Which brings me to this week's experiment: relaxing without the assistance of alcoholic beverages. September seems like it's been one big blur, and not just because I've been busy, but at least partly because literally, things have been a little bit blurry much of the time. I haven't woke up in a different state (unless you count hungover as a state) or anything, but my behavior has been a little unhealthy even by my liberal standards.

This would all be much easier if I was able to release all that pent-up tension through, oh, sex, for instance. That hasn't been working out so well for me either lately. Generally the drinking leads to the sex, but clearly, I've been doing something wrong.

Maybe it's the 15 pounds I've gained since I quit smoking in June. Yeah, that's right, no nicotine to relax me, either. Not that I haven't cheated liberally when drinking (see above).

All the good stuff, in short, is gone. I'm left with exercise, eating right and getting a good night's sleep. For fuck's sake, what's become of me?

Oh, and I was going to post a picture of the neighbor's fucking outdoor living room, but apparently the IT overlords at work wiped the photo program off my laptop, and I need to reinstall it as well as my camera as recognized hardware. And it's hot and I'm cranky and I just don't feel like it.

Tonight we--me and Patio Man--had a kitchen window standoff, btw. I stood in my kitchen, shade open as it always is because I feel claustrophobic when it's closed unless it's below 20 degrees outside, in which case the numbness in my fingers overrules any claustrophobia, and fixed dinner. (A stupidly healthy dinner of fresh veggie stir-fry, fyi.)

Patio Man sat, his chair actually facing my house, and watched me. I had all the windows open, with Audioslave blaring at 11 on the volume knob. It got dark and I still didn't close the shade. For all I know he was sitting there pleasuring himself while I chopped red peppers--the oil in his tiki no-torch musta been running low because I could barely see him--but dammit, it's my window, my view, and I was there first!

just throwing some words out there

**Correction: the one chair is actually green, not pink. If I could retrieve the picture off my friggin' camera, I'd prove it.

For a few years now, some people have suggested I start a blog. Mostly, this subject comes up when I talk about an article I've written for a less-than-edgy business publication, and I have to leave the best parts out of the printed story. Like the elk farm story.It was never enough to get me to start a blog, though. What was? The neighbors' "outdoor living area."

Now, I've been reading a lot of articles about the latest trends in outdoor furnishings, outdoor kitchens, bringing the indoors to the outdoors, blah blah blah. I am certain that two upholstered chairs--one pink and one homemade patchwork denim--on an unsheltered brick patio, with a tiki torch that's missing the stick that makes it a torch, does not qualify as an "outdoor living area."

Unless you're my neighbor. Some guy has adopted the patio, along with furnishings listed above, as his house, or perhaps room. Today, he rearranged the furniture. I guess he needed a new view.

This house was built in 1910 or thereabouts. From my big kitchen window--the best window in the house, incidentally--it looks a little like the house from Amityville Horror, which, if you don't associate horror with it, is a pretty darn cool-looking house. You know, the quarter-moon windows on either side of the big chimney and all. My neighbor Miss D. just got it painted a real purty creamy pale yellow color, and the house sits on a double lot, so there's probably 50 feet or so of lawn between our houses. An original brick patio runs the length of the house on the side facing my house.

Enter into this lovely tableau some guy sitting in a freaking stuffed armchair. He seems to prefer the pink one. The patchwork denim one, he reserves for guests. I don't even know who this guy is. He is not the owner of the house. He is not the owner's ex-husband, or boyfriend, or brother. He may be connected with one of the owner's siblings--Skinny Crazy Sister, Fat Crazy Sister, or Short Crazy Sister--but no one's sure. All I know is that when I look out my kitchen window, be it morning, noon, or night, there is a man smoking cigarettes and drinking Bud Light, sitting in a pink armchair, doing nothing.

If I wanted to look at that all day, I would have stayed married.