feeling a little better

Feeling a little better today, but don't want to jinx it! Still a sore throat and very tired. Stayed home from work again. I'm lucky to have sick leave saved up to cover these days out.

We got a fresh Christmas tree, and it's so pretty. It's in the living room. The cat is mostly ignoring it, preferring to attack cardboard boxes. I still need to wrap presents.

Wrote a new poem today, which helped me feel a little better...

Wonderful

Wonderful things are happening
to walls thanks to textiles
in styles exactly right

for you--part country, part fancy,
strippable, scrubbable,
pre-pasted and pre-trimmed.

Do walls to last your lifetime
or the lives of your whims.

here's hopin' this works

i wrote a long post on here the other day and then my internet browser "unexpectedly quit". bummer!

anyway, the hairdresser was pretty nice - not awkward at all. my "real" haircut isn't so different from the haircut i've been sporting for the last i don't know - 5 years? ( shortish, maybe uh? shaggy? whatever) but, getting a haircut was pretty sweet.

we had our second annual holiday party on friday. our apartment is decked out in x mas lights, dradles, tiny white christmas trees and tacky garland to boot. it was a good party; hot spiced wine, egg nog, cookies and a lot of dancing.

the last few days i've been buying & making xmas gifts for people. so, there are bags and markers and needles and felt all over the place.

new home poem

Seed

There’s no foolproof way
to welcome birds to the garden

even in winter with a line
of feeders. Two jays

in ten minutes give me confidence.

how was the hairdresser?

I wouldn't know what to say while having my hair done, either. My hair is long and straight (and I'm thinking "unstylish" but that's OK).

Here's a new poem I worked on today. Deck the halls...

Decorating with Native Plants

Red hot pokers bloom at Christmas
in the hottest parts of the west, so what

to do when you want a wreath
of silvery foliage? You might have luck

to find sugar pine branches
with cones attached, or easy enough

to buy cones at a variety store
and tie them on for the same effect.

I still have a miserable cold and am trying to drink lots of fluids and not be too depressed, but it's depressing to have lost my voice and be so tired. If I have no voice again tomorrow, I'll need to call in sick again. I haven't worked since Sunday; what a relief that it's between academic quarters.

Where I want to be

I'm not at home, I'm in a computer lab at school. I'm writing the final paper I have to finish for the semester to be over. Looking forward to spending a month relaxing, sitting on my bed or lauras, drawing, drinking coffee , watching movies and whatever else.

I did a major clean/sweeping of my bedroom floor on Friday. The room looks a lot bigger and hanging around in there now feels a lot more...normal? No, not normal, but it's not as easy to fall into the "Oh no, am I actually crazy and I've duped all these people into thinking I'm smart and a good artist?" rut when there aren't scraps of paper everywhere. Maybe?

Tomorrow I'm getting my first "real" haircut of my life at the Beehive Salon. I'm kind of psyched. I'm wondering what the conversation will be like with the hairdresser.

not feeling well

We came back from Oregon on Friday, and T already had a cold Friday night, and now I'm getting it. Ugh. The dishes need to be done, and a few days of mail is cluttering the kitchen table. I'm thinking about working with local newspapers and junk mail as found texts; we have a suburban newspaper that comes out every week that could be good for this, and I made some notes last night based on an article in this paper about the recent snowstorm.

The nice thing about not feeling well is that it's a good excuse to sit still and read, and yesterday I brought home Barack Obama's new book for T and a book by Chuck Klosterman for me (this is a benefit of working in the library, so easy to find books to read). I hadn't read Chuck Klosterman before, and I find him kind of sexist and strangely macho in parts, but mostly he is funny and kind of insightful, and I've read half of Killing Yourself to Live since last night.

Today I have to fill out the open-enrollment insurance paperwork for the library and then work 12:30-5:00. Then I'll come home, and I bet we have soup for dinner, or maybe scrambled eggs.

Might as well

Start with the questions -

so, What's on your wall?

Well, here, in the joan's room/the living room there is a mural painted by an old friend. I'm not sure we're still friends.

In my room - some shelves laura & I put up one stormy summer day. Sometimes I get paranoid about the shelf above my bed falling on me while i'm sleeping. the odds of that happening and probably slim to none, BUT, it kind of looks like it couldpossiblymaybe.
- A giant woodcut printed on fabric laura made me with images of animals kissing and hanging out and the two of us talking shit in the corner.
-an emrboidery of joey ramone made for me by megan. at the top it says " i wanna be yr joey ramone" and there a bows and 3 sequines.
-a small print laura made of 2 friendship trees.
-an autographed 8x10 of pat's dad.
-a silk screen from the last LTTR publication.
-above my desk - some small things - a drawing by anne, a postcard from megan, a postcard sent from devon from portland, a nicole j georges calender that was a gift from an "ex", various small drawings from people.

our bathroom walls are painted bright pink.

our kitchen wall has godseyes we made in the summer tacked in with upolstry tacks. small wooden bird pictures. and a flag of bob marley - which is funny.