now hear this

NPR has a full-length iron and wine show on their website for your listening pleasure. i'm listening to it while i pay bills. it's the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.

heh heh heh

my students are doing ad analysis papers this week and i found this ad in the research process. read it as two words, with the "M" being the first letter of the first word. hehehe. i didn't, of course, take this one to class for them to analyze. but i did think i would like to share it with my who cares friends.

We finally painted our kitchen!

I really, really like the color.

beware the cattle truck.

i have never liked driving by cattle trucks... it makes me sad for the animals, and makes me want to not eat beef.
last friday, while cruising behind one of these rigs at 65 mph, i was thinking what riding in a semi was like for those cows. was it scary? was it fun, like a field trip?
this truck was going to slow, so i quit my thinking and proceeded to pass. i am glad my windows were up, and that i was not driving a convertible, because before i knew it, a geyser of urine burst from the side of the truck. luckily, i have cat-like reflexes and managed to swerve into another lane (safely swerve, of course) before the worst hit the car. the freshly washed car.
i admit, i looked back in the rear view mirror, hoping to see another car get blasted.

the shepherd's dog

there's a new iron & wine album out on tuesday. bet it'll be good.

coming along

work it, girl

i mentioned this in the comments on the last post, but i feel it merits a whole post of its own. last night i went to a lactation class at the hospital. we each got a life-size rubber baby so we could practice holds, and a folder with a bunch of photocopies and info sheets about breastfeeding. the lactation specialist was really cool. she wore bright pink lipstick and lots of rings, and the first thing she said was, don't worry, nobody will show their breasts in this class. it hadn't occurred to me to be concerned about that, but i guess it keeps some people from taking a lactation class. instead of the real thing, she had a foam version which she used to demonstrate her various points about latching, etc., and i know i was tired when i went, but i left thinking, good grief. there's a lot to it. heck of a lot to nursing a baby. i'm not seriously thinking about using formula, but suddenly enfamil seems like a perfectly reasonable and rational option.

the universe

i had dinner with kate & julie last night. part of the conversation went like this:

me: so, i know i need to find some kids for my kids to play with & i should make some mom friends, so i...am...going to my first MOPS meeting tomorrow morning.

kate, graciously playing into the drama: [GASP!] my, how the mighty have fallen!

julie: and how far!

but i got home from dinner & violet had been "buffing", as she put it. we spent all night snuggling on the couch together, in between her barfing fits, until 5am. so i guess no one has fallen, quite yet.

dance you across the wood floors

we live in our house. we have a telephone. we have internet. it's nice to be back.

happy birthday ali, cheryl, darby!

this is a bit of a pathetic post because you each deserve a dozen, proclaiming your charms, your beauty, wit, high character, love of God.

but here i will say it simply (a day late for cheryl, two for ali, but it's actually darby's birthday today) -- happy birthday friends.

hope this year is a blast. and if not...who cares?! you still got us.

Office dwellers: Have I a plant for you!

Bought this lovely little plant at Lowe's the other day. It indicates that it needs low light. And, it was only $3. The gal on How About Orange recommended it.

i'll key ya

my mom & i drove 2 hours up to the chicago IKEA yesterday. we arrived at noon. and we walked out of that mammoth store, pushing three very heavy carts, at 7pm. i have never shopped that long & actually enjoy it. in fact, i felt giddy.

and i even want to go back in a week or two.

Anyone for croquet?

We must have had some night visitors this week. We woke up to find our croquet wires artfully arranged in our backyard and huge divots all over from someone pounding our yard with a mallot. Weird. Creepy. Kyle wants to set up a webcam.

anyone up for a parody?!?!

whocares should make our own version of this video. daphne could play feist. all we need is a blue sparkly bodysuit! and a warehouse! who's with me?

have a laugh at the expense of christian consumer culture

andrew sent me a link to this hilarious blog, alittleleaven.com. it's run by a reformed blogger, and it's half smartypants, half lament, devoted to the most agonizing by-products of kooky evangelical consumerism, like the jesus fan above, and other gems, like (my personal favorite) "threat alert jesus". the archives are really worth a browse too.

house for sale!

hi everyone... after much discussion, justin and i have decided to put our house up for sale. we would really like to be able to pay off some school bills, as they always seem to hinder us from getting ahead. so, i thought i'd put the offer out there to all of you folks before we seek out other buyers, whether that be by FSBO or by realtor.

here are some specs....

-brick tudor built in the 1940's with approx. 1680 sq. ft. (not including unfinished basement)
-all woodwork and doors are original and not painted, orginal doorknobs, all in superb condition
-main floor
- two bedrooms with wood floors
- dining room with wood floors
- living room with wood floors
- kitchen with a nice pergo type flooring, original cabinets and counter in PRESTINE condition and a swinging butler's door!!
- cute little entryway with an open storage closet
- two large hallway closets, one with a laundry chute!!
-upstairs
- the upstairs is one room with several "wings" you might call them
- knotty pine walls and new carpet
- built in book shelf
- three accessible HUGE storage closets, as well as three additional attic storage closets
-basement
- basement access through kitchen
- cleanest basement in pretty much the WORLD.
- two large storage closets (one makes a great tornado shelter with no windows)
- toilet, sink and shower
- washer/dryer hookups

the house also comes with central a/c, gas heat, a HUGE beautiful privacy fenced-in backyard, a small deck with adjoining patio's, an attached garage (which does not have a doorway to the house), a front porch, a really cool mail slot, probably some appliances, and a small dog. haha. just kidding. oh and did i mention there is a park, post office, library, walgreens, no frills, and dmv all within walking distance, as well as some awesome thrift shops?!?!?

come and see if you want, don't be shy! this really is a beautiful, well taken care of home. i hate to even think of leaving it, i would live here forever if i could! just email me or comment this and we can work a time out for you to see it and/or discuss any further details (uh, price :)....) this house is quite versatile, working well with families, or even single folks...


and here are some pics.... these pictures just do not do the house justice.

Friday Night Lights...

Nate's brother Sam is a Sr. this year for Millard North. He is a lineman. #74. He is a beheamoth, a sasquatch if you will. Most games they pair two guys against him and he just sort of shoves them out of the way. Very entertaining. Very nostalgic of those fall days my Sr. year when I actually had friends at school to go to games with. Our little whocares group is one I cannot guess about - did ya'll go to football games? were any of you cheerleaders? common! not all 11 of us merely mocked the cheerleaders... one of us must have been one! fess up!

oh, and surely all of us wore more clothes to the games than the Sr. girls do now! Holy Moly I am old, but was it ever OK to wear only a sports bra and boxer shorts with fishnets to a football game before?... oh, and Marti Gra beads of course. I think I would have remembered that!

oh, at the last game I also parked next to a girl talking on her cell phone, driving her Mercedes Kompressor and trying to find her friends out the window simultaneously... were any of you that girl in highschool?

whocares? gnarls barkley does

I was getting down with my lame self the other day to Gnarls Barkley's "St. Elsewhere" album, and realized that there's a song on the album called "Who Cares?" I looked up the lyrics, and they are kind of funny - maybe especially pertinent to this blog is this verse:


--------------------------

You see, everybody is somebody
But nobody wants to be themselves
and If I ever wanted to understand me
I'll have to talk to someone else

Cause every little bit helps

And I can go on and on and on... but who cares?
--------------------------

That last line is the chorus. I was singing that line all weekend!

sad day

madeleine l'engle died today. i loved her books. here's the npr report.

spit spot

my mom is coming tomorrow afternoon. she's going to float to town with her magic umbrella & whip our mess into shape.

i have had this happen to me many times: i start to try to make sense of a big, huge physical mess (it's always my messy room, or in this case, my unpacked, disaster of a new house) & then this happens: i freeze. i am sitting in the middle of the room & the monstrosity of work ahead overwhelms me. this is where mom has always come in: somehow she'll walk into the house, look around, & magically have a plan to make the clothes hop into the closet on their own. the wallpaper will willingly peel off in the bathroom. and so tonight, before i go to sleep & hopefully sleep, i'm breathing out a great big sigh. i can't wait to rise up the banister, too.

keep calm and carry on

i can't remember if i saw this poster with one of you during the who cares weekend or if it was elsewhere with else-one. anyway, the person i was with at the time wondered outloud where the saying came from. i saw this today on a website that sells the posters (click title link to go there):

‘Keep calm and carry on’, a message fly-posted around Britain during World War Two.

my cuppa

I was out of coffee on Tuesday and in a hurry grabbed a bag of Eight O'Clock Coffee (whole bean, original roast). And can I say, YUM?! It's my new favorite! Nice and smooth and slightly dry for the morning cup. The Starbucks beans I was buying were bitter, even with half-and-half (the way I take it). Goodbye, you stupid siren.

Have any of you found any locally-roasted beans you love? I had a place in Des Moines (Zanzibar's - go there if you're ever passing thru), but don't know what beans are good around these here parts.

yum yum this

part 2
my REAL outfit today:

the iron works better when it is plugged in. FYI. check that you complete this important step before spending 20 minutes ironing.

a bad movie, but a good artist

we got the netflix up and and running after a summer hiatus, and the next movie in the the queue was "fur," which is a sort of surrealist hybrid between a biography and a fairy tale. it's about diane arbus, the photographer who was most famous for her portraits of people from new york's subcultures (like dwarfs, transvestites, people with genetic abnormalities. she used the word "freaks"). the picture in the middle is one of her famous pictures, child with toy hhand grenade in central park, new york city (1962) . the film, with nicole kidman and robert downey jr. (as the hair-covered upstairs neighbor who draws diane into his carney underworld), was really and truly awful. beautiful visually, but terrible. don't see it. the real diane arbus' work was worth learning about, though, especially for anyone interested in photography and design. though if you're into that, you prolly know her already.