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Places to Go:
Fun & Games
Totally swiped from Alison at (un)complicate me:
The Name Game
1.Your rock star name (first pet, current car): Jesse Cadilac
2.Your gangsta name (favorite ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe): Peppermint Plaid Boots
3.Your Native American name (favorite color, favorite animal): Turquoise Dragonfly
4.Your soap opera name (middle name, city where you were born): Julia Presidio
5.Your Star Wars name (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 of your first name): CALjo
6.Superhero name (2nd favorite color, favorite drink): Royal Blue Coffee
7.NASCAR name (the first names of your grandfathers): T.P. Dunnow
8.Dancer name (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy): Chanel Skittles
9.TV weather anchor name (your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter): Griffin Glendale
10.Spy name (your favorite season/holiday, flower): Winter Rose
11.Cartoon name:(favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now): Grape Grannies
12.Hippie name (what you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree): Jammed Toast Willow
13.Movie star name (first pet, first street where you lived): Jesse Cherokee
What aliases did you come up with?
Saturday is for Scattergories!
SCATTERGORIES - it’s harder than it looks! Play here or play on your blog. Saturday is game day!
Use the first letter of your first name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, things - nothing made up. You can not use
your own name for the boy/girl names.
1. What is your name? Calliope
2. A 4 letter word: cock (sorry, it’s the 1st one that came to mind…)
3. A vehicle: carpet, the magic kind
5. A boy’s name: Campbell
6. A girl’s name: Carrie
7. Drink: cosmo
8. An occupation: chicken farmer
9. Something you wear: crown
10. A celebrity: Chris Cooper
11. Something found in a bathroom: caulk
12. Reason for being late: car clutch catastrophe
13. Something you shout: Catch!
14. A body part: chin
15. Word to describe yourself: cheeky
Put your answers in the comments or play along on your site- just let us know so we can see your answers!
Meme on a Monday
Holy heck, it’s a meme! Starrhillgirl has tagged me with the following:
What’s On Your Nightstand?
Rules, rules, rules: post what you’ve got on the table (chair, nightstand, whatever) beside your bed. Leave nothing out. Nothing. Heh. Link back to the kind person who tagged you and then tag 3 other folks. Really tag them - none of this “whoever hasn’t done this meme yet” tagging.
Lucky girl that I am, I actually have two bedside tables. Yes. I love symmetry.
One table is dedicated to the comfort of BG Talula and my collection of Grovers.
The other bedside table has a painting propped on it, a crystal lamp, a clock radio, a coffee mug that I really should bring back downstairs, the remote for my tivo, two bobby pins, a collection of twist-ties that a certain cat brings to me in the middle of the night and a tiny glass bottle filled with sand from Big Sur. You can sort of see it all in this photo. Inside the side table is a doorknob from someplace and the extremely GIANT remote control that my Grandfather used to need to use. It is literally almost the size of a large reference book.
Now…for the tagging…
I tag: Arcane Matters, Sarah Solitaire, and There Must be Something More…
Tuesday’s Tallying, etc.
This weekend I got a random refund check in the mail from a place I had never heard of. I wanted to just thank the random Gods, deposit the check and move on about my March. But then Mother had to get all clever on me with her movie plot notions that it could be a scam check or a mistake check or an oscar winning check (sorry, bad pun). It was enough to make me realize that with the sort of luck I have had within this era of my life if I deposited the check it most likely would end up as some sort of major drama and hell.
I did much internet researching on the name (a series of initials) and address (a state I never lived in) of the check and came up with nothing familiar. Clearly it was some sort of voodoo check that if deposited would trigger a series of horrific and lifetime movie worthy events.
Yesterday, after looking at the check sitting all casual on my desk I noticed that it had a major bank name on it. I thought if I called the bank maybe they could break the anagram for me and at least clue me in on the legitimacy of this paper annoyance. Or maybe I would be the hero figure helping break an international check forgery ring. There might be a reward. You never know with these things.
(and just to be clear, this is, by no means, a whopping, change your life sort of check. it’s maybe a week’s worth of groceries including a cheap bottle of wine)
It took forever to get a human being at the bank. There really isn’t an automated prompt for people trying to verify if a check is legit. I finally had to be sneaky and pretend I was looking for a new home equity loan to get a real live person on the phone. It took less than 1 minute (me relaying the series of numbers at the bottom of the check and her typing it in) to verify that the check was real.
Somehow I am the recipient of a refund from a medical test I had nearly four years ago. Four. That is weird, right? But I’ll take it and chalk it up to some sort of ripple in a wave in the ocean.
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It’s a Meme! Because I am a giant needy dork I must tell you how geeked out I was to actually be selected to participate in a meme. Seriously. No one ever picks my sorry ass and I was starting to get a complex. Now, thanks to Laura, I feel like I got picked for the kickball team. Yay.
Step 1. Reference back to the blog that sent you
Step 2. Make a list of 5 things that you have to get done this week, no matter how small
Step 3. Get 2 other people off their asses to get their shit in order
- I must empty out the fridge
- I should deposit the random refund check
- I want to make a burrito dinner
- I need to fill up the car with gas before the price goes up more
- I would like to spend thursday afternoon taking photographs
I know, not such a groovy or fun list, but that’s my life: neither groovy nor fun. I am tagging Sarah Solitaire and The Family O. Also, let me know if you, like me, never get tagged and we can spend the week tagging the crap out of each other.
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Now for the Tally-Ho event of the week. (no, I did not just call you a ho. calm down.) Please put on your vintage polka dot swimwear and dive into our photo friday pool. Do a few laps and enjoy the arty and clever contributions of the week and then towel off and come back here to vote. The photographer with the most votes will win creative control for the following week.
Go to the Main Photo Friday Site to see this week’s theme. I am looking forward to seeing how you guys capture the theme. Heh.
Which Photographer should be showcased?
- Niobe h (29%, 11 Votes)
- Timaree (16%, 6 Votes)
- temmerling (16%, 6 Votes)
- Care SMC (16%, 6 Votes)
- TheLongestRoad (13%, 5 Votes)
- dismantledarmadillo (8%, 3 Votes)
- Shanghai Louise (3%, 1 Votes)
- jay and vee (0%, 0 Votes)
- kimandlisa2003 (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 38
Loading …Tuesday is a meme
I. My dreams are very, very heavily influenced by my surroundings. Now when I say that I am sure that many of you are thinking, “well, duh”. But I mean this beyond events and stresses in my life. I mean that if I fall asleep with the television on whatever airs during the night will become prominently featured in my dreams.
I discovered this years ago when John Denver died. I feel asleep watching the local news and there must have been a report about his death. When I woke up I recalled that I had dream about John and how sad and then when I saw a news report I had a fleeting moment of imagining myself with psychic powers. Further testing revealed that it was just the news seeping into my REM.
Bottom line: I can never fall asleep with the news on, much less any sort of tv running as you never know when the news will just pop up. Sunday night I accidentally fell asleep to something and ended up dreaming that I was a top aide for Hillary Clinton (she was extremely pleasant to me in my dream).
II. I make iced tea nearly every day and I never drink it. The tea is for my Mother who, just a few months ago, began having nostalgic feelings about the iced tea that GM used to make for supper. Thus began Mother’s epic quest to figure out GM’s top secret tea recipe. Finally I caved & told her that I had been gifted with the recipe (along with other gems) and that I would make her a pot. She enjoyed it so much, and I took so much pleasure in her enjoyment, that we are now in a cycle of my making tea every day.
III. I do not write in cursive or script handwriting. Ever. I privately do not like it when others do. (sorry) This is 100% all because of my Grandfather, who had the coolest block print I have ever seen. Picture how an architect forms letters and then humanize it a bit- and that was how GF wrote.
When I was in the fifth grade and visiting my Grandparents for some reason or other my GF took me aside and filled me in on something: while he enjoyed my experimenting with my handwriting (Yes, these were the years where my writing was supplemented with extra curvature and doodles. There may have been stars involved.) he could not, in fact, understand what I was trying to say. Clarity was key, he preached. I countered that I wanted people to see that I was creative. And then he taught me something very big: people should know that you are creative by what you write not how.
I then became super freaked that my writing would not be understood so I began to emulate his font the best that I could. I dabbled with giving lowercase a’s those little bonnets but that proved to be too much effort. I finally honed in my deepest paranoia: that my lower case r’s were blending in too much & possibly not looking like r’s at all. In the summer before 6th grade I fixed my print and decided that I would never use a lowercase r again. Since then ALL of my r’s have been decidedly uppercase. A year or two later lowercase l’s became uppercase as well.
IV. At least once a week I look at houses for sale in cities across America. It’s part of my imaginary relocation project. This week I am looking at houses in Carmel and Monterey. I pretend that I have a small daughter and a need for a home office. I pretend that I have gobs of money. I pretend that if I wanted to I could just buy the house on-line and just go. Here is where I am going this week.
V. Before IVF #1 I decided that I needed to stop dying my hair. This ended a decade and a half of dying my hair various shades of crimson. I now have a very dull and very drab shade of brown. It does not suit me, not an ounce. My persona is still very much a redhead’s. My coloring is meant for a redhead, the very core of my identity is wrapped up in it as well. I am debating going back to red, but I worry that something as silly as hair is defining me. Or rather not defining me at the moment.
VI. I am allergic to gold. If I wear gold I break out in a rash and my skin begins to peel away from itself. This is not something I suffer over as I have a strong preference for silver anyhow.
The Rules:
1) Link to the person that tagged you.
2) Post the rules on your blog.
3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people at the end of your post and link to their blogs.
5) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6) Let the fun begin!
Now. The tagging. I am going to select some relatively new blogs (at least to me): A Journey Through, On to Plan B, and There must be more than being fond of grief. Also- if you have a vowel in your middle name I am tagging you.
7 things
7 things you didn’t know about me until now: (thank you, Jen, for the tag!)
1) I can not stand ice in my beverage. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy a cool or frosty drink, but floating ice just bothers me. In order to deal I have a very honed system: I place four cubes of ice into a glass and then fill the glass with water. As the ice melts the water becomes cold but unfortunately too cold for my enjoyment. So then I have to wait for the water to be cool but not cold. As I try to drink as much water as possible before my diet coke cravings kick in I end up having a row of water glasses at various ice melting stages. I line them up on the counter and try to convince myself that this bit of neurosis is actually attractive, modern kitchen art. When it is in season I also add bits of cubed watermelon to the glasses. The addition of the fruit completely disgusts my Mother (she thinks it looks like cooling flesh) so I have to hide my rows of glasses when she is home.
2) I don’t like talking on the telephone. I once had a job that required me to always be either on the phone or waiting for the phone to ring or just a phone call away. I was given electronic devices so that I could always be reached - my cellular leash. I noticed that once I left LA I was forgetting my cell phone: in the car, in my purse, at a friend’s house. There was a freedom in not being able to be reachable. I cringe when the phone rings, but I think I come by that honestly as no one in my family is a phone person. My Grandfather used to have this long rant about not being indentured to a ringing phone. The end of his fantastic rant (which I loved as he used lots of swear words) was, “Just because someone has a G*d damn quarter doesn’t mean I have to give a shit.” Brilliant, right?
3) I have never read Gone With the Wind…I own 4 copies. There are many reasons why I haven’t read it, but most of them are completely related to rebellion. For starters it is my Mother’s favorite book. All through my childhood my Mother would talk about how she couldn’t WAIT for me to read it. She would buy these utterly too expensive editions and gift them to me expecting me to be completely thankful. However, when all you want for your birthday is earrings to deck out your extra ear holes and you get GWTW…not cool. So I began a deep seeded rebellion against it. I actually never saw the movie until I moved to NYC. To this day my Mother harps about the fact that I haven’t so much as cracked the four copies that I have.
4) I love freckles. When I see another person with tons of freckles on their face or arms my heart melts. Kids with freckles? I am goo. This is why when my most favorite make up started advertising that their product would cover up freckles I got a tad weepy and upset. I wanted to send them freckle loving letters and start an embrace your freckles campaign. Then I sadly realized that not everyone does love their freckles…so maybe covering them up makes them feel more beautiful. And since I am not the beautiful police who am I to force my freckle ideology onto others. But seriously, if you have freckles - show them off!
5) I miss my dog, Admiral Wyatt, so strongly that I can not have any photographs of him displayed. I can’t even deal with scottie doodads. As we have always had scottie dogs we have amassed a large amount of art, pillows, salt & pepper shakers and bookends shaped like the terriers. Once we moved and I was able to select what went where I put the kabash on allowing any scottie paraphernalia into the new house. The only scottie is Charlie the dog.
6) I struggle daily with how I feel about my family. I also have an extreme fear that because my family is so fucked up the universe is banning my female bits from creating offspring. I have fantasies about not having any family at all. There is a sick freedom in those thoughts. I fantasize about my (yet to be conceived) daughter and I moving far away and building our own family out of friends. I don’t want to give the impression that I take the family I have for granted…but I think they might do that to me. I wonder if anything would ever get done if I was gone…and would I care? horrible, right?
7) Sometimes I go to bed without brushing my teeth. ew! Usually it is because I am half asleep. You would think I would add brushing my teeth to the insane night time face rituals I go through. I must be in the bathroom for ten minutes just scrubbing my face and rubbing zit zapping creams into it. But then something will distract me, usually it is Jon Stewart, I will feel the need to walk over to the television and then I might as well get into bed…next thing you know I am asleep and my teeth have been neglected. The shit part is that I ALWAYS feel guilty about it in the morning. I wake up remembering the forgotten tooth soldiers and I will go into overdrive with pre-rinses and flossing and tongue scraping.
I am tagging: Sarah, Captain Crank Pants, Sophia, & Jade
In honor of the birthday people…a meme
There a couple of awesome people (& some non blogging partners) that are having birthdays this week. In honor of you, here is a birthday meme:
Go to Wikipedia.
In the search box type in the month of your birth and the date (not the year)
1) List three events that happened on the day of your birth
2) List two “people of note” also born on the day
3) List one “person of note” that died on the day
4) List any holiday or observances
Paste answers here or at your own blog.
I-pod/Fertility meme
It goes like this: you have a list of questions relating to IF. You have your iPod on and set to shuffle. Then you go through the shuffled play list, and each new (random) song is the answer to the next IF question. I added another dimension by including a lyric that could answer the question. It’s all a bit silly, but I’m having a slow day & so what the hell…
1. The song for the “you” that existed before you ever thought about your fertility:
Scattered Black and Whites by Elbow
first line: Been climbing trees I’ve skinned my knees
My hands are black the sun is going down
2. Would you really want to go back and be that person again?
Gone for Good by The Shins
sample line: That’s enough sitting on the fence
For the fear of breaking dams
3. The song for when you first started fertility treatments:
Hide another mistake- the 88
sample line: you gotta believe me
hey I need it badly
and they never see me
those sentimental fools
4. What did infertility do to your sex life?
Shoplifters of the World - The Smiths
sample line: Hand it over
Hand it over
Hand it over
5. What about superstitions and fertility rituals?
Evening on Ground (Lilith’s Song) - Iron & Wine
sample line: blame me for the rocks and baby bones
and broken lock on our
garden
6. How about “alternative” treatments, from cough syrup and pineapple to acupuncture and ‘body workers’?
There’s Hope - India.Arie
sample line:
There’s hope
It doesn’t cost a thing to smile
You don’t have to pay to laugh
You better thank God for that
7. How do you feel about coming out of the IF closet?
was never in the closet about it…so maybe this is how I feel about blogging about it:
Let Go- Frou Frou
sample line:Excuse me too busy you’re writing your tragedy
These mishaps
You bubble-wrap
When you’ve no idea what you’re like
8. Your song for other people’s baby showers:
Soul Meets Body- Death Cab for Cutie
sample line: I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
If the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
9. What about our scary friend hope?
I Like It- Dixie Chicks
sample line: Some people think I’m crazy
But try to understand
I get satisfaction
Out of everything I can
10. And lastly, the theme song of your fertility journey:
Time is My Everything- Ian Brown
sample line:
Time is my everything
For you I’d do anything
Under the sun
(Thanks to Road Less Traveled and the Original Meme maker, Sarah)
Just. one. word.
This is a suggested Saturday post by my friend Sherry. This is way better than my own attempt at a meme. You can steal this one too.
You.
Can.
Only.
Type.
One.
Word.
No.
Explanations.
Not as easy as you might think…
1. Yourself: expository
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend: lacking
3. Your hair: tangerine
4. Your mother/stepmother: nutty
5. Your dog: herpetologist
6. Your favorite item: correspondence
7. Your dream last night: eccentric
8. Your favorite drink: coffee
9. Your dream car: wagon
10. The room you are in: cookery
12. Your fear: barren
13. What you want to be in 10 years: established
14. Who you hung out with last night: e-mail
15. What you’re not: diminutive
16. Muffin: bagel
17: One of your wish list items: IVF
18: Time: morning
19. The last thing you did: newspaper
20. What you are wearing: flannel
21. Your favorite weather: snowfall
22. Your favorite book: Salinger’s
23. The last thing you ate: folic
24. Your life: paused
25. Your mood: inconsistent
26. Your best friend(S): remote
27. What are you thinking about right now? sex
28. Your car: Grandmother’s
29. What are you doing at the moment?: contemplation
30. Your summer: tropic
31. Your relationship status: gettable
32. What is on your TV?: dust
33. What is the weather like?: pleasant
34. When is the last time you laughed?: recently
My Answers.
1) If somebody said you were like a breakfast cereal, which one would you be and why?
They would say I am like sugar smacks as I can be overwhelmingly sweet and mushy but I also, if consumed in excess can leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
2) How do you take your coffee/tea?
coffee: HOT with a splash of flavored coffee mate
tea: with 1 cube of sugar and lemon
3) Your bedroom is on fire. You can only reach in & grab ONE thing. Do you grab your photo album or your journals?
I think I am the only one that would take journals. Photos I know I can re-accumilate from friends and family, but with my crappy memory I doubt I could ever reclaim years of my life without my journals.
4) When I see ______ I wish I could ______ so that everyone else would know that _______.
When I see a person littering I wish I could bop them on the head so that everyone else would know that recycling ROCKS!
5) Got porn?
Why yes I do.
6) If I could meet _______ and explain why I _______ I would never ______ again.
If I could meet my child and explain why I strived so hard to achieve her I would never doubt that I will be a Mother again.
7) What is the worst pet name in the history of your family?
Farquar
I would eat a bowl of _____ for free, but if you want me to eat a bowl of ______ you’d have to pay me $_____.
I would eat a bowl of mac & cheese for fee, but if you want me to eat a bowl of electric eels you’d have to pay off all of my family’s debt and fund all of my fertility treatments.
9) What 80’s tv star would make you giggle like a school girl?
The Greatest American Hero
10) What age was your best and why?
19 was a kick ass year for me. I was truly happy being a theatre dork in NYC and felt like I could do anything I wanted with my life.
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