post office woes

Went to the post office this morning to mail a package. Handed the postal worker a $20 bill. She looked at it as if it were a two-headed snake, looked back at me and said, "We don't have change today." I thought she was joking. She said, "No, seriously. You'll need to pay with something smaller." I said I didn't have anything smaller. She ripped the stickers off my package and handed it back to me and said, "Come back later then." I asked everyone in the post office if they had change for a twenty, but no one did. Eventually I walked out, utterly dejected, and then remembered the bookstore next door. They were very amused by my tale of postal woe and happily handed over two fives and a ten. I went back to the post office, got back on line, ended up at a different register. It had lots of change.

because mocha

I licked the soap in the shower this morning.

It just smelled so delicious, an irresistible combination of freshly brewed coffee and deep, rich dark chocolate, and the scrubby coffee grounds made me think of dark chocolate covered espresso beans. And so I licked it. Just the teensiest bit, on one corner.

It tasted like soap.

Years ago a boyfriend gave me an expensive jar of sugar honey body scrub and I couldn't help but taste that too. It also tasted like soap. Very sweet soap, yes, but still soap. He, of course, thought I was nuts. So does my current boyfriend, for that matter, when he catches me doing something like this.

I don't have any excuse at all, really, other than a childish compulsion to sometimes put delicious-smelling things in my mouth. (And no, I don't mean that in a dirty way!)

I just couldn't resist licking the soap this morning (as my friend Sarah might say), because mocha.

consumerism

I don't really get Black Friday. I don't get waiting on line for hours in the cold and dark. I don't get this national obsession with getting the best deal, the biggest electronics, the most cheaply-made gifts. My family is trying to keep Christmas small this year. What I mean is that we're trying to keep it filled with love instead of filled with things. Oh, there will be presents of course! There is a baby involved now in our holiday gatherings, so of course there will be presents! But my gifts this year will be simple gifts. A handcrafted wood playset. A knitted cowl. A jar of infused honey. Local handcut, paper-wrapped soaps. Things to please the senses: the tactile pleasures of wood and warm wools, the rich, satisfying tastes and scents of honeys and herbs and oils. I won't be specifically supporting Handmade Monday (11/25) because I try to buy handmade on a regular basis already anyway. But I encourage YOU to support it because it's a lovely thing in the face of our overly-consumerist, factory-made, underpaid gift-giving culture.

There's so much talent out there, so many people making beautiful, durable, practical, fantastical, truly artisan things, and it's so worth being a part of and a supporter of that movement.

'i've been feeling old, i've been feeling cold...'

(Musicians: Flume & Chet Faker. Dancer: Storyboard P.)

"But the dancer, as elongated in limb as a Giacometti, rejects hip-hop’s reflex bravado. The intricate language he helped invent and is constantly, obsessively revising describes dreamers, poets and ghosts, not gangsters. This “mutant” idiom shows what it feels like to be young, black and pinned to the inner city, not whatever stance you take to deal with the situation."

BFFs

So we did the photo shoot yesterday for the bridal shop. At one point Dawn, the lovely photographer, instructed Ari, the lovely model, to look at me as if we were having a conversation. We started chatting about what to buy for our Thanksgiving feast next week. (Tons of garlic, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, more garlic, some sort of bird. Did we mention garlic?) Dawn sat patiently. Finally she rolled her eyes, amused, and said, "Ladies. When I said have a conversation, I didn't actually mean HAVE A CONVERSATION!" This is what happens when you've been BFFs with your model since the first grade, I guess.

bridge, 11.16.13

maternity care & men

This whole debate about men being forced to pay for maternity care in their health insurance plans has me in such a rage that it feels like old times (you know, now that I'm not quite as generally rageful as I have been in decades past).

Here's the thing. Or a couple of things. You don't get to pick and choose what's in your insurance plan. You can probably pick another plan if you don't like the one you've got, but you don't get line-item veto power with the plan you have. You're not the fucking President. If your insurance covers a certain number of therapy sessions per year, just for example, and you are lucky enough to be in pristine mental health, you don't get to say, "Oh hell no, I'm not paying for that!" Or if you're lucky enough to have insurance that includes dental but all you need is an annual check-up because your teeth are made out of goddamned diamonds, well, you're still stuck with cavity coverage. But no one's forcing you to use it.

So there's that.

But even more enraging is that many of the people who are all up in arms about men never having babies and still having to pay for maternity care (Republicans) happen to also be the same people all up in arms about women controlling their own fertility (Republicans).

You know what's cheaper than maternity care, foks? Contraception and abortion!

That's right. By tens of thousands of dollars per pregnancy. On average, maternity and newborn care in the United States costs $30-50,000. The average abortion, on the other hand, runs you a mere $400, give or take. You want to put your money where your mouth is, than make sure those two things are covered and you won't have as many freaking pregnant women to pay for. Or babies, for that matter. Because clearly they're a burden on society.

So there's that.

But even more infuriating to me than that is this: every single man had a pregnant mother. That's right. Every single man has quite possibly ALREADY BENEFITED FROM MATERNITY CARE. But that's the thing about so many of these so-called conservative Christian attitudes. It's all, "I've got mine, so screw you." And where exactly is the Christianity in that, I ask you?

So there's that.

But there's even more! There's this: basically these up-in-arms-about-the-horrible-injustice-of-having-to-pay-for-maternity-care-folks are saying that women alone should be financially responsible for the FUTURE HEALTH OF THE HUMAN RACE. By dint of biology.

So then let us fucking run the human race for awhile, why don't you.

bridge, 11.9.13

bridge, 11.2.13