December 31, 2005

It's 7:45pm and I just finished working on my taxes..

I am trying to erase a sense of fiscal doom so I can go to some sort of party and whoop it up.

Oh whoop.

I said: "I have the spending habits of a 18 year old jewish girl from the upper-west side." My friend said; " I have the spending habits of hurricane Katrina."

Ha.

Resolutions pre- midnight:

1/ Spend less money
2/ Make more money
3/ keep my receipts
4/ Save 20% on all untaxed income
5/ No more shoes.....!

non-financial resolutions

1/ Learn to drive.
2/ Re-pot my plants when they need repotting.
3/ Keep other people's secrets.
4/ Keep my own secrets (oh too bad blog no more tasty treats).
5/ Stay the fuck away from jagermeister
6/ Don't give the dog so many rawhide biscuits. Snack food is no substitute for responsible pet ownership.

spiritual/emotional resolutions

1/ Have faith in people.
2/ Have faith in myself.
3/ Be an optimist about things worth being optimistic about,
4/ And be completely dismissive of the things that don't warrant my attention.

I think that covers it. I am going to go and do the shrug while I look for something sexy to wear when it's minus 40 outside.

December 30, 2005

{I actually wrote this on the train ride home from my vacation hence post-post}

No-one ever says;

"Attention is if there is web-designer aboard the train please come to car 01 immediately. Thank you for your assistance."

I am sitting on the train (wifi enabled) working on my submission for she is such a geek.

Which probably won't get in but I guess that's okay.

I am listening to simon and garfunkel, and wonderng what has happened in train 01, reflecting on the difference between being a doctor and being anything else. Why don't they ever say; "All incorrigable gossips with ADHD who hate long train rides and would prefer watching emergency CPR to sitting on their tuchas for another 4 hours with nothing to do, please come to car 01 imemdiately."

A friend of mine is going to get on this train at Belleville and I am semi- annoyed because I have a chocolate letter which is the first letter of both our names and I would like share it with her and I can't because it is assigned seating and I don't know which car she will be on.

Here is a collection of my favorite bon-mots from the holidays, spent mostly with family, except for one ill-fated evening spent with some old friends and about two too many shots of jagermeister. Which I will get back to later.

Try to guess who said what, if you have had any meetings with members of family flink.

"I don't like the jib of your nose."

"Stop sitting there and take your turn already."
"I am not sitting here, I am thinking. When my eyes are very still and fixed on the game-board it means I am thinking."
"What were you thinking about?"
"Whether I should get us another bowl of jalapeno corn-chips."

"You're not going to date Helmut are you?!"
"No. Helmut and I are just going to be friends."
"She told Helmut to put a lid on it."

"...I don't know why you aren't married yet. It's not that difficult, you meet someone when you are 18 or 19 and then bumpf you're married."
"Bubi I have bumpfed with 2 or 3 people in my life, and none of it has led to marriage."
"Mum, I only bumpfed with one person and now I am divorced."
"I don't know if we should talk about this over dinner."

"You know, you're smart, you're funny, and nice, you have a good job.. I don't understand why you haven't settled down..."
"Don't worry Bubi, I am going to marry at least twice so that more then one person has a chance to experience all my good qualities."

"How much was the digital camera?"
"It was about 400 dollars."
"That seems expensive."
"Mom do you even know what a digital camera is?"
"It's a camera that takes pictures by itself."

"Are you mad that I just beat you?"
"I'm not mad, I'm dissapointed."

"Look at this picture of Dads bloody eyeball, he looks like saruman."
"That's awesome!"
"Don't go and put that on the internet - that's not why I bought you a camera - to embarras your family with."

and now....

{The friend totally found me and we traded kolbassa for chocolate, and then went slightly mental when the train was an hour behind schedule}

She is presently standing in front of me complaining that her clothing smells like latkes..

I am back and I am (... a B word here bitchy, bad-ass, bored, blatantly ignoring the fact that my vacation ended 48 hours ago)... and I kinda wish I wasn't I guess that means I had a good vacation. Someone should tell surly teen-agers this: Right now you hate your family, and think they are totally crazy and annoying. Once you have grown up you will still sometimes find them crazy and annoying but for some inexplicable reason you will actually love them for it. If you are lucky though, only if you are lucky.

December 21, 2005

Oooh..one of my bosses just signed into messenger, marry christmas to you too.

Wait what am I doing online.....

Oh yeah, I bought some flannel cowgirl pyjamas and I put them on when I got home to wrap presents and was galloping around the apartment yelling yee-fuckin-hell-haw motherfuckers, when I realized, cowgirls don't wear pyjamas dummy, they sleep nekkid except fer their holsters.

Oh well, I got dork pyjamas.

Also why can't I wrap presents? I had the whole set up going on; tape, scissors, fancy ribbon. The wrapping paper was plain and cheap but I thought the ribbons would make up for it. I even got tiny little christmas stamps for decorating.

As if. Everything looks like it was wrapped in a mixture of dog-hair, cat-hair and rug lint. I used to be crafty what happened?

Jacob writes these beautiful things at the right time always - it's quite amazing.

I'll quote it here so I can go back and read it often.

I had forgotten that I had said that modern life was like triage, that we deal with each thing in our lives on a strictly emergency basis, and things that seem less urgent are mercifully shuttled off to the sides. That we are all much too busy and this fact infects the very texture of our consciousness. I had forgotten because somehow, somewhere along the way, I slipped off the fact of all of that and sometimes it seems like I no longer spin. Who (of any substance) speaks of what is the good way to live? (All we get are tepid self-help books the sub-text of which always has something to do with how the individual can survive all the pain, damage and loneliness that capitalism unknowingly inflicts.) But of course we already know what the good way to live is (easier said than done): a life against the triage of small, daily things and towards giving meaning its due, against pushing things to the side and towards bringing that which is essential towards the centre of one's heart. (But perhaps it is better to keep such thoughts to oneself.)

It's funny while I am writing about Jacob I am listening to a song from a mix his sister Ruth made for me.

And they say there's no such thing as community anymore.