I'm in love with Sufjan Stevens.
I want to have his nineteen babies.
Seriously.

Step Two: Cookware (almost)

In further preparation for my NZ trip, I bought a backpacking stove on Ebay. It cost over $50 and weighs under a pound. The best part? Though the preferred fuel source is white gas, it can use anything from diesel to rocket fuel. That means that if my flight across the world goes all Lost and rips in half and crashes on a (seemingly) deserted island, if we can find my pack, and if there is any fuel salvageable on the plane, we can cook!

The online backpacking community has warned that the stove sometimes shoots out fireballs when the something and something else go wrong. (What? I can't remember.) If you happen to see me without eyebrows in the next few weeks, please, don't ask why.

Anyone need to add a little something to their ramen ritual? I don't think you could ask for more than a little Missi, a little backyard, and a whole lot of pyrotechnics. Come on over!

Celebrate!

My church is great. My church has a women's group. A couple of weeks ago at women's group we sat around and made collages that were metaphors of ourselves - a very Starting Over thing to do. Deborah, my fifty-something pastor currently pursuing her PhD, had a line from a magazine glued on to her page that said "Funk you." I asked her why she had chosen that (also very Starting Over) and she said it was because it sounded a lot like "fuck you" and that more women need to develop a "fuck you attitude" in order to protect themselves. If you happen to be an often-passive female such as myself, or know one, you know that this is a good idea.

Case in point:
This evening I talked Melissa into going out dancing with me at the Holocene even though there was a $10 cover, and even though it was Monday night. Because of the great Mercury write-up I had expected a Portland hipster dance party, overrun with sweaters, glasses, and shuffling feet.

Nope.

Somehow the club was swarming with hippies and ravers, and the men outnumbered the women ten-to-one. And they were, for the most part, creepy men. One of the not-quite-hippies wore a white dress shirt partially unbuttoned and alternated between beat boxing and doing the running man. He looked like Napoleon Dynamite when he practices the dance video in his room. To my horror I accidentally made eye contact with him and he held his hands out and asked me to dance.

If only I had had the Fuck You attitude, but no, I didn't, so I smiled uncomfortably and said "sure" and then he grabbed both of my hands and started spinning me around, attempting to ballroom dance. Mind you, this is all to thinly embelleshed, uninteresting house beats. Awesome.

I pulled my hands away after awhile and tried to stay away from him, but then he pulled his shirt up over his head and stomped around like Godzilla... and...

The good news is that I received sympathy glances from a cute boy in a grey sweatshirt. When I looked at my watch to see if I had spent my $10 in dancing it was midnight, and Cute Boy in Grey Sweatshirt leaned over my shoulder and wished me a happy Valentine's day.

I wish this story had a better ending than that - like, the exchanging of phone numbers! - but it doesn't. Oh well. There's always Kona.

Ok!

Not all boys are stupid.
Believe me when I say I meant nothing bad towards either Bob or Adam.

There are two reasons that I have been working so much (13 days straight):

1. Boys are stupid.

2. I'm going to New Zealand and am discovering that "gear" is really "expensive."


There are two VD-related festivities happening at our house:

1. Valentine making party this coming Thursday. Sharpen you wit for this one, folks!

2. A "Blood and Wine" party on the big day, the fourteenth. We will watch a slasher movie (particular film as yet undecided) and drink wine. The way I see it, Valentine's is generally a lose-lose situation. Because, unless I get a card that reads "Blah, blah, blah, you are the most amazing person I have ever met. With undying love, Adrien Brody" I'm going to be a little bit disappointed. However, if you take any potential for romance out (after all, it's the "maybe" that gets me every time) and replace it with death and alcohol, well, then you have a winner.

I worked two jobs today:

1. 6:30 am to 6:15 pm, the Soumokils. Three kids, one dog, one cat. Some time around four I had finished washing some dishes and turned off the faucet to discover that the house was completely silent. This is never, ever good. Except for this time! The oldest yelled down the stairs for me to play the first song on the CD, and "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid blasted through the living room. The kids came running down in their bathrobes. I said, "Please tell me you're wearing clothes," and they threw the robes open and danced around in their swimsuits. Then threw the outerwear on the ground and laid out beach blankets and put on sunglasses, shimmying around like sizzling bacon. Then they brought out their kickboards and pretended to surf across the carpet. This was all the summer I needed, and this is why I love my job.

2. 6:30 pm to 10:45 pm, the Comic Book Family. Two kids, TiVo, best Geek collections (and connections) you'll ever see. Dashiell: screams for Mom every forty-five minutes. Elliot: "I just ate your brain! I just cut your arm off! You're bleeding and you have no head!" I sang "Baby Beluga" three times, "Twinkle Twinkle" and "Sally the Camel" each twice. Lengthy discussion with parents afterwards on how to best build a fire and why I now consider myself an expert in children's literature.

My two favorite children's books:

1. The Big Red Barn - Margaret Wise Brown

2. Mr. Putter and Tabby Stir the Soup - Cynthia Rylant