SugarSkull

SugarSkull

About Me

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I'm in a perpetual phase of transition which doesn't seem to be phasing out.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Izzy, the Chinese Crested Pup



I'm taking care of a hairless dog this week named Izzy.  Her owner is a friend of a professor that I keep in touch with. She desperately needed a house-sitter at the last minute.  I guess I kind of saved the day, because the person who normally watches her pup had some sort of family situation to deal with.  It has has been so nice to stay in a cute, clean house with a pretty yard and a ridiculously comfy bed. I feel very at ease.  I should probably clean my own place sometime. I came to the realization the other day that my apartment isn't messy, it's striaght-up filthy.  I should just bleach the whole place and throw a bunch of crap away.  I'm not the slightest bit of a hoarder, in fact quite the contrary, I dont own hardly anything.  However, there is just useless crap everywhere like receipts, pay check stubs, tags from shirts I bought a year ago, bobby pins, hair ties, dust bunnies, rat cage bedding, etc.  I really need to work on it, I think I'd be a happier person if I were cleaner.  I spend most of my at home time on the back porch, and even that isn't tiddy. gaahhh. okay, I'm going to clean ASAP.  Niki said she'll help me clean my place if I help her clean hers. God I love the bartering system.  I hope we pump up some spice girls or old-school Britney and dance while we scrub. Maybe we should start early and make mimosas and just drink and clean all day 'til we're pooped. 


Izzy is so odd.  She's so skiddish and shakes all the time and has major tummy problems.  Her owner has to cook her chicken to eat.  I don't know how to cook anything so I'm thankful that the owner cooked up a bunch of chicken and refrigerated it before I got here.  The dog likes me though. I pet her (or rather rub/massage her skin, which was very weird to adjust to) and hold her a ton and talk to her in a baby voice a lot. Animals and kids take to me really quickly, like abnormally quickly. My friend Ana is having trouble getting her new kitten to interact with her, but for some reason the orange-striped Maurice (I suggested that name as a joke, but Ana kept it) came up to me really quickly. The latino children I watch adore me too.  The other day we had a fiesta with their parents and the whole time the kids were tugging on my arms and legs begging me to spin them and play dragons.  I pretend I'm a fire-breathing dragon and chase them all over the pace. They love it. But picking them up and spinning them 'round and 'round gets so tiring and they all fight over who's turn it is. (Not-to-mention some of the kids are far denser than others). So the other day I just said "here lets all join hands and run around in a circle."  It worked well, I'd pretend to get dizzy and fall down and they all came crashing down with me and all the adults would crack up.  Then the bottoms of my super cheap-o, velvety thrift store flats came unglued so that both of my shoes looked like big-mouthed puppets.  So I had to take them off and next thing I know all the kids have their shoes off too.  One of the mom's noticed my broken shoes and came up to me, rubbed my back and in broken English asked me if I was hungry.  Her daughter explained that in El Salvador if someone has bad shoes they're probably hungry.  Her mom laughed after she asked me that though. Thank God she was kidding, because I felt really embarrassed. (Oh I also ate a ton of meat, which I rarely do and got extremely sick later.  Jalepeno, Pork and Hominy soup can really do a girl in who is used to eating crackers, oatmeal and salad to sustain herself. Oh and the chicken tomales probably didn't help either.  But good god authethentic Central American food is freakin' incredible and totally worth the 25 trips to the toilet.)


Anyway the point I was trying to get to is that it makes me feel a little ill-at-ease and then obsessively artificially at ease when I'm around kids and animals that like me so quickly.  I know that animals and children are acutely aware of any nervousness or bad-nature in a person that they meet. So I try super hard to exude a comforting and comfortable energy.  It seems that the animals and youngins would somehow pick up on my insincerity, but maybe the fact that I'm trying so hard to make them feel safe gives me more authenticity than I credit myself.  I really do love kids and most animals, so it's not as if I have any other desire than to have fun with them and hope that they like me.  Either way, I often feel like I'm far from good-natured and almost wish kids and creatures didn't like me as readily so that my veil of phoniness would be stripped from me and people would question my integrity a little more. I just feel that I'm too obsessed with ingratiating myself into everyone's hearts, even people I'm not crazy about. I don't feel like I ever reveal my real self and instead feed people thoughts and ideas that they want to hear.  The worst part is that I'm really good at that. Really good. Like pathological liar good. I often find myself spouting out opinions that are completely contrary to my real beliefs just for fun. I told my conservative Grandmother the other day that I'm extremely disappointed in the Obama administration. That may be very true, but I failed to mention it's because he's not taking enough socialistic action. It's very rare that people get that I'm fake.  But the one's that do get that are the people who I know will be my lifelong friends. A pretty Russian girl probably realizes that I'm specifically referring to her and a couple of others. I guess we all have our guises and masks that we change out depending upon the social atmosphere we're situated in...and most of the time it would be highly inappropriate to say my thoughts out loud.  I love getting around people that I can be really honest with, it's fun to blurt out absurdities...things which I don't actually think are absurd at all.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Anti Offspring Rants and Baby Onesies Producing Paradoxes...and also Milky-Way Monk Heroes

Well my posting has clearly declined substantially in recent weeks.  I've been in a consistently weird, unsettling, anxious and fairly grumpy state of mind for a good while now.  Slowly coming out of the depressive side of it, thank goodness.  I've been questioning the way I think about things and the things that I think about a good bit, but I haven't taken my thoughts much further than questioning, so that it feel like I'm not really thinking much at all, or at least not coming up with any new thoughts. I haven't written on here in a while mainly due to the fact that A.) I've been so caught up in my own bubble that I haven't taken much note of my surroundings, nor have I analyzed them enough to find any mateiral for writing. B.) I've been doing watercolor and ink drawings that I want to somehow digitize onto baby onezies.

I see babies everywhere. People are still having kids.  I find that really odd.  Adopting seems fine and rational...but actually bringing more children into this world? why? guess I'm a radical and I often forget that other people don't see things the way I do...then I see little munchkins running around that are the spinning image of their parents and I remember that I'm an eccentric....oh a complete misanthrope disguised as someone that really likes everybody.

So hmmm...
Well my last day at the bakery was yesterday. Technically I'm going to be "fill-in" worker from time to time, but essentially I no longer work there.  I got burnt out doing service industry stuff.  I'm loving getting back into art and reading.  I'm on a philosophy kick right now.  I should probably stop spending money on books. gah. i'm practically unemployed.

I have a phone interview for a college library in coastal Maryland tomorrow.  I might be moving to the coast if it goes well, to a town with a population a little over 1,000.  I think it could be really interesting.  I hope I get it. I really hope I get. I really, really, really hope I get it. Please have me in your thoughts, or prayers or sage burnings or whatever it is that you do.  thanks.

Yesterday a sixty something, highly unkempt, unaturally scrawny, red suspender wearing regular customer at the bakery told me that he had been unbearbly sad the other night and couldn't figure out why.  He kept analyzing it and trying to put a finger on exactly what was causing this overwhelming depression.  He then thought back to an earlier conversation he had with me at the cafe.  I had been joking with him and said "You're STILLhere?" (he had been there playing chess on the internet all day, which he does everyday) "You know, Mark, if you came in less...like maybe once a week...I'd be a lot happier to see you."  I was completely kidding, we mess with each other all the time....but I guess I just took it a bit far.  So the night after I said all that was the night that he felt awful and he was trying to figure out if it was because of what I had said.  He emphasized that he understood that I was just playing around and was not being sincere, but he still somehow felt saddened, and wasn't even positive it was rooted in my words.  He then explained to me that he has trouble interpreting things, that he's a genius in some realms but struggles with things like emotions.  He told me that it's because he has aspergers, a mild form of autism, and that you really have to be careful with what you say to him.  Gahhh. I felt like shit. Absolute shit.  So now I'm going to illustrate the cover of his bizarre spirtual/ sci-fi book he's writing. He sent me his ideas for the cover, along witht he first chapter of his book.  I'm going to be drawing a spiral galaxy with various religious symbols being sucked into it, which represents the different spiritual warriors characters traveling through time to save a five-year old girl who was abducted by some evil guy.

maybe i'll post the final product on here....I don't have a copyright on my art or anything so I'm scared to post on here.  Hopefully one day I'll sort all that out. The drawings are kinda quirky and fun.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Typing with a broken middle finger

This is a guest post by Zanie's friend, Narya.

I typed out almost a whole post and hit the backspace button to backspace text, but the browser decided to change pages instead, so I lost everything. This seems to happen a lot to me, so I have gotten pretty good at remembering what I have written...

I am sitting on Zanie's porch, drinking a beer while Zanie is shaving her legs in her driveway in a mini skirt and bikini top. She has just finished putting air in her tires, although one tire she accidentally let all of the air out in the middle of the procedure. She figured out what was going on and fixed it.
Zanie and I went on a walk this morning. We decided to walk to a little cafe and get coffee. I think the best kind of exercise is when you are going some place that has beverages. It is a strong motivation to get to where you are going (no turning around early!) and then, after relaxing with a hot cup of coffee or a cold beer, you return home rejuvenated, and perhaps even take the long way home. Instead of us taking the long way home, we stopped at an auto parts store to purchase motor oil and a tire gauge. We both learned that there are quite a lot of different tire gauges available, but they all do they same damn thing, so Zanie purchased the cheap one.

After Zanie and I arrived at her house, somewhat caffineated by our trek to the cafe, we managed to unscrew her motor oil cap with my wrench that I happened to have in my Jeep and dumped her new motor oil into her mysteriously empty motor oil holder thing (???) and checked her tires' pressure, which were all just about right (until she made one tire flat). After all of this work, we both felt pretty hot so we walked up to the corner store and purchased beer (and a Black&Mild because we're gangster). This purchase of beer for me meant I would be staying at her house until I needed to go to work. Unfortunately I haven't showered in a day or two and my hair was feeling pretty greasy (I swear I am not gross! I just don't get that dirty...much...) so I asked Zanie if I could wash my hair in her bath tub. She complied, but I realized I would get my broken finger wet that is being held stable by a splint and is wrapped in gauze and I really dont want it to get wet. So being the amazing friend that she is, Zanie bent me over her bath tub and washed my hair for me. What are friends for anyway???