it felt like ten o clock in the morning all day today.
then, tonight, there was devotchka. the drummer plays the trumpet! there's a girl playing a tuba! everyone in the band plays the accordian! and then there was this!
whoa. girls. in the air. it looked dangerous. rock on.
it only took me three hours and fifty two minutes to get my blasted phone to quit blinking MESSAGES MESSAGES MESSAGES MESSAGES MESSAGES MESSAGES
now it shows the time. 12:24.
DREAMWORLD: working 10 am to 4 pm and getting done with everything in that period of time. the rest of it would be spent knitting and cooking and yoga-ing.
i want to be the person in the television commercial who makes scrambled eggs, toast and steaming coffee in a white fluffy robe in a sun drenched kitchen where there are no crumbs. seriously. what planet are these television people from where you wake up and have some leisure time and eat well and talk to your family and it's light out in the morning before you leave for work. i want to go there.
posted by renee 12:23 PM
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
maybe i am a cynic. but getting a half sheet of cardstock with my name on it from someone who has no idea what i do all day while messages pile up on the voicemail back at my desk does not make me feel particularly appreciated, even if the scrambled eggs are really good.
the funny thing, i think, is that for some people, that really works. and give them a balloon, too. they'll totally eat it up, come back to the office energized and optimistic and working harder than ever.
or something.
fine. so i'm totally a cynic. but only because of evidence.
posted by renee 1:28 PM
Monday, November 27, 2006
ah, poor neglected blog. POST FREQUENCY {is inversely related to} TO-DO-LIST LENGTH
on sunday this happened - 1. on the way to church, fantastic 83 year old white haired lady says a particularly unfantastic thing RE: interracial marriage. a baffling tension between what is right and respecting one's elders. anyone who knows me probably can guess where i err. 2. before church, old friend's father reveals that he is now attending yale law. we once claimed we had identical brains. am i wasting my life? 3. in that same conversation, before that news, i dismiss the possibility of attending harvard for my MPP due to overwhelming numbers of legacy students, general snobbery of the ivy leagues, lack of desire to make real change due to entrenchment with the already-powerfulmumblemumblemumble.... oops 4. if that weren't bad enough, he puts in his plug for public-private partnerships in the movement toward affordable housing (ahem-cough-government-ruins-everything-it-touches-how-bout-that-george-w-bush-anyway). thank you for your anecdotal evidence. truthfully, you may be right. however, church is starting, and i must sit down. 5. overweight pastor makes umpteen hundredth joke about being overweight. c'mon. i really like and respect that guy, but seriously. either do something about it or at least pretend to be in denial. 6. "thank you, God, for freedom" my brain goes crunch crunch crunch. how'd we get so free again? 7. pizza. two things happen in my family: HONESTY and LOVE.
and then i drove drove drove and got a really great hug from a really great old friend who is heading back to iraq to finish his second deployment soon. HE knows some things that he deserves to talk about. i wish there was much more time. either way, i remember when he was a little pudgy and wore a whipped puppy expression more often than smiling. and now he is tall and strong and confident and i am proud.
and then i drove drove drove some more and got back to a place where: when i am gone, the refridgerator gets cleaned out and cookies get baked.
seriously. any single guy out there who has not yet attempted to marry sam winkels... well, you just have no idea...
i am going to take the 15th, 16th and 17th off of work every month from this point forward.
if anyone else calls and tells me that i'm ruining their life, i might cry. or yell. i hope i don't yell.
and every time i feel like there's a possibility that i can squeeze a trip to fricking cedar minnesota and a trip to edina to an already packed schedule, seventeen more single family homes in brooklyn park appear in my inbox.
so i'm sorry that we had a phone call that apparently i didn't keep good enough notes on a month and a half ago, but there's just nothing i can do about it now.
plus: chris hill posted this and i read the whole thing and thought: if we weren't all so worried about showing how stupid everyone else is, we'd probably get a lot more done. this goes for both sides EQUALLY.
and that is the reason i am wary of capitalism, jordan raney.
posted by renee 10:50 AM
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
a few days of pondering and i must make a revision...
"legal" is perhaps the wrong term for option 1. "unsanctioned" is more what i'm looking for. there are punishments of a social nature that are more motivating than many institutionalized consequences for lawbreakers. (both in terms of severity and likeliness of the punishment actually being incurred).
also: i think maybe the motivation behind this new pursuit is the alienation i still feel from the economic concept that "what is best for me" is the only motivating factor in people's behavior. it makes me want to isolate other forces that drive us.
but maybe it goes right along with m's confidence that every person goes consistently down the path of least resistance. in the face of each decision we merely choose what is EASIEST for us.
that just sounds too close to a lack of free will to me...
grumble grumble, sort sort
posted by renee 9:08 AM
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
THEORY there are potentially three options in any decision-making scenario. in its infant stage, i am fairly confident that these three options are comprehensive:
1. what is legal 2. what is right 3. what is best for me
there may be situations where “what is smart” could be an additional choice, but in order to be convinced of this, someone would have to provide a scenario where “what is smart” does not fall into any of the other categories.
and “right” is, in this case, purely subjective. when a person chooses option two, it is based on their own framework of right and wrong (however warped that might be).
i do not believe that sane people err from these options. no one will choose to do something illegal, wrong, and bad for them except in cases of lack of complete knowledge or logic.
i do believe that people choose to do what is legal and/or what is right on occasion despite it not being the best for them.
hmmm……
THOUGHT matt is in asia. i wonder what he is noticing.
OBSERVATION at bunkers it is okay for a middle aged woman to be kind of slutty and for middle aged men to ask younger women to dance. also: the best part about that place is who is represented. young, old, black, white, skinny and not so…. but everyone seems to love the music.
CONCERN i’m not sure why, but i’ve been having extremely violent and frightening dreams more often recently. i hope they go away. last night i was attacked, abandoned and framed for a rather gruesome murder.
posted by renee 10:13 AM
Sunday, November 12, 2006
sooo....
i've had about enough of mental breakdowns for awhile. family is quite a good remedy. i'll be repeating that solution a few times in the next couple of months and have high hopes for its continued success.
today hilary and i watched (in this order)
1. Shipping News 2. Donnie Darko 3. Sense and Sensibility
and during these i sewed, crocheted and did the work that i brought home this weekend. i am completely obsessed with accomplishing things. this is largely the source of most of those mental breakdowns, i think. pondering how to stop the endless cycle of try harder try harder try harder....
also: called the bunker's phone number ("aura man") we'll see how incredibly uncomfortable that turns out to be. adam ochuck, consider it a duel of awkwardness.
posted by renee 11:47 PM
Friday, November 10, 2006
so maybe i'll regret this later. but also, they say that honesty is the best policy.
TRUTH: i have not been loved back by anybody in a long time TRUTH: this makes me very afraid that maybe nobody will ever love me back again TRUTH: if nobody ever loves me back again, i kind of don't see the point of all of this struggling through life. TRUTH: i know that is extraordinarily unchristian of me to think. TRUTH: i try to pretend that getting the phone number of a random guy makes me feel whole or wanted or loveable. it does not. TRUTH: when i am not dating someone, my self-esteem level is rather pathetic. when i am, i get kind of crazy and try to get that person to fill all my needs. it does not matter how illogical (and also unchristian) this is. i have little faith in my ability to stop doing it. TRUTH: the punishment for that tendency may be a lifetime of feeling an incredible capacity to give and be good in a relationship but never having that potential realized. TRUTH: i am currently unable to deal with that reality and therefore cause myself to escape in any number of different ways. TRUTH: i see two options: 1.) pretend to be very happy and not needy and self-contained and self-directed and confident with the underlying hope that the right person would be attracted to that and pursue the false projection of myself, hopefully not being eventually disappointed by the real thing. 2.) be lonely and admit it, recognizing that lonliness is pretty dang unattractive and limits my options even more severely than my strange combination of Christianity and progressive politics already has. TRUTH: i have a sense that my poor ability to make correct choices in the past is now being consequently heaped upon my head in the form of burning coals. TRUTH: tonight, i feel a little like giving up.
posted by renee 12:24 AM
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
if you meet a man in a place that's LOUD and he picks you out from across the room in your new dress
and he says he likes your aura and dances nicely ---your new dress swinging
if he gives you a folded up piece of paper with his name and a ten digit number with two hyphens
should you call?
because men who pick you from across the room for your aura might be the very best type of men or they've maybe just got a lot of practice at pretending
posted by renee 2:45 PM
Monday, November 06, 2006
yesterday blair avenue saint paul minnesota united states of america was the best place in the whole world to be
if you don't normally take walks in your neighborhood
make an exception
breathe in the autumn smile at two little girls of different races wearing football pads smashing into each other and laughing
smile at the old lady who's also smiling at them
avoid barking dogs
wander into a cozy knitting shop where cozy women are crafting and chatting
lay down on the front lawn on your belly and look out across the strange world of three inches off the ground as if pretending to be a bunny
also: hum
and if someone comes around the corner while you're humming and they can hear you well, keep humming anyway
posted by renee 1:32 PM
Thursday, November 02, 2006
sometimes it seems like most everything going on out there in the world is wrong. violent government oppression in southeast asia of grassroots drives toward democracy. street children in rio de janeiro whose only chance for survival is stealing or prostitution. stranger on tourist quadruple homicides in new orleans. the jamacian economy in shambles due to the influx and outflux of sweatshops and world bank money. inane politicians debating against other inane politicians and rarely saying anything at all. and all the while, AIDS and global warming grow and grow.
and my brain begins to whir and my optimisim gets all stirred up and i think that maybe, if we could just all talk and if people were given better means that we would help each other better than we have been
posted by renee 12:28 PM
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
for the past three years in a row i have sat expectantly at the front window of my house on halloween and waited and waited with my bowl of goodies. no one ever came.
this year, despite the odds, we bought four bags of candy, lit jack-o-lanterns in the front porch, and got our hopes up all over again. but this year, for a change, turns out our third neighborhood was the charm and all four bags of candy were gradually dispursed among dozens of pillowcases held by 36 inch high ghosts and uncostumed teenagers.
my favorite was a pregnant 20 year old and her three small kids of the already-born variety. she was wearing a costume and carrying a pillowcase herself. interesting.
but by the 20th little tyke in face paint, the appeal wore off and i started resenting having to stop knitting and get up off the couch again.
maybe next year we'll revert to hiding in the dark.
posted by renee 7:15 PM
