Where in the Hell Have I Been?

I couldn't tell you. I've been around. I've had things to say. I've been reading my normal blogs. I just haven't posted. I didn't feel like it, and, you know, producing great art such as this is all about being in the mood.

Anyway. I'm knitting.



This thing is going to need a ton of blocking, but if it actually works out it will be the top of a cover for my old ottoman. The poor thing doesn't go with my new(-ish, now) living room furniture. First, it was too short. I solved that problem by putting casters on the bottom, and now it's the right height AND roly-poly. It's still to purple, though. This cover will help a lot. I hope.

I've also been reading Mrs. Miniver, which I hadn't even realized was a novel until I read The Gentle Art of Domesticity (which I will get back to in a minute). Mrs. Miniver was written in 1939, but I promise you that if the author, Jan Struther, were writing now, she'd totally have a blog. Each chapter of the book is a wonderful, wonderful blog entry--only written in the third person. In fact, if Suse of Pea Soup were British and wrote in the the third person, she would be the Modern Day Miniver. In style and outlook, that is. That might change when I've finished the book, but I can't help but think of her as I'm reading.

Okay, now for The Gentle Art of Domesticity: I liked some of this book, but I was put off by a lot more of it. The photos are wonderful, but awfully self-congratulatory. The author is So Very Pleased with Her Wonderful Life--not that she shouldn't be, but . . . I don't know. I didn't feel inspired as much as I did pitied, and that's not comfortable. But I did like the way she referred to books and movies that she felt inspired domesticity, and that's where I found Mrs. Miniver, for which I will be eternally grateful.

She also recommended the 1954 Frank Sinatra/Doris Day vehicle Young at Heart, which I didn't like all that much. Sinatra was SO handsome then, but Doris Day was a terrible match for him. Plus, she reminds me of the squinchy Renee Zellweger, whom I only ever liked in Bridget Jones.

Here are pics for comparison (I had a terrible time finding one of RZ smiling or looking at all happy, by the way):




Can you see it, or is it just me?

I also watched Houseboat, based on a recommendation from TGAoD, and I liked that one MUCH better. First of all, Cary Grant. Second, Sophia Loren! She's so hot that her acting and her stupid Bing, Bang, Bong song don't matter at all. Plus, unlike Day/Sinatra, Loren is a great match for Grant--and they're fun to watch despite the gap in their ages.

That's about it for me, though. We're in a pledge drive at work (support your public radio station), and The Boy is out of town for a school trip to Wallops Island, VA, to visit the NASA Flight Facility (where they get to participate in a mock launch) and a wildlife preserve where they'll wade waist-deep into marshes and go out of boats to do water studies. He's most excited about getting to stay in a hotel room with his friends, of course. He'll be back tomorrow night, and I can't wait to hear all about it. I sent him with a water-proof disposable camera, but god knows if it will ever leave his bag.

And now . . . I'm off for a nap.

My Dad

Remember a while ago when I had the Cat Pee Problem? It's been cleared up since late summer, but there was a certain spot in a corner of what used to be the dining room that became a favorite. No matter what I cleaned that portion of carpet with, I could still smell traces of pee if I put my nose right up to it. It wasn't really a problem, though, since the cats left the spot alone and I never spent much time lying prostrate in the dining room, sniffing the floor.

Who knew, though, that months later I would turn the dining room into the living room? Who knew that once The Boy and I started spending most of our time in the new living room, the cats' interest in the corner would be renewed? Ugh. So I scrubbed the carpet again, to no avail. Then I made the bold, bold move of ripping out the carpet, scrubbing the floor with TSP (tri-sodium phosphate) which my dentist (who had a similar problem with his dogs) recommended. You know what? The cats are STILL interested in the freaking corner, and I busted one cat RED HANDED (pawed?), peeing like my living room is his own personal WC.

My solution? Make it so the stupid cats can't get into the corner at all. Right? If they can't get there, they can't pee there. Take that, Kitties! I don't possess any furniture that fits into that corner without allowing kitty access, so I decided to build one. I'm no master crafts(wo)man, but I know my way around a wood shop and was confident I could slap something together, once I had the right tools (I lost the power tools in the divorce).

So I called my dad to see if I could bring the wood, screws and hinges (because my table would have a hinged lid and serve as a box in which to store blankets) to his place and use his tools to make a table. He immediately started quizzing me about measurements and materials and finishing techniques. Gah! It took me a long time to convince him that I wasn't trying to build a masterpiece--literally the only portion of this box on legs that would be seen would be the table top--and once convinced, he told me to not buy anything before he had a chance to poke around and see what he could find for free. Fine. I like free.

So he called me Sunday to confirm the measurements I had given him, saying he found a piece of maple he thought might work for the top. There wasn't enough of the maple, though, so he again quizzed me about how I would finish the thing, and whether the top could be plywood, because he had enough of that. I assured him that plywood was fine, because I wanted to try to decoupage the top, anyway ("You want to WHAT? What the hell's that?"), and we dropped the subject in favor discussing The Boy's earlier soccer game, all wood working forgotten.

Or so I thought. My dad called me last night to tell me that he had the whole thing pretty much done. Done! I asked him to send me a picture, and then explained how he could send and receive pictures with his cell phone, something he was very skeptical about. He gave it a whirl, though, and here's the result:



How about that? It looks bigger than it is, because of the angle, but it should be perfect once I finish it. And the cats will be able to sit on it and look out the window but won't be able to get anywhere near the floor. Ha! We humans and our opposable thumbs will not be defeated by domesticated pets!

Hooray for my dad!

FNL

Do you want to know how good a television show Friday Night Lights is? The Dillon Panthers played their state championship game tonight, and I was on my feet. Please consider that a fictional football game featuring fictional characters had me on my feet, cheering. I may have even called out a few names and threw my arms up in the Touchdown position--I care about those characters THAT MUCH.

And there's always Tim Riggins to consider:



The actor is 28, so I don't feel like too much of a dirty old woman. Thank God, because you should see him with his shirt off.

The season finale is next week, but the show just got picked up for two more seasons, so you have all summer to catch up. And get hooked.

Tansformers, Eyeballs & David Sedaris

P, C, The Boy, and I went to see David Sedaris at the Benedum Center last night, and it was wonderful. P had never seen him before, and I'm pretty sure Sedaris is now one of her Secret Gay Boyfriends. She had to take off her glasses to wipe away tears of laughter, which pretty much guarantees that she's hooked. C cackled through the whole show like a maniac. The Boy . . . fell asleep, just like he did when we saw Sedaris two years ago. It seems that you can't let The Boy get warm and comfortable in the dark any time after 8pm, because he won't be able to keep his eyes open.

It was his loss, though, because DS was in rare form. He talked about being an American in France and traveling the world during the months running up to the election, and told a hilarious and beautiful story about a trip to Australia that made me laugh, got me choked up, and made me happy to be alive. Honestly! The man is a national treasure, and if you don't know him, Google "Sedaris Jesus Shaves" and have a read. It will make your day.

DS also read from his diaries last night, and an entry about how sometimes he doesn't know what to do with his face (as when a cousin told him she and her husband had participated in the World's Largest Tractor Pull, or a fan at a reading plugged his bar and its specialty, the Toe-tini--featuring a floating toe), which killed. And he continued his tradition of recommending a book, but this time served up a sample of the audio book he's been listening to again and again, Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. I acted like a dorky little fangirl because Bennett is one of my Secret Gay Boyfriends, and I love that Sedaris loves him, and I was just in Talented Writerly Secret Gay Boyfriend Heaven.

So that's the Sedaris portion of this entry. The remaining items mentioned in the title appear below:


This is one of many weird eyeball seats that live in Katz Plaza, right in the middle of the Cultural District. The Boy was sitting on the other side of this as I took the picture.

This guy's name is Arch, and he was created as part of the celebration of the city's 250th birthday. He's made of bridges and based on a Transformer, but I can't help but see him as a Steeler.



These two pics are an illustration of why Arch was made of bridges--both pics are taken from the same spot on the 7th Street Bridge over the Allegheny River. The top one looks NE and the bottom one looks SW, towards the Point. See? We really are a city of bridges.

And now I should probably get some work done.