“What are we going to do today?” is the game we played today from 2:45 to 3:30 PM. After a lazy morning of breakfast and reading and video games, I was restless for something new and exciting that didn’t require I leave the house unless it was to get somewhere quickly and air-conditioned, or cost a lot of money. Plus, it had to be fun and entertaining. Those were my parameters – Stuart’s parameters were sort of whatever made me happy since I wouldn’t stop whining about how bored I was. Some of the suggestions bandied about were:
“Let’s go buy stuff at Toys R Us.”
“We’d just spend loads of money.”
“Let’s play guitar.”
“No.”
“Let’s go to Home Depot.”
“And build a man with a helmet for a head and oven mitts full of toilet paper for hands and we’ll put him on the roof and knock him down by throwing things at him.”
“We’re out of toilet paper.”
“Let’s build a robot.”
“We’d need a brain. We don’t have any.”
“Let’s go to the Queens Museum.”
“Too far.”
“Let’s go to McCann’s and play Trivial Pursuit.”
“We don’t need to go to McCann’s to play a game and drink $80 worth of alcohol.”
“Mmm, $80 worth of alcohol ….”
“Let’s go rollerblading.”
“In September.”
“Let’s make fake flyers selling nonsensical stuff and plaster them around Astoria.”
“And hand them to people!”
Oddly enough, after all that time, what we ended up doing was taking the guitars down and tuning them. I’ve never tuned my guitar before. It was actually my guitar for three years before I gave it to my brother having learned nothing but a badly-played Silent Night, and my brother learned the entire 1960′s worth of songs before moving on to three electric guitars (I’m telling you, some people just have muscial talent and some of us don’t). Since he has three electric guitars, he gave me back my roundback acoustic Applause and it’s mostly sat there, looking reproachfully at me from the wall.
So then, after tuning them, I learned how to play Hey Jude and I’ve Just Seen A Face. I’ve Just Seen a Face has my favorite chord of all time – the E Minor, which I refer to as the Leonard Cohen Chord because it’s so morose. And Hey Jude has this sweet little switch between D7 and C that I mastered surprisingly quickly, okay, when you think about it, it’s not that hard, but SMALL HANDS HERE. There’s even some snippets of a recording of me singing both songs and trying to be quick about those chord changes – not that you’ll ever get to listen to it. Well, maybe you, Mom.
My left three first fingers are numb. So that’s what I did today. You?
I have a tiny piece of glass in my foot, the outer rim of my left foot, to be precise. Stuart checked it yesterday, trying to pull it out with tweezers, but it’s either too small or too deep.
I’m of the opinion that it should be haughtily ignored until it decides to stop being such an immature brat and comes out of my foot on its own, preferably shamefacedly. This popular doctrine of “Ignore It Until It Goes Away”, however, might have its downsides.
Like, I might lose a foot.
So, anyone have any advice? Experience? Suggested means of extraction? Magic crystals that’ll do it for me because I’m such a HUGE pansy about pain?
I’ve been thinking a lot about BlogHer, which was this past weekend, because I said last year that I wanted to attend some day, and although this year passed me by, I’ve got my sight set on next year and a certain roomie.
Although I liked looking at the pretty pictures and being jealous of Amalah’s perfect hair and everyone’s huge cameras and omg Ariel’s shoes, what I’ve most enjoyed is how the experience seems to really make these amazing women step back and look at themselves, at their blogs, at their roles in this still-very-much-male-dominated society and see how these things are interacting, are interconnected.
On that note, Susie Bright’s post from August 1st about her impressions of the conference have made an absolutely enormous impression on me. I read it twice, seeing connections and implications that I had only hazily imagined in the more Sarah-Lawrence-esque moments of reflection. And it reminds me that although I usually play down the importance of this blog in my life, especially when explaining (or, more often, defending) the concept to non-bloggers, it’s changed my life for the better.
Everyone should read that post. And, while you’re at it, this one, too. Feminisms, indeed.
I got about an hour, total, of sleep last night, because our A/C didn’t work and it was 87 degrees in our apartment. Stuart woke me up at 5:45 AM because I was burning up to the touch, and I buckled a little when standing up. I was getting dehydrated.
He poured water into me and took me to the diner for food and air conditioning. On the way, we stopped into Trade Fair for a huge bottle of water for me, and I nearly started crying because the cold air was such a relief, reminding me so much of bed and how tired I was.
Now he’s off to work on not much more sleep than I have, and I’ve come home to an almost completely powerless apartment – barely any lights, no wireless (sorry, guy that I’m borrowing this from) and just the charge left on my computer battery.
I need to sleep but I’m not sure how I’m going to without a fan. I promised Stuart that I would drink gallons of water. I’m too tired and exhausted to leave the house for someplace more air-conditioned.
And there are more news vans than Con Ed ones on my totally powerless street.
Update: I may just have gotten interviewed by Channel 4, hanging out my window desperate for some air when the power went away completely. It’s back now, at least the low voltage is, but the A/C is still a no-go.
*whimper*
Update: It’s BACK, sweet baby jesus it’s back. I can sleep now. Sleeeeeeeep.
