True story

I let Z play with my iPod this afternoon and right after he gave it back to me, it froze, I reset it and promptly got the sad frowny dead iPod face. Boo.

I blamed him secretly, but really it's been acting funky since I went to Canada last August, and on the plane ride home I turned it on and it was completely empty of music, I reset it and it all came back. It's living on borrowed time, I'm saying.

So I reset it no less than 15 times tonight, tried to get it into disk mode, left it charging for 6 hours, read a million forums and Apple support, and find one with possibly useful (force diagnostic mode), and/or possibly destructive advice (take it apart and disconnect things), and someone posted a follow-up in the thread:

"Yo,
I have just spent 2.5 hours going through every single combination to restore my girlfriends ipod mini, all very interesting and useful.

It had the unhappy face etc.

The ipod now works from one very useful piece of advice... i hit the top right hand corner quite hard against a wall.

Technology is great."

Yeah, right, I say, except 7 other people post to the thread that they all have the exact same problem and the banging worked.

Turns out? Worked for me too. We are, perhaps, into the 7th of 9 lives of this iPod. I still can't believe it.

You can cancel my Clean House appearance

Inspired by Apartment Therapy's January Jumpstart projects, I got disgusted with the corner of my living room that has been serving as my home office, only I hadn't quite embraced that I had anything other than a (super tempermental) computer on a college-y desk. Which was surrounded by SO. MUCH. PAPER. That horrible oak bookshelf isn't mine - one time D&A were moving it from their house and I chose its storage place to be in mine, because I frankly needed the space for 1.5 years of Vogue. You can see the breaker box poking out behind it - Murch told me back then, "I don't want to have to move this thing every time one of the circuits needs flipping" which I took issue with for two reasons: 1. I told him I wasn't going to fill it with anything heavy (yeah, right) and 2. I am capable of flipping a breaker, for crying out loud. Nonetheless, he was right - it has been a terrible inconvenience to have a bookcase full of vases and Vogues in front of the breaker box.

Anyway, I persuaded DanaLee to go the 3.5 hours to the Virginia Ikea (Ee-kay-uh) with me a few Saturdays ago, and though her trip was only medium fruitful (no red bookcase for DL, boo), mine was deliciously fruitful.

In the grand tradition of b&a photos, they are kind of cheater because the after has great lighting and the before is a craphole, but let's be honest - that corner really did look like that most of the last 3 years.

BeforeAfter

I'm not kidding myself, it's not like I'm doing anything particularly innovative with the design here - the Vika desk system is probably among the cheapest furniture choices in the whole joint, but I do approve of its whiteness and the scale of the left hand portion of the L is only slightly too big. I love how I had a little space leftover to push the filing cabinet partially under the desk, because it still gives me some room for my legs when I need a workspace. I also know there are some cord-wrangling problems and I didn't touch that bulletin board yet, but I will soon, and it will also be more tidy.

Here's the thing: it feels grownup to finally have committed to an office space in my house. It's weird how at some finite point in your adulthood you realize that you have had bank accounts for more than a decade and you have things that need filing, that need organization, that your dad isn't taking care of the realities of your life anymore. I had that trunk there, on the right, that had some hanging files in it, organized in a burst a few years ago, but the space on top of the files was an 8" pile of things that ought to have been in those files. It took the better part of a week of nights to go through every single paper in that corner, and I got rid of tons of stuff, put the others in their rightful place, and even got to bust out those super fun folders Aesh (the grand poobah of such projects) got me that say "I am so Organized." For a minute, anyway, they are not ironic.

Oh, and moving Cakes over the breaker box freed up that wall, so here's what I ended up with over there. I am a little undone over the even number of things, but I can't figure out exactly what else to do. I'm not sold on the plate - it's mass produced and from Home Goods, so not particularly unique or amazing, though it's pretty, but the other 3 objects are all interesting. The orange print is from 12fifteen's etsy shop, the wonderful photo (a metallic print, so it kind of shimmers) is a Christmas gift from E&T by Linda Plaisted, whose Photoshop work I find interesting and not overmanipulated, and the the old, green Sabbath School certificate was among my many fortunes found for $36 total at the Fancy Gap Antique Mall on the way home from Little Rock. (It is, I'm sorry to say, closing, so I am glad to have found it. I love Fancy Gap. I rarely want to live pre-electricity and plumbing, but it makes me want to be a mountain woman in a big skirt and crooked cabin.)

Style-wise, I sometimes wonder if I've gone way overboard on the vintage modern inspiration. I can't get enough of AT's house tours and design*sponge's sneak peeks. My former style was whatever Pottery Barn calls itself - neutral pieces with smallish bits of color (purple for a long time). What I love now is very trendy, just like the PB look was a few years ago, and while I think vintage modern lends itself to a lot more imagination, I think I lack the editing instinct that lots of the people with the really beautiful homes have.

This one, for example, I love so much, but I know I couldn't be comfortable in her living room with its bare floor. Ultimately I'm just not tidy enough to pull off the more spare, purist vintage modern aesthetic, but I am very attracted to its odd pieces, handcrafted and funky-colored objects, and the freedom to buy old (and sometimes really cheap) furniture. I like the hunting, I like the mixing of styles, and I love groups of things. But I only have the one room to play with, and though it has many angles and walls, I have a lot going on, and maybe too many groups. I definitely feel like my personal design aesthetic is undergoing a big evolution, and maybe I'm embracing the things I love with a hair too much gusto - sort of like the vintage modern equivalent of Victoria magazine, which I subscribed to in high school and thought, at the time, that it best represented what I loved. Of course, I was stuck with hearts and flowers wallpaper and a million bouquets of dead roses, so it's easy to fit that look within the imagination of Victoria.

The point of all this is that I don't post this to brag on the design, but to brag on the organization, FINALLY, of my adulthood. I am going to be thirty freaking two years old next week. It was about time.

It's true, it's from an email forward,

and I only chose my favorite ones, but it's so awesome to rip on/love Fresno. Go Dogs!

• You have to explain to friends from out of town what animal a "Tri-tip" comes from.
• You think salsa goes on everything.
• Drivers think a red light is just a suggestion.
• Your out-of-town friends start to visit after October, but clear out before the end of April.
• The best restaurants in town start with "El" or "Los."
• You know a swamp cooler is not a happy hour drink.
• People break out coats and uggs when the temperature drops below 70.
• The pool can be warmer than you are.
• You still don't know your way around downtown.
• Anywhere "and 99" is too far away.
• You drive just as fast on a sunny day in June as a foggy day in December.
• You complain about how boring Fresno is, but still make fun of people from Sanger, Selma, Reedley, etc.
• You never knew how you managed before River Park.
• Someone from out-of-town talks about how foggy it is and tell them, "Just wait."
• You know not to take Shaw at 8, 12, or 5.
• You swear there was an orchard there last week, where now there are houses.
• Running from the police consists of hiding in a vineyard.
• You have "foggy" school days instead of Snow Days.
• You classify people by which high school they go to.
• You have Asthma.
• You notice the best parking place is determined by shade instead of distance.
• You can say 115 degrees without fainting.
• It's a good day when the air quality is only Moderately Severe.
• To put Fresno on the map, you mention all the famous people from here: Kevin Federline, Amber Frey, and the California Raisins.
• After moving away, takes a full year before you stop using the club
• When the overpasses are the only hills in town.
• You know what Hmong means
• There are 7 streets, in different parts of town, with the same name (Alluvial?!)
• You know the best bagel place ever is Fresno Bagel Company [Sorry, Bean!]

Baby Charlie is already skeptical

He thinks Hillary is going to win.

(But we're so glad he joined us, even if it did involve a scalpel and a booty-first entrance.)

The Family Bed

We were never allowed to sleep with our parents, even though they had a king and our mom is like 5 foot nothing and keeps to her little corner of the bed. Instead, we had blankies (I say 'had' there like we still don't have blankies) and boom boxes with Brite music instead of our hand over our mom's face.

So yesterday in testimony meeting, this pretty cool new woman in my ward gave this confessional testimony about how when she had her caboose baby, who is 1 now (her other kids are like 11 and 9 or so), they really didn't want to buy a crib, so after she outgrew the basinette, they just gave in and put her in their bed. The thing is, this baby is a little tank - she's not chubby, exactly, but tall and solid, and both this woman and her equally cool husband are tall people.

Anyway, she was confessing that it was getting to be a nightmare so they finally gave in and bought a crib and are now trying to undo the family bed habit, and it has been really horrible for them. Which, that website says "co-sleeping actually provides a safer, sounder sleep for everyone in the household," but I just found this slide show via Apartment Therapy, and it looks like the worst night's sleep that ever was. She's in a sleeping bag! In my experience, if you're changing positions every 20 minutes, and your head is mostly off the bed, you are not getting restful sleep. I have those kind of nights, they often involve talking and walking, and I don't even have a toddler and an Elmo in bed with me. Yikes.

My faux Apartment Therapy

Thank you, Santa, for that fabulous cabbage-y votive holder, and thank you, Bean, for the runner. I wanted you to see how cute it looks.

I think I am going to move Cakes to the office and do an art grouping on this wall. We'll see how it turns out.

Our beloved associate.

President Gordon B. Hinckley

June 23, 1910 - January 27, 2008

Good news!

You can see that clip from Junebug that I talked about a couple weeks ago. It's such a beautiful scene - it will probably take a bit to load, but it's worth it, I swear. (The aspect ratio is messed up but I have no idea how to fix it - it took some doing to get it on here in the first place . . .)

A ghost cooking green beans

I know I just said I had green fatigue (and I still do, mostly), but this is a great idea from Treehugger. In North Carolina (and most of the Southeast) we are in a very serious drought, one of the worst in history, and though I'm on a well out here in the country, I'm still trying to do my part to conserve. I love this concept, though I think I would want it made of stainless steel or silicone, even, but maybe that plastic could stand up to the heat. Seems a little dubious.

(Why is that hand so ghostly white?)

For shame, part 2

I have self-diagnosed green fatigue. Just this weekend, I threw away some orange peels, a banana, two steel soup cans, and I'm getting ready to dump my compost into the trash because it's weeks old and it is going to smell to high heaven when I take off that lid. I also got one plastic Target bag last week, and I gave K & Z a paper bowl for their M&Ms this morning, which they promptly threw away, and I've been using plastic utensils (which I've chucked) every time I brought my lunch and/or breakfast this week.

The weird thing is, I don't care. When I throw it away, I feel this devilish little "so there" and I can't quite figure out what's going on in my head. I am quite embarrassed. I guess it's like anything - you do something long enough, you need a little boost to make it seem worthwhile, and when it's cold and gloomy and you're about to turn 32 years old and you have post-Christmas depression, well, it's hard to feel motivated to care about one more thing, even something that is quite a part of your life.

Everyone loves a good pop song

At the Carolina game this afternoon (sigh), I heard a super-emo remix of "Time After Time" which annoyed me at first and then I decided it was awesome. Not because Quietdrive did some fantastic spin - on the contrary, it's pretty derivative - but because it is a truly awesome pop song. There are something like 100+ covers on iTunes, and I'm sure that doesn't even come close to the number of bands and/or lounge singers who've covered it. So I started thinking about all the pop songs that I could hear over and over again, preferably in their original incarnation. This might be a too-broad definition of pop, and my songs are certainly kind of old. There are lots that might be added to the list in a few years - the whole thing is totally arbitrary. These are those I thought of tonight, and the list is totally not all-inclusive:

1. "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper. Bless her orange-haired heart, she has such a weird voice and crazy close-together eyes, but that swell on "when you're lost . . ." kind of gets you every time.

2. "Stardust" by Nat King Cole. This might be cheating, because I don't actually know if pop songs per se existed in Nat's time, but it was certainly popular and, my goodness, always bears repeating. I get sucked in at the fermata "Sometimes I wonder how I spend" and then the violins that follow.

3. "Take On Me" by A-ha. They might win the prize for stupidest band name ever, but I cannot tell you how much time I spent listening to KRSP with Shannan waiting, dying for this song to come on the radio. Much screaming followed.

4. "Somebody" by Depeche Mode. This could just be my generation, but its lyrics are kind of every teenage girl's best scenario. "About the world we live in and life in general." As you do.

5. "Father Figure" by George Michael. It's not your first George Michael choice at a dance - that honor goes to "One More Try" because it's like 6 1/2 minutes long - but it has interesting chord progression (and those super great background ladies), and it's kind of unnerving in a good way. Only, it's probably better to just not listen carefully to the lyrics as an adult.

6. "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS. This song was my favorite song for a very long time. The video was really mysterious and Parisian, and Michael Hutchence was all wandering around with his lovely blowing curls. And come on, the minor violins? So great. It's a good use of white space and phrasing, too. He loves your precious heart.

7. "Bad" by U2. I was only 8 when The Unforgettable Fire came out, so I don't know how it was on the radio, but I discovered in in high school, and the live version from Wide Awake in America is equally fantastic. I think there are probably more popular choices from The Joshua Tree, which I love, but "Bad" is one of those songs that builds beautifully and takes you right along with it until you "Suuuuuureeeeeennnnnder, dislocate" unwittingly. Hoo hoo!

8. "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" by Phil Collins. Phil Collins songs are all so keyboard-y and mixed kind of weird and mushy - they sound so representative of pop songs of their era. Maybe it's because we remember them from cassettes, but either way, the name of this song is some weird grammatical problem (and it has the weird parenthetical addition to the title in a sad marriage of marketing and art, no doubt) but the soaring music . . . you just can't help but be sad that "there's just the memory of your face."

9. "A Little Respect" by Erasure. I don't know that Andy Bell & Vince Clarke really wanted to write a song for teenage girls and their unrequited love, but there you go. "I'm so in love with you-u-u-u-u" indeed.

10. "She's Got a Way" by Billy Joel. Billy Joel songs are best when it's just him and the piano, his voice sounds great, and it's a quite perfect love song with one of those amusing journeys to falsetto at the end.

11. "Scarborough Fair" by Simon & Garfunkel. Is it the only song ever written about herbs? It's among the small group of songs written in 3/4 time, which makes it flow perfectly, and no matter how much better musically Paul Simon was without Art, they harmonize beautifully. Also kind of mystical and haunting. (Although, I have to say it's in a tight race with "April Come She Will" for me.)

12. "And it Stoned Me" by Van Morrison. I love how he just starts, vaults you right in. It has interesting rhythm, and though the horns are vaguely blare-y, I do love the melody and the narrative.

13. "Every Rose Has its Thorn" by Poison. Not really super deep insight there, but who can resist Bret Michaels and his giant sigh before the song even starts, like, "what follows is so heartbreaking, I can barely stand it." That's certainly how I felt listening to it a million times. "Yeah, it does."

14. "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac. Oh Stevie Nicks, and your wonderful scratchy alto. It's a perfect, perfect acoustic song - simple, but not completely prosaic, metaphors for the hard parts of being alive, those quiet mmm-mmm parts, and the musically ambiguous ending.

15. "Crazy for You" by Madonna. The thing is, you're always "dying to say" stuff to people, and it's all clichés and smoky rooms, but it's such a great melody, and the "ah, ah, ah, ahhhh" background singers totally suck you in.

For shame

I have a rich sewing heritage. I made a drawstring bag, once, made a lumpyish tie quilt, and screwed up many pieces of a chair in an upholstery class in college; everything had to be either fixed or redone by my teacher or Steph. But my mom made many prom dresses, many easter dresses, various and sundry valances, and could certainly mend anything that crossed her path. I think she even knows how to darn socks, for crying out loud. Grandma M certainly knows how to darn socks, (which, it's amazing to consider that we once kept our socks instead of going to Target and buying 15 new pairs sewn by Chinese children for $3.99), in addition to being able to sew and repair anything quickly and with great skill. I think probably 80% of Renate's wardrobe was made by her two hands, and that includes pants and jackets and blouses, and they do not look like a home-ec special. Grandma T made, among other things, matching flannel nightgowns for me and my dolls, aprons, potholders, and Bean is only running a sewing business.

So you'll see why I am so ashamed that I took my new coat and 2 fallen-off buttons and the 3 barely hanging on to the nice Asian ladies at Fashion Tailors and paid ten dollars (TEN dollars) to have them sewn on.

Places to visit in France & Italy

France:

1. Sainte-Maxime en Provence. Looks like it might be less glamorous than St. Tropez or Cannes, which is certainly appealing, but we'll get the Côte d'Azur vibe.

2. Colline Du Chateau. In or near Nice.

3. Marseilles: Notre-Dame de la Garde and Chateau d'If. Seems like that would be exciting for Dad. Sadly, I think we will be too early for the lavender - looks like summer is its season. It would be great if we could even get a taste of how gorgeous it looks and smells. This little town Valensole seems to be a good place to start.

4. 50 things to do in Paris. We can skip the alcohol- and underwear-related ones (and the Eiffel Tower, if you ask me, though I don't know if I can get out of that - I think a view from the car or the sidewalk would be fine with me). I vote yes on numbers: 11, 20, 22, 27, 30 & 38. Versailles sounds like a serious sensory overload time-eater, so I'm okay skipping it, and a big no thank you to Les Catacombes and going near any Hermes or Vuitton stores where we will look like the big Americans we are. Oh, and yes on picnicking and people-watching somewhere along the Seine, maybe where the Contessa and Captain Awkward had their little tomatoes and wine. And of course the Louvre, but not for more than 1 day.

Italy:

1. Capri. Hopefully it's an easy and inexpensive trip over from the boot (maybe involving a ferry?) and we can squeeze it in.

2. Seeing an opera in Italy. Could be a clothing problem and a pipe dream, especially with our lame weak dollar, but oh my. Could we see Otello, even? Boo, no. If only we were going in December, oh my gosh, I would die. But on Thursday, March 20th, if I am reading this half-translated by Google page right, there is a performance of Mozart's Requiem in Florence at the Teatro Verdi. That could be amazing. I can't tell if there are tickets available, but oh my. That is an overwhelmingly exciting possibility.

3. Other things to do in Florence (Firenze): Baptistery.

More to come . . .

Hot tip

There are few things I love more than folding clean sheets, as you know, but I do it in kind of a complicated way that tends to make people's eyes glaze over when I try to explain it. Also, it requires the back of a sofa.

So this girl has a great photo instruction sheet on how to make a perfect little flat package. She also has a cat on her bed while she's doing it, which . . . I love cats (even a new orange one not unlike the one in the photo) but ew to the cat hair on the clean sheets. Nonetheless, the finished size also fits inside a pillowcase; I know some people love the packet idea. Happy folding!

I'm kind of a know-it-all

And I'm forever telling people, "Did you google it?" Like, for sure the answer is out there.

Here was my problem: every night since coming home from my trip, I have had a dream that my bed is in the middle of a large room with many other beds, and though it is the middle of the night in my dream, someone needs me to get out of my bed and go somewhere else. So I sleepwalk out of bed, and stumble around for a little while until I wake up, sometimes in my closet, sometimes facing the window, sometimes by my door. Then I open the door, go look at the kitchen clock (it is usually somewhere around 3 am) and then I tell myself it's a dream and I can get back in bed. Sometimes it happens more than once per night. But it has happened every night since December 30th.

I'm thinking there has to be an answer on some kind of dream interpretation website somewhere so I google it. Here's what I find (all [sic]):

Q: do these dreams mean ther is something wrong with me? i find myself constanly having these dreams where i get out of bed while im still asleep open my eyes and walk around my room. this is not a joke its really serious!

A: well, it's possible you could be having out of body experiences...
No, there is nothing wrong with you, and nothing wrong with your dreams....

So THAT'S it. Out of body experiences. Thanks!

And PS, there is something wrong with both of us. That's why we were ASKING.