Inspired by Ms. Ophelia of Dreaming in Denmark I am sharing something I’ve seen one of the senior members of ComedySportz do on more than one occasion, that I thought was cool. The first time there was a young girl in the audience celebrating her birthday, and V., who is quite tall, got down to her eye level during the “Birthday Song” that was being sung for all the birthday folk that night. I thought this was incredibly cool and thoughtful of him.

Later, I saw him interacting with other children, and realized that he’s an old hand at such behavior, but I thought it spoke highly of him, and said so to my husband. “Well, you’re supposed to do that,” he said, “when you’re talking to kids.”

“I know,” I answered. “But most people don’t.”

We had a lively discussion about that, but I maintain that most people do not think to do that – if they did, witnessing someone doing it would not have been noteworthy, after all. But Ms. Ophelia’s post got me thinking that crouching when you’re interacting with a small child does more than give them your eyes, it also gives YOU a new perspective. I don’t have children, of course, so I tried it with my dogs, which, let me tell you, is almost impossible with a chihuahua.

Still, at – or rather, near – doggie eye level, I realized that dogs look for visual clues, too. They don’t necessarily understand a smile vs. a frown, but they know that slitty eyes mean anger, and blinking can mean distress. Zorro, the chi, is always trying to avoid eye contact – he’s a lovable shy little guy – but Cleo, our galumphing girl-dog, is always straining to reach our faces, and somehow, I don’t think puppy kisses are her sole motivation, any more. I think she really needs to see our eyes to know if we’re happy to see her, or bothered and want her to go away. She’s always been very visual though, responding to hand signals even before vocal ones, though her hearing seems fine. (For a while she even slept with her eyes open, which practice I’m glad she grew out of, because it was sort of disturbing.)

Of course, the whole experiment with crouching brought back reminders from workshop about eye contact (or lack thereof) being key, and now I’m hyper-conscious of meeting anyone’s eyes.

In order to participate in the Blogathon without being chained to a desk, I’ve made a new purchase. I am now the proud owner of one of these.

(I’m already a Cingular subscriber, so it was a good choice for me.)

Tonight another of the newbies from my group at ComedySportz made his debut. I particularly liked some of his mime work – there were really nice bits of detail, and I could ‘see’ the object he was shaping and using. I liked that he gave it mass when he moved it.

I was sort of distracted during the show though, because I lost a filling and cracked a tooth the other day, and while there’s no pain in the actual tooth, the inside of my cheek is swollen and sliced to ribbons. I got teary during Freeze Tag watching as tonight’s playerz helped an audience member set up a marriage proposal to his (very) pregnant girlfriend, and it wasn’t just that I was moved, it was pain cutting in.

After the show, many of us went to Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner, which was tasty, although I couldn’t eat the bread because it requires too much chewing, and they were out of tiramisu. My chocolate sundae was nice, but there were nuts in the magic shell. Oh, well. At least pasta and mushrooms were mushy enough for me to eat.

It will be Wednesday before I can get to the dentist, because of work and the 4th, but the swelling’s already improving, and Blistex makes this great KankaPen thing that has a soft brush which dispenses novocaine gel into the furthest reaches of my mouth, and my cheek is already starting to feel a bit better.

So, all in all, it was a nice night.

A friend once commented that even though I tend to be really guarded in real life, I’ll talk about almost anything in my blog. That’s not entirely true – I tend to avoid spouting my politics, for example – but I do have a tendency to be far more revealing in text than I ever am in person, unless I know someone really, really well.

Wikipedia refers to this by a term coined early in the existance of weblogs: escribitionism. I’ve liked the way the word tastes for a very long time, and as I’m prepping for a new project (Blogathon 2006), and have just changed my blogging engine and skin AGAIN (longtime readers will recognize the return of a favorite template), I thought I’d adopt it for a while. As one does.

Speaking of Blogathon, I’m blogging for First Book this year, and I hope you’ll all support me.

Reading Charles de Lint has faeries on my brain, pixellated pixies popping out of ‘puters in my imagination, to pirouette en pointe across my palm before disappearing in a poof of glittery pink.

Talking with Sky has my head in 1875 Belgium, 1920 Paris, Spain somewhat later, and Havana in the early 50’s, and my brain bursts with fantasy images of intimate soirees with neurotic artists and denizens of penny universities, sipping coffee black as ink, armagnac deep as blood, and twice as sweet, or absinthe, in shades of emerald and pearl.

My brain floats free following the eddies and currents in the stream of consciousness, preparing me for sleep in much the same way that reading James Joyce always did when I was still in school, disconnecting thoughts and letting reason lie dormant for a few hours.

Darkness shrouds me from the harsh light of reality, and soft cool sheets cradle my descent into dreams, where faeries decked in vert et argent (Janet will know the significance of THOSE colors) whisper magic words in my ears.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
— Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

I went to bed with my hair pulled up and woke with a knot in my hair, and when I was in the bathroom this morning, I got toothpaste all over my favorite bra, and dropped my blusher brush in the sink and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

At Starbucks this morning they had a raw newbie running the till (during morning rush) and on loop 12 there were stupid drivers who waited too long to merge into a single lane, and when I got to work there was a cluster of smokers directly in front of the entrance door, and they glared at me when I asked them politely to move. I shouldn’t have to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke to get into my office!

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

The loan processing software I use at work kicked me out with three times (sql and divide-by-zero errors) forcing me to reboot and every file I touched was completely craptastic and they were out of apples and peanut butter in the cafeteria and there was no soap in the good bathroom.

(It was the kind of day that makes me want to blow off my real life and go be an itinerant street poet. )

On the way home, I made the mistake of returning a call to my mother (who’d called my cell from Mexico) and she spent fifteen minutes screaming at me because the company we now refer to as “Affordable FuckHosts” and it’s sister company “Affordable FuckDots” refuse to release her domain, or answer the email ticket she sent (we don’t respond to email – it’s spam) and WHY this is my fault is beyond me, and then we went to buy dog food, and I wanted to look at the fish, and one of the angel fish was cannibalizing it’s tankmates, and when we stopped at a certain quasi-fast-food place for dinner, there was an old guy ahead of us in an even older Mercedes flirting with the flustered cashier, completely oblivious of the line of cars behind him, and then I crunched my ankle coming into the house because Cleo pounced me and Zorro was between my feet.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Fuzzy reminded me that some days are like that.
Even when you rhyme.

With apologies to Judith Viorst.

Taken from Tarotchan at LiveJournal:

I am The Lovers The Lovers often refers to a relationship that is based on deep love – the strongest force of all. The relationship may not be sexual, although it often is or could be. More generally, the Lovers can represent the attractive force that draws any two entities together in a relationship – whether people, ideas, events, movements or groups. For a full description of your card and other goodies, please visit LearnTarot.com

What tarot card are you? Enter your birthdate. Month: Day: Year:

Dear Sky,

You asked me to write about 65, and I confess, until a few hours ago, I had nothing but the half-remembered chorus to a pop song, ” ’65 love affaire.” Oh, I could talk about how 65MPH is a popular American speed limit (on signs anyway, I’ve found that actual drivers generally go 80 or 40 instead), or mention that 65 is the expected age of retirement from the workforce, but those have no real meaning for me. I mean, speed limits are universally applied to everyone, and the only time the age is a concern of mine is in connection with work – we’re not allowed to decline loans to people based on age, etc.

But the song was haunting me, and that drove me to Napster to find more inspiration in music, where I stumbled upon a recording of cellist Jacqueline DuPre playing Chopin’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 65” and I was struck dumb in a completely different way. I’m not sure how much you follow classical music, if at all, but Ms. DuPre is one of those brilliant but mad genius types, socially awkward, artistically amazing. When she played, she bared her soul, and you could feel the bite of the strings beneath her finger tips.

People said she played like a lunatic, because she rocked her cello back and forth. Many cellists since have done the same, and for some it works, and for others it’s simply a contrivance. Myself, I’m very still when I play, but a lot of that it’s because I have a 4/4 sized cello, and I really need a 7/8, or “lady’s” cello, because of my height, and the size of my hands. Actually, when I was shopping for instruments, when I decided to reclaim my music several years ago, I looked at 3/4 size cellos (celli is correct, but sounds stupid, so forgive the lapse in grammar), but the owner of the luthier I’d chosen emailed me and counselled against it, explaining that while he understood I was strictly an amateur, if I had any kind of love of music, I’d be displeased with the sound of the 3/4.

But I digress. I was supposed to talk about 65.

Anyway, “Op. 65” is the catch phrase that resounded in my head, and as a result I spent a lovely couple of hours listening to Chopin. Personally, I like the Bach cello concerto’s better, but Back can be a little too fluffy sometimes. Chopin’s more sensitive. Thoughtful. Moodier, somehow, and gentler, even during the crescendos.

While I was listening to DuPre layer her emotions onto Chopin’s I kept looking for more inspiration. The cello music reminded me that I snapped my c-string last summer, and haven’t bothered to replace it. I haven’t been in the mood to play in so long, that it hasn’t been an issue, but, prompted by the number 65, and half-remembering that there’s a kind of string that costs about that, I went looking for actual strings.

Currently, I’m using D’Addario Helicore Silver/Tungsten, medium weight strings for my lower two. My cello has fine-tuners, so heavy strings aren’t really a good idea. I’ve had a recurring issue with the tuning peg for the c-string, where I have to retune that string far too often, and I’ve had two C strings unravel after less than a month of use, so am considering buying either several cheaper strings (The D’Addario Helicores run about $30 each) or one really expensive string, to see if it’s mee or the cello. (I think it’s both, as I’m so afraid of the string snapping and hitting me in the face, and I don’t want to spend the money on an actual luthier rebuilding the peg box until I’ve had a chance to do a bit more experimentation. I know several other cellists who swear by Pirastro as a string supplier, but I’m torn. Also, every time I look at the website for Just Strings, I click on the Pirastro Gold Label link, and realize that I’ve always wanted a baroque cello. (The Gold Labels use actual gut as the core of the string, but are still wound with tungsten.) Of course, I’ve always wanted a Gagliano too, but I don’t have a spare $10k to buy one just now.

Still undecided, I decided to surf the web for instances of the number 65, and wait for a couple people from whom I’ve sought advice to get back to me. I came across this link for the Trilobis 65 floating home, which strikes me as a fun place to spend a weekend in, and reminded me that I went through a phase when I was nine or ten during which I wanted to be a marine biologist. I still have, as you know, an obsession with sharks, and I think I’d feel safe observing them from one of these.

And on that note, dear Sky, and with the knowledge that I was supposed to be in bed about 65 minutes ago, I shall end this, having enjoyed the journey of discovery I’ve just taken.

Thank you.

I say… And you think… ?

1. Newspaper :: crossward
2. Crucify :: the verse
3. Sausage :: and peppers
4. Handy :: man
5. Cloak :: and dagger
6. Drunk :: en Sailor
7. Fuel :: for the fire
8. Caress :: soap
9. Itch :: scratch
10. Vehicle :: motor

Like this meme? Play along here.

I have NOT forgotten the 65 challenge. I’m still composing my response. Just sayin’.