A Movin' and a Shakin'

Here are the exact texts that Reid and I exchanged early this morning.

5:31am Melissa: Was there maybe just a really small earthquake? The bed was shaking but the washer's not going...the shower door was shaking a little too.

5:32am Reid: washer probably stopped before you started listening...i do that a lot

5:33am Melissa: did you have it running at 5am?

5:34am Reid: sorry...want it to go in the dryer when i get home

5:36am Melissa: you suck...i thought my life was more exciting

6:27am Reid: ha we DID have a 4.6 earthquake...good job you're exciting again

6:29am Melissa: I'm awesome...5:25am...I KNEW I didn't hear the washer...=P

6:30am Reid: ;-)

Back at the Burke

Finally I get to work back at my happy place! After two and a half months of having to cut my hours to work only on Saturdays (and then the last couple of weeks of not working at the museum of all) I am finally able to work at the museum again. Basically my job as an underling only allows me so many hours I can work per year and last year I started out working too many, so by the end of the year I had run out (my year starting with my hire date which happens to be January 11th). I had to pick up a 3rd job at the University Book Store. The job was decent, even if the pay wasn't.

So anyways, when I came in to work the back desk receptionist showed me a hilarious picture. Basically our PR (public relations) person for the museum was doing random searches online for pictures that people have posted that related to the museum. What she found was the following.



Now as you can see, the picture in itself is not that funny, BUT the description the guy gave to the photo is. The person who took this picture has no affiliation to the museum and doesn't know who was in the picture. The gentleman in the photo that the guy so kindly refers to as 'douchebag with no coat' is my boss. So the PR person printed out a copy of the photo and circled my boss and jokingly wrote "Who's this douchebag?" and put it with the bask desk receptionist for all to see. My boss has a good sense of humor and thought it was funny. Actually he was the one who told me to go and look at the photo since I missed it on my way in. A great way to start the day. Oh, and he didn't really get hit with the snow.

Booksies!

Escape. I loved this book! AND significantly to me, it is one of the few non-fiction books I've read. Don't judge me. I like to use reading as an escape from reality, but this book was so far beyond reality as I know it that it didn't seem real. For lack of motivation to write a stylized personal review of the book...this is what the google synopsis says the book is about...

"The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs."

My favorite word to describe this book is 'fascinating.' I couldn't stop reading it. In fact I pretty much read this book straight through The Dark Knight. I really admire her fleeing an abusive/unhealthy relationship based on a religion of which was her whole world and the only thing she ever knew. I can't imagine how difficult that would be. Something that really ticked me off was her oldest daughter Betty who not only made the escape incredibly difficult for everyone, but then when Betty turned 18 (four years after they had left) she decided to return to the FLDS. Yeah, that's a smart lifestyle choice. I'll hold myself back from going into a rant about that.

Other books I have read (somewhat) recently that I enjoyed were The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Snowflower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See and of course the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer because I'm a dweeb.

Let's Balance it Out..

In contrast to my last post I thought I would list some things that make me happy--just to prove I'm not always a downer.

--I love when it gets dark at around 4pm. Some people find it depressing, but I really like it! Then it gives people more of an excuse to turn their Christmas lights on outside which I also really enjoy. I'm just glad I don't have to help put them up or take them down.

--I thoroughly enjoy the smell of books. It's not just a paper smell; I have more than enough experience working in a copy center and that smell doesn't make me happy. I'm a book sniffer. It comes with a lot of funny looks from any witnesses, but I'm ok with that.

--Lighting candles all around the house. Not only does it mask the smell of our lovely canine friends, but it gives a happy atmosphere.

--The guy that lived in this house before us never cancelled his subscription to National Geographic nor changed his address. Reid and I have quite the collection sitting in the bathroom. Free maps are cool.

--My stepmom Barbie taught us how to lamp work so now I can make my own glass beads whenever we can get to Spokane! AND I miraculously didn't burn myself in the process. I've been wearing my 2 beads that I made during our last visit lately as they both turned out red and I own a lot of green clothing. Holiday spirit and all, but this is my way of doing it without a garish sweater covered in sparkle snowflakes and pom pom snowmen. Or snowwomen. I don't discriminate.

--I love watching What Not to Wear. I love watching Stacy and Clinton make fun of people before they get helped. It is hilarious. Reid says he doesn't like it, but he secretly does.

--There's a lady who works at the bookstore with me (I'm not sure which department as it is a BIG bookstore with a lot of different sections) and my first day I was in the breakroom at the same time as she was. There is one little trash can with a tiny amount of counter space near it. She was hogging both the counter space and the little trash can by peeling her orange. I needed to unwrap and throw away the packaging for my microwaved 'gourmet' meal, so I set my stuff on the closest table and unwrapped it there still waiting for the trash can. When she was finally done she turned toward me and her eyeballs popped out of her head and she said with her teeth all clenched up "I'm sitting there." Apparently I had sat my stuff right where she was planning on having her lunch while I was waiting for her. I said, "Sorry...I was just waiting for the trash can...I'm moving." She didn't move at all or tuck her eyes back in her head and said "I'm sitting HERE." I kind of laughed at her because at this point she was clearly and undeniably psychotic and socially retarded. I left her alone and she ate all by herself as it seemed no one else wanted to sit next to her. Every time I've seen her since then she looks at me like she's both scared and angry and it always makes me laugh. Some people are special. She only looks like she's in her 40's so she's not one of the crazy older people that work there...not sure what's going on there.

--Reid has made some really yummy REAL mashed potatoes a couple of times now. He got a bag of potatoes for under $2.00 I think. He was really excited about it. He's been such a good boy babying me as I whine and don't feel good. I love you Reid!

This is already too long for people to want to read it so I'll shush.

Whining.

Some things that annoy me are as follows:

--This stupid computer I'm on and it's inability to function properly. It told me it autosaved a draft for this blog I just wrote (right as I hit publish post), but turns out the last time it saved was an hour and twenty minutes ago. So that was some excellent time wasted. I love when blogger lies to me.

--When you look on the back of the book to see what it is about and all it has are reviews and/or descriptions of why the author is a great author. Also, when you for some reason have not given up on finding out what the book is about and flip to the inside jacket and find more blah blah blah about the author or a 10 year old picture of them when they were skinnier and had hair. Why would I buy a book when I don't know what it's about?? The cover art would have to be magnificent.

--Not having any money in which to buy gifts for family for the holidays. The one year I finally have learned to wrap presents and I have none to wrap. Hope you are excited about the matching crochet mittens and ear muffs I'm making for you Dad! Just kidding. I wouldn't do that to you (unless I was a really fast crocheter and could whip them out in a day...then I would do it just for the mere 30 seconds in which you first open them and have to pretend that you like them...that would be enjoyable...your favorite color is pink, right?).

--Having 3 jobs.

--People who complain about the free gift wrapping I am doing for them or telling me I'm doing it wrong. I took a 1.5 hour gift wrapping training course...I am soooo an expert.

--Being in constant pain and having the only people that can supposedly help me (the GI clinic) tell me that the earliest appointment they can get me into is February 12th at 7:45am. I told them that since my pain seems to be getting worse on a daily basis that I would probably be dead by then, but they could go ahead and pencil me in anyway and if I were to die I would at least be giving my appointment to someone else. Maybe. I then told the lady that I knew I was being over dramatic and that I know it is not her fault.

There were more negative things that were lost that I can't remember. On the plus side we have a nice smelling real Christmas tree and Kona and Zoey only almost knock it over like twice a day. Zoey thinks it is her hiding place since she can fit under it and Kona doesn't know that she doesn't fit under it. The Burke Museum had their annual holiday party last night that I was able to go to. It was actually a lot more fun than I had anticipated. I entered a silent auction and 'won'! I paid $2.50 for a cute little dinosaur toy for Chrissy's baby. It was an auction for stingy people. It was an auction I could afford. The sad part was that I didn't even have that much cash on me, so I had to write a check.

Ok bed time.

Birthday!!!

It's my birthday! Reid says I'm having a quarter life crisis. Also he seems overly excited about the idea that I can rent a car at a cheaper rate. Wohoo.

I just finished crocheting a dinosaur for Chrissy's little boy, but I'm not posting a picture of it since I want it to be a surprise. It's actually cute! Reid was really whiney about me not letting him post a picture of it. His effort was setting up my crocheted stuffed animals in front of a white screen he created and taking photos. My effort lasted days. I will, however, post photos of the squid I crocheted! I may have gone a little off the pattern. For example, he was only supposed to have 10 legs, but he ended up with 19 :S Oops. He's actually much cuter than the original pattern was supposed to be. Good thing I'm good at screwing things up. I decided that I'm now going to classify him as a seamonster rather than a squid since anatomically he is no longer accurate. Dad helped me name him Sigmond.

As you can see his eyeballs are a bit wobbly, which is why he will not be given to Chrissy's boy for a possible choking hazard.

Alicia is here right now. Last night we dyed her hair back to a closer version of her natural hair color. She had previously bleached her hair blond which I think most people feel was not a good color on her. Now it looks better! The dye we used was that cream stuff that was not supposed to drip. It actually didn't! In fact I could mold her hair to be whatever shape I wanted. I decided she needed a shelf on the back of her head. Since it was hair dye holding her hair together I felt it would not be a good idea to test the durability of this shelf by putting items on it.

Reid's birthday present to me is that he's buying me a plane ticket to go and see Chrissy and the baby when the baby exists in a world outside of Chrissy! Reid won't be able to go since he is teaching that quarter. Now I have things to look forward to again. Yay.

I'm Here for the Weather

This is something I stole from my friend Dena's blog. It just struck me the right way and I thought I would share it with you all! I'll dot dot dot through some of the text that I didn't find as interesting. It was written by Tom Robbins as he explains why he lives where he lives. He too happens to live in the Seattle area. Enjoy!--hopefully...

I'm here for the weather.

Well, yes, I'm also here for the volcanoes and the salmon, and the fascinating possibility that at any moment the volcanoes could erupt and pre-poach the salmon. I'm here for the rust and the mildew, for webbed feet and twin peaks, spotted owls and obscene clams (local men suffer from goeduck envy), blackberries and public art (including that threatening mural the smut-sniffers chased out of Olympia), for the rituals of the potlatch and the espresso cart, for bridges that are always pratfalling into the water and ferries that keep ramming the dock.

I'm here because the Wobblies used to be here, and sometimes in Pioneer Square you can still find bright-eyed old anarchists singing their moldering ballads of camaraderie and revolt. I'm here because someone once called Seattle "the hideout capital of the U.S.A., " a distant outpost of a town where generations of the nation's failed, fed-up, and felonious have come to disappear. Long before Seattle was "America's Athens" (The New York Times), it was America's Timbuktu.
...
I'm here for the forests (what's left of them), for the world's best bookstores and move theaters; for the informality, anonymity, general lack of hideboud tradition, and the fact that here and nowhere else grunge rubs shoulders in the half-mean streets with a subtle yet pervasive mysticism. The shores of Puget Sound is where electric guitars cut their teeth and old haiku go to die.

I'm here for those wild little mushrooms that broadcast on transcendental frequencies; for Kevin Calabro, who broadcasts the Sonics games with erudite exuberance on KJR; for Dick's Deluxe burgers, for the annual Spam-carving contests, the cigar room at Dolce's Latin Bistro, Monday Night Football at the Blue Moon Tavern, opera night at the Blue Moon Tavern (which, incidentally, is scheduled so that it coincides with Monday Night Football - a challenging overlap that the first-time patron might fail to fully appreciate); and I'm here for the flying saucers that made their first earthly appearance near Mount Rainier.

I'm here for Microsoft but not for Weyerhauser. I'm here for Starbucks, but not for Boeing. I'm definitely here for the Pike Place Market and definitely not here for Wal-Mart or any scuzzball who shops at Wal-Mart. I'm here for the snow geese in the tide flats but not for the snow jobs in the State House. I'm here for the tulips but not the Tulip Festival (they're flowers, folks, not marketing tools!). I'm here for the relative lack of financial ambition (which, alas, may be responsible for some of those Wal-Mart shoppers), for the soaring population of bald eagles, and the women with their quaint Norwegian brand of lust. "Ya. Sure, ya betcha."

But mostly, finally, ultimately, I'm here for the weather.

As a result of the weather, ours is a landscape in a minor key, a sketchy panorama where objects, both organic and inorganic, lack well-defined edges and tent to melt together, creating a perpetual blurred effect, as if God, after creating Northwestern Washington, had second thoughts and tried unsuccessfully to erase it. Living here is not unlike living inside a classical Chinese painting before the intense wisps of mineral pigment had dried upon the silk - although, depending on the bite in the wind, they're times when it's more akin to being trapped in a bad Chinese restaurant; a dubious joint where gruff waiters slam chopsticks against the horizon, where service is haphazard, noodles soggy, wallpaper a tad too green, and considerable amounts of tea are spilt; but in each and every fortune cookie there's a line of poetry you can never forget. Invariably, the poems comment on the weather.

In the deepest, darkest hear of winter, when the sky resembles bad banana baby food for months on end, and the witch measles that meteorologists call "drizzle" are a chronic gray rash on the skin of the land, folks all around me sink into a dismal funk. Many are depressed, a few actually suicidal. But I, I grow happier with each fresh storm, each thickening of the crinkly stratocumulus. "What's so hot about the sun?" I ask. Sunbeams are a lot like tourists: intruding where they don't belong, promoting noise and forced activity, faking a shallow cheerfulness, dumb little cameras slung around their necks. Raindrops, on the other hand, introverted, feral, buddhistically cool, behave as if they were locals. Which, of course, they are.
...
Romantic? Absolutely. And nothing to be ashamed of. If reality is a matter of perspective, then the romantic view of the world is as valid as any other - and a great deal more rewarding. It makes of life and unpredictable adventure rather that a problematic equation. Rain is the natural element for romanticism. A dripping fir is a hundred times more sexy than a sunburnt palm tree, and more primal and contemplative, too. A steady, wind-driven rain composed music for the psyche. It not only nurtures and renews, it consecrates and sanctifies. It whispers in secret language about the primordial essence of things.

Obviously, then, the Pacific Northwest's customary climate is perfect for a writer. It's cozy and intimate. Reducing temptation (how can you possibly play on the beach or work in the yard?), it turns a person inward, connecting them with what Jung called "the bottom below the bottom," those areas of the deep unconscious into which every serious writer must spelunk. Directly above my writing desk there is a skylight. This is the window, rain-drummed and bough-brushed, through which my Muse arrives, bringing with her the rhythms and cadences of cloud and water, not to mention the latest catalog from Victoria's Secret and the twenty-three auxiliary verbs.

Oddly enough, not every local author shares my proclivity for precipitation. Unaware of the poetry they're missing, many malign the mist as malevolently as they non-literary heliotropes do. They wring their damp mitts and fret about rot, cursing the prolonged spillage, claiming they're too dejected to write, that their feet itch (athlete's foot), the roof leaks, they can't stop coughing, and they feel as if they're slowly being digested by an oyster.

Yet the next sunny day, though it may be weeks away, will trot out such a mountainous array of pagodas, vanilla sundaes, hero chins and god fingers; such a sunset palette of Jell-O, carrot oil, Vegas strip, and Kool-Aid; such a sea-vista display of broad waters, firred islands, whale spouts, and boat sails thicker than triangles in a geometry book, that any and all memories of dankness will fizz and implode in a blaze of bedazzled amnesia. "Paradise!" you'll hear them proclaim as they call United Van Lines to cancel their move to Arizona.

They're kidding themselves, of course. Our sky can go from lapis to tin in the blink of an eye. Blink again and your latte's diluted. And that's just fine with me. I thrive on the certainty that no matter how parched my glands, how anhydrous the creek beds, how withered the weeds in the lawn, it's only a matter of time before the rains of winter come.

The rains will steal down from the Sasquatch slopes. They will rise with the geese from the marshes and sloughs. Rain will fall in sweeps, it will fall in drones, it will fall in cascades of cheap Zen jewelry.

And it will rain a fever. And it will rain a sacrifice. And it will rain sorceries and saturine eyes of the totem.


Rain will primitivize the cities, slowing every wheel, animating every gutter, diffusing commercial neon into smeary blooms of esoteric calligraphy. Rain will dramatize the countryside, sewing pearls into every web, winding silk around every stump, redrawing the horizon line with a badly frayed brush dipped in tea and quicksilver.

And it will rain an omen. And it will rain a trance. And it will rain a seizure. And it will rain dangers and pale eggs of the beast.

Rain will pour for days unceasing. Flooding will occur. Wells will fill with drowned ants, basements with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics will roam the dripping peninsulas. Moisture will gleam on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their rest in dead tree trunks, will clack their clamshell teeth in the submerged doorways of video parlors. Rivers will swell, sloughs will ferment. Vapors will billow from the troll-infested ditches, challenging windshield wipers, disgusting intentions and golden arches. Water will stream off eaves and umbrellas. It will take on the colors of beer signs and headlamps. It will glisten on the claws of nighttime animals.

And it will rain a screaming. And it will rain a rawness. And it will rain a disorder, and hair-raising hisses from the oldest snake in the world.

Rain will hiss on the freeways. It will hiss around the prows of fishing boats. It will hiss in the electrical substations, on the tips of lit cigarettes, and in the trash fires of the dispossessed. Legends will wash from desecrated burial grounds, graffiti will run down alley walls. Rain will eat the old warpaths, spill the huckleberries, cause toadstools to rise like loaves. It will make poets drunk and winos sober, and polish the horns of the slugs.

And it will rain a miracle. And it will rain a comfort. And it will rain a sense of salvation from the philistinic graspings of the world.

Yes, I am here for the weather. And when I am lowered at last into a pit of marvelous mud, a pillow of fern and skunk cabbage beneath my skull, I want my epitaph to read, IT RAINED ON HIS PARADE, AND HE WAS GLAD!