heli thoughts

a helicopter frequently flies low over our house, and i've been told it belongs to luke bryan. he lives just down the road a piece and he is rich enough to have a heli, so i have no reason to doubt this is his. i don't know if he flies it himself or has a pilot. that wasn't part of what i was told.

i can see the convenience and i feel like it's probably no more risky than a car, but i am just not sure i'd have a heli. i just don't know. 

i do know if i were rich enough to have a heli, i'd have a swimming pool. i love to swim and i don't think it's an overestimation to say i'd be in my pool most every day. clearly, i am rich enough for a heli, so my pool is an indoor/outdoor jobbie where you swim under the plexiglass window to get outside. i'd pay someone to come over and certify me as a lifeguard so i could keep all the kiddos safe.

i'd also have smallish lake big enough to canoe around. i like to canoe and it's good exercise. i would paddle around a while then lay back on the stern deck, put my feet up on the thwarts, and just get some sun. not too much, though, since you can only really comfortably lay on your back in a canoe, and i wouldn't want to be all one-sided.

i'd have a place to play my harmonicas. first, i would have more harmonicas, and second, i would play them more. apparently, i am assuming i am independently wealthy or something, because no one is going to pay me to play my harmonica. i am good, but i am not that good.

one thing i wouldn't worry too much about is having a bunch of televisions everywhere. i mean, one in the gym and one in the family room, but there doesn't need to be a TV in every room. read a book, why dontcha? 

i am not looking for a huge house, but it would be nice to have enough room to have everyone over. to have family or friends spend the night - like, to have guest suites with bathrooms. i might put a TV in the guest suite because that might feel homey, but you are here to visit, so don't be sitting in there all day! it would be nice to have enough space to be able to have people feel comfortable, not crowded. for visitors to have their own space so they don't feel like they are encroaching. maybe put a mini-fridge in the guest suite - and you don't have to pay for what you take out!

pool. lake. harmonica studio. not too many TVs. a place for company to be comfortable.

after i have all that, then maybe i will think about the heli.

this is the sort of thing that makes me want to give up.

 i used to be able to write like an ace. now i suck at it. makes me want to give up. see this for more:

http://bareyellowbulb2.blogspot.com/2013/03/post-fifty-first-2013.html

this book i'm reading

a friend from work invited me to join her book club, so i did. after a couple false starts, i was able to read the book and join the discussion in february. so it's march and we're reading another book and it's got some flaws. 

first of all, it's as if the author believes that L and M are the main two letters names can begin with. libby, lucy, michael, marco, mémé plus then there's a henry jr and henry sr. then she alternately gets fantasticly creative with birdie, phineas, clemency, stella. obviously she has an imagination. i'm telling you, though -- unless libby and lucy turn out to be somehow the same person, it's simply poor form. you're confusing your readers and demonstrating your lack of creativity. 

secondly, the way she's unfolding the mystery is less intriguing than frustrating. it's even like a mystery is unfolding, but more like it's being withheld and parcelled out -- like she doesn't quite have enough mystery to make it to the end, so she's got to be careful how much she gives out. so, it's not a natural development, it's an artificial construct. 

on top of all that, it seems a bit trite. i'm maybe 1/3 of the way in, and what we have so far is a well-to-do british family where the mom has some sort of mental breakdown, invites in some odd/dangerous boarders into the house, and things go downhill from there, culminating in suicides. 

the mystery is, what happened that led up to the suicides. 25 years later, the surviving baby is 25 and, unaware of her origins, inherits the house. the surviving teenagers are (1) narrating in the past tense and (2) destitute in the present. none of them seem to have awareness of the others in any meaningful way. 

so... it's confusing, slow, disjointed, and mechanical. now, in its defense, i have learned some new terms: wolf tone, wooden harboring, and chinese burn. the latter is what we in the states would call an indian burn, altho neither term is politically correct. 

i'll try to remember to let you know how it turns out. 

the baby shower

i had been looking forward to it.

i was invited to a baby shower. it was going to be outside, with safe distances, and people wearing masks. at least, that was what i thought when i RSVP'd, and when i diligently shopped for & found a gently used copy of the 1965 edition of Andrew Henry's Meadow to fulfill the currenlty-very-fashionable practice of asking guests to bring a book instead of a card, and when i carefully crafted then carefully handwrote a heartfelt note on the flyleaf, and when i realized that the book wasn't meant to be the gift - that there would be other gifts - and so i bought something off the registry at target to be shipped to the baby's house, and when i printed the page from the registry to put into an envelope to wrap with the book so that it would be clear i had gotten A Real Gift, and when i wrapped it all in a reusable orange string bag with yellow tissue paper poking out the top like a sunburst, and when i planned to do my taxes in the morning so i could make it to the party in the afternoon, and when i selected an outfit and took a shower and dried my hair and got dressed and in the car and drove over and parked and all the way up to arriving at the decorated concrete driveway with the balloons and cupcakes -- that was what i thought right up until then.

but i was the only one wearing a mask and no one was even pretending to be six feet apart, and i felt alternately like a pariah and like a judgy mcjudgerton, and either way, nobody wanted to talk with me from six feet away, and everyone was all in these really tight groups talking in each other's faces and they were hugging people they never spent any time around, and i finally had to tell the expectant mom that i hoped the party went really well but i had to go.

i think i said something about cognitive dissonance.

so i went to sam's to pick up my zyrtec scrip and everyfreakingbody there was wearing a mask. one guy had his on his chin and one lady had hers hanging from one ear, but everyone else was properly masked up. nobody was too close, everyone was respecting everyone else's personal bubble, and overall it felt much safer than at the baby shower.

i stopped at starbucks for a blonde americano and came home to read my book.

i was really disappointed about the baby shower. i had been looking forward to it. i also felt somewhat betrayed - i had been led to believe it would be safe. these people had put me in the position of being the bad guy - i don't care what anyone says, that's what it is. i left, which means i deemed it unsafe. i judged them and decided they didn't meet my standard. like i am too good for them. or like i am not good enough. either way, it was me that had to be the one to leave, right in front of everyone, but at the same time, trying to be low key because it's not like i had someplace else to be or anything - i just didn't want to be there.

i wish i'd never planned to go at all. i wish i had just dropped off the gift and not acted like i was going to stay. that was the thing - i acted like i was going to stay, and then i had to be like, nope, can't do it. i wished i'd never said i was going to stay at all.

anyway. that's all there is to it.

we'll see how far i get.

tomorrow i plan to do the taxes. we'll see how far i get.

i know it's outdated but i like to do my taxes by hand. i get a cuppa and settle in, download the forms from the IRS and just typpity-type away. i mean, uh... carefully enter precise and well-scoured data. that's what i do, that last thing. 

i always start by pulling out the previous year's as a starting point, and then i gather all the required inputs, and then i download the forms, and then i start filling them out, and then i get about 8 or 9 lines completed, and then i realize i don't have everything i need, and then i realize that it will take several hours or even days to get what i need, and then i get really frustrated and break things. 

so that's my process. we'll see how far i get. 

not sorry

ducky ducky rubber ducky

floating in the tub

someone pulled the drain plug out

glub glub glub 

a million channels and nothing to watch

every truck around here has a trailer hitch

whether it hauls anything or it don't

cause everyone around here wants the top of the line

whether they plan to use it or they don't

it's the sheer number of channels that's to blame. there are so many channels that there is simply not enough quality - or even anything close to quality - to go around. just pages and pages and pages of OMG IT'S THE SAME THING thumbnail after thumbnail just paging and paging through the thumbnails. 

good stuff is incredibly hard to come by. we watched anne with an e, longmire, hell on wheels, blacklist, yellowstone, arrow, queen's gambit, the komisky method, plus most of jane the virgin, some of the 4400, and a metric shit-ton of others i am forgetting. we have recently watched a dozen or so movies - spenser confidential, 6 underground, kodachrome, the highwaymen, the take, fisherman's friends, the fundamentals of caring, homefront, redemption, and who knows what else because who remembers all that -- but they were mostly-good to really-very-good, but that's like a dozen out of a million. oh, and we are watching one right now called behind her eyes. it's pretty creepy in a mysterious good way. 

it's the paging through the pages that just wears you the fock out. you get numb to the excess. blinded by the deluge. can't see the trees for the forest. 

yes, this is obviously a metaphor for life in the states, but we will take your netflix recs, so bring it on.