Lady GoneDiva

I forgot the name of this blog. Is that a sign that it’s been too long? Apologies to anyone who noticed. Am still here, 100%. And happy.

Good thing I name everything after candyjars. For what reason? So I thought of candyjar.org, and then I thought candyjar creations…no, something with a c…. chronicles! Of course. Silly me.

For fun, here is my most recent card, she’s gone ‘diva.’

detox

I’ve never believed in any eating methods that deny you cheese and chocolate. I am not sure how I ended up agreeing to that whole RAW food thing. Something about my yoga teacher. Somehow. Some belief that not consuming dairy or fat or caffeine would cleanse the system and mind and spirit and let the soul blossom in the fresh, pure air. The idea of refreshing a being was just so terrific, so tempting…

Certainly, this morning, after three days of vegetables, I did so enjoy that latte and home-baked bun, a new beginning of its own. And, alas, raw food or not, there are other beginnings, sprouting up all around,  yellow and blue and white and purple… The first round of flowers. I can’t help but feel this inside, as though petals are spreading, tender, delicate, opening to let the sun bring out their colors….

buh-bye security, buh-bye identity

1. Quit my job.
2. Leapt around in a state of euphoria.
3. Felt anxiousness and loss at what will be gone: my salary, health insurance, Internet, computer, phone, identity as a working person.
4. Waffle between step two and three, again and again.
5. I’m not there yet. I hope it’s good.

red things

The sky turned red orange on Friday afternoon. For several hours. What is it? we mused at the grocery store.

The world is coming to an end, they told us.

It’s a fire, we decided. (I surrendered my idea of breath-taking sunset when I realized it was only 4:30).

Apparently, a neighbor explained, it was actually sand, blowing over from Utah. This proved true the next day, when the snow — all over the town and the mountain — was coated with red brown gook.

This made interesting snow conditions for the last day of the season (yesterday). It was a little like skiing on dirt, but not too bad, and the whole town was there for the party anyway.

Particularly one long-haired fellow, who was skiing naked (with a small cloth covering his front side). He’d just gone down the North Face, and apparently gone down, since he had an enormous strawberry covering his whole right butt cheek.

Shivering on the chair lift (it was cold), we discussed this wound with two rowdy strangers. His girlfriend probably painted that on him, for effect, one of them said. That thing was too brutal.

No dude, said the other. It was real.

look, there’s an egg in a book

Two years ago I saw a call for submissions on Craigslist: a book for 20-something struggles. I was struggling.  I wrote a scrappy essay. Then I spent the afternoon taking artsy black and white pictures of a broken egg in the sunshine. Um, yes. I did. I do these things, sometimes. Don’t ask why. I can’t remember if I ate the egg afterward. I was pretty hungry in those days. But I had stuck my finger in it to make the eggshell just right, and to change the shape of the goop so it caught the flicker of light. Eating the egg would be kind of gross, after all that  poking.

I’m a little embarrassed.

And now, I’m told, the essay and/or the picture are in this book: Quarter Passed. Gulp. Who knows what it looks like, this embryo of my youth.

I am tired of winter.

Yes it’s beautiful and snowy and fresh and fun (sledding! skiing! snow-shoeing!). But I have had enough. I want flowers, I want sunshine, I want lemonade!

I have just realized that winter is almost half the year in this little town. That is a long time. A too-long time. I am looking at the crusty snow out my window, which is taller than I am, and wondering if there really is grass under all that, or if perhaps I just imagined it. Sigh. At least, can it warm up a little? My bones are achy, I’m an old lady.

Netflix thievery

I got a Netflix slip in my PO box, with an apology reading: Dear Postal Customer: We sincerely regret the damage to your mail during handling by the Postal service… etc, etc.

My Netflix account registered that my delivered movie had been watched and returned. Not by me. By them. They, whomever they are, always open our Netflix. Usually they give them back, open but undamaged, a few days after the anticipated delivery. This isn’t a big deal: I’m a non-TV-owner on a 2-per-month plan and I don’t care if the movie is late. But the principle of it is intriguing.

Who are they? How many movies can they possibly watch? Also a little secret: they are not fond of foreign films, and they don’t take those; they simply open the envelope and slip it back in your box. Box office hits,  though, they love — and those will disappear for awhile.  Now that we’ve figured out what they like, I just have to decide whether I’m in the mood to share before I order…

the general history project

Today, an email arrived from an old friend, Miss Laura Lee Huttenbach. She was announcing her new endeavor: The General History Project. She is setting out to record the stories of an ‘unsung world hero.’

My most vivid memories of Laura Lee: on the beach in Argentina, clapping her arms like a seal. Eating ice cream, before and after riding four wheelers in the sand (she can eat more ice cream than anyone I know). Another late night at the law library in Virginia. The classic butt shake on the dance floor. She’s quite adept at the butt shake. I am so glad that LL is still shaking her butt. Oh, the places she’ll go….

lovely luminarias

Christmas Eve in Santa Fe. Children amid the luminarias, instruments of light.

other names for umbrellas

• Bumbershoot: The umbre from umbrella, the chute from parachute, baddaboom: Bumbershoot! The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that bumbershoot appeared in writing in the year 1896, and Bumbersol and Bumberbell were also common at one point. 

• Brolly: The probably came from shortening Umbrella to Brella, which became Brelly and then  Brolly. In the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, ‘brollies’ is a common slang term.

• Gamp: This word is taken from the character Mrs. Sarah Gamp from the Dickens novel Martin Chuzzlewit, as she is alway carrying her umbrella. Gamp is British slang for an umbrella, especially large baggy ones.