Adventures du jour!
Last night I spent most of the time hanging out with Ray. We played Left4Dead, a cooperative shooter game that *really* enforces cooperative play for greater success, and we both drank one of my random gin concoctions. (I’d accidentally picked up diet tonic water; when I say I’m my own worst enemy, it’s because I’ve picked up the diet version of some freaking beverage. HOW. I check every time.–Oh, right, ADD.) The drink was yummy and we didn’t do too terribly at the game. I was a lot more aggressive with play than normal; I usually spend a lot of time watching everyone’s backs and picking off sneaky bastards. I just didn’t have the fine motor control for it last night, though. Then I did a Hades run and ganked the Big Guy without using any extra lives. Both of these games feel pretty adaptable for various play styles, though, and it’s not like a more aggressive play style will get good results consistently on either game. L4D in particular *will* try to make use of my apparent change in play style by doubling down on sneaky bastards next time. The AI “director” on that game never fails to sniff me out.
This morning, I got up and knew it was time to accomplish some mischief that I’d been putting off for a day when I could focus on it. I gathered supplies and prepped, then did yoga to the hard rock/punkish playlist from the short story I just finished. I could already tell it was going to be One of Those Days because the playlist felt restful. More success with the lunges, using a chair for stability.
Out on the walk, one of my knees is back up to normal while the other is still sore; the sore one is the one that the ex’s failed experiment in “Responsible Dog Owner” fucked up. But it felt better than yesterday.
I walked, then did the mischief on the way home. As soon as I’d done it, my hip clenched up! Too funny. I think I was expecting to get yelled at. I made it home and did research for the next step, for which I was missing supplies. Expedition!
I got a burrito and some menudo from the taco place; they only have menudo on Saturdays but I wasn’t in the mood for it so I got it to go. I got there just as it opened and the door was locked. I made this pitiable disappointed peep out of my nose, and the lady who’s always at the front counter opened the door and let me in, laughing at me. Good folks.
I obtained most of what I needed at Target, but not THE essential part, which was cleaned out. The whole shelf gone. BUH. Instead I got some holiday ornaments, including a Black angel tree topper. I don’t have a tree, but at least now I have a topper that’s Just Right. I’ll try to remember to take a picture of her when the light’s better. Just adorable. They had Black Santa Clauses there, too, but he just wasn’t calling me.–And a bucket of fried chicken, which I thought about, but the bucket wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing as the ice cream sammitch and bao ornaments I picked. I got Ray a Fluffy Sassy Unicorn as well. At Walgreens I found the essential part, as well as some beautiful metallic markers with paintbrush-style tips and some completely unnecessary candy orange slices, which I have now eaten. I got home and worked on the mischief, but it was tetchy and has to sit for a while.
I also got some blue smurf snot (a.k.a. poster putty) and stuck up some cards and other materials friends have sent me. I used to do this all the time, starting in high school.–If I like something, it gets picked up and repeated, brought “inward” physically or metaphorically closer somehow, gets used for art projects, danced, sung, doodled, turned into an interpretive boozy drink and/or food recipe, etc. (The gin drink from yesterday was mostly “stuff we have on hand that Ray will like.”) I’m constantly drawing from real life for stories, both good and bad; the story yesterday was a guy I know plus some political bullshit I’m probably one degree of separation away from. YUH.
But it’s been college since I’ve done a smurf snot wall. I put up postcards on the wall with the ex, but they were ones that either he picked out or approved of, mostly in the way of “too cheap to buy prints/frames.” Not the same thing. A real wall of smurf snot is full of things you put up because other people have touched, have sent, have intended them; because you encountered them as part of the ephemera of your life; because together they make something else, even better than each thing alone.
Putting them up made me remember another project that I put up while I was with the ex fairly early on, in West Branch, Iowa. After a particularly lovely rainstorm one night, I covered the ceiling of our bedroom with clear plastic beads on long black strings wrapped around thumbtacks, to give the same feel as looking up at the rain in the parking lot of the apartment, the streetlight in the corner lighting up the rain as it fell. I don’t remember if I ever took those down, although I must have. He made fun of me while I was doing it, then said he liked it for a while, then nagged me about it: “when are you going to do something else?” I just never did anything else like it after that.
This apartment feels *much* more like a home than anywhere I’ve lived in a very long time, which probably indicates that I feel more at home with myself than anything else. Surfaces are filling up with eclectic bits and pieces of stuff, memories, time. I like it.