2005-10-31 - 8:11 p.m.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

I am in an outrageously good mood today. I'm not sure what brought it on. No, wait, I know what it is. I'm excited about rearranging the house. How nutty is that?

Poindexter decided that he is going to move the guest room (which has a big 8'x8' unused space in the middle of it) into the office and the theater room and office into the guest room. Then the theater room (a small dark depressing room that's a half-basement) will become a storage area, containing a pantry for food storage, a wardrobe for coats/jackets (because after this we are going to knock out the unncessarily large foyer closet and replace it with a mudroom bench to open it up, but I have 386 coats and jackets, half of which are tweed, and I cannot have them all hanging on mudroom bench hooks), storage for other things that are rarely used (suitcases, seasonal decorations, seven years of bank statements, old work files, etc.).

We thought we needed a big guest room for when his sister and our nieces came to visit, but it's been three years and they haven't visited yet -- they are getting older and school and activities gets in the way, and they spend half the summer in Florida so we see them there. When they were younger, when we lived in Virginia, they could visit anytime and did. We can still set up beds for them in the new office when they do visit. We'll putting the vanity and a narrow chest of drawers inside the closet (the closet is ENORMOUS) and the bed and nightstands will fit in the room. Snugly, but they'll fit. It will be nice to have nothing in that room EXCEPT stuff for guests. I like to give guests their own space, and not have to say, "hey, can I come in and get some wrapping paper out of that closet there."

One thing I really hate is when I am trying to get at something in a closet, and I have to remove heavy items that are on top of the item I want (like stacked boxes of seasonal ornaments). I only do this like three times a year, but I *hate* it. I want everything to be easily accessible. After the rearrangement, I think that's exactly how it will be. Nothing will be piled on top of anything else. This is VERY EXCITING for me. Of course, I probably could have avoided this problem with shelving, but that didn't occur to me until just now. Duh.

In other news, I've been wanting to report a new discovery I made about Poindexter while we were in West Virginia. First, some backstory: I find the town layouts there to be bizarre and "wrong". (This should not be construed as a criticism; it's a perception thing.) I grew up in New Jersey, where a proper small town has a village center, and the town spreads out from the center in concentric circles, at least for awhile until people start building curvy suburban pods interspersed with commercial stretches with parking lots and no sidewalks and RUIN EVERYTHING.

In southwestern West Virginia, however, the geography prohibits this type of development. You can build a little way up the hill, but not much. The natural way to build there is following the cracks between the mountains (I hesitate to call them valleys because they are barely a quarter-mile wide in spots, if that). So the towns tend to be fairly linear, with minor branching here and there. This just feels WRONG to me, though I am fascinated by it.

Poindexter, however, said in passing to our host that it reminded him of the logging town he grew up in, in the Santa Cruz mountains. The day we were packing up to leave, he came in and said in an oddly nostalgic tone of voice for someone who dislikes being cold, "I forgot about these mountain mornings. Foggy and damp and cold!" As we driving out of town, he pointed out some fog clinging to the side of the mountain, again looking oddly nostalgic and happy. I mentioned that the layout of the towns felt strange to me, and asked how he felt about it. He said,

Poindexter: [again with the happy/nostalgic tone] "Yeah, that's how these towns are made. It's familiar. It's like the towns I grew up in.
Evelynne: [gaping] You're a hillbilly.
Poindexter: I'm ... [mulls it over, decides he agrees] I'm a hillbilly. Remember how much I liked Montana.
Evelynne: Yes, you did like Montana. You surprised everyone with how much you liked Montana.
Poindexter: [in a "that's that" satisfied tone] I'm a hillbilly.

There you have it. I'm married to a hillbilly. I thought we were city mice. *I'm* a city mouse. It's a good thing I like dirt biking and that small towns are usually walkable, 'cause I expect we're going to be living in the mountains at some point.

In other other news, for all both of you who were missing my fashion blathering, I splurged and bought myself a really nice bag. I have boots in a matching color, too. When my picture CD gets back from CVS tomorrow (my four-year-old digital camera stopped working when I dropped it last week), I'll show you a few outfits with the bag. Meanwhile, here is the bag itself (it's about a foot long):

Monday, October 31st, 2005

Now here's a quote I could've used to help me with perspective a few weeks back when I was feeling sorry for myself:

Sit down, my love, I�ve a bitter truth to tell. All of us are gravity�s bitches. Barring superhuman - and perhaps surgical - efforts on your part, your body is never going to look better than it does at this moment. Fortunately, your body already looks pretty damn good.

Don�t believe me? Gain some perspective. Look back at your high-school photos. You would kill to have that ass again. Perhaps this makes you feel glum about your current ass. Well, stop it. When you�re seventy you�ll look back at today�s photos and realize how much time you�ve wasted fretting over a perfectly sexy bum.

HA! From now on, my magic phrase for all age/body-related issues (including stuff like stiffness and back pain) is going to be "What would 70-year-old Evelynne think?" Of course, Poindexter keeps talking about how we're going to clone our bodies and do a brain transplant by then.

Kit's audio snippets made me think that some of you might be interested in hearing what MY squeaky voice sounds like, especially since I've talked about the fact that you can "hear" my deafness in my voice. I just need to figure out what I'm going to SAY. Maybe I'll read a passage from Risk Pool. I've been reading that aloud to Poindexter during all our long car trips for dirt-biking. Although I think it might be more entertaining to read something from a post where I was excited or mad about something, so you can hear what I sound like when I talk in all caps.

I am not going to sing, though.

In the meantime, here's a picture of me with my new bag, plus a couple dirt-biking-related photos.

Here I am experimenting with the jeans-tucked-into-boots trend:

No, I didn't get a haircut; that's just the top layer.

Here's another fun picture, of my filthy face after riding my dirt bike on a dusty day:

And one more, of me in the window of an abandoned building midway around a looped trail:

I love how nature just takes over these places that humans abandoned. The entire inside of the building is indistinguishable from the surrounding forest, except for the cement framing.

Thanks to LJer tdj's link to Worth1000.com, I have fallen in love with another painting. This is Bouguereau's "Frere et soeur Bretons", which has now become my "Evelynne blathers about art" usericon.

Again with the white clothing. I don't know why I find that so compelling. Also, I didn't think I was that interested in portraits, but here's two portraits in a row that I find completely arresting. I like a lot of his other stuff, too. But best of all, the painting is AT THE MET in New York, which means I can go visit it in person. I'm hyperventilating just thinking about it.

(If anybody else likes Bouguereau, you can see HUGE jpegs of his paintings here. Squee! Other artists are listed here.)

Wow, has anybody ever seen one of those reproductions? They are not exact, but they're close enough that I wonder if I would be happy with one. Especially something like Charlemont's "Moorish Chief", whose face is in shadow. Look at the comparison of the reproduction vs. the original. It's not exactly the same painting, but a lot of the details are still there. Hmm. Given that I haven't yet fallen in love with an affordable painting (despite attending the art fair at Rittenhouse three times and browsing the galleries in Old City), and given that the point is for me to have something in my home it makes me giddy to look at (I'm not interested in an investment), this is an interesting option to consider. If the alternative is between the flatness of a print and something which is three-dimensional but slightly different, I might lean toward slightly different. Since I tend to be attracted mostly to color and light/dark contrast, it might work out.

Also, just now, I discovered that a painting I've had a print of for a decade (The Bunch of Lilacs; I got it at a dime store when I first got my own apartment) is by Tissot, the same guy who did the Hide and Seek painting I like.

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