2005-10-02 - 8:06 p.m.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Awhile back, LJer Jupiter29 mentioned that hardly one in four entries goes by without me mentioning my ass. The sad thing is, he's absolutely right. Well, I'm about to do it again.

Well, I'm about to do it again. It was easier to write this quickly before bed than to write about my trip to the art museum yesterday (though that post is definitely upcoming).

There's a reason for it, though. I talk about it a lot because it gets a lot of attention in my household. Poindexter cannot walk past my butt -- and I mean this almost literally -- without smacking it. It's as reliable as the sun rising and setting, and I've grown to expect it. He walks through the kitchen on his way upstairs to the office, I'm standing at the counter, my butt gets smacked. I'm reaching under the kitchen sink for the Ajax, I get smacked. I'm brushing my teeth or washing my face, I get smacked. You get the picture.

Evelynne: [stands in front of Poindexter, hip cocked, hand on hip, butt sticking out]
[We discuss the chicken dish I just made, which I screwed up last time by forgetting the soy sauce.]
Poindexter: Once you put the red chile sauce on top it was fine, I didn't notice.
Evelynne: Yeah, but it's better with the soy sauce. [cocks hip further, waits expectantly]
Poindexter: [does nothing]
Evelynne: WELL!?
Poindexter: [smacks Evelynne's butt]
Evelynne: JEEZ. I was standing there with my butt sticking out, waiting and waiting, and nothing was happening.

In lieu of further content, if the above can be called content, here's a crocheted sweater I got. I squee for crochet -- it reminds me of snowflakes -- so I've been looking and looking for one and I finally found this. I threw it on with jeans to get a picture of it, but I'm thinking it might look interesting with the sage corduroy pants from the previous entry. Any suggestions?

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

So, for the last week and a half I have been busy at work, and then have been very strict with myself about getting things done around the house. I spent Friday evening de-cluttering, Saturday afternoon grocery shopping, thrifting for riding clothes for Poindexter, and cooking (we roasted a chicken and I made gravy) after attending a family event in the morning, and Sunday I re-potted some flowers and planted pansies to replace my dying petunias. I was tired and cranky after all this, but I got a lot done, which is satisfying. Poindexter scoured all the bathrooms and floors in the house until they were sparkly

On Sunday I allowed myself a few hours of fun in the form of going to the Art Museum, at the suggestion of DiscoPete1, who brought his lovely wife and adorable daughter. Also attending were LJers CamilleOphelia (who looks even happier every time I see her), LipbyLipby (who is really quite nice and not scary like I used to think), and I finally met the charismatic Cubicalgirl, who was wearing a t-shirt with Wonder Woman on it (and some other superhero women, labeled "Ladies' Night") and carrying a periwinkle-ish bag that I was surreptitiously coveting all afternoon.

I went to the art museums in the Smithsonian when I lived down near DC, but that was 7-10 years ago. I knew I liked looking at the pretty pictures, but I was not expecting to have quite the reaction I did. I was pretty well enthralled. My exposure to art has mainly been in the form of books or prints, and somehow I did not realize how much better it was going to be to see it in person. It's like the difference between looking at one of Kit's pictures of the sky in Montana: they are beautiful pictures, but they're nothing compared to actually standing underneath that Big Sky and having it surround you. It is such a much more complete, overwhelming sensory experience.

And so it was with the art. One of the first paintings I saw -- and my favorite of the day, actually -- was Charlemont's Moorish Chief:

This photograph -- which looks to me like it's been deliberately blurred -- doesn't even begin to do the painting justice. The painting is five feet high, for starters, making the man almost life-size. The man's clothes were blindingly white, in sharp contrast to the shadowy surroundings and his dark skin. The man's likeness was so good that at first glance it almost looked like a photograph. And the man looks like somebody I might see walking around in Philadelphia -- he doesn't have that weird "olden times" look that a lot of portraits do, which contributed to a feeling I had that he could step out of the frame. I remember there were tons of details and colors in the background that I could explore, and the hilt of his sword was gold. It was just beautiful. I will take a look at the print, to see if I want to buy it and frame it, but I suspect I'm going to be wanting to visit the original instead.

As I told Camille later, one of my favorite things in paintings is when there is a lot of contrast of light (sunlight, especially) and shadow. I always like paintings of a stormy ocean with a ray of light breaking through the clouds. We were standing near a painting of a bunch of men in a tavern at the time, and I pointed to the contrast of the dark tavern with the light coming through the window. She pointed out something I'd missed: a man lighting his pipe, with the lit match giving his face an orange glow that faded gradually away across his cheeks and ears. I LOVE THAT STUFF. She suggested I check out some of the "Old Masters", including Rembrandt and Caravaggio (am I remembering this right?).

One painting I've always liked is Tissot's "Hide-and-Seek" (large-ish picture here), again for the light-and-shadow juxtaposition (not to mention the sheer cuteness and the lazy-afternoon feel). When I was Googling it, I realized that the painting is in the Smithsonian, which means I must have seen it there, and that's how I found out I like it. I suspect the print doesn't do it any justice either, so next time I am downtown I must drop by to visit this painting to see how much better it is in person, too.

The first few galleries we looked at were a bunch of impressionists. I was standing in front of a Monet painting, and I stepped closer, and closer again, until my nose was two inches away from the painting and I could see each of the dabs of paint he was using to represent wavelets of water. And inside one of those dabs of paint, I saw a little hair from the brush, stuck in the paint. That's when it kind of hit me, "Monet painted this! A human being, with a brush in his hand, made this, over a century ago! And I'm standing here in front of it!" It was quite a "wow" moment. I have that feeling when I walk past the places in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Indpendence was written or where Benjamin Franklin took his "air baths", and suddenly it seems like they didn't live so very long ago after all, and they weren't mythical figures but real human beings.

I also realized that from now on, wherever I travel, I'm probably going to want to drop by the local art museum and see at least a few famous paintings, so that I can get the full experience. And I will be buying a membership to the Philadelphia Museum of Art right quick.

The paintings aren't the half of it, though. They have BUILDINGS in there. Or pieces of buildings. They have either re-created or actually re-structured stone archways from churches and worked the walls around them, so that you can walk through them, like this. There is a cloister with a working fountain. There is a ceremonial teahouse. A pillared hall from a Hindu temple! It's just incredible, to be able to reach out and TOUCH these things, to stand in the middle of them, to see where somebody carved his initials in stone in some kind of medieval graffiti. And again, these pictures I'm linking you to are not doing any of it justice! And you know what? It's FREE ON SUNDAYS! Anybody can go!

Thursday, September 29th, 2005

One of my weird personality traits -- one of many, some would say -- is that I hate waste. I don't like letting things go to waste, unused, when they still have some use left in them.

Some of it might be vague concerns about the environment, though they're not terribly strong since in all the traveling I've done I've seen a lot more suburban sprawl eating up the landscape than I've seen landfills. I mostly just seem to be bothered by the idea of something sitting there, unused, taking up space, that could have been used in some way.

So, I nearly always eat all my leftovers, and save a lot of money in the process. I hate it when I travel and have no fridge and microwave and have to let the waiter take uneaten food away. HATE it. I can't stand using something made of plastic and throwing it away. I re-use my undamaged grocery bags (no holes) as kitchen garbage bags, and recycle the rest, even though it's nearly pointless to do so. Packaging bugs me. If I buy something that has natural packaging, like any citrus fruit or onions or garlic, I won't put it in plastic. If I only have one or two items I'm picking up at the store, I carry them home. If I'm picking up a few, I bring a backpack. I don't want to throw away a pair of jeans because I've worn huge holes in both knees all the way to the side seams, so I turn them into cutoffs, and I can't stand throwing away the legs, because, I mean, the cloth is still good, isn't there something I can do with it? If I don't want something anymore that's still serviceable, I donate it, because the thing is usually still USEABLE. I'm very reassured by the existence of sites like Freecycle and by trash-pickers and dumpster divers.

I have no idea where this comes from. I make Poindexter crazy. He loves the convenience of paper plates and plastic bags and uses them all the time whereas I insist on using proper dishes and tupperware (even Gladware, which sells itself as reusable OR disposable, NEVER gets disposed of unless it falls on the dishwasher heating element and gets deformed). I have a mountain of plastic Indian takeout containers that we use to freeze soups and chilis in single-serving sizes. Poindexter complained that we had too many of them, so I started reluctantly throwing them away, and then we made a double batch of soup and chili and we almost didn't have enough!

------

The other night, I was telling Poindexter about what I had just posted about butt smacking, and mentioned the preamble about him smacking it all the time. And he said, "Well, the problem is, it sticks out all the time."

Well, it does, I admit,

but I like how he blames it on my butt, and not on his own inexplicable attraction to round butts and the accompanying desire to smack them. Men are weird that way.

(That picture is for you, Jupiter29. It's old, but I think it might be new to you.)

Sunday, October 2, 2005

Today I went on the the city skate, for their beginner "recreational roll". We had a small group -- I think everybody was inside watching the Eagles game rather than coming out for a skate.

In fact, on one of the narrow small blocks that gets little traffic, we passed a group of people having what I thought was a block party. Well, it was, but the theme of the block party was unexpected. All of the chairs were clustered in a semicircle on the south side of the street, facing south, and as I got closer I could see why. Someone had run an extension cord and a cable out the window, which were attached to a TV set sitting on a small table on the sidewalk, which was playing the football game. In the middle of the semicircle of chairs were some toddlers and their toys, safely within their parents' immediate peripheral vision when their eyes were on the game. Too funny.

Also funny was what happened when I parked the truck on the Parkway and began heading to the Rocky steps to meet the group. I had vaguely noticed three children drinking from a water fountain and jumping around with that boundless energy children have that makes it impossible to walk anywhere in a straight line. Since I was running a bit late, I had had the bright idea that I would put on my skates, helmet and knee pads at the car, and then put on my elbow and wrist pads as I skated to the steps.

I managed to get one elbow pad half on before I tripped over some uneven sidewalk and performed a spectacular pinwheel maneuver of the arms and legs (with my backpack adding an extra "leg" to the fray) before regaining my balance. On to Plan B, which involved standing still like an intelligent person to put the pads on.

Suddenly I was surrounded by the three previously frolicking children, a boy of about 8, maybe 10, and a younger boy and girl, all looking at me very solemnly. The oldest boy said, "Are you OK?" I replied, "Yeah, I'm OK, I caught myself," and continued attaching pads to various joints. They all stood there, looking at me dubiously, and I said, "Really, I managed to catch myself, I didn't fall, I'm not hurt."

They still stood there, watching me put on the pads, and then the oldest boy said hesitantly, "The guy on the motorcycle was laughing at you." As though this was a Very Bad Thing. I said, "Well, he has a good story to go home and tell his friends! And I bet it did look pretty funny."

All three of the kids continued to stand there watching me, looking serious, and I was worried they were not convinced that I was all right. So I smiled at them and said, "Well, thank you very much for looking after me!" And all three faces broke out in smiles and they seemed to take that as their cue to resume playing, and I skated off with a wave. It was TOO MUCH CUTENESS! What a sweet bunch of kids. And since I'm writing this here, I will always remember them now. :)

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