Apparently

(Edouard Leon Theodore Mesens- Masque servant à injurier les esthètes. Ironically, I got yelled at for taking this.)

The verdict: I'm still batspit, but my blog title has changed and the address multiplied, apparently.

because you needed one more thing on your to-do list

1. down the rabbit hole

2. meanadic

3. batspit

4. a meanad's revival

5. overwhelmed and underimpressed

6. batspits

7. capricorn sun

8. apparently

10. 342735

11. my other glasses

12. awake, absurd

13. absurdly bat

14. if you were me

15. bat in retrograde

I need a new new new blog. I just can't figure out what I want to call it. I want it to be short, unique, easy to spell, and I want it to fit me.

This compels me to ask myself what it is I think my blog will accomplish, what it will be about- what I'm about.

In thirty seconds:

I write. I live, I take photos, I study people, I read, I write. I am cute as a fucking button, I smoke, I do dishes, I help little old ladies and small defenseless spiders, I was an oxymoron until that became too trendy. I'm what you wish your sister was like. [my thirty seconds ended here] I don't know why I write, or what I hope to accomplish from this blog. I just write. And shoot. And sometimes I hit "publish".

-

So pick me a name.

Seriously. I'm open to suggestions. I just thought I'd give you 15 or so as a start.

The land of sun and tanning spas

I would tell you about the Vegas airport; my first adventures with legal gambling and the overwhelming number of size 16 booty-shorts on orange women who bounced and oozed like prostitutes at a crack convention- I would probably tell you about the eventful trip to the apple store, where I met geniuses, an NFL player and briefly the face of god. Or maybe I’d tell you how fun it is to shoe-watch in L. A. (like people watching but lower). I’d tell you about my day at the Getty, how good it is to be near someone who thinks I’m funny; but it’s too. fucking. hot.

Like -3 humidity, I swear.

see, they even got me talking like them. It’s the sun. And all the smog. It does something horrible to your voice- makes you sound both ignorant and pretentious at the same time—oooooh I love L.A.

My eyes hurt. All I want to do is hide in the shade of smoke from these awesome pink cigarettes and drown myself in iced coffee.

If typewriters could dream

A minimalist animation (Typolution) set to the music of Ratatat- I had to share. If typewriters could dream, it would be like this.

Down the Rabbit Hole

BEST movie about procrastination- for when you need to kill a few minutes.

No one told me I was in the news!



I want one I want one I WANT ONE! (go ahead and turn the sound off for these next two)

Drowning is Exhausting

I should make banana bread. Otherwise I’ll have banana wine when I get home from this two-week trip. I'm nervous about leaving all my plants. There’s no way my sister will remember to water all of them (Sister? Are you reading? GO WATER MY PLANTS).

I spent most of yesterday in a beautiful old pond with my friend Rob. At one point I dove in, forgetting I was wearing my beloved (I can’t help it if they’re trendy) white-framed sunglasses. I knew it was almost time for my annual sunglasses sacrifice, but did they have to take my favorite pair? I tried to drive to the cold, muddy depths but panicked when something touched my face. I screamed (yes still underwater) and took in a teaspoon or so of pond water (water you can both taste and chew). Laughing at me as I spewed, sputtered and coughed, Rob neatly dived in (a 9.5 on the Lea scale of dives, I’d have to say) and gleefully exploded from the water minutes later, sunglasses in hand.

We may now confidently add monkey feet and ability to see in murky water to Rob’s (admittedly peculiar) list of talents.

(Full disclosure: I promised him I'd blog about his heroics in return for my shades.)



And, for those of you that asked, I did survive the wedding- went so late and left so early I didn’t have to deal with him at all. And my cousin was, of course, beautiful and I’m glad I got to see and hug her.

Objects in mirror are EXACTLY as they appear

and the (only) side view mirror fell out and landed on the cement, shattered but still held together by the felt pad it was glued to. As with anything automotive, it was a fucking adventure fixing it. But I did it. Myself.

Naming the monster

My aunt treated my to a haircut today. She had two appointments booked with Mike (who apparently has quite the waiting list), but her kids were both busy today and Nannie is still too sore for a haircut, so she offered it to me.
I wanted to know if he still charged a fortune and I thought she answered "Oh, it's beyond me", so I said "Um, no, I'm more in the Great Clips range". Apparently she actually said "Oh, it'd be on me", so we both squinted at each other in confusion for a few minutes before one of us broke. But I'm making a short story too long- needless to say I look freaking ADORABLE (but not too adorable)… I even got a little personality profile with it. Before Mike would tell me how he was going to cut my hair he asked me “But how are you going to WEAR this cut? What kind of ATTITUDE will you wear it with?”. He’s an artist. Apparently. Cause even I like my hair.

Tomorrow I’m going to battle the credit card company that has been fucking me like a cat with a spiked dick. Tomorrow I will get my interest reduced and my monthly payments lowered as well. That’s how it has to go if they want to get money from me. Do they still have debtors prison? For some reason I just bet it's filled with people who have ADORABLE (but not too adorable) hair.

Curse of the freckled

I love the sun but the sun does not love me.

I couldn't wear a bra all day. Walked around in a tube top and long sleeved button-up I got from someone.

I only tell you about the tube top to illustrate exactly how much my shoulders hurt today. If you tell anyone I own a tube top (let alone wear one) I'll have to kill you.

Yep. What, you thought this was going to be a real blog post? Maybe next time.

look –over there- what is that?

Do you ever try and write a blog post just so you won’t have to look at the last one you wrote? Yeah, me too. So, here’s a photo I rather like of Goat’s Beard, Tragopogon dubius

I can hope

(Dickcissel, Spiza americana)

My cousin is getting married tomorrow- ordinarily I look forward to weddings with the zest only a cultural anthropologist can bring to ritual drinking and procreation events, but not this one. This one will invariably come with my father, who will either be crazy and embarrassing, drunk and embarrassing, or, (most likely) crazy, drunk and embarrassing. And he will want to talk to me, I’m sure. Will want to tell me about my neglected pets, childhood heroes, now dead or “still hanging on”. Will want to know where I live now, and what I do for a living.
However, there is a small chance that he will feel so… crazy drunk and annoying that he won’t want to go. I can hope, but I know I’m not that lucky.

Wish you were here.

I've eaten 4 quarts of strawberries in 3 days. Eat your heart out, Daniel.

But really, what are grandkids good for if they can't mix a proper drink?

I insisted they keep her. It will make Nannie happy, I said. And look, she’s so small- you couldn’t ask for a better boat sized dog. Pawpaw smiled at me then, and I was pretty sure he would keep her.
She’s some kind of mix between a rat terrier and a dachshund, I think. Small. Likes to burrow under blankets. Loves to hunt bed mice. (You know about bed mice, right? Otherwise known as MY GODDAMN FEET). Apparently she won’t eat the dog food if the grandparnts don’t cover it first in left-overs, usually chicken or steak… She’s a horrible, yappy, happy little dog and she woke me up at 5 in the fucking morning. And then again at 6, and then 7, then I gave in and got up at 8.
And where was my dog, in all of this? Amelia was trying to hide under the covers with me, occasionally looking at the little happy dog with what could only be described as polite disdain. I could almost hear Amelia thinking “I would eat you if it wasn’t so fucking early. Go away and let us sleep. I was dreaming about chickens”.

Pawpaw had a double hernia surgery yesterday. I sat with him at the hospital and spent the night at their house. They really are remarkable people. (I’ll leave the remarks to your imagination). In the recovery room I listened as Pawpaw chattered at me, trying not to feel like I was eavesdropping on his sub-conscious. He kept prefacing with “I’m probably still feeling the anesthesia, but…” What his sub-conscious had to say was funny though. And inspiring. And heartbreaking, all at the same time.

The grandparents have someone who cleans their house and cooks during the weekdays, but she’s kind of flakey. And she doesn’t, apparently, know how to fix a proper drink. I waited politely till she left the house and looked pointedly at the diet coke in a glass on the table. “Do you need your drink, Nannie?” I ask my grandma, already heading for the liquor cabinet.
“No,” she says quickly and with enthusiasm, “I need you to put something in it!”
“When did you last take a pain pill?”
“I didn’t. I’m not in pain” she lies. I shrug and fill her glass with bourbon, hand it over and watch as she politely stirs it before taking a long satisfied drink.

A maenad's eructation.

I’ve decided to come back to the real world. Or rather, I finished the non-enriching, completely pointless and overwhelmingly entertaining book I was reading. I devoured the Hogfather in a day or so. I only folded the corner of two pages- only had to look up two words, but ooooh, the words:

Eructation: 15th century; an act or instance of belching.

This word will be most helpful at work, where 1 of every 5 people feasts on poached venison nightly. “Your eructation is as impressive as your intestinal fortitude,” I can diplomatically state while mentally adding vitamin C and airborne to the grocery list internally screaming “AT LEAST COVER YOUR FUCKING MOUTH YOU DAMN HILLBILLY”.

Maenads 1 : Bacchante (a priestess or female follower of Bacchus) 2 : an unnaturally excited or distraught woman.

And I think we have the new blog title I was looking for…

Instead of mentally deriding the bridal party as fashionably retarded annoying-as-fuck drunken scenesters I can simply call them transparently vapid maenads whose wardrobe choices encompass their life goals and abilities.

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

I quote Alice in Wonderland on a regular basis. Maybe that's why I found myself dancing along to Nick Bertke's music created from clips of Alice in Wonderland.

I like to party with octogenarians

I was going to New Orleans this weekend to celebrate the grandparent’s 60th anniversary.

I had so much fun at their 50th, carousing on expensive booze with all their friends, singing drinking songs all night while we all walked through the French Quarter… We were all looking forward to going back. The g-parents even offered to get me my own hotel room… (The last time I traveled with them they insisted a separate bed was good enough. They have a freaking YACHT and I couldn’t get my own damn room?! Or could I even pay for my own room?! Nooooo, that would be an unthinkable waste of money.)

But, in case you didn't figure it out from the past tense, we will not be drinking to 60 years of marriage in New Orleans this Friday.

Nannie broke something in her back (Nannie is what I call my grandmother. Honestly, how many times do we have to go over this?) Again. And it was totally preventable- I was standing less than 15 feet away when she tried to move a 100 pound potted plumeria and heard something pop. I’m trying not to feel guilty.
“Why on earth would you feel guilty” yelled my aunt (did I mention we’re all disappointed and worried and crabby?). I know why Nannie would idiotically try to move something as big and twice as heavy as she is, and if I had been thinking I could have prevented it.
We had just been talking about the plumeria and how it doesn’t like to have wet feet- I’ll translate that if you really need me to- and I know she walked over to it- well, shuffled over to it -saw its saucer was full of water and just had to get rid of that water so the stupid-fucking-plant could have dry feet. And I’m sure she was thinking it would be so much easier if she just did it herself rather than ask me. Urrgg.

And now there is a new, beautiful Japanese Red Maple planted in my yard. Which also came briefly with my crabby, disappointed family who would much rather be drinking in New Orleans.

Just in case you didn’t already feel sorry for me or figure out this is a post where I do nothing but bitch, today I also treated myself to the yearly pleasure of a pap exam. Too much? Soooo sorry. And if you are wondering why you would ever feel bad for a gal whose grandparents have a yacht I will be forced to tell you about how I was once made to wax the damn thing for 20. measly. dollars. Not impressed? Think about waxing your car. Now think about the size of your house. Now think about waxing a car as big as your house for 20. freaking. bucks.
yeeeessss, I can see you now understand my grandparents better.



And now, the word I had to look up this week:


Ersatz: German; substitute or imitation- usually artificial and inferior.

So instead of saying
"What is this shit you're trying to get me to eat?! I know it isn't food."

I can exclaim
"This is diet cream cheese?! No wonder it tastes like ersatz paste".

He does make a killer raspberry tort.

I'm tired. Not like actually, physically tired- more emotionally burned out. I don't like living alone. I miss the background noise of other people.

My longtime friend, Jason, lives with his mom out in the boonies. He's been working for her on the house for the past year or so. Their property is gorgeous- acres and acres of lush wildness-every time I visit I tour around to see and photo whatever is blooming (something is always blooming).

I met up with Jason this weekend at his house to go birding (btw, I saw a blue grosbeak, a scarlet tanager and a dickcissel, to name a few!) and I waited a half hour while he and his mom bickered at each other over who would take what car. You can tell people have spent a lot of time together when they argue like that. It’s annoying and safe at the same time- a comfortable, familiar argument. Home.
I miss hearing the annoying whines, the safe arguments, the busy chatter of loved ones.

So I get why he lives out there, I do. It's beautiful, and it's home.

But he is never going to get a real girlfriend. Not from the USA anyway. Truth. At least for me. Would you ever date a man who lived with his mom?

Uh huh, that’s what I thought. If you would, let me know and I’ll pass along your number. For the record, he does make a killer raspberry tort.

And so it was with horror

(Asimina triloba or Paw Paw Tree.)



I’ve been having trouble writing lately. And so it was with horror that I read I’ve been tagged by fellow southern Illinois blogger Laura from Quirkology. Maybe this will snap me out of it. or back into it.



What was I doing 10 years ago?
Ten years ago today I was 15, fighting with my parents and about to meet Iggy Pop in New Orleans. I had turquoise hair.

What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?
1) work [You stopped reading here].
2) re-write motherfucking paper
3) walk the dog
4) check garden
5) mail stuff

Snacks I enjoy:
your heart. thatswhatshesaid. There’s no way to make this interesting or funny. But I’ll tell you this-I’m sick of snacking. I want a real, multi-dish meal, damn it. (But I’m sure not going to cook it for just me and the dog. We'll just keep having cheese sandwiches and dogfood, thank you.)

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
My fantasies usually alternate between living in a tree mansion and living on a tricked-out floating house.
I would also have an accountant, an investor, a masseuse, and dog-washer.

Places I have lived before:
denial. anger. bargaining. depression.
Oh, wait- you’re looking for the actual names. Illinois, Tennessee, and your head.

5 people I want to know more about:

1) Farmers.
2) Long Lost Rich Relatives.
3) Eeva-Leena, ‘cause she’s my pen pal and has some new found time on her hands.
4) ‘The Vivacious Viv’. She marries TS Elliot but screws Bertrand Russell? That's my kind of crazy…
5) Uhhh… you?

brought to you by the letter f

Write something, and now.
It doesn’t matter if it’s good; just write.

I can’t think of anything to write.

Jesus. There are people watching. Throw it at the wall and see what sticks.

Fiiiiiine.


Where, exactly, does my money go? I have my suspicions, but I try reeeeeeally hard not to investigate them too closely. Always seem to spend more than I can make, and I never have anything to show for it. I have high-speed wireless, and the bill as well, but goddamnit, there are just some standards of living that have to be met. (Mental image of someone clutching desperately at wi-fi signals... was that in some cartoon recently?)


I’m trying to think of a compromise for the devils on either of my shoulder (and I mean devils in the most loving way possible, you two) about cursing on the blog. One shrugs as she flips the other off and says, “fuck it Lea, what the fuck do I care? I figured your internal monolog has more curses than real words and thought since it was all about self-expression, well, I guess I thought you’d have a damn spine and type like you think”. The other, calmer devil covers the ears of a small child in the room and cries a single, guilt-wrenching tear. She says nothing, but gives me a look that makes me want to alternately hug her and curl under a table crying in shame. “I understand your anger, it’s certainly justified”, she says softly after a minute “It hurts me to see you hurt. Do you understand me? I love you but you can show a little respect when I’m in the room.”

Oh little devils. I love you both so much. There is a part of me that can curse like a teamster. And there is part that hides it well. Since I can’t apparently listen to you both, and I know realistically I'm going to curse, I’ll try to think of a way to make up for it.

How about if I put a quarter in a cup for every curse on this blog and then give the sum to a charity?

No, you’re right, I wouldn’t trust me to do that either. I already told you I cashed in my change.

What if I did something involving other words?
What if I wrote a post on the linguistic history of curses?
What if I limit myself to 10 curses a post? No, that would never work. Some days are 178 curse word days.
I’m going to write a word of the week, I think. Some word I have to look up during the week. This week I had to look up… hang on, I circled it somewhere…

flanuer.

flanuer: an idle man-about-town.

So I suppose, instead of saying

“Oh you know Jim, he’s that lazy bastard always drinking coffee at the local café talking about Heidegger and how it impacted his blossoming music career and new found vegetarianism”,

I can say

“Oh, Jim is that flaneur with the vintage shirt in the sixth year of his MFA 'degree'. You know, the one with the pink bicycle? Likes to drink? No?"


How was that?

That was OK. Now edit the crap out of it and take out that money part. And don’t forget the spell check again, you twit.

No, you do it, I’m going to go smoke a cigarette and eat some reese’s pieces. I don’t respond well to name calling.

andre jordan rocks my socks

I spotted this stunning encapsulation of why I do what I do and why I read what I read- instantly I headed to the site. And wow. Andre Jordon is awesome, awesome, awesome (only one less awesome than The Almost Royal).

The art is fantastic, the blog flippin' brilliant, the shop threatening to deplete my already depleted bank account, and something called BBC ouch demanding my whole day off to peruse the site and all its links.

Makes me wish my own doodles were more like art and less like doo.