Ridiculous musings from megan and ben (and occasionally hayley and/or buckley).
Jun 22 2009
i just posted this about my friend susan, who happens to be a fantastic artist in addition to being a pretty rad human. so go read it n stuff. or at least pretend to read it, i'm getting pennies per page view, people! that is all. thank you veddy much.
Jun 16 2009
new featured brilliance by me. you should all set up profiles and make with the discussing and playing around on the site. i want to do that more meself, but i find it kind of hard to dig in when i spend weeks pondering and writing and rewriting and image-hunting for each post before it goes up. gonna work on that though....
in other writing news, i'm going to be Nashville's "contemporary arts examiner" for examiner.com. It's a newish sort of review / local guide type thing, set up in a bunch of cities with people writing about certain things (i.e., music, restaurants, parenting, arts). It does actually pay a tiny little bit, too; how much depends on page traffic and ad revenue and blah, blah, blah. i decided to do it partly for the practice and having a few extra "serious" clips and partly because it will force us out of the house more.
still in search of ways to make actual money so as to justify quitting the babysitting, all the while hoping and crossing my toes that some magical sponsorship money will appear at soulpancake and i can just get paid to do that, even though it'll likely be part-time and not a lot of money. but that part's okay. cuz then i can do that stuff a little more, and perhaps spend less time working myself into a suicidal lethargy (which is sort of good i guess, cuz i'm too blah to actually expend the energy on suicide) scouring the internets for writing jobs.
here's what i've learned in my job searching:
1. actual full-time in-house jobs i would want absolutely exist - in new york, washington, dc and atlanta.
2. people have no desire to pay anything close to reasonable for freelance writing and i hate them
3. i should've gone to nursing school
4. i actually have plentiful choices in the following career paths: fast food, the army, or nursing school
isn't that cheery and filled with glorious hope for a bright future? don't worry, i've taken to wearing my sunglasses all the time now. they cover up the dark circles and the tears. i realized recently that i'm letting this job bs consume me, to the point that i'm not only anxious in that skin-too-tight, innards on speed (oh wait, they actually are...) sort of way, but that i'm also so braindead it's hard to get motivated to really do anything else. i just sit and stare at this damn computer, searching job site after job site and then some of them again, pondering who else i can email. then the day is over and i spend the evening sitting and staring blankly at the tv. awesome existence i've made for myself over here.
i want and need a frickin' summer vacation, man. like the kind you have when you're 9 that's nothing but fun and breathing and laughter and sweat and homemade ice cream and seems like it goes forever and involves at least three trips to the beach. now this would also include frosty adult beverages, of course. i have this mythical "free time" right now; i'm babysitting two days and then at the soulpancake office from 11-4 on wednesdays, so tuesdays and fridays are wide-open. except that i'm so neurotic and worked up about needing to make money and finding a way out of the babysitting that i can't settle and organize myself to just sit and work on my book, or write a poem, or get all visual with my art-making. plus there's the house-cleaning and all that jazz to keep up with because if i can't pay my rent, i should at least make up for it in maid services.
some times more than others, it's rather difficult to be so completely crazy and chaotic whilst being a neurotic in desperate need of organization and classification and some sort of loose but defined schedule. if i had such a schedule, i could work some yoga or pilates into it and that would be really quite helpful...
Jun 12 2009
Happy Friday to us! There's also one more itty bitty one above these two and a bunch of blooms.
Jun 11 2009
we did. and this week our box had four lil' peaches on top. we're very excited about the peaches, though i had just found a good rhythm for eating strawberries all the time. i'm gonna miss them. if you're wondering what i'm on about, i shall back up and inform. we signed up with a CSA this summer (community supported agriculture); we pay a membership fee, basically to ensure we're going to be getting and paying for our food every week through the end of the season, then we pay $35 a week for a 1/2 box filled with delicious produce. we joined avalon acres, which is a sizeable farm outside of nashville worked by a few amish families. conveniently, one of their drop-off points is cmt, so we don't even have to make any effort to go get it. we signed up a couple of weeks late, so this is our third box and man are we loving it. it's like christmas every wednesday, only way more healthy.
plus we get a few new experiences out of the deal. our first box including a kohlrabi, or german turnip, which looked somewhat like what would happen if a turnip had sex with a beet. tasted like a turnip though. we had a bunch of radishes the first week (and this week too!) and because we waited too long to use the lil' carrots, inadvertently discovered that awesome joy that is the roasted radish. i think i actually said "where've you been all my life?" we've had napa cabbage, which we mostly ate raw in salads because we weren't 100% sure what it was the first time, other than delicious. yesterday we got a couple of yellow zucchini. nope, not yellow squash, zucchini, which are a lovely, daffodil yellow color and very smooth to the touch. my interwebbing tells me it's a hybrid and tastes pretty much like a green one.
i think the most exciting new discovery is the garlic scape, the long green stemmy part of the garlic that most people discard - to their own detriment. it has a very mild flavor that's somewhere between garlic and green onion, but also a little bit buttery. we've gotten some in every box thus far, and i'm hoping that we'll get many more since garlic isn't harvested until later in the summer. they can be used any way garlic or onions would be. i cut the first bit in bigger pieces and roasted them with some veggies and last week's batch went into loaded potato salad instead of onions. dee-licious! having never seen them before, i'm not sure where you could get them.
yesterday's box had potatoes, an onion, garlic scapes, a napa cabbage, a head of some sort of lettuce (haven't examined), carrots, yellow zucchini, yellow squash, radishes, a head of cauliflower, peas, dill, basil and some other herb that is very dark purple.
i haven't yet mentioned the almost best part for me because i'm a weirdo: i LOVE getting food with dirt on it. perhaps this stems from being a farm kid and growing up with the crazy belief that food came from the ground, IN the dirt, not some candy-colored flourescent-lit nightmare store out of a delillo novel. food. complete with dirt and stems. *aaaaahhh*
Jun 05 2009
i appreciate you, i really do. you've collected our escaped children and returned them to our yard on numerous occasions. you've shouted encouragement over the years at all our attempts to rehab those front flowerbeds. generally, you seem like a very nice lady, and i'm honestly more than a little fascinated by the odd and sizeable pack of dogs you have over there. the many sundry cars are also a point of interest. BUT.
why, oh why do you find 6:30 or 7 am to be the best time for your loud outdoor activities? fairly often you're out cutting your always-immaculate lawn, whilst we young deadbeats across the road are still lazily clinging to hour number 6.5 of sleep. the last three mornings you've been happily hammering away replacing the picket fence enclosing your always lovely front yard. this endeavor in general i whole-heartedly support, because that thing has long been losing the battle to the over-excited mastiffs and rottweilers who like to put their front paws on it to better keep tabs on the 'hood and bark at passers-by. they also are well-aware that they can push certain spots and free themselves for some brief exploration of the neighboring yard, and that 30 pound lil' rat terrier you have spent so much time outside your yard that we didn't know she was your dog for about a month. so, yay, new fence. but seriously, hammering before 7 in the frickin' morning? NOT COOL.