tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68983432011-04-21T19:01:11.054-04:00A window also reflects...Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.comBlogger731100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-33224073877903519482008-07-28T13:16:00.004-04:002008-07-28T13:21:52.980-04:00

I've decided that I get all the public exposure I want or need over at Suburban Guerrilla, where I post intermittently - sometimes more intermittently than others. As for my personal life, it's gone personal. If you are a friend or acquaintance and want an invitation to my private blog about my personal life or directions to other places I may be found online, please email me directly.Otherwise,

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-60742385495338710512008-04-23T16:05:00.003-04:002008-04-23T16:28:04.325-04:00

Wow, two in one day! (see you in six months).I'm posting here because there are two weeks left in the semester and it makes far more sense to be here procrastinating than it does to sit down and write all those papers.It does. Trust me.Writing here helps to...uh...warm up my writing muscles before diving into that paper all about the hell that was observing a 5th grade class for two days. And it

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-79669486398057730632008-04-23T15:59:00.002-04:002008-04-23T16:04:10.587-04:00

I was looking for one of those neat mats made from recycled plastic to use camping this summer, when I discovered this on ebay today: a rug crocheted from plastic bags. Hmm, more economical, less carbon shipping it around. Not as cool, but, well, it's to camp on. Guess it's time to crack open that "how to crochet" book collecting dust in the corner...

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-40912998215886771902007-11-15T14:42:00.000-05:002007-12-09T22:30:43.597-05:00

Ever since I read this article about the ubiquity of plastic molecules throughout the ocean, my entire relationship to consumption has changed. I cannot look at a piece of plastic without thinking of it winding up in the ocean killing creatures at every level on the food chain.In 2001, in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, we published the results of our survey and the analysis we had made of the

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-84990781235938029642007-07-20T10:09:00.000-04:002007-07-20T10:11:46.413-04:00

Dear Rep. Pelosi,I am writing to implore you to impeach.With his latest executive order, Bush has gone too far. Again. You are in a position where you can stop him. The only way I can stop him is to implore you and the other representatives to do so. In doing nothing, you are letting down not only every of us who worked so hard to elect democrats last November, but the entire American

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-8046583496061724032007-07-17T13:50:00.001-04:002007-07-17T14:06:05.563-04:00

Via Suburban Guerrilla, the horrible paradox of federally mandated HPV vaccination:Each vaccine shot will cost $120 through private insurance, or $96 through governmental programs buying at the federal rate. Those that have insurance may only need to pay a co-payment if it is offered by their provider and those on government assistance programs might not pay at all, but those without insurance

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-58249531252782247462007-07-13T10:19:00.001-04:002007-07-13T10:26:33.361-04:00

I went to Portland, OR a couple weeks ago & my best friend turned me onto the repurposing movement, in which you take something used and make something completely different out of it. She showed me clothing made out of multiple cut up t-shirts sewn together & restructured into something completely different. I never considered it as a movement - my parents built their hippie house in the woods

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-26872516009050461532007-03-16T13:53:00.000-04:002007-03-16T13:59:34.590-04:00

(cross-posted at Suburban Guerrilla)I have a soft spot for historic preservation.Our seventy-five year old house has pink and blue tiled kitchen walls that were drywalled over by some previous owner, presumably for the sake of sanity and the protection of household retina. But in the name of restoration, I ache to remove the drywall and restore the tiles no matter how nauseating a pastel pink and

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-48596338235531484732007-03-16T11:29:00.000-04:002007-03-16T11:32:45.691-04:00

I've had it. I'm sick and tired of giving and giving with no sign of a return anytime in the near future. I feel used and discarded, and I've had enough - I'm leaving.My career, that is.I wanted to be a massage therapist from the moment I received my first massage, back when I was a twenty-three year old advertising assistant, scraping by on twelve thousand a year and copious employer abuse for

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1169750192733433952007-01-25T13:31:00.000-05:002007-01-25T13:36:32.746-05:00

I'm part of the bench-warming team for Susie at Suburban Guerrilla, which leaves me zero time for posting here. Come by and visit - there's lots more posting - mostly political, but with some personal stuff in case you're just trying to keep up with my life. Like, for example, I got engaged. The rest of the team is worth reading, too. There's a reason why SG is my daily can't miss news stop.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1165602089584193412006-12-08T13:14:00.000-05:002006-12-08T15:21:54.743-05:00

Last night I decided that I'm not really the sort of person who suffers for beauty. I wear minimal make-up, I don't pluck, heck I can't even be bothered to shave for months on end - why did I think that I would not mind tending to five bleeding holes in my head?The answer is simple: I didn’t know I would have five bleeding holes in my head.See, when I went to my initial consult with Dr.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1165516913354027112006-12-07T13:38:00.000-05:002006-12-07T13:41:53.400-05:00

It all started in October, as we were dressing for my boss' wedding. I was putting in my contacts, because my glasses aren't suitably styled for formal occasions, and touched the mole on my eyelid as I raised it to insert my right contact lens."Man, I hate that thing," I mutter to myself."You DO?" asks the S.O., intruding on my internal conversation. "I always thought it didn't bother you."It

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1156906065465316492006-08-29T22:16:00.000-04:002006-08-29T22:49:53.436-04:00

It's not that I have nothing better to do than sit around watching for dirt on Wal-Mart. Really. It's just that they make it so. darn. easy. I'd suggest they change their name to "Target" if there weren't trademark issues.So I'm checking my email one last time tonight, in hopes that someone at Burning Man has developed an email teleportation device and decided at random to try it out on me.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1144432784235282652006-04-07T13:29:00.000-04:002006-04-07T13:59:44.310-04:00

Sweet mother of reason. I know I should be used to this sort of thing by now, but...well, I'm not. I can't be. I need to wake up in the morning with the belief that human life does matter to other people. If I become used to this, I might become used to Bush in office, or wars based on lies, or some other mass-hypnosis. At least I can deal with soda.The FDA has decided that they're going

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1143127545653953942006-03-23T10:08:00.000-05:002006-03-23T10:25:45.683-05:00

Communion wafers suck more moisture from your mouth than sin from your soul. The wine is little better, a bitter vinegary solution whose aftertaste is almost worse than total oral dehydration. But all that is behind us, now that we have Chocolate Deities!The sacred heart of Jesus is available in dark, milk, and "white" chocolate (though it's a whole separate sin to call something without any

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1143044269514558962006-03-22T11:02:00.000-05:002006-03-22T11:17:49.573-05:00

See, this is why I always ask my daughter what ideas she has when we have a problem to solve. Kids don't care about politics or the bottom line, they just want to help. You want to keep kids from dying of water-borne diseases? You don't hire a committee, you just go door-to-door and teach them how to wash their hands.The teenagers tend to avoid politics and corporate agendas and focus on

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1142272295991952032006-03-13T12:41:00.000-05:002006-03-13T12:51:36.023-05:00

I don't know about you, but there will be no more soda in my family. I had allowed citrusy caffeine free soda on rare occasions, but it looks like they're the biggest benzene factories of all.I'm looking forward to the various denial responses about how "my uncle/sister/neighbor drank this stuff growing up and is fine". If other people want to play chemical Russian Roulette with their family's

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1141931707068849362006-03-09T13:51:00.000-05:002006-03-09T14:15:07.100-05:00

First there was Rush Limbaugh. Then John Ashcroft (though to be fair, he was governor before anyone had even heard of Rush). And that whole Assembly Of God Church thing. There's far, far more, but it would take too long to catalog. Rest assured, Missouri has a long and sordid history of closed minded psuedo-religious idiots with loud voices. This stunningly unconstitutional attempt to create

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1138389998790566992006-01-27T14:13:00.000-05:002006-01-27T14:27:06.040-05:00

So much better than some time-wasting slot machine that only gives you a hit every few hundred dollars and meanwhile assaults your ears with soul-shattering blingy sounds. Far better than any drug that might leave you feeling strung-out and broke and craving more to the point that your integrity dissolves like an aspirin in warm water. Better even than good food, which is over all too soon and

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1138207521208046632006-01-25T11:16:00.000-05:002006-01-25T11:45:21.240-05:00

Can you believe people are still saying there's no such thing as global warming?Nevermind that there's snow in Hawaii, rain is finally coming to Arizona after a record dry streak (snow in Flagstaff), my mom reports that Chicago has been bizarrely warm, and here in New Jersey we're having such a warm winter that the bulbs are coming up and the buds on some of the spring shrubs are starting to pop.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1135792460211848652005-12-28T12:49:00.000-05:002005-12-28T12:54:20.220-05:00

For Christmas, my 8-year-old asked to help other kids around the world who don't feel as safe and secure with their families as she does with hers. So based on a friend's recommendation I made a donation in her name to Plan USA, a really wonderful non-religious charitable organization that helps children around the world. I couldn't afford to sponsor a child, but I did donate to the Childrens'

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1134406289233103492005-12-12T11:35:00.000-05:002005-12-12T11:51:29.266-05:00

Ah, science. Brilliant and self-serving. Utterly useless and yet absolutely vital. Millions of dollars in research to confirm what we already knew: there is no magic antioxidant bullet. Eating a balanced diet of unprocessed foods really is your best defense against cancer.Want to be healthy? Along with regular exercise (another rant altogether), Eat Something Different Every Day. Preferably

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1132332159784199632005-11-18T10:32:00.000-05:002005-11-18T11:42:52.243-05:00

Shopping has been an unofficial religion since about the 80's, when we began to build massive temples to the gods of commerce, with large anchor shrines on the ends to the greater deities (with escalators!). I suppose it was only a matter of time, then, before Consumerism became an Official Religion, tying itself more obviously to psuedo-spirituality through the buzzword of the moment:

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1131468049119091622005-11-08T11:37:00.000-05:002005-11-08T11:40:49.126-05:00

A truly awesome art project in which people anonymously mail in their secrets on homemade postcards. I can tell that this will be a regular stop on my work-avoidance route.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1131383704981134572005-11-07T12:11:00.000-05:002005-11-07T12:15:04.993-05:00

Yeah, okay, so it's starting to look like a vendetta. But, you know, whatever. Just go find someplace to watch this movie about why to shop anywhere but Wal Mart. If nothing else, you can congratulate yourself for being all subversive by going to some stranger's house to sit and watch a movie.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1131119471377868332005-11-04T10:33:00.000-05:002005-11-04T10:51:11.426-05:00

An old high school friend came home from Iraq last month. I talked to him last night for the first time in a year, anxious to hear how he made it through and if he was the person who left a year ago. Of course he isn’t. Neither am I.He spent a lot of time rebuilding schools and restoring or creating electrical grids, and generally cleaning up the community where he was stationed. He told me

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1130338004903005772005-10-26T10:32:00.000-04:002005-10-26T10:46:44.920-04:00

No matter how you dress it up. Sigh. Despite my little ray of hope, Wal-Mart is still all about the bottom line. Wooing eco-friendly people who generally avoid because of their horrible environmental record is worth spending money on. Taking care of employees, especially those nearing tenure (what the old school used to call "loyal"), not so much. They just eat up too much profit.And it's

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1129838141118053652005-10-20T15:46:00.000-04:002005-10-20T15:55:41.123-04:00

This goes out to everyone who wasn't sure whether it really made any difference at all to boycott retail stores because of their procurement practices. IT WORKS. Wal-Mart is tightening its environmental standards. They're even going to start selling organic cotton products.I don't know how thorough this will actually be, we'll have to see if their money goes anywhere near their mouths. If

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1129560939492282712005-10-17T10:47:00.000-04:002005-10-17T10:55:39.500-04:00

My dear friend Susie on the importance of maintaining a stance of compassion in the midst of exposing corruption, injustice, etc. I have not ever experienced the Great Cosmic Fuck of which she rhapsodizes. My experiences of the divine have always been like drips in the ceiling: little glimpses that keep me from falling back asleep, but too small to get me to jump all the way out of this warm

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1129222425894780912005-10-13T12:50:00.000-04:002005-10-13T12:53:45.900-04:00

Vatican University is teaching exorcism. No word on whether the students' new skills have effectively cleansed the Pope yet...

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1128612634972641342005-10-06T11:23:00.000-04:002005-10-06T11:31:46.026-04:00

Target is now selling sex toys. So is Amazon, for that matter.Huh. Well, while I'll still probably shop at my favorite alt shops, it's nice - albeit a tad surreal - to see sexual pleasure become acceptable enough to acquire at your local megacorporatehypermart. Of course, as long as airing extreme violence on tv is more acceptable than exposing a body part, there is still a long way to go

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1127498234905214522005-09-23T13:55:00.000-04:002005-09-23T13:57:14.913-04:00

A friend sent along this slogan generator. While I liked the Maya slogans, she was right - the swear words were the most fun. I will never grow up...

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1127240595938653112005-09-20T14:17:00.000-04:002005-09-20T14:23:15.943-04:00

Everytime I hear Todd Snider's "Ballad of the Kingsmen" on XPN, I just stop & listen & go "yeah, man!" "You know, every ten years of so, our country and some other little country, we start firing all our newest weapons at each other for some reason or another. Right or wrong, like it or not, it happens, and when it happens, people get shot. When people get shot, they show it on the news a lot,

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1125515487265579012005-08-31T15:00:00.000-04:002005-08-31T15:11:27.270-04:00

Susie over at Suburban Guerrilla posted this diatribe from a Georgia National Guardsman just killed in Iraq.Being the genexhibitionist I am, I really enjoyed the word husbandry of "fucktarded" even as I winced and my insides imploded at the scene over there.So I ask myself, "just how far into the vernacular has 'fucktarded' sunk its fangs?"Answerless, I questioned the oracle.It brought me to the

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1121276904878123052005-07-13T13:39:00.000-04:002005-07-13T13:53:24.700-04:00

Figured out the $50:Totally Gene Hackman:

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1120095473763330892005-06-29T21:00:00.000-04:002005-06-29T21:55:51.493-04:00

So we were sitting in the car at the gas station the other day and the SO says to me as he fondles the twenty that will barely fill the tank halfway, "I hear they made the new bills to look more like movie stars so that they will look more rugged and handsome."I hadn't heard that, but I opened my wallet and pulled out a ten-spot and gave it a long, hard look.Familiar...but not...quite...AHA! "

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1115828626762851302005-05-11T12:18:00.000-04:002005-05-11T12:23:46.766-04:00

I think about the excesses of being an American in the 20th century quite often, imagining that I could probably live without all that stuff, but telling myself that there's no way, in the midst of all this, that it would even be possible to try. But this woman in DC has done it. I mean, sure, at the end of it she gets to go back to the comfortable life. But still...it's not like I'm the one

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1114616171079664542005-04-27T10:51:00.000-04:002005-04-27T11:36:11.083-04:00

Farewell, bacon. Ciao, chicken. Bye bye, buffalo wings...you too, barbeque. See ya, sausage. My meat-eating days are over. Though I love you so, you are not so good to me and I have to move on. I'm going vegetarian. Not vegan - they'll have to pry the cheese from my cold, dead hands - but vegetarian. No meat. Anymore. *sniff* Ever.I've been toying with the notion of going veg for

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1114211746282441622005-04-22T19:15:00.000-04:002005-04-27T11:37:45.130-04:00

Make your own South Park character. This is either me or Nicole Kidman. Only in South Park could we possibly look anything alike...

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1113851328568900902005-04-18T14:43:00.000-04:002005-04-18T15:08:48.570-04:00

Okay, I admit it. Last week I went to Burger King for my quarterly hungry-but-too-busy-to-stop dose of junk food. For what it's worth, it was a BK veggie with cheese, no fries, and a bottle of water. So I'll only die like five years early, not fifteen.But, as a TV-deprived pop-culture dropout, imagine my horror when I pulled into the drive-thru and they're advertising this THING, this billion

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1113415376028394832005-04-13T13:25:00.000-04:002005-04-13T14:02:56.030-04:00

Mom sent me an email asking for my take on Wal-Mart's sudden environmental largesse.Well,1) $35 million is a drop in the bucket for Wal-Mart (cheaper than an ad campaign).2) Many environmentalists & other activists decry Wal-Mart for many, many valid reasons, like3) Wal-Mart has fought in many localities to build in violation of the Clean Water Act, among other things. Google walmart

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1112818018749534012005-04-06T16:01:00.000-04:002005-04-06T20:35:12.866-04:00

I am so addicted to Google's new satellite feature. Now I can look at the playa anytime. Why it is that I'm wistful for a giant pile of gypsum dust and a bunch of drunken freaks, I can't entirely explain. The fact that I am will just have to do. This year me & the S.O. are road-tripping it. I can hardly wait.Think I'll go buy some day-glo yarn & knit me a playa costume!

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1112029692415854332005-03-28T11:51:00.000-05:002005-03-28T12:08:12.423-05:00

For my daughter's eighth birthday I bought her a knitting starter kit. It seemed like the sort of thing she might enjoy, especially on car trips and things like that. And, you know, anything that both absorbs some of her endless kinetic energy and turns out a nice scarf is a good thing.Problem is, she's left handed & all the instructions are produced for a right-hand-centric society. Evidently

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1111025551770151722005-03-16T21:00:00.000-05:002005-03-16T21:12:31.816-05:00

Wow, the dust is so thick in here it muffles your footsteps! The structure seems intact, though.Figured since I'm filling in for Susie and she's actually going to link to me where actual people will read my actual words, I'd better clean up a bit.Dragging this old thing through the wormhole from me in November to me in March is...something like trying to push a Mack truck up a mountain with the

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1100233287173060582004-11-11T23:12:00.000-05:002004-11-11T23:21:27.173-05:00

Okay, okay, so maybe daily posting was a bit..ambitious. The weekend was all school, a quick trip to Baltimore for a PDF meeting, then up to CT for three days to do marathon chair massage at a poker tournament. What a freakin' study that was. These people play for days, some don't even leave the table to shower or change clothes. Then they want a massage...at the table...while they play. I

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1094587300152750312004-09-07T15:44:00.000-04:002004-09-07T16:49:59.476-04:00

I am sitting in the public library in Reno, Nevada. My typing is horrible because I haven't touched a keyboard in nearly two weeks. The library is decorated in lush plants and fountains, in wild contrast to the dusty wasteland I called home for the past week. Right now green is still the most beautiful color in the world and water is a precious substance. I have two hours before I can check in

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1093465053490484992004-08-25T15:51:00.000-04:002004-08-25T16:17:33.490-04:00

Pink wig...check. Silver vinyl pants...check. Leopard print platform boots...check. Podbelt, platypus, goggles, respirator...check, check, check and check. I am nearly packed for the greatest participants-only show on Earth. Ten days of freedom and laughter and dust and music and bonding and bondage and things I have yet to even fathom that I'll probably never be able to fully describe, with

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1093286802767931412004-08-23T13:40:00.000-04:002004-08-23T14:46:42.766-04:00

You know, after awhile you get used to all the 15 hour days and penny pinching and nail biting and hand wringing and self flagellation and knocking over piles of dishes and unopened mail and you think, "hey, man, I'm bored! All the adrenaline used to key me up and I'd run around like a hamster on crack, but now I'm just tired and disaffected." And you realize that you've stomped the steel-toed

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1092410615807327712004-08-13T11:21:00.000-04:002004-08-13T11:25:15.336-04:00

Of all the Mercury retrograde info shocks in the world, Governor McGreevy has come out of the closet. It’s all anyone is talking about here in Jersey. Anyone who says men don’t gossip was not in our break room moments after the big speech. I happened to catch a couple clips from his announcement in a Chinese takeout restaurant while I waited for my noodles last night. What really touched me was

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1090413215405136102004-07-21T08:27:00.000-04:002004-07-21T08:33:35.406-04:00

Goddamn I'm tired.  Aside from parenting/work/romance/massage/custody issues/legal issues/health issues/getting ready for Burning Man (got a velvet pink leopard print tank top the other day!), I also started an excelerated English Comp II class at the beginning of July.  Reading, research, essays.  Sigh...  Leaves little room for writing here, alas.  Something does have to give.  For now this is

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1088624965022344572004-06-30T15:25:00.000-04:002004-06-30T15:49:25.023-04:00

I just want to take a moment to state the obvious: there is a special room in hell, no make that an entire greasy, burning blood-drenched screaming miasmic underworldly layer, reserved entirely for the makers of adware. Harsh? Maybe. But keep in mind, I am one of those people who truly believes that everything in the world has an important role, however subtle. I even doggedly researched the

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1088527328790658022004-06-29T11:02:00.000-04:002004-06-29T12:42:08.790-04:00

Did I actually forget, as all the giddy syrupy romantic bliss and ongoing domestic drama of my past mistakes collide in the filter of my current growth, to tell you that I am going to Burning Man?! Then let me do it now. Close your eyes. Imagine me leaping around like a 10 year old girl hopped up on pixie stix and Coca Cola and Justin Timberlake. Hear my voice, shrill and chirpy and

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1088024408733899482004-06-23T16:34:00.000-04:002004-06-28T17:11:31.666-04:00

Ah, growth. That gorgeous, confusing, hyper-aware time in which your theories on life, so casually slung about like eggs on some greasy spoon griddle wind up with their yolks unceremoniously broken on the sticky spatula of experience. When everything you ever thought you knew, that looked so good on paper, doesn't hold up to real life. Simultaneously exhilarating and humiliating, you swell

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1087407048688198902004-06-16T13:05:00.000-04:002004-06-16T13:30:48.690-04:00

Nothing like a bunch of new people in your life to shake your psyche up like a little snow globe. Trouble is, the way the flakes fall look awfully familiar. But I guess sometimes you have to get out of your customary context in order to see that clearly. Most of the time our unconscious stuff just fades into the background of experience, a slow muzak that hums quietly just below perception.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1086714045771285932004-06-08T12:35:00.000-04:002004-06-08T13:00:55.913-04:00

The time since I returned home from PDF has been a rapid, rapid shifting of my reality. Sorry to be so quiet here, but it's durned hard to relate all this movement into so few dimensions. To even list them all seems so inadequate, and really so irritatingly airy-fairy that it only serves to trivialize the depth of my recent experiences. I guess I should just pick a detail and wax on (wax off)

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1086190914716328072004-06-02T11:24:00.000-04:002004-06-02T13:54:53.500-04:00

Sometimes you just have to get away from the ordinary. Preferably far away. Where not a single McDonald’s wrapper flaps mockingly from the grass, where the fastest speed you can travel is the one your legs move you at, and since you have nowhere to be, that’s not very fast. A place where you get up early because you can’t wait to see what sort of wild orgiastic feast of human experience awaits

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1085776397093075722004-05-28T15:57:00.000-04:002004-05-28T16:44:38.883-04:00

I'm still pretty volatile. Every time I think I've made friends with the beast, I seem to drop a little deeper into my anger, right up to its hard and terrifying edge. It occurs to me as I write this that massage works by the same principal, namely that it takes far more effort (and far more pain on the part of the recipient) to force your way through tension than it does to drop in gently and

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1085682066517495952004-05-27T14:12:00.000-04:002004-05-27T14:21:06.516-04:00

Guess what?! Grist Magazine liked my haiku! They had a contest & I'm a finalist (maybe five years in advertising weren't ALL for naught). I don't get anything for it, other than the joy of having my anonymous words plastered all over a tshirt, but that's good enough for me. So I'm doing what any lowlife subject to a vote count does, I'm trying to load the ballot box. If you care about me at all,

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1085666879326144072004-05-27T09:23:00.000-04:002004-05-27T10:07:59.326-04:00

Ugh. Yesterday wound up being a "mental health day." Argued with my daughter for what seems like the 900th morning in a row. She is a budding Rosa Parks - she has passive resistance down pat. "It's time to brush your hair now." "No." "Okay, then you can either brush your teeth or make your lunch." "I don't want to do either." "Okay, then take a time out and get to a place where you feel

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1085504286905689242004-05-25T12:13:00.000-04:002004-05-25T16:17:51.773-04:00

I am positively salivating. Only three days between me and two and a half days of strange, vibrant, unruly, juicy communal bliss. It has been too many long years. I thirst so deeply for this sort of event, it's distracting. I'm not even remotely ready, though I found someone on freecycle to come and take away all the crap in storage that separates me from my camping gear. I have a list of

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1085171541419028712004-05-21T16:01:00.000-04:002004-05-21T16:32:21.420-04:00

So last night I dreamed about the perfect man. I'm not one to dream about strangers, nor am I one to meet them at dream Starbucks. But, oddly enough, I did last night. Someone who can keep up with my random philosophies and my sense of humor, who always has something to say that I never would have thought of, who is playful or intense or thoughtful at the appropriate times, knows nature well,

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1085065275576115002004-05-20T09:44:00.000-04:002004-05-20T11:01:15.576-04:00

I've been a bit irritable this past week. My trigger is set to hair, and just about everyone is driving me nuts. Thank goodness for computers, or I would have cut down my own personal tree to do all the Judge Your Neigbor worksheets I've needed this week. Course that only helps if you're doing them. I've managed one, which isn't gonna help much, since my thoughts are racing with a multitude

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1084845358809965142004-05-17T21:37:00.000-04:002004-05-17T21:55:58.810-04:00

What a day. Sometimes life makes total sense. Sometimes I feel like someone gave me the manual in Japanese. I'm feeling sort of speechless (thank goodness for archives). The poem below sums it up pretty well (somehow I wrote it 5 years ago; it was one of my first). Tomorrow is another day...thankfully. FRUSTRATION If there were somehow a way To dissolve myself and to become Part of

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1084642719243158782004-05-15T12:58:00.001-04:002004-05-15T22:26:58.000-04:00

Parenting is not (alas) all trips to the science center and birthday parties and touching bedtime stories. There is an element of parenting that is sheer endurance. Sometimes its sleepless nights, or coitus interruptus, or "no, really, I promise for the 5,972nd time, there is no such thing as monsters/bloody mary/__________, but yes, you can climb into bed with me at 2am again tonight." But

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1084459968757847382004-05-13T10:12:00.000-04:002004-05-13T23:18:26.106-04:00

On Highway 5 in Washington heading south toward Portland, Oregon, there is a billboard that reads, in giant block letters, "believe in the lord and thou shalt be saved," along with some random scripture citation from the book of Acts. As our car whizzed past it in the fading daylight, I sighed and rolled my eyes, as I often do when confronted with unsightly acts of religious zeal, the visual

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1084308975386095572004-05-11T16:51:00.000-04:002004-05-11T16:56:15.386-04:00

So evidently even exterminators think honeybees are beneficial. They are testing one of them to make sure they are honeybees (visions of tiny paternity tests and maybe a little buzzing Judge Judy), and if so, they will vacuum them up and take them somewhere more appropriate to colonizing. Good news! Both for the bees and my chemical load... Course this whole saga brings me right back to that

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1084284466806743362004-05-11T09:14:00.000-04:002004-05-11T10:07:46.806-04:00

We have bees. Not like two, like hundreds. They are flying around the rafters and the light fixtures, which are flourescent stick bulbs suspended from the ceiling and covered with a yellow mesh. Vaguely retro in character. But evidently the warmth and the light of the flourescent bulbs, the mesh (which is like ready-made honeycomb), and the proximity to the roof soffits were just too much

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1084212941176415732004-05-10T14:06:00.000-04:002004-05-10T14:15:41.176-04:00

I talked through 30 minutes of my lunch hour today. It's a gorgeous day here in Philadelphia & I wanted to get out and walk. I got all the way into my car, started the engine, and released the emergency brake before I realized that driving to the park would cut 10 minutes off my outside time. I turned off my car and decided to walk around the Navy yard here where I work. Instead of seeking

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1083963766060669052004-05-09T09:17:00.000-04:002004-05-09T09:22:16.733-04:00

So I just stumbled across this major cultural flaw: we raise our kids to act one way because it’s easier on us as parents, but then the rules of adult life are completely different. So as young adults we go out into the world completely unequipped, then we spend our entire adult lives struggling uphill against the habits that were so carefully ingrained in us as kids. Like “don’t talk back,”

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1083962282127396242004-05-07T16:35:00.000-04:002004-05-07T16:42:30.216-04:00

Found this that I wrote back in June 2002. As Venus heads into Gemini for some big astrology/astronomy, I find this to still be pertinent now, but with some different nuances having experienced the past 2 years of my life. Enjoy! ------------------------------------------------------------------ So, it being Gemini time and all, I guess it’s appropriate that I am currently grappling with a

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1083866915271979452004-05-06T13:32:00.000-04:002004-05-06T14:25:48.793-04:00

More tragic photos of tortured Iraqis this morning as the hideous slow motion S&M horror movie of our times plays out. As Mark Morford would say, hell readies a room. I keep searching for a punchline, something to lighten the tremendous load of shame of being an American right now. Something like "hey, people pay good money for that sort of treatment here!" But it only serves to highlight the

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1083789777821761522004-05-05T16:05:00.000-04:002004-05-05T16:48:44.996-04:00

I can see this is going to cut into my...um...productivity. See, you can't see me muffling a grin here, it sort of loses the effect...oh well. I went to the park at lunch today, full of energy and wanting to experience and notice. Walking from my car, I noticed the locusts will bloom soon, and the oak leaves are getting bigger. The water is up from all the rain. I saw a turtle jump off an

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1083764537261018312004-05-05T09:41:00.000-04:002004-05-05T16:50:04.983-04:00

So it's time to start writing again. I was afraid to for the past couple years, & my words dried up like an old creek bed & I've just been sitting around examining the cracks. My fear was that SHE would read it (and judge me). It was a convenient setup, that's for sure. She got to be the projection of my harsh inner critic. When that voice is outside of me I'm a victim, when it's coming from

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712noreply@blogger.com0