29

my mom came for thanksgiving and all i got was this lousy cold.  well, that's not actually true at all.  i got the pleasure of her company and a rug which really ties the whole (living) room together and a great thanksgiving feast that lasted me through lunch today and office furniture and a respite from the early weekend morning habieinsanity and an amaaaaaaaaaaaaazing vacuum that both cleans and makes me feel bad about the apparent filth i was living in before i met its DUAL CYCLONIC ways.  not to mention lots of crucial mom conversations where i whine about not knowing where my life is going and she sympathetically nods and listens and then says something wise that makes me feel better, at least until the next wave of panic. 

but forreals:  she leaves and i get sick.  coincidence?  well, probably.  or else some weird psychosomatic thing since i only started feeling bad when her departure neared.  and of course she made me gargle salt water and load up on vitamin c and water and tea with honey and sleep and zinc.  but still!  she's been gone for a day and despite continuing the mom regimen, i appear to be fighting a losing battle with the beasty.  it's still in the early "my head feels like it's a balloon" stages, so i predict a full touch down on wednesday.  which is also the predicted first day of snow.  oh winter, i haven't missed you at all.  and true, i'm not in michigan anymore, so i really have no cause to complain, but being on the far eastern edge of the central time zone means that it's dark by five pm and a wee depressing. 

tonight i was full of good intentions, but they got lost in self-pity, so i just lay on my couch and did lots of creepy internet searches.  not creepy because i'm looking up anything illegal or super weird.  just really incredibly random, with a side helping of google stalking people i don't talk to anymore.  once a friend decided to type in a letter on my computer and see what google autofilled from my previous searches.  this quickly rose to the top ten of things coty freaks out about and is (perhaps irrationally) unable to have a sense of humor about.  (also on the list?  jumping out from behind things and scaring me; putting meat on my plate; haley joel osment)

no really, i swear:  it's not the individual searches so much as the combination of dozens of them.  plus i'm weirdly good at extracting that golden link on, oh say the seventh page of results that leads to someone else's waaaay too confessional blog.  it's a skill!  really!

but anyhow, i started feeling worse and worse this evening.  and--this is most likely the cold medicine i just took talking--i began to think:  what if lying around wasting hours on the internet doesn't make one feel better?!?! 

and because i'm a sucker for clean starts and new leafs and beginnings*, i happened to remember that tomorrow is december first, and so i decided to make a new month resolution:  no more mindless internetting for the rest of 2009.  i can check my email and read my google reader and buy christmas presents and watch friday night lights and even post things like this--let's be reasonable here.  but navigating the world wide web without a set purpose and goal?  nunca. 

ideally, this would mean that i'd become super-productive and get the rest of my office/craft room (oh yes, you read that right.) set up and finish my shopping before vacation and call all the people i've been neglecting for the last few months and maybe even think about real writing again.  but baby steps.  even if all i do is play "klondike" (is the name solitaire trademarked or something?) on my bbry and watch hgtv?  this is still, sadly and incredibly, a definite step up.

to kick it middle-school-style: this could be a long december.


* i do not eff around with resolutions.  not eating meat?  started as a new year's resolution . . . for 1995.  in 2008, i gave up celebrity gossip and made it all the way to finals, which is particularly impressive considering britney spears had her meltdown about two days into the year and yet i still refrained.  obviously i consider that a much harder feat than the not-eating-meat thing. 




even with a codependent dog at my feet, i am not a fun under the weather (as captured by my mom this weekend)

(this post brought to you by alka seltzer cold & cough)

28

depressed by the game, sober on the third saturday in november for the first time in years, and decidedly not in the mood to clean the kitchen and living room floors, i went on a walk this afternoon.  with habie AND my blackberry.  i live in a historic district (encompassing an entire three blocks), and so most of the people around me 1) own their homes and thus 2) work on their lawns.  A LOT. the pressure to landscape is only encouraged by the official powers-that-be, who bestow a "yard of the month" award on the front lawn that best fulfills the aims of the founding fathers of hoptown.*

i take habes on the same few routes and so i've gotten pretty familiar with the different sights.  until now, i've refrained from photographing the curiosities since i didn't want to be labeled a creepster.  however, despondent over tate's second-half performance, i threw caution to the wind.  behold:

while most places i've lived have adhered to the "christmas decorations after thanksgiving" rule, hoptonians laugh in the face of calendar-based tenets (see also:  white shoes after labor day).  this crèche has been up since the beginning of november. 

do i encourage habie to pee in the yard that displays the black jockey lawn ornament?  do you really need to ask? (and yes, i realize that you didn't actually ask, but just go with my rhetorical device!)

 

dear kandy,  we'll go ahead and disagree.  love, strunk & white

but i digress, because there's something very important that i want to discuss:  the ubiquitousness of finials in this hood.  perhaps seen as symbolic bulwarks of the hearth, these heavy, concrete-cast ornaments are generally found closer to the front porch rather than the sidewalk.  

not only are finials prevalent, but the types of finials are highly prescribed.  especially valued are two different figures.

figure # 1:  the lion

it's not surprising that lions appear so often:  symbols of strength and power, lions often appear as noble protectors in myriad cultural depictions.  (see:  aslan, richard the first, sri lanka's flag, mgm's logo, simba.  but see:  the cowardly lion before he was off to see the wizard).  area residents have embraced paired lions at the entrance to the house, watching and guarding, in a decorating choice that calls to mind patience and fortitude up north. 

the classic lion look

this house displays winged lions at their side door.  perhaps they are venetian?

little lion, big world?



figure # 2:  the pineapple

while the lion connotes strength and seriousness, the pineapple sends a message of fun and frivolity.  or a love of tropical drinks?  i don't have an effin' clue.  according to the googs, pineapples are symbols of hospitality, especially of the southern ilk, but different websites that state this only further confuse the issue when trying to explain why.  but if pineapples are meant to communicate "c'mon in!" then my neighbors are some of the friendliest people in america.

this is the classic pineapple shape with a colorful twist.  i think they look stupid.  perhaps not-so-coincidentally, these are the neighbors who let their hedges grow onto the sidewalk, forcing habie and me to walk in the street and risk life and (six) limb(s).

 

a spin on the standard:  the elongated leafless variety.  one might argue that these look more like footballs, but that one would be quickly labeled a philistine and brought back in line through social shaming.

symmetrical finials is of the utmost importance.  while some variation is allowed with other decor elements, paired identical finials anchor

while unpaired finials report feelings of unease and helplessness.  :(  :(  :(

also uneasy:  me every morning when i drive down the street and encounter this house.  i get that lots of construction is going on and it is clearly a work-in-progress:

but that doesn't explain WHY ON EARTH IS THERE A DOOR ON THE SECOND FLOOR WITH NO STAIRCASE!?!?!

i recommend a pair of lion finials for this house, since i don't think "welcome!  come in!" should be the message it's going for just yet.   



* while this is not explicitly cited as the criteria for YOTM, it can and should be inferred.

27

today, probably because of this article, i thought of the game show debt (hosted by wink! martindale!), which was on during my year o'home school and so i watched it evvvvveryday.  the conceit behind the show is that there're three people who announce at the beginning that they're in debt because of school or love gone wrong or an obsession with star wars action figures.  it's basically like jeopardy except that everyone starts in the negatives based on how much money they owe.  instead of a final jeopardy-like end round, however, a player could double down and bet her debt and be asked a single question based on a pop culture subject of her choosing.  so one person would pick star trek and someone else would opt for the monkees and yet another went with caddyshack.  the bet your debt questions were hard, and when someone got it wrong, you could see this panic flash across her face as she realized that maybe she wasn't davy jones's biggest fan after all.

it's that little part of game (show) theory that captivated me so, keeps me going:  how do you choose one subject to master?  what is finitely knowable?  when joyce brothers, who is neither dr. ruth nor dr. laura thankfully, had to become the expert in one area for the $64,000 question, she picked boxing and apparently memorized twenty volumes of a boxing encyclopedia.  and damn if girl didn't take it all home. twice.

i read that in a trivia book, i think, one of the yellowed paperbacks from the seventies or eighties that lined my dad's bookshelves.  i'd sit and go through these books like they were food; i didn't read them, i chewed my way through.  chapter 12, sports and leisure?  bring it on, and i'd sit there on the window seat learning all about the dodgers of ebbets field times.  or food and drink, where one page could take you from drinking games in germany to tea ceremony customs of feudal japan to what state consumes the most potato chips per capita (this is apparently an ungoogleable fact?  and i forgot the answer!).  the only thing common to all this information was that it was culled together by some nameless, faceless staff who apparently felt that a book wouldn't be complete without both descriptions of llama courtship and the best of mae west quips ("between two evils, i always pick the one i've never tried before").

even when i stopped with the trivia books, i didn't stop with the trivia:  it's just mutated into 90s TV stars:  where are they now? and trashy trashy celebrity gossip.  but there is a limit:  when you decide to learn everything about one area, another must be sacrificed.  when i was abroad and stuck with creaky dial-up that rarely lasted for more than five minutes, something had to go, and that was sports:  goodbye heisman finalist histories and ERA stats and a complete rundown of women's ice skating olympic champions (if only i were joking about the last one).  when i got to law school? farewell memorized passages of mrs. dalloway.  there is only so much that can stay in.  and so the whole game becomes a juggling act:  what goes up and what needs to be thrown out, or at least packed away in the back of the closet for a while (and it's true:  "so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster."  but others are like bone marrow, and i'm not ready for aspiration just yet).

for all of this worry, i don't think i'm actually good at most of this, because i'm not a master of anything.  well-meaning, sure, but i can't seem to keep on something past g, much less x or y.  there are started-but-not-finished projects all over--bags of crafty things that once had designs, pictures that need to be framed and hung, to-do lists on post-its that have long since fallen behind the nightstand/desk (in my office office, not home office.  i haven't gotten around to getting that yet), piles all over the utility room.

and maybe the hardest part of all is that in order to get good, you have to be bad.  you have to be bad over and over and over until you want to throw up and pull the comforter over your head and never ever try again.  and you have to doing all this failing without knowing if there's a point to it, if you're ever going to be really good, much less great.  i mean, i could try 10,000 cartwheels, and i'm sure i'd be a lot better at the end than i am now (hahahahahahaha), but that doesn't mean that i'd ever hang with bela karolyi.  there are some things that are hard, and you do them because it's good for you, sure.  but there are other things that make more sense--even when you're not good, there's something worth holding onto and returning to.  telling the difference when it's rough going can seem impossible. 

i had my first two suppression hearings today.  lost them badly.  lost them both and cried in the car and cried after getting a limeade from sonic and then cried on the phone with my mom.  "you'll win more, cotes," she said, but all i could reply was "well, i can't win less."  oof.  and yeah yeah yeah i'm a puppy lawyer and it's tough at the beginning and all my talkers of pep keep reassuring me that i'll get better.  but how much?  how fast?  when and where and how?  it's like i just started my own game of debt:  i'm 2 in the hole now and sadly my bet your debt category will  have nothing to do with the cast of full house.

26

when you get a dog, especially one that's part german shepherd, you worry that your dog will be out of control or overly aggressive.  and when that dog and you drop out of obedience school, that worry grows.  what if she never learns to stop jumping up?  what if she bites someone outside the house who isn't so forgiving next time (sorry liz! and mom! and kate!)?  what if she confuses the neighbor's new daschund puppy with a squirrel?

you know she's not a mean dog, that she just wants to play, but girl plays rough.  when she wakes you up at six am one morning and you have the audacity to brush her away, she grazes your face with her nails and you show up at work with a scratch under your eye.  at least it was an accident (you hope).  but now that she's forty-five pounds, things are less cute and more dangerous.

she's not a bad dog.  most of the time she's pretty calm, when it's just the two of you.  she's afraid of the swiffer and she cries when she can't get to you.  she sits on the back of the couch like a cat (she's doing that as you type this, her butt pressed up against your neck as she surveys the street) and rolls over to have her belly scratched.  after a day of doggie day care  (you know that it's bougie, but it's also a lifesaver at $8 a day), she comes home so exhausted that she slumps on the floor and snores while you watch 30 rock or british tv shows on hulu.  she puts up with more cuddling than she needs to, and you often pick her up when she's curled up at the other end of the couch and she nestles her head in the crook of your neck and settles next to you and goes to sleep.  when she barks, she barks to protect you and her and the house, and you kinda like knowing exactly what time the neighbors get home or take their garbage can to the street early tuesday mornings.

and so you practice sitting and heeling and "off!" and you buy/are gifted tons of chew toys.  every morning you play fetch with her rope toy and every evening she gets a teaspoon of peanut butter (unsalted, obviously) in her kong.  on non-day care days, she gets long walks.  and most of the time, it's all right, or it's gonna be, anyway.

and when the bloodlust appears, you are very very very grateful that it's directed at inanimate objects.


RIP monster.  your service and sacrifice was not in vain.

 

 

25

there's a lot to love about this new yorker article about robots.

this line alone knocks my socks off:  "gerontologists have observed that, when fish tanks are introduced into a nursing home, residents congregate to watch the fish; this not only sparks more conversation among the residents but also encourages healthier eating."  not because it's amazingly written (no offense jerome groopman--it's just not hemingway-level prose), but because of everything it evokes. 

it makes me picture a sterile environment, one not even white but that off-grey shade, with the flecked tiles on the floor and salmon formica halfway up the walls.  and in this place that you can't believe anyone could bear, at the end of the hallway, there's a sitting room, filled with those hospital waiting room chairs in patterns the textile equivalent of muzak, and the chairs are pushed to the sides to make room for wheelchairs, and just when it becomes too much, just when you have to get out of there, run to the front door, and breathe in air untouched by all this sad resignation, you notice that there's a glass bowl on the top of a counter.  and inside the bowl are rocks and some grass and one orange body that just swims around and around, in a circle.  not fast at all, but fast enough.  and it just keeps going, and so do you.

and another reason to love the article?  it talks about "the uncanny valley," and that just makes me think of tracy jordan and his porn video game.  tracy jordan!  why are you the BEST EVER?  and why did i just discover this website and sit there reading it for ten minutes?  i mean besides the fact that i can because we didn't go to obedience school tonight and ain't ever goin' back.  see you never, crazy teabagger lady!

this entry brought to you by my all-popsicle dinner and its ensuing sugar high and low.  being old enough to know better made them all the more delicious.