elephantine

moo

Japanese linen tape from A Little Goodness and Odds and Ends from Field and Sea.

On the bus ride home, out of nowhere, I hear: "Cows? Cows!... he said that? Cows?!" I glance back – it's coming from these two girls that I often see sitting together. One of them – the one with the dark hair – has a history of showing up to the bus stop either immediately before or immediately after me. The other girl usually boards a few stops down the route.

"Cows!" I hear again. "Really, he said 'cows'?!"

The three of us all get off at the same stop. As I'm trekking up the hill, the two of them are walking in the same direction, but on the other side of the street. One more time I hear, with slight variation (all together now): "Chickens and cows!"

the beginning

Paul & Joe and Phillip Lim Spring 2008.

I'm already in denial about how hot it's going to be today. 90, you say, little weather widget? No. You must be kidding. You must have a fever.

Yesterday (not quite as hot, but close) we hid indoors during the more saturated, burning part of the day and were out and about in the morning and evening. In the morning there was a car show within walking distance – I can't recognize a Nova to save my life, but I understand the pride and nostalgia and all that. In the evening, we made a run to the discount bookstore, and let's just say that it was a godforsaken heat trap in that place, and the heightened scent of aged paperbacks did it no favors. But I found what I was looking for: a hefty medical reference book for the novel. (My story is not health-themed by any means, but I need to get things right when they do come up.) I worked on my outline for an hour or two, figured out the first of many problem areas.

And (I promise not to continually blog about this, because I don't think it's very interesting to anyone other than myself) I feel the need to add a caveat to my previous declaration about writing the novel: this is not one of my countless spur-of-the-moment projects. It's not like the crafts, the pasta making, the occasional mixtape. I have had the hankering to write this book since fourth or fifth grade. It's been lingering, boneless and restless, in the back of my head. With recent inspiration from other novels, setting a daily routine, and some support on your end (I'm not fishing for it – I'm just pointing out that the comments left for the other post were appreciated threefold), now feels like a good time to seriously get to it. So. I'm getting to it.

Today's unrelated checklist: find a new colander with feet and a ladle that doesn't cost $30 (sorry, Whole Foods). Find new summer clothes, because mysteriously, all my skirts are either too big or too tiny. Find a way to savor the weather without being scorched alive.

pop and rock

In case you're not on the mailing list: exclusive video recordings of Radiohead's In Rainbows are now available on iTunes, shot by the indie music series folks over at From The Basement. The videos were all captured in a single day. I'm downloading All I Need and Nude as we speak.

Yesterday beau and I were meandering around Fred Meyer when I spotted their (lo-fi) fireworks display. "Oh, come on, we have to get some Pop-its!" I insisted, but then I grabbed one of the boxes and the top fell open, revealing that there was nothing inside. A speck of saw dust, maybe, but nothing else. Whoever you are, you thief, I hope the guilt is eating away at you. Who steals Pop-its? They're, like, seventy-five cents. (This reminds me of once when I was little, and I had my hands in my pockets when we were checking out at the grocery store. The cashier was giving me a suspicious eye, and my mom warned me, "She probably thinks you stole some chapstick or something." Even to this day, I often get nervous about what to do with my hands when leaving stores.)

smells like sweet spirits

Just discovered this lovely jewelry from Lauren Haupt.

As I'm waiting for the bus this morning, I'm thinking, "Something seems a little too familiar. I don't know what it is, but it feels like I'm somewhere else." Then I sniff my wrists and remember that I had put on a certain lotion that I hadn't used for several months. When I get on the bus, it is an entirely new wave of smells, unusually pleasant, a mix of plumeria flowers and after shave and incense.

Now, (skip this part if you don't want to hear about my novel-writing ramblings) today I also officially figured out a deadline for my book: 7 years from now (and in an ideal world, more like 5). Roughly 500 pages. Outline done by end of this August, before my birthday. Main reasons: that time frame seems comforting enough not to induce panic but a hard enough number to get me going; I have an unwarranted desire to write it before I'm 30; and Sylvia Plath had completed The Bell Jar by that age. The 500 page thing I'm not stuck on by any means, but that's the kind of weight and depth I'm going for. So, there, just wanted to get it on the record.

Hope your friday is most excellent.

bloom

Feel like wearing: Hana Sandals from Revolve and Ksubi Sunglasses from tobi.

There are these really tiny yellow flowers that have sprouted up between our balcony and the neighbor's fence. In my peripheral vision, I consistently mistake them for a reflection of mini Christmas lights. They waver in the exact spot that I had spotted a spider web a month ago, when we were sitting out there in new camping chairs, eating potato salad and letting Rufus roll in the dead leaves.

the big and little things

Meet the Schaffas.

Done and done: Middlesex is now officially one of my favorite reads. There may be nothing better than a well-written five hundred page novel. (Besides, of course, a nine hundred pager.) Next up to bat is Amanda Davis' Wonder When You'll Miss Me. McSweeney's is home to the Amanda Davis Hirewire Fiction Award (founded in 2004, in her memory) and is something I'd apply to in a heartbeat if not for the terrifying requirement of sending "a work in progress, between 5,000 and 40,000 words." So, let's change that to: I'll apply to it in maybe five years, after a million or two heartbeats, when my roman à clef notes have liquefied into something tangible.

You know what I always think is funny? Stores that usually only sell one commodity, but then start throwing a couple of other ones in for good measure. For instance, we were in a small bookstore after dinner tonight, ninty-five percent stocked with heavily dog-eared books, and then there's one swiveling rack of DVDs in the front, featuring maybe twelve movies at the most. I basically interpret it to say, "Your kid/spouse doesn't like to read? This should do the trick – much less commitment required."

There were also three plastic snakes on sale near the childrens' books, wrapped in crinkled cellophane, tongues permanently jutted out.

trapped in paradise

Amazing hand embroidered work from Takashi Iwasaki and, swoon, the Olivetti Valentine Typewriter, circa 1969.

Rufus loves nothing more than Q-tips. His face lights up as soon as he spots one (and don't even ask me how they escape from the container), with a gleam in his eyes that screams, "PURE GOLD! MINE, ALL MINE!" And then he pounces, tortures, and attempts to eat the little white swabs. He keeps himself entertained until he accidentally knocks one under the door of our shoe closet, which is followed by blindly and desperately pawing under the door for maybe five or six minutes while thumping his whole body angrily against the door, which is eventually followed by a split-second change of mood to indifference.

I heard the familiar thump-thump-thumping as I was getting ready for work this morning. Then a muffled "mmmmrerr," and then another thump-thump.

"Rufus, cut it out," I yell out to him from the other room.

More thump-thump-thumping.

Then I peek out at the shoe closet. No Rufus. No frustrated cat, front paws searching furiously under the door. Just more thump-thump-thump.

I walk over and yank open the door, which had been completely closed. First I see a trampled mess of shoes, and then I see him, sitting in the dark with glowing eyes, glaring at me for accidentally shutting the door on him five minutes before.

"Oh," I mumble, and he dashes out furiously.

that warm humming

Cristal Carafe and Pen Clip from Charles & Marie.

It was a few evenings ago, while I was splayed across the sage green sofa, feet in mis-matched socks and propped up on lumpy pillows, that I heard the clarinet. Twelve months into our lease and this was the first time I had caught wind of any sort of live instrument. Its reedy, honeyed intonation played half a song I didn't recognize, patiently, cunningly, without error. The highlight of listening to a clarinet (or any of its woodwind cousins) is more than just its pitch, just its melody. There's a talkative quality to it, a breathiness that carries the notes. Warm breath-inflated notes ran up the scale, jumped down, tickled the high octaves, dove deep into the low ones.

Follow along with me, imagining the impassioned musician: fingers taut and academic, back arched, eyes shielded by wrinkled lids and cheeks puffed into a necessary reserve, one end of the instrument held firmly by strained lips, the other end pointed dramatically away from the body. This is what I pictured as soon as the clarinet began its numbed solo, but at the same time, I pictured our upstairs neighbors, where the music was clearly emitting from. Even though they'd lived in the building almost as long as we had, I knew them only in passing: checking their mail, knocking on our door in seek of a phone book, walking their dachshund. And to put the two together – this image of the fervid musician (fingers flying intensely down the instrument, striking a Kenny G pose) with the image of the standard couple (the husband impatiently waiting for his dog to do his business outside, the wife laughing on the balcony with intermittent clinking of glasses) – seemed both wonderfully amusing and disparately creepy.

feels like summer.

Muzina sandals from Revolve Clothing and Sateen dress from Free People (via Not Couture).

Post pasta making, I spent the rest of yesterday morning vacuuming the rufus-fur off the entire apartment, ran multiple loads of laundry and dishes, watched a dumpy Kevin Bacon movie, and sunk a little more into Middlesex. In the evening, beau and I wandered around Golden Gardens with Goji juice from the grocery store and soft serve ice cream from Little Coney. It was balmy and extra gusty out on the dock, the wind nudging my tower of ice cream to one side, drips of vanilla spilling across my knuckles, glazing my skin.

Oh yes, and my favorite quote from MTV that night (and it sums up why I resist watching it): standing amidst heinous prom dresses, one manicured teen says to another in a southern drawl, "Think about it. We've been best friends since ninth grade and never been to a prom together. Ever!" Wait, wait. How many proms, exactly, do these girls go to? Five, six? Is MTV-land so privileged that they get double of everything? Somehow, I wouldn't be surprised.

amore

My first go at using our new pasta machine churned out amazingly real-looking pasta. Is that inane to say? But yet I had expected shredded, lumpy strings that just hung there, mocking me. More photos to come.