Category Archives: *bleep* my brother says

drinking from a fire hose

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My brother recently said that his week felt like drinking from a fire hose and I thought it was such a perfect description of my 2023 so far. As always, there are things that I can’t / won’t blog about but let me just say that teenagers are no joke, y’all. There are times when I feel like a stranger has taken up residence in my kiddo’s appallingly messy bedroom and is stomping around in her new varsity jacket. I know we all go through this terrifying developmental stage and my own parents advised me on more than one occasion that I was a massive storm cloud during my teen years but sometimes you have to live with it to really get it. And kids these days have very different concerns and stressors than we did with the omnipresent influence of technology and social media. Sooo… deep breath, both hands on the wheel.

Likes this week: A mid-week snow storm which didn’t disrupt my life too badly, just laid down a nice fluffy blanket of white that’s been largely absent so far this winter. Looking up at almost 6pm the other day and seeing that it was still light outside (we’re starting to move out of the dark season now). Keeping up with my 2023 reading challenge and finding a new cozy series (the Dr. Nell Ward mysteries by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett) to keep me occupied. Keeping up with my vitamin D and happily finding the missing 3 cards from the tarot deck that my parents gave me for Christmas when I turned 14.

Dislikes this week: See first paragraph above.

This weekend is a breakfast with my bestie and a big football day on Sunday for Brandon, via his team the Bengals. TGIF!

check in part three: entertainment

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ann arbor art fair – a summertime staple

I gave up my cable television several months ago because the only thing I tended to watch was the 6:00 news – I haven’t missed it. I’ve had a very lucky summer in terms of great books, podcasts, and original series on Prime & Netflix – so here are some of my favorites!

Books 

I’ve read several “just meh” books this summer (One Thousand White Women and I Was Anastasia spring immediately to mind) and yet in strokes of good fortune, these were balanced out with two of the best books I’ve read this year so far – Flat Broke with Two Goats and The Punishment She Deserves.

Going in reverse order, Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers are back together in the most recent Elizabeth George British mystery series installment The Punishment She Deserves and they’re as entertaining as ever. Lynley and Havers never seem to get old to me – their interaction is comfortable and funny and also refreshing and touching, all at the same time. I love stories of men and women who work together, will never have a romantic relationship or sexual tension, but truly love and respect each other nonetheless – I think that’s a hard dynamic to write well. And Elizabeth George always does it. Add in a typically convoluted case, complicated by a colleague dead set on bringing down Havers while struggling with her own secret alcoholism – and you have a beefy, satisfying read that ticked all the boxes.

In a totally different vein, Flat Broke with Two Goats is a mostly-lighthearted true story of a couple who lost it all during the 2008 recession and moved to a ramshackle cabin in North Carolina to try to get their finances and lives back in order. I love homesteading stories and by the time they’d acquired their chickens and the titular goats I was hooked. This has led me on a homesteading book spree and I’m sure at least one in the current stack by my bedside will end up in a future post.

Podcasts

My Favorite Murder, Criminal, and Thinking Sideways are perennial favorites that I’ve mentioned here before, but I also want to recommend Slow Burn, which is a Slate podcast with Season 1 about the Nixon Watergate scandal. It’s amazing to listen to the total fuckery that was Watergate and hear how Nixon’s supporters defended him – much the same way 45’s supporters defend him – by deflecting criticism back to Democratic candidates. During a lunchtime walk, I laughed out loud on the woods trail around my office when a scratchy old recording caught an indignant Nixon supporter screeching, “WHAT ABOUT CHAPPAQUIDDICK?” the same way today’s Trumpster might be heard to screech, “WHAT ABOUT CROOKED HILARY?”  Days or weeks before, of course, Nixon was forced to release his tapes and was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a criminal. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This podcast is also equal opportunity! Season 2 will be about Crooked Hillary! (well, okay, don’t get all Putin Passionate on me, my conservative friends, it will be about Bill’s impeachment.)
In the same socio-political vein, The RFK Tapes has been fascinating, too – an in-depth look at Sirhan Sirhan and the response to RFK’s assassination. This one is a bit more steeped in conspiracy theory – why did the actual autopsy not bear out the statements of eye-witnesses? Who was the girl in the polka-dot dress? What role did the Rosicrucians play? Was Sirhan the original Manchurian Candidate? But equally enjoyable and educational.
And Karina Longworth is back with the new season of You Must Remember This – Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon. I love old Hollywood and this season, Longworth deconstructs Kenneth Anger’s book “Hollywood Babylon” to examine the roots of many Hollywood myths. Recently released (and the accompaniment to a couple of my recent short runs) – Fatty Arbuckle and Virgina Rappe.

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street art by david zinn at the ann arbor art fair

Series 

My brother is famous for a few things – his hatred of crockpots, his affinity for chickens and Oreos, and his teenage confusion over states that start with a letter I, to name a few – and one of them is his propensity to drop into my life after a few weeks of radio silence to recommend a new series on Prime or Netflix that will ruin my life. I say “ruin my life” in a tongue in cheek way, meaning my productivity levels and desire to do anything except sit in front of the TV. He did this first with “Narcos” and I lost hours and hours of my life to  Pablo Escobar. Then it was “Bosch”, and I am ignoring everything else from him until I finish season 2 of “Marcella”. Which is good, but she fucks up so much that it’s hard to feel a lot of compassion for her…except when you stop to ask why her ex-husband is such an intolerable douche. And I actually really love her style. Great sweaters, messy-hair-don’t-care-I’m-solving-a-horrific-crime, cropped pants and brogues, great coats…

Honorable mention in this category to The Forest on Netflix, which is originally French, I think, so the subtitles made it hard for me to knit to – but suspenseful and interesting nonetheless, they sold it a bit as a sort of foreign Twin Peaks – a girl disappears in the forest and to find her, all her secrets must be revealed. Not in the Twin Peaks category or even close, but an absorbing diversion.

I hope you are well wherever you are – here in suburban Elysia we received a lot of rain this past weekend, which put a damper on the 5k that B & I ran on Saturday morning (my running shoes are still squelching). It did not, however, spoil our trip to Ann Arbor’s Art Fair on Sunday, as evidenced by the photos above. B is back to Iowa for a couple of weeks, then he will be back with me for a long vacation and to wait for his next assignment.

Summer sweeps past. xo

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shine like glamour

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So what have I been up to since we last talked? Let’s see, we went to a carnival with my brother and his family.

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There’s something about a small-town fair that really appeals to me. I think it reminds me of how exciting it was when we were kids – all the old small-town festivals and county and state fairs. In daylight, they look tired and cheap, but at night, especially to a kid, they glimmer and shine like glamour.

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My brother is always an excellent carnival companion, perhaps the best there is. He is prone to pointing out that when I am on a particularly frightening ride, I curse in a decibel lower than my regular voice. This observation always makes me laugh and think of Chris Farley of SNL dressed up like the Gap salesgirl. He makes me laugh so hard and so often that my abdomen aches the day after I am with them.

Miss L juked me twice this year. If she wants to go on a scary ride, I of course must accompany her. However, as I get older, the heights really bother me. This year, she was determined to go on the shock drop, where you are harnessed in and they lift you up up up 70 feet into the air. You are essentially sitting with your legs dangling, nothing between you and oblivion but a locking harness. Miss L ran up, sat down; I sat next to her and locked my harness in place. Once this was done, Miss L jumped out of the seat and said, “Nope. Changed my mind,” and scampered off to join my SIL, who was shrieking with laughter. “Well hell no am I doing this, then,” I thought, and tried my harness. Locked and loaded. No escape. And the ride began its ascent. Everyone thought that was quite hilarious.

She also thought she wanted to ride the Zipper, in which you are locked into a tiny revolving cage and spun up and around, over and over. I climbed in – she climbed in next to me – the cage door began to swing shut and she was out of there like a shot. Luckily, my brother climbed in next to me, and as the cage door locked and we began the ascent, he said conversationally, “Well, if there was some sort of catastrophic event down below, we’d really be screwed, locked in up here, wouldn’t we?” NOT HELPFUL.

We went back and my SIL had arranged a lovely little birthday party for Miss L. It’s always a fun tradition and one that I remember all year long.

The weather has turned a bit cooler and Labor Day, the last hurrah of summer, is almost upon us. The major road construction that has plagued us is over, and school starts next week. Still, true autumn feels a long way off still. My friend had a Lularoe pop-up party on Facebook and despite my caution toward such cultish things, I bought some leggings and a skirt and am excited to wear them with boots and sweaters, hopefully soon. I need cool weather, rain and incense, knits and candles and a fire in the woodstove.

 

sentence per picture, memorial day edition, with a 1-sentence ‘*bleep* my brother says’ bonus.

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I've been so sick for the past two weeks with bronchitis and sinus infection, swallowing fistfuls of antibiotics and steroids every day; yet I finally felt better and continued my running rehab program - with a post-run wallow on the sunny riverbank.

I’ve been so sick for the past two weeks with bronchitis and sinus infection, swallowing fistfuls of antibiotics and steroids every day; yet I finally felt better and continued my running rehab program – with a post-run wallow on the sunny riverbank.

I was super thrilled to find a morel growing in my own garden; then everyone warned me that it might not be real so, afraid of dying ignominiously from mushroom poisoning, I didn't eat it.

I was super thrilled to find a morel growing in my own garden; then everyone warned me that it might not be real so, afraid of dying ignominiously from mushroom poisoning, I didn’t eat it.

Although I think the cardinals moved their nest to a quieter locale, there are still nests and babies in my yard.

Although I think the cardinals moved their nest to a quieter locale, there are still nests and babies in my yard.

The stained glass window behind Sarge made me sing "Take Me to Church" to him, which 1) he didn't get, and 2) made me think I've been spending too much time alone with my cats, based on the amount of hilarity I received from this.

The stained glass window behind Sarge made me sing “Take Me to Church” to him, which 1) he didn’t get, and 2) made me think I’ve been spending too much time alone with my cats, based on the amount of hilarity I received from this.

Friday night I was standing at my kitchen sink, listening to WRCJ's evening jazz, when I happened to look up and see this standing under my birdfeeder staring at me.

Friday night I was standing at my kitchen sink, listening to WRCJ’s evening jazz, when I happened to look up and see this standing under my birdfeeder staring at me.

On Saturday night, Sarge climbed the back screen door, scolding, and when I investigated, our visitor had returned and was placidly consuming the neighbor's flowers. In response to my posting of this photo on FB, my brother wrote severely, "You should tell them they need to leash their ungulates..."

On Saturday night, Sarge climbed the back screen door, scolding, and when I investigated, our visitor had returned and was placidly consuming the neighbor’s flowers. In response to my posting of this photo on FB, my brother wrote severely, “You should tell them they need to leash their ungulates…”