Snarky was just going to throw out a light, humorous, purple-prose-free post about the miracle of covering things in chocolate (obviously, the good), but she just got a call from the imaging center asking her to come back in for additional views (alarmingly, extremely, horrifically bad).
Based on her mother's occurences of breast cancer (2-3 times, depending on how you look at it), Snarky went in for an early baseline mammogram two days ago. The woman who called was very reassuring about the fact that several women get these "call backs", and that the reasons that are bringing Snarky back in (that have absolutely nothing to do with the glaring C WORD that neither mentioned over the phone) could be overlapped tissue and the fact that the radiologist wants the baseline mammogram to be as accurate as possible.
Still. Snarky can't help feeling the tears crawling up the back of her throat... nor the sense of absolute, blind, shrieking panic just barely restrained by her too-tight, too-cold skin.
Perhaps she should have saved the last chocolate covered Nutter Butter for later.
Given that her attention span is normally comparable to that of a fruit fly on a normal day, Snarky's ability to maintain "workplace workface" today has been a hopelessly lost battle from the get-go.
Not only is her heart and mind still racing through MoveIntoTheHouse scenarios, but their contractor is currently tearing up the subfloor in the main bathroom right now, with no way of being finished until the ordered flooring (Asian Tiger! Rawr!) gets in tomorrow at the earliest.
And tonight is The Great Cat Migration '06. The Snarks' furbabies do not take to their carriers very well. At all. EVER. They could be going to the land of catnip and cheeses and still with the yeowling and bloody murder.
Before TGCM'06 comes The Death Defying Cat Wrangling of Ought Six. Snarky only hopes that they have managed to leave one polypro jacket unpacked in which she can suit up in order to protect her fragile, extremely claw-able hand/arm/chest/neck skin. She has had to have medical attention applied to her body in the past. At the vet's office. Cat Wrangling is that violent, swift, and gory.
Tomorrow is the Official Day of Moving, though the Snarks have been schlepping bits and pieces of their lives over to the house for the last two weeks. Last night Snarky did their first quarterless load of laundry in their very own, new washer and dryer! They also have a shiny new fridge! The Snarks are a bit disconcerted by the new appliance smell coming off of said fridge, but they are confident that a few trips to the Safeway will eliminate the problem.
One more hour left before the bloodletting fun begins. Snarky suspects she will be radio silent after tomorrow morning possibly through Monday. The Cable Guy is supposed to be hooking the Snarks up Saturday morning (between the hours of 10 and 12, of course). Even if all goes well, Snarky might opt for the more alluring prospect of blissful unconsciousness Sunday rather than playing catchup. If Snarky gets too caught up tomorrow, she wishes all of y'all a wonderful weekend in advance.
Snarky owns several statementy T-shirts that she used to employ to keep her sense of self at the gym. One had a giant, glaring Big Brother (from "1984"), another declared "RACIAL STEREOTYPES DEHUMANIZE" (a gift from her activist brother), and yet another one implored the reader to "Visualize Whirled Peas".
Which really has nothing to do with this post, except that Snarky finally managed to download some photos and was thinking along the lines of helping y'all to visualize her life out here in the Pacific Northwest.
More to come, eventually.
First, some more house pics!
A bad photo of our finished floor upstairs. Also an inkling of our whacky PeeWee color choices.
The cats spend most of their day up in the hutch.
Meant to give you an idea of the amazing candy-apple-green of the living room. Also our slovenly ways.
And love for Kubrick.
... and some travel pics...
One of our recent bike excursions on the Spring Water Corridor Trail. The red speck is The Mister.
A mural by the Devil's Punchbowl on the coast. The poppies are real.
Closeup of the strange sand formations on Hobbit Beach.
This is why the Snarks love the coast.
The Snarky's on the coast! The Mister has sworn to learn how to use the camera. Someday you might actually see more than just Reflected!Snarky.
OK... that's it for now. Coming soon: more coastal pics, the IKEA run, and 'maters!
Kustom Krafts!
(Snarky feels a little weird calling DarkityBro a "man", but as he just turned 28, she supposes it applies.)
That's pretty much how he talks too.
Snarky has to interrupt this regularly scheduled home improvement program to do a little theraputic venting/stream of consciousness whangdoodle:
Givens:
1) Snarky hates moving. HATES it. With a deep, burning, vitriolic passion. She suspects she might be a little OCD about her Stuff being Messed With, even if it is she who is doing the messing.
2) The Mister has been suffering from low-grade depression for as long as Snarky has known him. That would be eight years.
3) The Mister only recently started getting treatment for said depression when it developed into anxiety attacks that affected his work performance and also showed up as heart attack-like symptoms.
4) The Mister had to stop taking his "happy pills" because they gave him a rash.
5) The Mister hates his job. This is probably what pushed his depression into anxiety.
6) The Mister's job is so consuming that he's too busy during the day to do anything "extra-cirricular" and has also had to bring home "homework" that sometimes has him up past midnight (or in one instance, he never came to bed). Therefore, Snarky has been doing all necessary research for the house/move.
7) Snarky really, REALLY hates moving.
8) Snarky wrestles with her own issues of low self-esteem (coupled oddly enough with a raging ego, work that puzzle out) which can create overblown reactions to criticism.
Catalyst:
So today, all those factors came to a head as Snarky tried to secure temporary permits to allow the Snarks to park a fourteen foot moving truck in front of their (essentially, for the purposes of this story) downtown apartment building. It's always the little things that set off the best explosions, no?
This could have just as easily been a week-old stack of unwashed dishes in the kitchen or an odd comment on the appropriateness of a certain pair of pants to a certain type of musical venue. Something trivial and small yet monumental, like dripping water or straws on camels' backs.
Results:
A very terse, very public cellphone conversation in the middle of the engineering department where at points Snarky had to hold the phone away from her ear because The Mister, in his best moods, cannot use an Inside Voice to save his life. As he was at times apoplexic with anger (at Snarky, the world, his employer, again with Snarky, and again with work), fuming with frustration, and exclaming in exasperation, his Outside Voice was just about at Football Stadium Level.
Snarky responded with hushed, angry, trying-to-be-not-"you-statements" speak and had a fun time wrestling her features away from alternating between tears of rage, tears of sadness, tears of fear, and just plain good old fashioned WTF.
Snarky admits she is not blameless in this. She is passive-aggressive, sensitive, and requires much grooming. She's usually pretty much self grooming, but enjoys a fluff every now and again from her paramour. She can be a demanding diva bitch banshee at times, but has been working hard to recognize when those "chocolate and pickles" style impulses present themselves.
This is the rockiest point before it gets smoother. This is the abyss from which, after the dust has settled, they will look back with their arms looped around eachother's waists, and they will say "Whew! That was a close one!" And they will be glad that they had eachother to lean on, rail against, and be pushed through by in order to make it to the Other Side.
They just have to have faith and get there together.
Solution:
Snarky plans on making peace offerings tonight. But for now, she has a job interview for which to prepare, and a slowly rising tide of panic to quell with logic and love.
The Mister's maternal grandmother passed away yesterday. She had been slowly leaving this world for the past two years, but this weekend was her final exit. By all accounts she most likely died in her sleep after they unhooked her from life support.
The Mister had already said good bye to her long before all this. The Snarks went to see her when they visited Back East last fall, but she was hardly the woman they knew even from just six months before their last visit.
They already remember her from a more vibrant time. They are going back not so much to conjure up those memories, but to provide support to the MIL and The Mister's uncle.
They are also going to see their third niece for the first time.
The Snarks knew this was an inevitability (the MIL has been preparing them for this for the last five years) but still can't help but feel a little taken by surprise. This also completely negates any plans they might have had to visit around Christmastime as they have already booked up the rest of their time off with the DarkityFam in mid-September (the vacation AKA Hurricanes Ahoy! 2006).
Snarky will most likely be incommunicado from tomorrow through Sunday when she returns. They will have two days to prepare the house for the week-long visit of her parents starting next Wednesday.
And before they go, Snarky has a second interview at one of her Dream Companies tomorrow. Plenty of things to keep them from getting morbid/morose.
Popular theory stated that Spring had indeed Sprung, but she couldn't help but feel mild bemusement tinged with her sense of personal tragedy as she looked out over the river during her morning commute.
Or at least, what she could see of the river. There was a solid, wintry gray wall of fog taunting the entire city from about halfway across the bridge. The repressive haziness continued all the way north to her workplace.
She couldn't see the tender Spring colors asserting themselves in the landscape. Her fellow commuters had all sunk back down into layers of woolen browns, blacks, and grays. Shockingly pale kneecaps, anklejoints, and collarbones retreated back into the warmth of cavelike clothing.
The weathermen all promised a return to sun, to life. She warily eyed the flat sky and felt the smallest flicker of hope.
She's wearing Midnight Mass to match the weather.
Chez Snark is evolving. Unfortunately, Snarky has been a bit slack about documenting the evolution. Here are some older pics to bring everyone up to speed:
They didn't have a working shower for almost a week while the subfloor was replaced (and then the looong wait for the Asian Tiger). A week!
The original color scheme for the bathroom: white sink, white toilet, white shower surround, black tub, pale pale blue walls. Bleah. Snarky was oddly fond of the vaguely gothic tub, but the chips and dents had to go.
With the door put back in place, this is the best "after" shot of the tub Snarky could manage. Whitey white white white! The Snarks employed the local Miracle Method franchise and highly recommend them to everyone. One big caveat: prepare to endure at least three days of intense chemical stench.
Another shot of the itty bitty bathroom.
This is supposed to be a memo holder, but has become the Snarks' precarious-yet-cheeky soap holder.
The Mister decided to sponge opaque copper paint over the glowing firelight in the exercise room. The experiment has since been dubbed a bit of a dud, but The Mister had a fabulous mani for about a week.
The Snarks' real estate agent gave them a housewarming gift. Instead of a basket 'o goodies they got a treasure chest!
Guess who snapped it up for her own nefarious purposes?
Also of note: the crazy fuschia/pink ante-room is s-l-o-w-l-y evolving into a half eggplant purple, half light spring green room. The spring green is mostly done (and they even managed to hang artwork after Snarky hulked out and smashed all of the glass in the frame) but the purple will require an astonishing third coat to reach their preferred level of opacity. After that, (and a little more purple-ing of the hallway on the first floor) the Snarks are Taking a Break with the Painting, Already.
(After Snarky was schooled, she has always preferred the Queen song containing that famously ripped of Vanilla Ice lyric, though the sting of plagerism has faded over time to be replaced with a kind of dorky nostalgia too.)
The Mister collapsed at work yesterday. By the time the ambulance got there, he was awake, aware, and talking. He walked to the ambulance on his own steam. The ER doc couldn't positively pinpoint the cause, though stress and anxiety are likely candidates.
After a couple hours of observation (and another one waiting impatiently to be discharged) Snarky was able to take him home. They had cheesy Mexican food and wandered around Trader Joe's and bought up supplies for a near-future (possibly before the Fourth, as the Snarks are an impatient bunch) cookout on their newly discovered charcoal grill.
The Mister will take off of work today, but is already antsy about not keeping up with his landslide of work. Snarky tried (half-heartedly) to obtain something for him to work on when she stopped by his office yesterday to pick up the car.
His boss, hopefully finally Seeing the Light, refused to let her take anything, and strongly urged The Mister to stay at home and rest through the Fourth.
Snarky knows that this grand statement is partly spurned by genuine concern, but she also knows that The Mister will just get all the more agitated because now his boss's unable-to-delegate and/or assign-work-realistically "management style" will push all the pressure onto the other already loaded-down PMs in the office. Which gives him stress.
And Snarky is trying ever so hard to minimize the stress. Like some kind of frightened, over-protective mother hen. The Mister is a grown man, but Snarky can't help but remember seeing him with wires and tubes and bustling be-scrubbed attendants.
No matter how many episodes of "House" or "Gray's Anatomy" she'll see... nothing will inure her to that sight. Ever.
Snarky's got a camera full of color, but hasn't had the time (or the energy) to download them for y'all. Hopefully she'll be able to snatch a moment's respite to faithfully record and report the process of The Snarks stamping their sign of ownership all over the walls of this house tonight. Maybe.
In the meantime, Snarky just wants to take a moment to share her newfound, revitalized love for violets. She bought a few to transplant into a strawberry pot from the local multi-culti pan-Asian megalomart. They've been acclamating by the kitchen sink (along with a fancy jade plant and six organic basil seedlings purchased from a redheaded entrepreneurial tweenager with charming salesmanship) and provided a very uplifting, very grounding whiff of goodness every time Snarky and The Mister bellied up to the sink to rinse out paintbrushes and pans.
She can't remember the last time a little handful of flowers has brought her so much peace and joy and contentment and hope. She can almost feel the chemistry of her brain rearranging to hardwire the smell of violets and fresh latex paint directly into her idea of this house that is slowly evolving into their home.
This makes her happy beyond the thrill of new homeownership. Most of her scent memories come from pre-adult times. She has always hoped to experience equally intense moments now that she can appreciate them more fully. (She has a fairly depressing theory about the relative impact of finite periods of "important" time in inverse proportion to the longevity of the subject experiencing those periods of "memorable" time. Anything that disproves this theory is welcomed warmly and with much fanfare.)
So yes. Tonight, possibly pictures of retina searing colors. If not that, than definitely the long and somewhat interesting tale of the fancy schmancy piece of exercise equipment The Snarks purchased over the weekend.
Edited to add: OK, so the tie back to BPAL is kind of tenuous at best. I meant to say that I am now going to re-evaluate my "to try" list to include just about everything with violet in it. Then I got sidetracked... and hell, tangents happen, y'know?
Valentina recently asked about favorite romantic movies and Snarky, as is her MO, twisted it all back to the tummy. She suspects this close association between heart and hunger is genetic as her entire family has spent a combined gazillion hours of their most memorable moments either consuming, making, or planning meals.
As per her comment on Valentina's blog, Snarky's all time favorite "it's all about the food" movie is "Tampopo". This is a classic of not only modern Japanese cinema, but of all foodie cinema the world over. It is a collection of short stories concerning various people and their obsessions with food. There's a main story involving a John Wayne-esque ramen-loving trucker (I kid you not) and a struggling noodle shop widow. This was the first movie that opened my eyes to food as love-play (and no, I hadn't seen "9 1/2 Weeks" yet) and sparked my life-long romance with teh ramen noodles .
This just says everything Snarky wants to say about how important food is in her life.
Other movies that come to mind are "Like Water for Chocolate" (Snarky still wants to make some of the recipes in the book), "Babette's Feast", "Big Night", and "Eat Drink Man Woman". She does not count that one with Penelope Cruz ("Woman on Top"?), because it was just. Not. Good. Bleah. So much wasted potential. Maybe it was because the "rival suitor" was the same actor from that meh sitcom "Good Morning Miami", also he played the optomotrist Miranda faked orgasms with on "Sex in the City".
What are your favorite foodie movies?
Today, thanks to Valentina, Snarky smells of Al-Shairan.
He trusts her. He continues to work silently over blueprints scattered across the living room rug as she presses her lotion-chilled fingers into the welts, all the angry red patches on his back. She works to cover all the places his skin has betrayed him.
His body seems, in all its solidity, horribly frail. He is an unbalanced chemical equation tipping forward on his haunches, always threatening to tumble away from her. Away and down into the dark valleys where she can't find a path to follow.
She tries to hold on with her slippery hands. Her palms linger on his shoulders, much longer than needed to set the medicine into his skin.
She resists the urge to shake him roughly, shake him back into the man he was.
He trusts her not to do this, not to stomp and wail and disrupt the little bit of foothold he has left. He trusts her to hold on, keep an anchor, keep him steady. He trusts her to trust that he will come back.
(WARNING: Disjointed metaphors ahead and underfoot!)
Ever since she became conscious of the differences between boys and girls, Snarky has been trying to figure out that line between the feminine and masculine. She's unsure of not only the coordinates of the various demarcation points, but also where she stands in relation to those teetering little points in the shifty sand.
She vascillated between Girly-Girl (ballet training coupled with a near drag-queen level obsession with her mother's 1960's wardrobe) and Tomboy (tusseling with the neighborhood boys in the snow, wading waist deep in creeks in order to catch minnows) as she grew up. The advent of body hair and the constant battle to eradicate it was an absolute nightmare (tutus and 'pit hair don't mix) but she also became sporadically lacksadaisical about maintenance (surely Snarky isn't the only girl who has "winterized").
Snarky was lucky to have either indulgent or equally laissez-hair paramours during these experimental times.
Thusfar she's developed a duality fluctuating between the extremes. Some days she does the full get up: make up, matching shoes (as in: shoes that match the outfit, Snarky usually has presence of mind enough to match the shoes to eachother on any given day girlie or no... most of the time), matching underthings, matching BPAL, matching earrings... just matchy matchy all over the place. Other days she's lucky if a shower happens, let alone color coordinated not-nekkidness. (The Mister has been known to serenade her with "Ebony & Ivory" on the days that her bra/panty choice is chromatically challenged.)
For the past year Snarky has evolved away from platform heels and slinky skirts to Mary Janes and corduroy pants due to working closely with contractors, engineers, and ginormous, filthy machinery. This practical work wear attitude has bled in to her off hours as well.
On top of her sartorial schizophrenia is the concept of the masculine and feminine in attitudes as well. Snarky is constantly battling it out between her perceived dominant/submissive, Asian/American, intro-/extrovert, and male/female halves.
(For example, body hair is a Big Issue for Snarky. How does a self-proclaimed feminist explain her need to eradicate naturally occuring body hair to suit some wholly unrealistic sexualized pre-adolescent imagery?)
Then the cherry on top of this sundae of textbook gender identity woe are the emotional eggshells Snarky has been treading upon since The Mister's recent health scares (more honestly, these eggshells have been cropping up for as long as the Snarks have known eachother). She's been swathing their weekends in safe, neutral tones and non-aggressive, granny pantied conversations to keep things bland as oatmeal at home. She's been more mother than wife lately, and that sort of extreme imbalance can skew more than just the one boat in the marriage flotilla. She can't help but think that a wave of equal amplitude in the other direction is needed to put everything back on course.
The Snarks have been recovering long-buried and forgotten portions of their wardrobe as they are expanding into their house. Almost single handedly Snark's hootchie-mama arsenal increased ten-fold (OK, more like two-fold, but ten-fold is so much more impressive) just by finding and liberating the right tub of clothing.
So she's easing herself back into more feminine attire. Perhaps with the physical donning of her old "split up to there" skirts and flirty ankle strap heels, she will also be able to also mentally shed the metaphorical sweatpants. Time to Wake Things Up a little and return to feeling completely human (and girly, and ROWRy) again.
And if she needs to wear the pants for a little while in order for The Mister to get back on track, she'll do that too. But they'll be tailored and leather and just the right kind of snug.
Maintaining the status quo.
Treading water.
Keeping a holding pattern.
Snarky has long suspected that she suffers from a slight case of whatever that dude in "Memento" had... her early life consisted of two year stretches between changes in scenery, and with each change she dropped most of her points of reference -- her friends, her hobbies, her life.
Pick up a new string, turn 180 degrees, start wandering the labyrinth again.
Sure, the "reset button" draws her back into a slightly different place each time, but it feels like two steps forward, one step back. It's a stilted, wonky march to the beat of time's inevitability.
There are a handful of touchstones. Powerful moments that break through the thorny hedgerows. Most of them are triggered by scent.
Today she's wearing Jacob's Ladder. The high, bright amber is bringing back memories of her maternal grandfather. Memories of his passing which was sudden, unexpected, and tinged by family lore about karma. He's been dead longer than he's been alive in her life, and that death still ripples through everyone in her family like a silent aftershock.
For years, his death froze her in a substrate of fear. Fear of nothingness and of simply not being anymore. It has taken time, but she is finally starting to see that being still and impacting little is an insult to this brief moment of somethingness she's been granted.
The amber is comforting, familiar. But it needs to be broken. She needs to climb those thorny hedges and see the labyrinth for what it is.
She's making a move.
Swimming for shore.
Touching down.
Snarky has absolutely nothing profound upon which to pontificate. She has completely rotted out her brains on television lately (TV "watching" - which is more like TV listening the way Snarky does it - is the perfect companion to repetitive lace knitting) and can only bullet point the programs that have permanently wiped out such things as high school calculus, family members' birthdays, and her favorite cornbread recipe:
* 24: mmmmm Baueriffic. Not that the show is meant to be plausible in anyway, but the Snarks do like getting a good workout early in the week.
* ANTM: Snarky started watching this in earnest again last week and confessed, tail between legs, to her co-workers that she had... only to find out that they had been sneaking episodes too! It was the freakin' laser beams that pulled them all back in!
* Babylon 5: they are up to season four and are really enjoying seeing all the arcy goodness come to fruition. Snarky especially enjoys the cast commentary included on the tenth anniversary DVDs (Kosh's "eye" is referred to as "the sphincter" )
* Battlestar Galactica: the Snarks are still unable to watch their favorite show on its new night because they are only getting older and crankier and really do require a reasonable bedtime on Sunday nights. So no, they haven't seen this last episode yet. They have gotten the shock wave of angst from across the country from their BSG loving friends, though.
* Grey's Anatomy: this show is thisclose to going On Notice. Snarky would really, really like to know where all these Izzie/George 'shippers are. Because she wants to understand why the sudden luurve where there wasn't any at all, and why all this support for this magical luurve and JUST WHY?! It makes no freaking sense.
* March Madness: Snarky isn't really paying attention to this, but it is what's on at ChezSnark. So it gets a placeholder.
* Planet Earth: The Mister stumbled across this series on the Discovery channel last night. Amazing, beautiful, breathtaking footage. Even (possibly especially) the brutal moments - like the shark pursuing and ultimately devouring a seal in midair - are just absolutely captivating.
* Princess Tutu: Snarky did not get the whole shojo thing until this weekend. This is the perfect confluence of Snarky's dance background, her love of fairy tales and story telling, and all those stolen moments of pretty-boy anime oogling back when she visited her cousins in Hong Kong. Really very clever.
* Ugly Betty: awesome as always. This show has the palette of an Almodovar movie crossed with the subversive joy of Peewee's Playhouse plus the deftness and timing of a Gene Kelly dance number (and sometimes also the tight sailor pants to boot!). Or something. Just total eye candy and wonderfully snarky/bitchy/delicious throw-away lines.
Snarky is either planning on getting a life soon before her ass completely melds to the couch... or... well, there is Eunny's print o' the wave pattern she could be working on... (as soon as she finds cobweb weight yarn. )
(Either Snarky just lifted the entire title of a book she once read in elementary school... or a surreal p0rno.)
The promised finished heart t-shirt pics, plus bonus t-shirts because this did turn out to be a very addictive hobby:
Unfortunately, Snarky cannot walk and chew gum (AKA craft and make clear documentation), but here's the finished heart!
Detail of the heart. Snarky went back in after taking this picture to clean up the semi-painted spots.
Niece #1 requested a drawing of a "pink unicorn with a white horn standing on green grass". So Snarky bent the rules a bit.
Mane detail.
The grass ended up overpowering the unicorn a bit, but Snarky figures a five-and-a-half year old won't mind. (Hopefully!)
The Mister's one request for Christmas: a shirt that he could wear with (stinky) pride.
Snarky also enjoyed "open studio" last night at work and will have more crafty pictures to post after she gets back from her trip Back East.
The Mister seems to be in a much better place mentally, even though his job situation is even more complicated, though possibly in a good way: he's been tentatively offered some continued part-time work that he might be able to do from home for his current employer, and he just got the results from an online personality test that prompted a company to immediately contact him for an interview. This might end up becoming the major fork in the road for this part of his life that defines how the next several years roll out.
Snarky hopes all of you are enjoying good food and great company. The passing of the Winter Solstice feels like the turning of a very important page for her. She's hoping for the same sense of forward momentum for everyone else who is currently Doing the Unstuck.
(New pics posted in Snarky's BPAL Member Gallery. She's having trouble linking to them directly ATM.)
Snarky has posted picks of The Blackening.
The dining room was originally a cranberry red, which looked very striking next to the neutral gray of the living room.
Then the Snarks up and painted the living room candy apple green. In combination with the red, they were then faced with Christmas on Acid.
So... they decided to put down an equally bright and cheery orange to complement the green only... it didn't. At all.
Then The Mister, the normally non-gothy of the two Snarks, had a brainstorm: paint it BLACK.
The Snarks had a gallon of matte black pain on hand to use as a base coat to the blood red they are planning for the basement AV room.
After minor cajoling ("It'll look crisp against the white trim and green w/red accents theme of the living room! There will be so many pieces of art and state plates on the wall the black will look like a framing device!") Snarky agreed and now they have a BLACK dining room.
Snarky is now considering a recycled antler chandelier as well. (only not really) (maybe?)
The assumption usually made about those of a Darker Bent, is that they tend to surround themselves with dark, brooding colors in heavy, funereal (sometimes boudoiresque) fabrics.
Those traditionalists really need to just go elsewhere and have some tea and (angsty, morose) biscuits because Darkity is about to Blow Your Mind.
Behold:
Master Bedroom, apres Snarkification
After one coat. One more (maybe two) to go.
Master Bedroom, before, back toward the bathroom. Darkity added for scale.
The color is called "chocolate sparkle" though the Snarks are unsure from where the "sparkle" comes.
OK, OK. So that wasn't really all that crazy. In fact, it is rather traditionally dark and cozy. But! The ceiling? Those putrid green niches? Those are all going to be sky blue, y'all. The ultimate Master Plan involves a few different shades of green and leaf stencils to create a treehouse/canopy effect.
On to the brightness:
Oops! I exceeded photo limits... to be continued in Part Two, then!
Since Snarky is an image posting fool, this entry is continued from Part One below...
On to the brightness:
This was supposed to be the Auburgine Anteroom to the Brown Boudoir. The second coat is darker, and the Snarks are planning a third. The Mister is already grumbling about washing over this with either black or dark blue to tone down the pink. PINK!
Behold the pukey green before of the exercise room. This color has been dubbed "shittay" by a close family friend, and the Snarks are not arguing with that. Shittay indeed.
The solution? A little somethin' somethin' called "Glowing Firelight". "Glowing"? Try "Glowering"! Darkity likes!
After one coat. There might be as many as three in this room too. Also eventually a metallic wash over the whole shebang. Because they can.
A shot of the test wall in the living room for the Granny Smith Apple Green. It is a bit brighter than in this shot. Also, yes, the red has GOT to go. This is not Christmasville.
Are your eyes now pulsing and watery? The Snarks are enjoying their crash course in color theory. They did not have the opportunity to paint prior to moving in to their last house. While the coming weeks promise to be a hectic scramble to the finish for so many things (the amazingly intricate domino array of contractors needed to just Take a Bath, not to mention the whole "move all the crap in the apartment into the house" manoeuver) (A procedure so complicated it needed extra vowels!) The Snarks are truly enjoying the feeling of putting their (technicolor, barf-up-a-rainbow) stamp on this little house.
Last night they even schlepped a few things over to make their first dinner in the house.
Nevermind the fact that they don't have a fridge yet. Brushetta!
Snarky would like to leave you with something a little more restful for the eyes. This is what greets them from the kitchen sink when they finally manage to wrestle the battered side door open:
Just breathe...
(Thank Beth for Faustus!)
Snarky got back on the needle felting wagon this weekend. She made a little desktop meditating turtle for her best friend, who is currently going through some tough times trying to find work in an over-saturated market. On to the cuteness!
Behold the Om Turtle!
(Fuzzy) Close-up
The shell is detachable. Note the cute little turtle butt! The lighter colored... thingie is a pocket. And what's in the pocket?
A wee little heart! Or a T-bone steak! Whichever will make her happier!
There is something very therapuetic about stabbing a blob of fluff repeatedly until it forms into something. Snarky couldn't completely zone out (that would result in punctured paws) but she could take her mind off of more serious matters this weekend and concentrate on just making something.
Darkity was going to squee all over the "how are you feeling?" thread, but there's some heavy shozbot going down over there and she didn't want to be the inappropriately gleeful one interrupting the flow of commiseration...
So she'll subject her blog to rampant glee instead.
Because the house? Very almost nearly officially ChezSnark! Darkity and The Mister signed away their lives and handed over The Big Check yesterday. The Sellers had already signed their bit up in Canada, so all that stands between The Snarks and Homeownership now is for the paperwork to record (and the check to go through... Darkity still regrets that her bank does not make their checks proportionately sized to the amounts they represent. She wanted to have a picture of the Ginormous Check Handoff complete with Ginormous Publisher's Clearinghouse style Check.), which is scheduled to happen sometime on Friday.
To add to the glee, some good friends visiting from Back East were dragged to the homesite for One Last Look on Saturday, and the house (and grounds) met with enthusiastic approval. These friends have about two more decades of experience with the world than The Snarks. The husband is the Ultimate Mr. Fixit and the wife is a Master Gardener. They both knew The Snarks' last ChezSnark (in all it's cute, quaint, cramped glory) and are famliar with Darkity's Black Thumb of Doom. So to get their nod of encouragement was... extremely encouraging!
Now The Snarks are dealing with nesting instincts on Overdrive. They found a place that consigns ecclectic furniture. They are addicted to Craigslist. They are gonna have a home!
Antimony ruminates on the Lloyd Dobbler/Diane Court dichotomy of soul mating.
Snarky has to admit, should the world of couples fall into the strict either/or of Lloyd or Diane archetypes: she aspires to Dianeness (Dianeity?), but is most likely the Lloyd in her relationship with The Mister.
Sure, Snarky is the rightful egghead of the two. Her nerdiness and geekiness are such to elicit hybrid words like gnerd or possibly nee(k) (an homage to Monty Python, which adds a flavor of Dork to the mix as well).
Heck, she even started making notes in dictionaries (her own copies, of course), she was crushing on Diane that hard.
But her yearning for The Mister, even now almost six years into their marriage, is all Lloyd. She feels she needs to be a better woman to be with him. He makes her want to succeed at things she's barely even dreamed about. He didn't take her across the pond, but they did end up on the other side of the country to follow his career. (OK, and it was separate flights so no hand/breath holding, "waiting for the 'ding'" moment for the Snarks.) (Which seriously? Next to the "holding up the boombox" moment? One of Snarky's favorites.)
Currently The Mister has a slight advantage to Snarky on bread winning. Very slight. The care and feeding of the home fires is done jointly (though the laundry-and-dishes part of the kindling often gets neglected). Snarky has taken the reins of the check book and manages most of the financial matters of the house, though The Mister does his Annual Duty of Using His Accounting Degree Once a Year for Taxes.
All in all, Snarky has to say her relationship with The Mister falls into a more stereotypical, "traditional" one (man provide, woman manage)... with leanings toward scale-like equilibrium rather than yin-yang parity.
She is thinking about taking up kickboxing.
Today Snarky is nekkid! Well, in the ol factory sense anyway.
The Mister got in touch with a childhood friend just before his and Snarky's wedding with the intention of asking him to our Best Man. They had lost touch during their college years and in that time DeathRockGuy had married DeathRockChick, who was twelve or thirteen years his junior.
The Mister explained that DRG's father was significantly older than his mother (he was sixty when DRG was born), so such an age difference was not shocking.
And over the years, the Snarks and the DeathRockers got to know eachother as couples and became comfortable "couple friends".
The one thing that always caused a bit of unease for the Snarks was the fact that the DRs were almost too well matched. They were of one mind. Always in agreement, and always together. Save for work, they did everything together. They had no hobbies, did not leave the house except to eat out, and were thisclose to developing their own twin language. If ever a living, breathing example of Plato's theory (as Snarky understands it from watching "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" anyway) about soulmates existed, it would be these two.
However over the years, DRC has also exhibited a tendancy to absorb the personality of those she hung out with most: her sister, her co-workers, and of course, her Mister.
After the birth of their baby (DeathRockBaby! Oh, the dark and spooky knitted goods Snarky made for that child...) they seemed to make the perfect (albeit dark) young family. New house, new car, new jobs, new baby.
Then, after DRB was weaned, DRC fell into a severe post-partum depression. She started going out two and three (possibly more) nights a week with work friends, getting so drunk she couldn't recall the evening. Snarky remembers listening with growing horror as DRC proudly announced that she never had to pay for anything but her first drink.
The last time the Snarks visited Back East, DRG confided that things were not going well for them. DRC was leaving him at home with the baby to go to the gym for hours and then to bars, then complaining that he never wanted to do anything with her. His argument was that she suddenly wanted to do things that they never wanted to do together to begin with, and also she needed to give him more advanced notice so that they could arrange for a babysitter.
Y'all can see the trajectory this relationship is taking, but the Snarks were still a bit shocked to find out yesterday that DRG and DRC are now on a trial separation. She has moved out to an apartment and they are taking turns caring for DRB.
Snarky wonders if DRC is trying to re-establish her own personality after her perceived removal from being a mother once DRB was weaned. What the Snarks thought was mature self-possession when they first met DRC might have been what she developed from being around DRG.
It's... upsetting and confusing. This is not the first separation in the Snarks' small circle of acquaintences, but it is the first one that will affect a child.
They are working to be equally supportive of both parties, though it's probably apparent just from this recap that they are more sympathetic to DRG's plight.
And all of this sudden drama and upheaval has Snarky wondering about soul mates and the influence of those with whom we have entrusted our hearts/minds/lives.
Snarky firmly believes with the faith of secular scientific types that there is more than one "soulmate" out there for everyone. She finds more romanticism couched in the actions of the people that finally settle down and commit to make lives with the one(s) they choose rather than in the pining, angsty search for The One. But how much of making small changes to accommodate this whole other person (or persons) in one's life is just making adjustments before it becomes major shifts in one's basic... well "one"ness?
DRC married DRG before she turned 21. While she was mature for her age at the time, perhaps she's feeling now like she hasn't had a chance to figure out some things on her own.
The Snarks hope that this separation will help both of them to see what makes them unique, but also how that uniqueness and their similarities complement and enhance the whole... both for their sake, and for the baby's sake.
What they fear is that she will realize that she wasn't meant to be this woman (wife, mother) all along. If that is the case then permanent separation would be best for the child, but the Snarks still ache for the consequences.
Over time, Snarky has learned to appreciate the value of Name Brand Things - not always (she still just can't get the whole Louis Vuitton thing) but more often than not. When she does purchase things these days, they feel more like investments. (Even if said investments are happening at the Goodwill.)
She would rather have the one good pair of Danskos rather than a closet full of Payless ripoffs.
It came as a bit of a shock to her a few years ago to discover that the straight legged jeans from Eddie Bauer were the best fit for her body (which she lovingly refers to as "the curvy rectangle": slight dip at the waist in a long torso over short, muscular thighs and calves).
Snarky always thought of Eddie Bauer as The Gap for soccer moms. In other words: better than Wal-Mart, but not North Face/Patagonia/whatever the heck posh soccer moms wear.
What came as an even bigger shock is that a sweater she purchased from the EB factory outlet last year (deep red boxy cabled cardigan) provoked a rather interesting response from The Mister. He made a point several times to comment that he really liked the sweater, and liked Snarky wearing it. Sometimes the commentary came in tactile form.
Snarky could not pinpoint exactly what it was about this shapeless sweater that was pushing all the right buttons for The Mister, but she is now determined to figure it out.
Well, Snarky isn't sick. YET. But The Mister is. Woefully so: fever, sinus pressure, just the general nastiness + malaise that tends to strike 'round this time of year.
Snarky fixed him up with a round of Nyquil (he was up all night, which means that Snarky was up all night too ) and set some frozen chicken thighs to thaw in the fridge for some Jewish penicillin tonight.
Actually, there is a type of chicken soup DarkityMa used to make when members of the DarkityFam were under the weather. She had a special clay pot with a sort of funnel in the middle - it looked like a bundt cake pan crossed with a clay donut - that she used to steam up the chicken. The pot sat on top of another pot of boiling water, and the funnel directed the steam into the donut and cooked the chicken she had placed in the bottom of the clay pot. The soup formed from the steam and random cooking juices released by the chicken and aromatics.
Snarky suspects that Chinese mothers and Jewish mothers have a lot in common. Her proof is still pretty flimsy, but this still might be something worth investigating futher:
- both provide food, usually in the form of soup, as the panacea of choice (there's the aforementioned chicken soup, plus all manner of sweet soups for sore throats and mucus issues... Snarky disctinctly remembers a sweet soup her mother made with white wood fungus that was supposed to help her blood somehow, and she also recalls a berry/astragalus root tincture/soup she took roughly once a month for her wimmin issues)
- both are violently addicted to mah jong
- both consider Chinese Food a perfectly good holiday meal alternative/standby
- both are highly skilled in guilt-ninjitsu, case in point:
"How many Jewish/Chinese mothers does it take to change a light bulb?"
(heavily sighing) "Oh, don't mind me. I don't want to be a bother. I'll just sit in the dark."
