inthelouvre.org

I Has A House

This is Richard.

He’s looking out through the bedroom window at me standing on the balcony. We haven’t lately had any kind of special events in our lives (anniversaries, birthdays, etc) but I wanted to make him a gift anyway. Despite our lack of occasion, we’ve been having, ah, issues lately. Nothing we can’t work through, which is why I decided to build him a house.

The house is sort of a universal symbol for support, and it’s important that he knows I support him through whatever he needs. Observe in the pictures above: Curtains (winter in the first, autumn in the second). I had a lot of scrap fabric after I made them, so I decided to make the house out of these scraps - it symbolizes support, yes, but it’s made out of home. He is my home, and he’s said I’m his; it only seemed appropriate.

I’d like to say that each side tells a story, but in reality, the whole project tells the story. I cut up two book covers - both by Elizabeth Lowell (Winter Fire and Autumn Lover). I hadn’t read either book, but found them appropriate seasonal covers for my project, as they both had an image that was just the right size.

This side (not the roof) was the last side that I made. I was out of ideas, so I put sparkly love on it.

A repeat of the winter side, except more autumny. I got the 1-inch pins from my collection. In high school I loved those things and I still have about 20 hidden away in various places. These were perfect matches so I used them.

And finally here we are inside our house looking out through our oddly placed curtains. This was really difficult to make but well worth the effort.

And the roof - all autumn, deeply contrasting with the bottom of the house. I took lyrics from the Ricky Nelson song “I WIll Follow You” because I couldn’t think of a better way to tell him that I’ll be beside him as long as he lets me. Plus, who wouldn’t love having this song stuck in his/her head for all eternity?

When I gave it to him, he put it on his head.

He would probably wear it forever if he could, but I’m afraid that the roof embellishments will fall off. Some of them are hot-glued onto the fabric.

Whenever he’s done studying the details, though, he can put things inside if he’d like.

The lining fabric is completely scrap and I have no idea where it came from, but there was enough of it in my scrap pile, so I used it. It doesn’t exactly fit the theme, but I think it’s pretty anyway.

It took two days of strenuous stitching to complete this. Each piece has an exterior fabric, 8 sheets of newspaper, and an interior fabric. I first attached the exterior to the newspaper by sewing one inch inside along the border, then added embellishments.

Then I pinned the interior fabric on the back, and rolled the edges over the exterior fabric, stitching as I went along. I didn’t take photos of each step, but to give you an idea of what it looked like…

After that was done, all I had left to do was put the house together. I approached it as you would a gingerbread house - sewed the sides to the bottom, and then sewed the sides to each other. The roof was easy - just had to attach the two pieces at the tops.

This is how I’ve spent the last few days. I kept thinking while I was making it that I was totally going to make another one; it was fun and interesting and creative, etc etc. However, by the time I was done I felt like my fingers were going to fall off, so hurt and tired as they were! So I’ll probably never make another one, but at least I can immortalize this one on my website.

(That said, if I do make another, I will photograph each step in case anyone is interested. It won’t be for a long while yet, though, because my fingers are still extremely sore.)

Mystery and Misery

There are things I sometimes forget. I was viewing my own Myspace profile today because it’s been a very long time since I last did so. (It is of little importance to me to keep myself updated there. My life can be found here and at my Livejournal, so I use Myspace to keep up with friends’ lives.) It was there that I found this lyric:

mystery and misery can sometimes be a call to action and can be a source of passion

I’ve lately been overblown with disappointments. It’s nothing too entirely serious, just little things that I’ve looked forward to but which cannot happen for some reason or another, in addition to my apartment’s seeming inability to keep itself clean even though I pick up my own trash and try to keep it as tidy as possible. It’s frustrating to live with clutter. I had roommates once who so refused to take out the garbage that if I didn’t (or didn’t force my boyfriend to), it would pile up so much as to obstruct the way to the kitchen. I don’t even want to talk about the smell. When we left them, I promised him and myself that we would never live like that again - and here we are. Living not exactly like that (it never blocks paths), but close enough to make me wretched.

And instead of doing anything about it, I clean up once a month and eat chocolate the rest of the time.

We’ve gotten rid of the smell with which our filthy animal decides to reign over the living room; most of our boxes are unpacked; I have a little bit set aside in savings for more organizational units; and yet, despite all this, here I am sitting on my big green chair doing absolutely nothing productive. I’m eating a giant chocolate bar and looking at my own Myspace page.

How easily I have forgotten those things which used to inspire me.

mystery and misery can sometimes be a call to action and can be a source of passion

As the lyric says it, so I used to live my life. I used to change this misery into something useful. I was never one to laze around with sweets within arm’s reach, hoping that a better life would float its way right over to my lap. The mystery? The boy. I cannot figure him out for the life of me. Men, in general, seem to be only useful for a few things: Loving and being loved, lifting heavy objects, and unending, unconditional warmth (of the body and soul). They are not good for keeping the house tidy, keeping promises, remembering birthdays, or entirely proper manners.

Boys? They don’t mind the smell. They don’t mind wading through the mountains of clothing to climb into bed or having to pick through piles of trash to find USB cords. They don’t mind books piled in various locations around the house because it doesn’t at all effect the levels they beat in their video games. This is what I’ve learned living with a boy: I have to do everything I want done, because it can’t be expected of him to regularly take care of the dishes, move his clutter out of doorways, or snack on anything other than mass amounts of fattening foods.

Yet, it’s charming. When I get in these moods where the Internet makes me physically sick because I spend so much time on it, I think of how charming it is when he comes home with magazines I didn’t ask for: more things to disorganize the house but in which I might find a few interesting articles. But it’s not action or passion. It’s still sitting here in front of the computer while I may as well be throwing tennis balls at myself. It doesn’t make a difference.

I’d like to make a difference. I’d like to be creative again. I’d like to cook a healthy feast. I’d like to go running, if it weren’t 10 at night. I’d like to be productive. But what is keeping me here? I only cleaned the house last weekend, but already its disarray annoys me. I should clean it again! I should get off my ass and do something.

Is this a wasteful life, to sit here writing this entry about how I wish I had the motivation to get up and do something? Or is it more wasteful to find inspiration in a lyric, an old friend, but then waste that inspiration on blabbering about my frustrations?

Turtle Adventures

My turtle seems to be trying to climb up his water filter to get out of the tank. It’s really funny but also really sad because he’ll get just high enough to sort of get out, but since his feet are so slippery from being in the water, he’ll just fall right back into the water, usually sideways. I’m pretty mean to my turtle, I know; I’m laughing at his struggles. Well now he’s moved onto his basking log and he’s making pretty good progress since it’s so much higher up in the tank, but he still keeps slipping. I can’t tell if this is because he hates his tank or because he hates us, specifically.

I’m putting the screen over his tank. This is something we previously didn’t think necessary because he really can’t get out, but he seems to be a pretty smart turtle. At first we thought he was just generally destructive, and knocking down his tank apparatus simply because he’s a huge jerk. Now I see that he uses these things as stepping stones to climbing out. He actually had his head over the edge for a moment and I don’t want to risk him finding a way to use his chin to lift his entire body out. I know that sounds pretty ridiculous, but as this is a turtle who we previously thought was an idiot, running directly into the glass and other solid, non-transparent objects, maybe this is a turtle who actually has magical powers or lazers, who will get out of his tank and shoot his lazer beams at us and then eat our rotting bodies.

The other day his namesake was visiting the apartment, meeting him for the first time. We let him out for imitation freedom, where we let him crawl around the apartment everywhere except under small enclosed areas, in the kitchen, outside, or on my yoga mat. (I told Richard that if I got salmonella and died from the turtle crawling on my yoga mat, that he wouldn’t get anything in my will.) He seemed to be really enjoying himself until he realized that he wasn’t allowed outside. In fact, I got the first hint of his intelligence when he went straight for the front door and walked into it repeatedly, as if to say, “I know this is the way out, but I can’t figure how to get to the other side. Let me try again.” Who has a turtle who knows where the front door is? He’s been outside on the balcony through the balcony door; why didn’t he try going that way?

In any case, when he realized he couldn’t escape our clutches, his next move was to find a nice hiding place. We didn’t want him crawling underneath anything we couldn’t reach, so we blocked all his passageways and offered him a box. He seemed very skeptical of the box, and I suppose rightly so, because eventually Richard just put the box on top of him and he pooped. Immediately. Great, my turtle is not afraid to go out into the world, which would be the bottom level of this apartment complex where any child could scoop him up and give him worse living conditions than he’s ever had, but he’s afraid of a box.

I hope that when I have kids and put them in boxes that they won’t poop immediately, because you can be sure I’ll be calling on Martin to come over and clean it up.

Hello, My Name is Martin. You Took Me from the Wild: Prepare to Die.

Today I’ll be answering Miranda’s question: What is your favorite comfort food?

Ice cream, hands down. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter what kind of ice cream, though I don’t like coffee flavors and I usually try to stay away from anything that has several small chunks of things; for example, vanilla ice cream with peanuts, chocolate chips, strawberry bits, and hardened caramel. I don’t really do well with lots of things in my mouth at once, and thus it’s not very comforting.

Miranda, what is your favorite comforting activity - something you do to wind down, relax, whatever? And where do you do it?

If you have a question you’ve been dying to ask me, you can ask it here.

Today I have some involved news.

First of all, I think I’ve figured out how to effectively mess around with WordPress comments, which is a huge accomplishment for me. For a long time I just nixed comments on my blog all together in favor of not trying to figure things out. On that note, I’ve made a new layout for my book reviews/thoughts journal, retitled Book Avenue.

Secondly, and most importantly, Richard and I have acquired a turtle. We keep telling people that my brother gave it to us, which is certainly not fictional, but we don’t let on that my brother found it right before he may have driven over it. I like to think of it as a “rescued” turtle who now has a constant food source, reliable shelter, and a considerable amount of warmth, though I know I’m probably delusioning myself away from the fact that we took this thing out of the wild and brought it into captivity.

He hates us, but we love him! He’s also not camera shy, and today while he was eating his fish he posed for some pictures. For a while he lived in our bath tub, but I think he’s much happier now in his 40 gallon tank. He has a log, as you can see, but it isn’t very heavy so it sort of floats around. We’re going to buy him a castle, or perhaps some ancient ruins. I also think we should get him a background so he will stop trying to escape, ramming his head hard into the glass completely bewildered at why he can’t get out.

See him in action! What’s this? What’s going on? It’s shiny… Let me out, my humans are boring… Ohhhh, I think I found me some dinner! CHOMP!… Hello log, I love you. Okay, they’re a little dark, but give me a break - I’m a new pet owner.

What was it like bringing home your pet for the first time? Anyone else have a turtle?

Magazines and Water Bottles

So I was spending a nice, quiet evening on the toilet, reading a mystery novel and thinking, hm, this has been a pretty good day. I’ve been inside almost all day, in the air conditioning, reading and working on websites, generally doing things I ended up rather proud of. Then someone knocked on the door. My first thought was, “I’m on the toilet! I’m not going to get up!” Then they started jiggling the handle and my first thought morphed into my second thought which was, “Shit, it must be the maintanence guy.”

One of our bedroom windows is broken, so any day now I expect the maintanence guy to come and fix it while I’m in the shower or on the toilet or having sex or whatever else. He has a key to the apartment, so why wouldn’t he think, “oh, they’re not answering, they must not be home”? In order to save myself from this embarassment, I closed the toilet lid and answered the door.

First regret.

My second regret was when the guy standing outside the door asked for a water bottle and I gave him two, as he was very sweaty and standing next to an equally smelly girl.

I knew who they were. I knew the purpose of asking for the bottle of water. I’m sure some large percentage of Americans keep packs of bottled water in their home, and to them saying, “it’s really hot, could I trouble you for some water?” is the same thing as “I’m a scam-artist, could I trouble you for some money?” If you receive the water, you’ll probably at least be able to pique interest in what you’re selling, because you think you’re dealing with a sucker.

My intentions were all wrong; however, I still regret those bottles of water. Especially since she didn’t even touch hers, as if it was forbidden for her to be accepting the water at all.

He knew his script well. My favorite color is blue, I said, and right off the bat he shot out the words “loyalty,” “honesty,” and “laziness.” “Which ones of those apply to you most?” and I could only pick one. “What superpower would you most like to have? Have you ever been out of the country?” and here’s the kicker: “If you subscribe to one of these magazines, you will be able to send me out of the country.” Gee, thanks guy. I’d love to spend my hard-earned money to send you on a luxorious trip to London, so I can later pick up the scraps of what I have left and wonder why I wasn’t saving up for me to go to London.

I told him I was totally broke, and he said if I got a paycheck any time within the next month that it would be okay, as they don’t deposit the checks for at least two weeks. Right, but I’m still broke. All that money is going to bills.

And as soon as it became clear that I wasn’t going to help him out, I was given the cold shoulder. “I just can’t believe that you don’t trust us. I understand that you don’t think you have money, but it’s a small price to make some kids in a hospital happy. What can I do to make you trust us? Get you on the phone with my boss? I will do anything.” Again, clarity ensues, and he starts to walk away without even saying thank-you for the water bottle.

So I called him out on it. I congratulated him for his well-learned script, for his personable skills and for his ability to get a water bottle out of me, though I probably would have given the water to anyone who was sweating profusely at my door. I told him it was crossing the line when he asked to enter my apartment and that if he wants more sales, he shouldn’t be so quick to give the cold shoulder. Leaving in anger won’t guilt me to it; it’ll just make me annoyed that I even listened. Next time, you won’t be so lucky. I’ll slam the goddamned door in your face.

He listened intently and restated that it wasn’t a scam, not that I ever said it was.

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