Another year down the drain… 31 December, 2008 -- Wed

I think I only wrote one thing here all year.

Alas.

It was a year of very few words.  Very few exciting happenings.  Very few longings and woes.  Which is a very good thing.

The one thing I wanted this year happened.  My Father is healthy again and his fantastically wonderful self again.  Thank you.

Next year will be the year of words.  Most likely not here, but in the places they should be.

And as I did last year, I leave you with Neil Gaiman’s perfect words.

I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you dream dangerously and outrageously, that you make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked. And most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now) that you will, when you need to be,  be wise, and that you will always be kind.   –Neil Gaiman

Falling Away 16 March, 2008 -- Sun

I know there are at least two people who enjoy reading the updates and whines that I used to provide on a fairly un-regular basis, so I apologize to those two people for my three month hiatus.  The rest of you gawkers can just suck it.

At night when I am drifting off to sleep, sometimes I bolt straight awake with the thought that things are just happening TOO FAST.  I am sure that happens to every person once in a while, but it happens to me all the time.  I will wander the house or flail in bed thinking of all the years I have just WASTED, and how the ones I have left are falling away at a faster pace every day.

Lord help me if I stop to think about the age of my parents, the age of my cats or the age of my husband.  I will scrub the kitchen floor at three a.m and plan out what I will do when one of the cats dies, when I have to deal with my elderly parents, what sort of casket will the boyband want?

I know this is unhealthy and silly and borderline manic, and I wish I knew how to quiet that Monkey Mind that races around and keeps me up all night worrying.

Us Simpson’s are worriers.  We are not enjoyers.  And that seems quite unfair to this little sleep deprived far from death girl.

Winter is long in Maine.  Just as long, perhaps longer, than winter in Montana.  There is a 15 foot pile of snow just over my back fence that I glare at every single day I leave the house.  There is no promise of Spring peeking its way through the clouds in the forms of buds or grass.  There is only snow, dirty snow, and crusty ice clumped in the corners and crannies of everything.

The boyband and I are house hunting.  I have suggested that we show up to houses in pith helmets with spears, but the boyband does not find me amusing.  Every day I hear on the news how hard it is to get a mortgage these days, how tough it is for first time home buyers to come up with the money in our flailing economy, but that is not the case for us.  The hard part is finding a house that we both want to live in.  Buying a house here means I am staying here and not going home.  Buying a house here means that another bit of my life is falling away and buying a house means even more nights of pacing the floor and scrubbing windows with ammonia.

I wish I knew the way to stop worrying.  To start enjoying.  I think that would help a lot.  But for now I am going to go and bite a nail or two and scan the trees outside for buds.  Even though it is snowing.  Again.

I can’t say it any better. 1 January, 2008 -- Tue

Thank you Neil Gaiman…

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t to forget make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Happy New Year everyone!

xoxo

Ehme

Meatloaf Bakeoff! 4 November, 2007 -- Sun

The Tenth Annual Meatloaf Bakeoff is at my house in a week. I am actually planning for it this year. Last year it was at our house, three days after we moved in. Needless to say, I forgot some important things….like forks. Not this year. The Meatloaf Bakeoff was started by a small group of my friends, and I have bullied my way in and taken it over. Mostly because I think having home field advantage will actually let me win for once, but it has yet to work.

This year there are bags of prizes that do not include things I was going to take to Goodwill anyway, there are appetizers and side dishes, there are chafing dishes to keep meatloaf warm, there are actual categories and most importantly, there are forks. And t-shirts!

I love meatloaf bakeoff. It is one of the many, many reasons that I love my friends and stay here stuck fast on the East Coast Least Coast. And as soon as it is over, I can start getting excited for French Whore Season!

lame. 4 November, 2007 -- Sun

That was the lamest hurricane ever.

The power didn’t even go out.

It barely rained at all.

Yet the weather channel, the local news, the national news, and my neighbor are all insisting “we got pounded”.

I do not feel pounded.

meh.

How people get here. 1 November, 2007 -- Thu

Some people that come here and read this are from E.’s photography site.

Some people come here from the Big Sky Blog.

But the largest amount of people that come here are doing internet searches for Jome. Jome…if you ever happen to read this….you have a ton of internet stalkers. It’s kinda creepy.

I mentioned his name once, because I wanted my Carter Beats the Devil book back (I did get it back, but then I loaned it out and it died a horrible painful death at the hands of a kitten and a bathtub. Sigh.) and ever since then this has been an internet stalker site. Perhaps I should start taking lots of pictures of him for his admirers. Hi Stalker People!

Pictchas. 1 November, 2007 -- Thu

This is Portland’s City Hall. I have to go there today.

Looking over the bay to my neighborhood.

And I complain about not living in Montana anymore. What a jerk I am.

insomnia 15 October, 2007 -- Mon

Something about October and my brain don’t work well together. It is my absolute favorite time of the year, but it is the time of year where no matter what tricks I use, I can’t sleep.

Last night I was staring at the ceiling and I heard a train chugging through an intersection, the sound that instantly calms all my thoughts and puts me straight to sleep. When I lived a block from the Metro North line it was the most well-rested I have ever been, even if it meant that all glassware was subject to shattering on a daily basis.

The thing is, I live no where near railroad tracks right now, and I have no idea where the train came from last night. I have never heard a train at our new house, and now I am wondering if I made it up, or if *GASP* I confused a boat for a train. I must now search my neighborhood for any form of railroad, and if I find it, request three a.m. passbys every night throughout fall.
Travel

THE railroad track is miles away,

And the day is loud with voices speaking,

Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day

But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,

Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,

But I see its cinders red on the sky,

And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,

And better friends I’ll not be knowing;

Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,

No matter where it’s going.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Idiot Fest Aught Seven 15 July, 2007 -- Sun

Have you ever been to Whitefish, Montana?

I am sure if you are reading this you have been.

You know that time of year when all of the sudden you look around and BAJAM! you don’t know a single person in line with you at the grocery store, and you hang your head and say….”damn. the tourists are back.”

Yes, it happens everywhere, but it was always so sudden back home. One day you were the only person on the beach, and suddenly BAJAM! 5000 people were squishing you every which way and you had to find the most remote lake (Wood’s) to hide from them.

I always swore I would never live in another tourist town. I have come to realize that every town in America is a tourist town…or at least everyone I choose to live in.

NYC? Tourists all the time. The city that never de-tourists.  But you never had to interact with them!  It was genius!  You just shoved past their lost looking faces in the middle of Grand Central and left someone else to deal with them.  It was kind of heavenly.

Portland, Maine? Quaint small city. On the ocean. Lots of restaurants. Lots of artists. Lighthouses. Islands. Tourist Mecca.

Since I no longer work in the public eye, I don’t notice the slow creep of people descending on our town. Every two weeks I work at the parking lot, just like I have for the last 8 years, and every week I am swarmed by tourists asking the best place to eat, the greatest things to see, and the cheapest place to sleep. When I worked in retail I could handle it. Just an extra long shift at the store. These days I literally go days without talking to someone who knows my entire life story. I work alone, I go home to the boyband, I repeat the next day. So the tourists are a bit overwhelming when I am in hermit mode.

We are all tourists. At some point. But I would like to think of myself as a good tourist. And here are some secrets people.

1. Don’t ask–”Where should I go for dinner.” Portland, Maine has more restaurants per capita than San Francisco. That is a lot. Please phrase the question–”I am hungry for Mexican. What is your favorite Mexican restaurant?” (Although here it always Seafood. Lobster used to be fed to prisoners people, AS TORTURE, and it really is not that much cheaper here….so don’t even complain that the freaking lobster dinner that I recommended to you cost you $20.00. boo.)

2. Don’t ask….”Where do the locals eat?” because I am going to say…”At our houses.” And then I will probably charge you double for parking. We are not going to tell you where our favorite restaurants are….that is where we hide from you.  We are much more likely to tell you to go to the giant tourist trap floating craphole of a restaurant when you ask this question.

3. Do not ask me for directions and then question those directions. When I say, “go to the stop light and turn left” …do not say, “Wouldn’t it be quicker to go left and then drive down Spring Street?” If you know how to get there…..DO NOT ASK ME! I don’t care where you are going. True story….The parking lot is right on the water. There is a ferry, called the Cat, that takes touristas to Canada. It is a ferry. Ferries leave from the water. Tonight I gave directions to the ferry to a flaky guy, and when I finished he said, “Don’t you mean, turn right when you get to the diner?” To which I replied, “The water is to your left, I think if you go to the right you are going to have a really hard time catching a ferry.” He looked at me all suspicious and drove off. BLEAH! I hate giving directions to tourists. And GPS just makes it worse. Because now, they don’t just want directions, they want to know how to spell things….

Tourist: So how to you spell Portland?

ME: P-o-r-t-l-a-n-d. Port. plus. Land.

Tourist: One more time, how is that?  Oh and can you give me the names and spellings of all the lighthouses on the Maine Coast while you try to do your job at the same time?  I am not in a hurry, I am on VACATION!

4. Do not ask me how much hotels are, how much other parking lots charge, how much ferries are, what the ferry schedule is, what the best things to see in the summer in Portland are, or what my favorite tourist activity is. I DON’T GET TO DO THESE THINGS! You get to. Go do them! Read a book about my town. I only get to enjoy it in the dead of winter.

grr.

There are lots and lots of summer camps in Maine. And this is the weekend when all the guilty New York and Conneticunt parents come up to visit their spoiled rotten children and spoil them some more. It used to be the busiest weekend of the summer at the toy store. Now it is just idiot fest at the parking lot.

grr.

Believe it or not, I had much more of a rant brewing in my head, but jezum crow….it is 1:30 in the morning….and I just want to crawl into bed.  So I am going to do that.  Neener neener.

What’s not to love? 10 July, 2007 -- Tue

There is a Big Sky everywhere.

Even on the East Coast Least Coast…..