Current mood:

hot

Turtle Karma
So I've been busy.

I was sleepy Sunday morning (as I attested recently) and went to buy groceries. (The Kroger's I go to now doesn't have the bagels I like, that I can see, but they do sell Burt's Bees products!) After that, mindful of the fact that I might have company over, I spent the rest of the morning cleaning--vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, and washing dishes. Just as I finished with my chores, Anton called, saying that Chris and Nicole were on their way.

I had a very brief rest while eating cheese, crackers, and grapes and reading a magazine, and then Anton came to get me and we went to the Levee.

We were only there long enough to get some food before it started to rain. The four of us (among us an extremely pregnant woman) agreed to go see a movie, preferably Star Trek. When we went inside, we found that Star Trek wasn't showing for three hours, and the other movies we were interested in--Up and Land of the Lost--well, they were no Star Trek. I offered up my apartment as a place to watch a rental, and we agreed.

After some deliberation, we chose In Bruges from Blockbuster, and then it started to rain, really hard, and we went to McDonald's for drinks, and I have NEVER seen Newport and Covington so incredibly flooded before. The roads were awful.

Anyway, I left all my windows open, so the floors were soaked, as well as my reading chair, magazines, pillows, and sofa. We spent a little time cleaning it all up. (And this just a day after my fridge leaked all over the floor...!)

In Bruges ended up being funny and dark, and pretty much the only movie I've ever liked Colin Farrell in.

Other things of interest:

-Tuesday I was on the playground with another (non-toddler) teacher, and a little boy near the corner of the playground started shouting. "A frog!" he said. The other teacher and I went over, and it wasn't a frog--it was a turtle. I ran to get a glove from my first aid kit (the other teacher asked if I ought to wear a glove when touching a turtle, and I told her, better safe than sorry--we have to wear gloves for lots of things anyway) and then picked up the turtle. Peering into his shell and trying to figure out if he was alive or dead, I could see his round gold eyes in there. At one point while the other teacher and I stood there talking, the turtle jerked his head out for a second, startling the little boy. I wondered what to do with the turtle--there is a manufactured lake across the street belonging to a condo complex of some kind, and I figured that would be my best bet, but I couldn't leave the playground, and I was afraid that if I left the turtle near the fence to take care of later, I'd forget him. Fortunately, another teacher was leaving work, and I caught her and asked for her help. She stood in for me while I hurried over to the lake. (While I was standing at the fence talking to her, the turtle finally decided he'd have enough, and stuck out his head and all his limbs and started scrambling to get free. The children were very interested, and the little boy who originally found the turtle would not come close. The turtle's little claws made my skin crawl!) I ran across the street and left the turtle near the edge of the lake; he immediately started booking it away from me as quickly as possible.

I hope he'll be okay there. I figure that's probably where he came from (turtles need water, right?), and I didn't want him to try crossing the street and get crushed.

And the funny thing? That is the second turtle I've rescued in two weeks; the weekend of auditions, Caroline and I spotted one on the road near her parents' house and since I was in the passenger seat, I was the one to get out of the car and take the turtle back to the bushes.

And then twoish days later, I was driving back from my break (I'd gone to Walgreens for candy and a magazine) and saw a turtle--if not the same one, then a similar one--crawling across the road. As soon as I'd parked, I hurried back to get him and put him down by the lake.

These turtles need to start taking better care of themselves, or they're going to owe me some serious favors.

-I've been chained to the kitchen at work lately and I can't wait for rehearsals to start so that I won't be dead weight around the center. Most of the time, washing toys is lame, hot, and exhausting (standing around on my feet in a poorly ventilated kitchen waiting for the jank dishwasher to finish up? No.), but Wednesday morning I drew the line. The school-agers were making "truffles" (in reality it looked like a pan of brownies, but I heard someone else call it cake, so I dunno what was going on there) (later I heard it was supposed to be a trifle, but it obviously wasn't because it was a cake brownie thing so whatever), so the oven--an enormous oven meant to heat up enough food for roughly fifty kids every day--was on and the kitchen was nigh-on unbearable. I managed to weasel out of spending most of my time in the kitchen today and worked in my room while the dishwasher was running. Hooray!

-I've been reading this book, Princess Ben. It was a book I spied last year or sometime and added to my "stuff I want to read" list, and then chose at random to put on a gift wish list (birthday, I think). My sister (I think) got it for me for my birthday, and I was delighted to have a new book to read. Well--and this is what I meant about feeling guilty about not liking gift books--it wasn't a great book. The plot was decent enough, but the execution was pretty bland, and I wasn't 100% on the language (the word "ere" was used a lot, but the time period was never defined) or the setting (takes place in two countries, Montagne and Drachensbett, and there is mention of a dragon, so I assumed fantasy, and then they started hurling the word "France" around occasionally and then I was lost), and finally, the romance was delivered in the last maybe ten pages and was the blandest of all. I mean, there was no attraction at all between these characters (they hated each other, but because of the bland execution, I wasn't feeling the hate) and then all of a sudden they love each other. Whatever.

I liked the general plot--a girl suddenly becomes heir to a kingdom and has to learn to be a princess (which she, predictably, hates, and involves dancing, eating small portions, manners, sewing, etc.), and she secretly learns magic and then gets kidnapped. Well, that part was boring. After she escaped and returned home, she decided to become a better princess and work harder at bettering herself, which I thought was kind of cool (although she remained a failure at sewing. What is the deal with books and women who can’t sew? I don't understand this. It's like that, even more than cooking, is held up in fantasy books as a hallmark of women. If you sew, you're an acceptable woman. Or, no, even worse, if you sew, it's like you're throwing away your rights as a woman. It's the most womanly of all chores, I guess. If you can't sew, or abhor sewing, you're...a feminist? I mean, you don't see tough females doing embroidery, right? I'm not even sure. What's so wrong with sewing, books?). If the book had been more detailed, and dwelt a bit less on the parts where she was all, "OMG poor me my aunt is being so mean to me because I have to learn to be a princess!", I probably would have liked it more.

And, again, I feel badly for not liking it. I was delighted to get it for my birthday, though! Sorry, Elyse!

-Friday I spent almost the whole day in the school-age room, which is like a nightmare come to life. I (very fortunately) wasn't in there by myself, but--PLEASE. A largeish class of kids grades K-6 (ish), about 75% boys. Two boys in particular made me want to shoot myself. Strangely, the afternoon, after their teacher left for the day, was much calmer, but GOOD GOD it was awful. (And I had cramps. And ice cream cake, which seemed good at the time, but once the cramps picked up, ew.)

-And then I was sitting on the couch watching Angel (it being something I know pretty well to have in the background while working on other things, and season one of Angel is so wonderful), and then the furnace came on again. IT IS NINETY EFFING DEGREES IN MY APARTMENT AND THE FREAKING FURNACE CAME ON. WHAT. This while struggling with the Internet in order to do some real work (as opposed to what I did first, which was reading blogs), and when the furnace didn’t go off, I finally turned it off myself. Now I am hot and grumpy.

Basically? Yesterday just not a great day. Hot, grumpy, and with great big piles of stuff to do. Whoo!

-And then today (Saturday) I went to my mom's house to do laundry and mostly hung around watching Lois & Clark and The Simpsons and getting some show work done. My sister and mom and I went down to the Millenium Center again, but as usual, it is mostly a disappointment. (They still have the beautiful lanterns at the garage sale...)

-Later today, my mom came over and helped me set up my window unit air conditioner thingie. I think I could have figured it out on my own, but it was heavy, and I wanted help anyway. The thing is tremendously loud no matter what setting I put it on, and when we first turned it on it didn't smell great (musty with an undertone of cigarettes, always a great smell), but it is now slightly cooler in here. I can live with 80 degrees; I can't live with 90. I figured if I get it below 80, then it's a huge success; if not, I'm okay. As long as it’s less than 90. (I lit a couple of candles nearby, out of the flow of air, to help with the smell.) However, the flow of air is not very strong. Fail.

-Something happened that is not a great omen. I'm a strong believer/lover of good luck charms. One that I carry with me is a John Adams gold dollar, which I obtained some time ago, on purpose, sometime after we did 1776. (I keep it in my wallet. I am convinced that if I ever spend it, even in dire emergency, something AWFUL will happen to me.) Another is the "Club Roulette" gambling chip I bought a couple of months ago from the Sin City Antique Mall. I love the store, and ever since I first went in there, I admired the gambling chips in general, and this gambling chip in particular, and bought it for $5. I keep it in my pocket, along with my chapstick. Today I realized that it was gone. I did a vague apartment search (to be expanded sometime, I am sure) but didn't find it. Since I keep it in the same pocket as my chapstick and sometimes my keys, it could very easily have fallen out at work, on the street, in a parking lot, at my mom’s house...

I am very, very sad without it. It didn't really mean much to me, and I would not go so far to say that it brought me luck, but I liked carrying it in my pocket, and I liked the chip itself, and I hope I will find it in the kitchen or under some papers in the living room or in the closet or, magically, in the street.

-I thought of what Little, Big reminds me of: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It's slow, and good, but you can't really say what the plot is until much, much later.

-Now my computer has started to make a sort of twitchy noise and it is all I can do not to rip my hair out from frustration. Seriously, universe? Now in my paranoia I must back up all my files tomorrow (though it was something I've been meaning to do for a little while now).

Let us end this resoundingly depressing post with some links to prettiness:

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.