Bon voyage

Well, the smoke has finally gotten to me. My throat is scratchy and my voice is hoarse, and I'm feeling weirded out and anxious about the strange quality of light in the sky all week, almost like the light during a solar eclipse. Right now the sun is going down and as I look out the window it's a deep, vivid red-orange color through the branches of the trees. The picture is of the mountain we live under, and the dry bed of the creek that runs behind our house. Usually there's water in it until at least the first part of August.

Seems like as good a time as any to get away for a week.

I'm leaving tomorrow and have suddenly realized I have nothing to special wear on this trip. I've been feeling really ugly lately anyway, and the thought of trying to come up with a whole week's worth of clothing I'll feel good in while seeing (being seen by) family and a few old friends fills me with dread and makes me remember why I started wearing a uniform in the first place. It's the same reason I standardize in so many other areas of my life, too: because it really cuts down on stress. Although it also creates stress, in the form of people who think it's not okay to wear the same outfit more than once in a week or so. I hate being disapproved of. But not enough to change this.

So it's two pants, two shirts, one skirt, one pair of shoes, one big piece of linen to wrap around myself if it gets cold, and that's it. Everything the same color, except one of the pants is a pair of jeans. No jewelry. Well, there is this little piece of leather cording I've been wearing wrapped around my neck, really simple; maybe I'll leave that on. And I guess I should take a bathing suit and sandals, for swimming with my nieces and nephews. And probably a hat, because of the sun. Urgh. See how quickly things start to get complicated?

And of course all it takes is one big glop of ketchup to drip out of your hamburger and down the front of your only shirt to drive home the fact that traveling with only one thing to wear is almost as stressful as dragging your entire wardrobe along for the ride.

Anyway! Clearly I'm still not feeling up to par. But I am looking forward to seeing everyone and I'm usually able to relax once I get there.

I had a nice birthday yesterday, once I got away from my office. The party was fabulous, and I don't know why this should have surprised me but everybody brought presents too, and it really blew me away to be in the middle of a bunch of people, all looking at me and smiling, and to feel mostly pretty okay about it. When I'm in the state of mind I've been in lately, being looked at – even by people I know and feel comfortable with – is like touching an exposed nerve. Waves of adrenaline surging through my body, and an intense desire to escape. I need to find some resources to read about this, and learn what the deal is ... what useful purpose could that kind of sensitivity possibly serve? I hate it.

ANYway. I guess I really don't have much to say; I'm just trying to procrastinate doing laundry and cleaning and thinking about what to have for dinner.

I will close with a small piece of interesting news on the job front: the big cheese asked me to take over as editor of the Web site they started for local dog enthusiasts last year. I'm cautiously optimistic that this could turn out to be a fun and interesting project for me, though the emphasis should remain on "cautious" because the only reason they're bringing it in-house is because the person they contracted with to make a go of it – someone who's developed similar sites very successfully elsewhere, apparently – has pronounced it unworkable, unprofitable and not worth her time. I doubt I'll be able to sell it if she hasn't been able to, but the goal now is not so much to make money but to re-architect the site for simplicity (a particular specialty of mine), adapt the content to the new, streamlined format, and then keep generating new content on a much less frequent basis.

Who knows what will happen over time (especially since I'll be working with someone who's kind of been demoted, and who I know doesn't like to "share" his projects), but if nothing else it made me feel good to be asked.

Okay. Laundry.

Stalking the yellow slingback

I finally came up with a decent stealth fashion photo, just in time for my birthday, which is today. Catching sight of this woman was actually kind of a thrill, because she's really beautifully and I'm going to guess even possibly kind of stylishly dressed – something of a rarity in this little farm and tourist town. This combination of gray and bright, chrome yellow is supposedly kind of hot right now, or so I have read. (Note the New York Times on the table here ... apparently some people around here do try to keep track of the rest of the world.)

Here's a close-up of the sandals. Not a style I would ever wear myself – any of it, actually – because it's too sort of ... I don't know, flimsy and refined, undoubtedly well-made but not meant to be sturdy, durable or even probably very comfortable. Plus, my feet are too wide and too important to me to wear strappy, thin-soled sandals.

Thinking of feet ... the other night I woke up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water and as I was stepping around the Jeeps (snoring away in the middle of the doorway – his new way of protecting me, since he can no longer hear a thing) I smacked my little toe hard against the bottom of the doorframe. It turned black and when I trimmed the broken nail it was all bloody underneath, and it occurred to me – a stubbed toe always hurts, but if I don't take care of my blood sugar this is exactly the kind of injury that could lead to my having a toe, foot or leg amputated. Like, within days.

I've read about this online in the diabetes forums; certain writers are super vigilant about reminding us newer diabetics to take rigorous care of our feet. So I put a pair of Crocs next to the bed and vowed never to get up again without immediately putting them on. They may not be as cute as a pair of bright yellow strappy slingbacks, but you can't wear slingbacks anyway if you've just had your feet chopped off.

Anyway. Rather a sobering thought at 3:43 in the morning.

I have been struggling a bit with my health issues again lately, first as part of my spring anxiety series and now just ... I don't know why, but it just seems to kind of go on for no apparent reason. My morning sugars have been back down where I like them to be for a couple of weeks now but I'm finding myself having to work very hard to keep them there.

The biggest problem is hunger – I just feel like I'm starving, all the time, even after I've just eaten a totally adequate meal. Now that I know this is a symptom of my condition, and not an indication that I need to eat something, you'd think it would somehow be easier to reign it in and ignore the urge to indulge. But it isn't. Hunger is such a primal, visceral, urgent experience – you feel like your very existence is in peril. At least that's how it feels to me.

So I'm experimenting again with different things I can eat lots of, that won't cause me to gain weight or blow my blood sugar goals. Water is at the top of my list, along with celery, leafy greens (without dressing), and all kinds of non-starchy vegetables plus fish, chicken and the occasional spoonful of peanut butter or ice cream, just for morale.

I'm supposed to have a new A1C in the next few weeks and I'm a little afraid to find out what it's going to be. I feel sure it will have gone up since my last one. But maybe it won't be as bad as I thought. And even if it is, it's always better to know, right? Then at least I can adjust my program to try to bring it back down again.

In other news, today is also my last day of work before my vacation, and a friend from work is throwing me a little party at her house tonight. While I do celebrate my birthday, I almost never have an actual party, so that will be something special.

P.S. I should probably mention that the podiatrist has pronounced my feet in excellent condition, and my smashed toe was completely healed within a few days. So no worries there, for now – just a cheery thought for the future!

Free ride

This bird has been riding on this horse's back for days now, down in our neighbor's pasture. Every time I ride by they're together, and I finally stopped to take a picture. Why would a bird spend so much time standing on a horse's back? Maybe they're just buddies.

The smoky haze and its accompanying weird orange-colored light continue, and this morning both are overlaid with a heavy blanket of fog that is just starting to burn away. Out in our yard there are two hummingbirds sitting on a salvia branch squeaking at each other, and beyond them in the field a big fat turkey vulture is sitting on a fence post, looking down at something in the grass – maybe a dead rabbit. A mockingbird keeps flying all around it, landing on one post, then swooping in at the vulture again, then landing on another post. Maybe the dead thing is a bird.

I like being able to see all this, without even leaving my chair. Though I also like getting out there for a closer look.

We had dinner last night with one of Mr. A's friends who is moving to Texas soon, taking a bunch of money he's inherited and building a beautiful house. He showed us his plans, and it made me think some more about all the things I'd like to do with this place. Mr. A is amenable, and several times a week he comes to me with a new idea about some improvement he'd like to make. Slowly, we are doing a few things.

The dogs just ran out into the yard to bark at something; better go see what's up.

The haze

Today was going to be my first day back at my regular 32-hour work week since early March – meaning I would not have to be at the office until noon, instead of 8:30 as I've been doing every Tuesday for the last several months. So I was enjoying a leisurely breakfast on the patio, watching the hazy sky (because of all the fires – the season has begun early this year), sipping from my fat yellow teacup and reading the first pages of an as-yet-unread-by-me Faulkner novel, when the phone rang.

I considered not answering it – and then I decided to follow up on that urge and let it go to voicemail. I waited for the little "ding" that lets me know there's a new message, and when I listened to it – halleluja and hot dang in a handbasket! It was my boss, informing me that there was very little work to be done today, and that if I would like to take the day off, that would be just fine. So yeah! I did it. I took the day off.

Making a conscious effort for the moment not to worry too much about what it means that there is so little to do that they are asking people not to come in (because with all the freelance work I committed to earlier this year all this really means for me is that I'm finally back to only 40 hours a week)... I enjoyed my day very much. I puttered, I read, I did some sewing, I did some cleaning, I took a bath followed by a brief nap, I tried on a bunch of new outfits. I rode my bike to the thrift store to drop off several large bags of clothes that have been hanging around in the garage for way too long. I went to the library and got a new library card – my old one having long since disappeared – and checked out a bunch of books about women in the American West in the late 19th century, with an emphasis on the Mormon experience (something that never fails to fascinate me).

On the way home I rode the long way around, stopping at this shady little bar on the banks of the creek not far from my house – a polka palace in continuous operation for more than 100 years, which now also features local Cajun, Zydeco and tango bands, among others. I was the only person in the place besides the bartender. He said it wouldn't get busy until the Kiwanis showed up for their weekly meeting at 7:30, so he turned on the waterfall for me and I took a seat under the Christmas lights outside and downed a couple of beers before riding the rest of the way home.

Here's a picture of the wall behind the bar, which the bartender informed me was painted in 1927. The whole place is old-school in the extreme, right down to the dinner menu (steaks, chops, pasta, giant uncomplicated salads, etc. – not a veggieburger in sight).



All in all a very satisfying day.

Now I am about to have a little salad, after which I will cut up the pants and dresses I bought by the pound at that thrift store, and sew them into new skirts to wear on my vacation next week.

I love summer. Except for all the fires. Those I will admit are a little disturbing, though the haze makes for lovely red sunsets.

Fro action

Once again my stealth-mode photography failed to capture the full glory of a look, but I wanted to feature this guy because of his magnificent afro. It's way bigger than you can tell from this picture! And red. G., he reminded me of a certain boy we both know, if that boy had a big giant fro.

His tattoos were also beautiful – both arms in a pattern of roses in plain black, no color, no shading, that reminded me of a half-bolt of Japanese fabric I've been hoarding. I kept thinking someone ought to do some beading on that vest for him, and get him out of those jeans and into some proper baggy trousers – so much cooler in the hundred-degree heat.

And here's another television photo. Do you recognize this character? What if I said, "Damn them all to HELL!!!!!" It was the title of the film that drew me in initially ... and then my own curiosity, when I realized it was not the campy original but the over-earnest, environmentally-angsty 2001 remake starring Marky Mark. His massive guns and delicate eyebrows were a highlight, but the star of the show, in my opinion, was the inimitable Charlton Heston in a brief cameo as the dying father of the chief villain. He's a good guy in this one, too – trying to tell his evil son the truth about the history of their race, before it's too late. Doesn't he look great? Well, for an ape on his deathbed?

Never before published

Lightening things up a bit, I will report that this morning I've found a copy of the music I've been looking for to accompany myself on a rousing rendition of a little thing I like to call "The Milkbone Song."

This is the song I sing to the dogs when I'm giving them their morning treat, and this morning I found out just how attuned they are to this, um, tune.

Both of them were snoring away in the living room and I was puttering around in the kitchen, getting my own breakfast together, when I started quietly – almost under my breath, even – humming the song. I was only a few bars into it when suddenly there they both were, standing in the doorway grinning and staring at me. They heard! And knew what it signified. Or at least, Tater heard (the Jeeps doesn't hear much of anything anymore), and Jeepers followed his lead.

So I decided to treat them to a fully orchestrated version, which you can hear right this minute if you have iTunes – and everyone really should have iTunes, shouldn't they? Yes!

So go there right now and search for this song: Carmen: Toréador, en garde – the version by John Mauceri, Leonard Bernstein, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & The Manhattan Opera Chorus. Then click to hear the preview, and sing along with me! The clip they posted starts right where the lyrics begin, and conveniently ends right about where I run out of ideas and start repeating myself.

I actually wrote the lyrics for two voices, in case Mr. A wants to sing it with me (a rare but not unprecedented occurrence). If you lack a singing partner you can sing both parts yourself. So here we go:

Milkbones for dogs!
Milk-Milky bones for dogs!
Milkbones for dogs!
Milkbones for dogs!
Milkbones, they are delicious and crunchEE,
(triumphantly) And they are all for MEEEEEEE!

Sit down and give me five*,
here's one for you
and one for Tater, too!

*Referring to the trick they have to do to get the bone.

I'm not quitting my day job yet but yeah, I do pen a lyric or two from time to time. For my birthday I'm considering buying myself a new ukulele, to replace the one that was stolen a few years ago. I'm blown away by this guy:



And look at this funny cowboy design! More likely I'll get a plain one and decorate it myself.

The small screen

This is one of my favorite scenes from a very famous movie. I may go back and take more pictures of it, actually; I'd love to get a good one of Max Von Sydow's jaw. Is there anyone in the world more starkly beautiful than that man in that movie? He's so lean and spare and tightly strung ... and that white blond hair. Hmm.

Wait – I found one online. Not from that movie, but from the same era. In real life I usually prefer people with quite a bit more meat on their bones, but. Well. Anyway. I still like this picture. Maybe in my next life I will be blond and gaunt and Swedish. And/or a man. Why not?

I've been enjoying photographing what's on TV lately. I have to do something, if it's going to be on, besides just watch it. Television watching is such a strange and useless activity – sitting still and staring at images on a box. If the box was missing you would be just sitting there alone, all wrapped up in your own mind. I suppose that may be that's why people like doing it. Letting your mind go blank and passively fill up with surreal images is kind of like being drugged, or sleeping ... and isn't everybody a little sleep-deprived these days?

We are, around here. It's sulfuring season again, which means all night long a team of noisy ATVs is driving up and down, up and down, up and down each row of vines across the road, engines humming louder and then softer and then louder again, making it impossible to ever fall asleep. I can hear them right now – I can feel them. Even with earplugs the energy or vibration of that kind of movement in this normally very still and quiet place is highly disruptive. Luckily it doesn't go on for long – they usually finish in one night. And they only do it a few times each season. It's all organic and completely harmless, supposedly, but I can always tell when they've been doing it – everyone in the house gets all sneezy and lethargic.

Anyway. Here's another scene from a TV movie, the name of which I no longer remember ... the plot has to do with a pair of teenaged and utterly unlikeable siblings who, while on a forced family vacation with their parents in an abandoned ghost town, happen upon a time machine that takes them back to "the 1800s!" where they encounter not only the usual white and black hats, but also an alien space ship (complete with furry, big-eyed "adorable" baby aliens), rioting villagers carrying torches (a la Frankenstein), and of course the obligatory "Important Life Lesson" embedded in a forbidden/unrequited love subplot. It was so bad I still can't believe we let it play all the way through til the end. But I did get a funny picture out of it. Who puts up the money to produce these things, anyway?

So yeah. I guess you could say my taste in television viewing pretty much runs the gamut.

New study

I don't have time to write a lot about this, but I've been reading about a new study that links diabetes and depression in some new and interesting ways.

... Golden, an endocrinologist, suspects that depression might cause physiological changes that predispose people to diabetes. Depression raises levels of stress hormones such as cortisol as well as other molecules that lead to inflammation; these chemicals in turn contribute to diabetes.

Depression plays a role in several chronic physical conditions besides diabetes. For years, scientists have known that depression is associated with higher rates of heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis and perhaps dementia. Stress hormones and inflammatory molecules play a role in all of those diseases. (more...)

Did I write about this already? Since I've been dealing with this latest bout of anxiety or depression or whatever it is, my morning glucose readings have consistently been 10-20 points higher than usual. True, I'm also not exercising as much as I was before, and I have gained back about eight of the pounds I lost last year (@*&#$). But now, rather than blaming myself for being a loser and a jerk and a terrible weak loser of a jerk, etc., I'm entertaining the possibility that hmm, maybe my body (not just my reprehensible character) really does have something to do with it – all on its own – and maybe it might be possible to NOT beat myself up so much when things like this start to happen.

This is not to say that I'm letting myself off the hook for losing more weight and getting my numbers back down where they should be. Just because there's a "real, verifiable reason" why I tend toward depression, weight gain, high blood glucose, etc. – that doesn't mean it's okay to just give up and let it take over my life.

It does mean it might be harder for me to control these things than it is for the average person who doesn't have this condition. It also means ... well, I can't say it makes me happy to see my morning glucose numbers rising, but it is somehow validating to have this bit of "proof" that the way I've been feeling is not just all in my head. Knowing that it's not all my own fault somehow makes it easier to keep trying.

As one of my favorite rabble-rousers said lo these many years ago: "The victory is in the struggle."

Keep on keeping on!

Vegas fashion (of sorts)

This is as close as I got to a Friday fashion shot ... a girl in a green blouse, supershort skirt and black boots striding through the airport in Las Vegas. I took several other shots of cool people while I was there – including a toddler in pigtails and sparkly plastic platform mermaid sandals, a creepy guy in junkie jeans and an armful of leather bracelets, and a young woman in a silver halter made mostly out of chains, swaying like a geisha on a pair of super-spiked silver and clear lucite fetish heels – but they did not come out. I'm liking the effects of the cheapie camera phone all the same, though. The grainy, sort of schizoid quality and muted, muddied colors feel familiar to me right now, vaguely comforting.

As I was driving along the bay coming home from Oakland last night the sun had gone down and heavy fog was rolling in, and it reminded me again how much this place feels like home to me now. I took some pictures from the car.







I like the sense of darkness and light in these; It made me wish I had the patience to learn how to paint. I would love to do a night skyline of the whole long ridge behind my house like this.

I have been enjoying the night time lately, so I guess it makes sense that these images would appeal to me. The quieter energy and coolness are soothing. The other night I took Tater for a walk just as the sky was fading to real darkness and it was just lovely, owls and mockingbirds and breezes, a few dim stars, the smells of green trees and the neighbor's hay field.

Hullk donuts

I took a picture of these in 7-11 today. Click for the big picture – the big one is always better.

Mr. A and I have been snickering behind our hands about this new Hulk movie for several weeks now, every time we see it mentioned, in connection with a friend's husband whose claim to fame for the last five years has been the fact that the back of his head appears briefly in a crowded restaurant scene in the 2003 version of the Hulk, hailed by the Internet Movie Database as "a film which is widely considered a failure, both financially and artistically."

Never having seen the film I can't say whether I agree with that or not. It did strike me as funny though that someone's remaking it again so soon after the last one bombed. What is it about this story that people respond to? Is it the rage? The fear that if you let it out, it will destroy everyone around you? And what does any of that have to do with donuts?

And what will our almost-famous friend do now, now that there's going to be a different Hulk movie out? He'll have to start qualifying his cameo. Maybe we can call his version "Hulk Classic."

Anyway. Slow day for news. I'm still not feeling great, and not much wanting to write, and especially not wanting to write about how I "feel," even though that is one of the more important functions of this blog for me – to help me keep track of my health, emotional, mental and otherwise.

One thing I will say is that it's interesting to have the glucometer to consult when things start feeling not quite right. My tendency when this starts happening is to berate myself for being a bummer and a terrible human being, trying to convince myself that it's all in my head, that I should be able to suck it up and snap out of it, etc. But when I wake up in the morning and my blood sugar is 40 points higher than it should be, that's a pretty clear sign that I'm not just making it all up out of weakness, laziness or a desire to slack off.

I don't know if it should make me feel better or worse to have scientific proof that there's something "real" the matter with me. Part of me always feels so guilty for not having made more of my life and talents, for not being more interesting or successful or social or fill in the blank. Lately I'm trying to notice when I'm comparing myself to others, and stop it. As much as I would love for things to be otherwise, there are some good reasons, real reasons, why I sometimes let myself go slow, limit my commitments, hold back, disengage, hermitize.

I get tired of making excuses for these behaviors. I don't like feeling this way. And I think I've spent enough time thinking about it for now. It will pass eventually, and until it does I'm already doing all the things I know how to do to get through it. Chief among these is my upcoming vacation, which I'm actually starting to get a little excited about. I'm taking a week off, and I'm going to be spending most of it in Utah. This time, I want to actually GO some places and try to see a few old friends I never seem to have time to see. At the end of the week my parents and a few of my siblings and their families are carpooling to Boulder to spend the fourth of July at my sister's place. I've never been to Colorado before and am quite looking forward to that.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Las Vegas again for another press check. Management had decided to use a cheaper local printer after my last trip, but we convinced them to continue with the one we've been using and I'm glad, because I enjoy these little trips. This time I have tentative plans to catch up with an old high school friend who lives there now, who is famous for his sideshow work, among other things.

P.S. It just occurred to me – I should've checked the inside of those donuts! Do you think it's hollow and empty under the Hulk picture, like a regular glazed donut? Or filled with some kind of oozy green creme?

There's also this

Speaking of disco: I can't remember exactly how I came across this, but for what it's worth ... I finally realized how easy it is to embed video in a blog.



The best thing about this is Mr. A's reaction when I showed it to him. I was sitting at the computer and said, "Hey, come look at this." He stood behind me as I started the video over, and as soon as the guy started moving, Mr. A – without taking his eyes off the screen – took a step back and began following the steps. Of course I had to get up and join him, and then both dogs got in on the action.

I always forget how much they love to dance until I see them leaping around with big smiles on their faces again ... maybe I'll try to take a video of that one of these days.

Fishy fishy:a half-hearted attempt at food blogging

I'm watching Julia again. This photo is from the last round, which I started back in April when I was having major anxiety attacks and looking for any way to think about something Else. Look at the size of the fish head lying on the counter!

Here she is handling an eel. Julia maintains that eels are not only wonderful to eat, they are absolutely required for a true bouillabaise. I like them as sushi but haven't ever cooked one at home.


And finally, here's a picture of that giant cleaver I mentioned last time. If I could post a movie, I would love to show you how she looked as she hacked that thing to pieces. Not graceful, I can tell you. Not precise. She just kept chopping and sawing away with her big mannish hands until the head separated from the body. I love that woman.


Kind of makes you want to eat some fish, doesn't it?

We had lunch today at one of our favorite restaurants and were surprised that the Caesar salad, which we always get and which is big enough to share – all thick with pine nuts and fat shavings of Parmesan and so much anchovy and raw garlic it makes your mouth burn – was delicious as always but today, suddenly and inexplicably, only about two-thirds its usual size. Hrm. We also shared a half of a roasted chicken and a glass of the house red.

Tonight for dinner I've just been grazing ... I made my famous low-carb bagel & lox substitute (one Kavli crispy thin cracker with cream cheese, capers, red onions and a thin slice of Ducktrap River smoked salmon: approximately 5 grams of carbohydrate), followed by some cold steamed cauliflower left over from last night, followed by four salted cashews, follwed by a Hansen's diet ginger ale ... and that's as far as I've gotten so far.

There is a pint of green tea ice cream in the freezer that I will probably break into later. Or maybe right now. One spoonful (15 grams) = approximately 3 grams of carbohydrate.

Then it's back to the task I promised myself I'd finish this weekend: sorting through the three boxes of crap mail I've been collecting for the last several months, separating the stuff that can be thrown in the recycling from the stuff that needs to be shredded. I actually got in a little bit of trouble at the post office the other day – they left me a note saying I need to either pick up my mail more often, rent a bigger box, or sign up for call service (a mere four hundred bucks a month, according to the taciturn gentleman at the counter).

I told him (in the nicest possible way, of course) that I didn't think I should be expected to pay even more for a bigger box, just so they can stuff it even more full of junk I never asked for, from people I understand are "postal customers" but who I deeply deplore for wasting not only the perfectly good trees it takes to produce their stupid "products," but MY TIME in having to sort through it all week after week, looking for the one or two items I actually asked to have delivered.

"If you don't like it, you can call the companies that are sending the mail and ask them to take you off their list," I was informed.

Yeah right. Like I have time to do that! I've just spent three good hours going through the latest set of boxes, and I'm still not quite done.

There really should be some way to deter people from abusing direct mail like this. Or at least, a way for unwilling recipients to more easily and instantaneously opt out. I wonder if it gets delivered to private mail boxes, like those ones you can rent at the mall? I need to look into that.

Friday fashion

I've decided to follow in the footsteps of the highly righteous Writermama and start documenting some of the street fashion, such as it is, in my little corner of our continent's Left coast. It's high time I do something to snap myself out of this ridiculous funk I've been in, and her Monday posts always make me smile – on weekends I often find myself actually looking forward to Monday, because I know it will mean new pictures and style commentary on her site.

So this is my first attempt: a pristine pair of bright yellow ostrich leather cowboy boots on a man in black, sitting on a bench beside his bicycle in the park next to my office. You have to click the photo to get the detail ... I'm still getting the hang of photographing people surreptitiously, and my technique is not yet up to standard. I will get there, though!

I've also decided to take a cue from another of my favorite bloggers, and follow my own advice from a few months ago, and start taking more pictures and posting them here. I've just downloaded seven new snaps from my camera phone, which I hope will inspire me to update this thing a little more often – maybe not every day, but closer to it – even if it's only to talk briefly about the photos.

Something to look forward to!

P.S. Looking closer at that photo of the boots reminds me of how I spent a pleasant hour this afternoon: Photoshopping out several unsightly globs and drips of bird shit from a fence in the background of a photo that is going on my next magazine cover. It makes me feel good inside to know I can protect the public from a sight like that ... although in my personal work I insist upon a more naturalistic approach.

Silver clogs (becoming grim & depressing)

To the person who wanted info about those silver clogs – I almost forgot to answer your question!

They're made by an American company consisting of a couple of Swedish ex-pats now living in Colorado. You can get bronze on the American site, but the silver is only available in Sweden, here.

However! When I emailed to ask if I could get the silver ones from the U.S. Web site, they said no – but that they were going to be in Sweden this summer and would be happy to bring back a silver pair for me, with the understanding that it would be a special order and not returnable. They also mentioned that the high heeled version of their clogs tend to run a little narrow.

I don't know when their trip was going to be but the email exchange was around the same time I wrote about the clogs. You can email them at the address on the U.S. Web site. Good luck, and let me know if you get them!

In other news, yesterday was Tater's tenth birthday, I'm still feeling irritable and dissatisfied with just about every aspect of my life, and the funeral for that guy I knew who died was Saturday, and disturbing. The service was okay – it was the body that was disturbing. Things like that don't usually bother me but he looked so awful ... so awful that it made me want to call up the funeral home and ask them, "WTF?" Not to paint any upsetting pictures in anyone's mind, but man.

It really made me think some more about my attitude toward death, and whether I'm really as comfortable with the idea as I always like to think I am. If so, then why should I find it so alarming to see a dead person who looks so clearly and unapologetically DEAD?

Actually, I will go ahead and paint a disturbing picture, because I want to work this out of my system. So if things like this bother you, you'll probably want to stop reading now. No, really.

First of all, he was not in a casket, but lying on a low platform draped with white robes and sprinkled with marigolds and other flowers, in a vaguely "Eastern" style similar to what you might expect to see at the funeral of someone about to set sail on a flaming pyre down some mud-colored third-world river. I don't mean this disrespectfully; it was actually pretty cool, and beautiful in a way. Low-tech and low-cost, which I respect, and also very matter-of-fact – not trying to dress up the fact that he was dead by putting him in a fancy box (we also considered the possibility that they may not have had a box big enough). There was a big bowl of flowers that people could pick from to decorate the body, which I did by placing a few flowers at his feet – for the journey, and also because it was his feet I worried about, that made me realize he was dying.

The disturbing part – the first thing I noticed – was his face, which was heavily made up with this bizarre putty-colored pancake makeup. Maybe they were trying to match his tan, I don't know. But it was sloppily applied and a terrible, cruel color. His eyelashes were long and curly and looked real, the way I remembered them, but nothing else about his face seemed familiar.

Most distressing though were his arms. Remember how I said they used to sort of float out to the sides? Well. Because he was on a platform instead of in a box, the size of his body was ... apparent. And his arms, instead of lying on the platform next to him, or even spread out to the sides sort of like a snow angel (to accommodate his size) – were just kind of ... floating ... in the air ... about half-way up his body.

I can't even tell you how disconcerting this was. It made him seem restless and tense, not in peaceful repose – almost as if he were trying to sit up. I didn't say anything at the time, but today at work my friend who also knew him (we went to the service together) mentioned it, and she said her young teenage daughter – and the guy's daughter, who is her kid's best friend – were also completely freaked out by his arms, specifically. So much so that his daughter wouldn't even go all the way into the viewing room.

Why would the mortician arrange someone's arms that way? Or if they were somehow stuck in that position, why didn't they prop a little pillow under each arm to give him some support? A plain black zafu would have been perfect.

The most interesting question to me though is, why did that one particular detail bother me so much? "Peaceful repose" is only an illusion anyway. A person who's already dead is neither tense nor relaxed, and if his arms are stiff enough to stay elevated a foot above the surface he's lying on, he obviously doesn't need the support of a pillow, Buddhist or otherwise.

It's so strange to look at a person you've known, who is dead. I guess that's all it is. Usually, a dead person has been arranged to look as if they're still alive. In this case, that didn't happen. Or rather, it happened only about half-way. The makeup showed an effort to create some kind of effect ... and the arms seemed to show a kind of giving up.

Would I have felt better if they hadn't tried at all?

Maybe not. Maybe so. I've seen a dead person's skin before, before the makeup, before they're even sewn up ... when I worked at the mortuary as a teenager. It's not so hard to look at. But then again, probably not something most people really want as their last memory of the person they've come to say good-bye to.

Some people, I know, choose not to look at the body at all after death. They only want to remember the person as they were when they were alive.

It should be no surprise to anyone that I'm not one of those people. I always look. And usually, I find that the first glance is the hardest; the longer you look, the less upsetting it is – whatever "it" is.

Still. I don't like having this particular image in my head right now. It makes me sad to think of him stressed out and ill at ease, even after death. Although I suppose he's been cremated by now.

It also makes me feel a little more understanding of people who prefer to Not Look.

Anyway. Hopefully nobody will even read this far.