She is risen!

Yoo hoo...is anybody out there?

Alright then. Turns out that when I'm not getting paid for it, I'm an incredibly inconsistent blogger. What the heck. I'm good at lots of other stuff.

All the same, I'm not throwing in the towel yet. For those of you who are interested, here's what we've been up to (to be followed, within a few months, by either another random bit of "what we've been doing" or maybe, just maybe, some snarky political commentary, or a viral video that hasn't yet been taken down):

Let me see. I took a long trip out west in September, which included a whirlwind work trip to San Francisco followed by nearly 3 weeks "back home" in Washington State. I can hardly remember that trip now, except that I ate a lot of good food, my new nose ring got infected as a result of a sunburn, which caused me to get an ugly sunhat and I was incredibly stressed out by the election (thank goodness that went the way it did, although I'd have to say that I'm as disappointed as anyone by Obama's cabinet picks and especially this Rick Warren shit). I was also torn up by the fact that one of my brothers (top secret: my favorite) spent all but the very last day of my visit there in an in-patient rehab facility in Mississippi. I picked him up at the airport the night before the night before I left, and he delivered me back to the airport about 36 hrs later. The good news is, he introduced me to my newest musical love, Tim Fite, (in Philly Feb 21 and DC the 28th -- come with us!) and he was still clean when I came home for the holidays.

I got back from Washington on a Wednesday late in September, which is noteworthy because Mr. Man and I moved into a new place THAT WEEKEND. Talk about a tough move. Although Mr. Man did his best to pack up before I got back, there was a mountain of shit to do, and the move put quite a strain on our already-pretty-strained relationship. Mr. Man had just started back at school, and I was swamped at work, so things were just...tough. I'll spare you the details, sexy readers, and flash forward a few months to the weekend before Thanksgiving, when we found two couches for $20 and $40 respectively, which we had delivered (AND the old couch removed from the front porch, where it'd sat since we discovered on moving day that it wouldn't fit through the front door) for a song at $40 plus a $20 tip.

We're now roughly 75% unpacked, which is pretty good, I'd say, considering the fact that we never even got most of our artwork onto the walls of our depressing old place. We've encouraged (read: forced) ourselves along the way by hosting a few small parties.

The best news about the new place:

1. It has a huge yard. I mean, huge. Plenty of room for lots of veggies, maybe even a few laying hens.

2. The landlady, a belly-dancer, is a saint so far. Our dryer (see #3) went shithouse on us the other night and she immediately started making plans to buy us a new one. Compared to the old landlord, we can hardly believe she's real.

3. It's got a washer and dryer. In the unfinished basement, which has plenty of room for our extra crap.

4. It's ridiculously cute. Ok. It's a little quirky, but mostly adorable.

5. It's in a great neighborhood, within walking distance of several of our friends, three amazing restaurants and a couple of decent bars.

Now for the bad news about the new place:

1. That huge yard is full of ticks. I just pulled one off the dog the other day, but when we moved in, I was pulling dozens off of her. Turns out that in spite of having a normally high tolerance for most things gross, I've got a weak spot for ticks.

2. Our bedroom and my office both have two of the most hideous paint jobs I've ever seen.

3. We've got mice. This is especially bad news for the devil cat, because we're rationing her meals until she kills them for us.

Three to five ain't bad, huh?

Aside from all that, we're relieved to have weathered what was a pretty tough year. And we're doing quite well romantically. Better than we've done for any stretch of time since we moved here. We've been fucking, not quite like bunnies, but almost like we did before we left NYC.

And I think we're each doing much better personally. Mr. Man is still on somewhat of an academic vacay, and although he's been stressing a little about work, he is lightyears more relaxed than he was before I went out to Washington for the holidays. As for me, I spent nearly a week off-line during that trip and have decided it suited me quite well and that 09 will be the year that I work less, garden more and do more for myself, like yoga and swimming and walking the dog and taking baths and fucking my boyfriend and making more friends in the Charm but also getting up to see my friends in NYC more, too.

There's so much else. Mr. Man went back on T, which we were nervous about but so far seems to be treating him just dandy, maybe even better than that. He's getting hairy, which I think is adorable, and other than that, actually seems more relaxed. The dog really does have arthritis, which is maybe better than having Lyme's disease, which was what I thought she had the first time it hit her hard enough to put her down (not "put her down"). $500 later, we've got it figured out and now she's on a regimen that is serving her well enough that she's playing some frisbee and doing lots of stalking of the cat. We haven't converted the car yet but in spite of a few minor fixes, she is a peach.

So. By and large, things are super good, which, I realize, probably places us in the top 1% luckiest folks on earth, considering the half million Americans who lost their jobs in November, the 1 billion who stand to go hungry worldwide in 09, and the poor Palestinians who are getting the shit bombed out of them as I type this. It might sound stupid, but I'm hellbent on channeling my energy into putting positive vibes (and positive work, a la peace march rather than anti-war demonstration, if you catch my drift) into the world, doing my best to roll my anger and stress off and do good instead of sitting around bitching.

We'll see how it goes when my/our luck takes a turn for the worse, which it inevitably will, because, as my daddy says, "the good old days for one guy are the shit days for somebody else." For now, though, I'm rolling with it.

PS. We're crazy enough to be heading down to the Inauguration, which, according to my handy Hightower countdown clock, is in less than two weeks! If you're that crazy too, give a girl a call and let's hook up.

Local Warming

The Charm is enjoying some unseasonably warm weather this week, a fact that makes for pleasant dog-walking, even if the mind wanders to global warming, energy crisis (experienced in our car-less home by rising heating costs--where's Hugo Chavez when you need him?), you know, impending doom...and the springy-ness of the weather, which would be a novelty, is spoiled by the budding (no shit) of the tree in the churchyard across the street, which we worry won't bloom this year, supposing that it freezes hard again, which it better, since it's January.

On a better day, I might be able to shove the inconvenient truth into the back of my mind and soak up the vitamin D, smug in the fact that we don't drive, but the fact is that we live in an old townhouse with a wacky thermostat that doesn't shut off when it warms up and it took us awhile to figure out so we burned a ton of gas over the last few months, so I was already feeling guilty before Mr. Man and I sat down to watch The End of Suburbia last night.

I think I would have really liked this movie when it came out in 2003 (or 2004). But at this point, the ironic retro film clips don't make the subject matter any less depressing, and the clever soundbytes offered by a few pompous white guys interviewees would have been better enjoyed in a print or text format. I like to drive home a point as much as the next girl, but maybe part of what keeps the masses from waking up/organizing is the emphasis on how dumb/fucked we all are and the under-emphasis on what we should be doing about it.

For our part, we're figuring out our heating shit and getting a recycling bin (kudos to Baltimore City for finally getting their shit together on that one, even though they didn't order enough for everybody) and hoping to find a CSA and trying to figure out where to position ourselves before the shit goes down.

And in a macabre way, we're kind of looking forward getting to know our neighbors and leading a simpler life after watching the machine chug to a stop.

On a lighter note, our feline ice princess, Bitsy, is showing signs of thawing in relation to our neurotic bitch, Belle. They're not making out yet or anything, but Bitsy has been adventuring down the stairs and away from her baby-gated lair, and often strays from her safe space on the back of the couch over to the end table next to the dog bed, where she can peer down on Belle, who gazes up maniacally adoringly. Come to think of it--like most cats, she's totally heat motivated--maybe the keeping the heat down will force her to submit to Belle's obsession--I might be fooling myself, but I'm dreaming of an interspecies snuggle session (think of it--we would rule Lolcats with their cuteness).

Keep hope alive.