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June 12, 2005
Every handful is a whole new snack
Here's a little cuff I whipped up this morning for today's 30th birthday boy. Party's this afternoon.
I used Glampyre's free skull chart. I had some half inch spikes I wanted to put on it but they were way too heavy. Pyramids will have to do.
Most of the people I hung out with yesterday morning will be there this afternoon but this time none of us have to wear stuffy polyester robes. I pity the fools who have to graduate today, because they're wearing those exact same gowns we wore yesterday and they haven't been washed. We pay twenty-five dollars to rent the things and the bastards don't even clean them between uses.
Check out all the blooms on my valerian.
Last week I was going to dig up those roses in the background and get rid of them, but now that they're in flower they look so good I kind of want to keep them. Those seven or eight trees that are mixed in with them have to go, though, and I'm afraid that in order to get all the tree roots out we might end up losing the roses anyway. I'll wait until they're finished blooming, at least. In the middle ground you can see my very important grass-killing project in progress (looks like trash on the ground but it's not!).
I went up into the attic and started sweeping up the 90-year-old cedar debris the other day. It's brutally hot up there, and by the time I had one garbage can filled with crap I had to quit. There's huge amounts of Barbage (the junk left behind by the house's former owner, Barb, and her kids) to throw out.
In this picture, taken from the stairs at floor level, you may or may not be able to see the following:
-the filthy insulation that is spread around the outer edges of the entire attic, right where it's not supposed to be, blocking the soffit vents. I have to throw it all away.
-plastic bags. and lots of 'em.
-pieces of styrofoam packaging from electronics
-at least one formerly white sports sock is visible in the picture, but there are many, many more than just one in this attic. Teenagers really make me puke sometimes.
-used Christmas paper and bows
-birthday cards, mostly the dirty joke kind
-a secret, dirt-covered lair that contains one Sweet Valley High book, one Archie comic book, Balderdash cards, photos, homework, a hockey puck, and a Canada 125 McPassport.
I was going to post one of the photographs I found up there but the technology got the better of me. The new computer won't recognize the scanner, so I have to scan everything with my pieceofshit old computer. But the old computer no longer has a floppy drive because we put it in the new computer, which didn't come with one. So the only way to get an image off the old computer and onto the new one is to unravel the long phone cord across the hall to the jack in the other room, use the dialup and either a) have Peter log into his chat with Trillian while I do the same downstairs on our real computer and send it, or b) use Yahoo to e-mail the image to myself. Since Peter isn't here and I don't know his password I had to use option b. Except that the old computer has old browsers that have to use an old version of Yahoo and for some reason today it won't let me send attachments. And the old computer has a habit of emitting a high pitched squeal when it gets too hot, which happens pretty much any time you use it for more than 20 minutes in the summer. By the time it started squealing I'd pretty much had it and just gave up. The picture wasn't really worth it.
Posted by jodi at June 12, 2005 03:28 PM | categories: self-absorbtion
Comments
That attic will be such a cool space when it's done (althoug not in a heat way unfortunately it seems!). I dream of having an attic of my own, must have read some book where the character had an attic room when I was young and impressionable! One day!
Anna (all done with the dirty work here and onto the painting soon!)
Posted by: Anna at June 12, 2005 04:10 PM
What? All that techno lead up and no photo? Bummer. Hee hee.
I read the white sock thing and thought, "Why on earth would they leave their socks in the... oh, ewwwwwwww. Gross." Maybe it's not the dryer that makes the socks go missing after all. It's little Charlie Whackoff.
Posted by: Stephanie VW at June 12, 2005 06:26 PM
Amazing what gets left behind by former owners, especially when they lived in the house a long time. The woman we bought our house from had lived here for 25 years, and left plenty of evidence of that behind in the basement when she moved out. Her name was Pandora. Pandage doesn't sound nearly as good or accurate as Barbage. Maybe I'll just pretend her name was Barbara.
Posted by: Cari at June 12, 2005 09:34 PM
Grass Killing! (I want to do that!)
Dude - you need a thumb drive.
...and teenagers = gross. I can't wait to have one. (heh)
Posted by: amped!!! at June 13, 2005 07:51 PM
Love the wristbands. There's obviously a market for lightweight studs out there.
And eww for the attic teenage-boy grossness .. but good luck clearing it all out.
Posted by: Kirsti at June 14, 2005 11:42 AM
Wow, the secret lair sounds so childlike, innocent and sweet. Especially when juxtaposed with the teenage sock yuckiness.
Sounds like you have some serious technological hurdles. Forgive me if I had to chuckle a little when I got to the high-pitched whining part.
Posted by: Kathleen at June 14, 2005 02:41 PM
We had Barbage in our attic as well. In Texas. That Barb gets around. The former owners of our house also had no lightbulb over 25 watts anywhere in the house and every light switch has a dimmer on it. We speculate that they are moles.
Posted by: Liz at June 14, 2005 04:13 PM
Sweet Valley High!!!!
By the way, I have a huge pile of geraniums that I fully intended to dig up and kill at the first opportunity this spring. Then they bloomed, and they're all red and happy so I can't morally justify killing htem.
*sigh*
Looks like you have some work ahead of you, but it will be so worth it!
Posted by: laurie at June 14, 2005 06:40 PM