Hey, what's up, internet? You scramble my brain but you're still alright.
I feel like I haven't been blogging fearlessly enough. My so-called blogger "dashboard" (woah!) says I have 12 posts on here, but several of those are abandoned drafts! I need to stop abandoning drafts for fear that they are boring or pointless. Many of my favourite bloggers sure don't let that stop them, and I don't mean that in the backhanded-compliment way it sounds! Some things are awesome because they are exciting, but not every single moment can be covered in neon rays of flashing wondrousness - some things are awesome because they are just real life and folks can relate to that.
Without further ado: My Day, Exuding REALNESS.
I tried to wake up at a decent hour this morning, because as I mentioned I am trying to get onto a sleep schedule that relates more directly to being alive when the sun is out. My BFF, who has been (and from here on out shall continue to be) referred to here as "Snoof", has been helping me out in this department, as I like her more than my alarm clock and therefore feel more excited to wake up and hang out with her than with a clock. Finally got up at 9:30 with minimal shouting from Snoof in the living room ("[Sequin Brown]! I'm alone in the living room with our coffees!!") and after a terrifyingly unhealthy breakfast of sour cream n onion chip remnants and Starbux Via instant coffee, I decided to listen to some Riot Grrrl music and work on a couple of paintings I've been meaning to tweak.
After that good time, plus a shower, Snoof took us out for ice cream to reward herself, and by lucky extension me, for having made several pages of notes for one of her many papers due in the next few days. After this joy, I got on the subway to go see my counselor, which is one hell of a transit ride out to the lovely 'burbs, had a decent session and hauled my arse back to the mainland to have a secular Good Friday dinner with my Mom.
We laughed, we caught up on life, mocked all the new developments in makeup application we noticed in Fashion magazine (honestly, roll-on foundation, spherical mascara wands and...vibrating mineral powder???) and drank zinfandel! Mom made some fabulous lasagna and brownies, 'cause we like things non-traditional that way. We surfed the net together, looking at really old photos of her parents and cousins that my uncle scanned and e-mailed her. I also introduced her to regretsy.com, which I figured she might get a kick out of if only for the entries where etsy sellers' spelling and grammar mistakes are picked on - she's a stickler for that sort of thing, and she likes crafts, to boot. "Fugly" seemed to be my mom's unofficial Favourite Slang Word to Use With Caution in 2006 or thereabouts, so I needed to hook her up with some fugly craft commentary.
This led us to gripe harmlessly about the new urns that "decorate" the front entrance of her (formerly "our") apartment building...they're big, they're gaudy and they're full of a combo of dried and fake plant matter that smells like spray glue and florist's foam. False pears and red spray painted pussy willows jut out at all angles and threaten to poke out visitors' eyes. Before I left, we spent a lot of time looking for the area on my totally unflattering but sensational sweater that I could have sworn had a polka-dotting error. Maybe I was hallucinating last time I wore it, but I really thought one of the shoulders had been knit with a few toonie-sized dots missing. I love my mom.
In closing, I noticed that being constantly connected through social technology like Facebook and text messaging makes me way more anxious and skews my already flawed sense of time. I find myself mentally rehashing sent e-mails and wondering where I went wrong if I don't receive relatively immediate responses. Because of this, I sometimes feel like a paper-bag puppet with extra-large googlie eyes: crinkly, ridiculous and wiggly.
Showing posts with label magazines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magazines. Show all posts
Friday, April 2, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
My internal weather, and sparkstensions!
I'm trying to get my body's internal clock to function in a more predictable fashion. This involves a gaggle of alarm clocks, agendas and calendars, which I try to make palatable by making damn sure there are kittens and stickers all over them. (Buying books from the Scholastic book order forms was not in the budget when I was in elementary school, so I skipped the Lisa Frank fantasy-fluorescent-ponies-and-pink-leopard-print-notebooks phase...*menacing*: it has finally come to take its course!)
As my luck would have it, the first alarm clock that I got at Honest Ed's was a $16 piece of junk that I tried to reason/wrestle with for 15 minutes before giving up and deciding that it would have been less frustrating if the fake clock face sticker over top of the actual clock face had not been "remove[d] before use". At least there would have been actual numbers, not just flickery streaks suggesting numbers that did not fit together in a way that represented actual times. However, as I am becoming more and more wise to the ways of Honest Ed's, I had bought a second alarm clock at the same time, this one being only $0.99 and having no accompanying instructions, and cryptic buttons on the top reading "Here" and "There". I though it was a puzzle alarm clock, but wouldn't you know it, the thing woke me up pleasantly and on time this morning. It looks like binoculars, and the here and there buttons can digitally "shut" one "eye" or the other with black pixels for no apparent reason, but I don't have to totally get it to be very pleased with it, so finally, one point for Team Sequin Brown.
After Honest Ed's yesterday, I spent several hours cleaning my oven and making cupcakes for our annual sale/customer party/time of awesomeness just days before we take inventory. Then I worked for 6 hours at the store, surrounded by giggles of glee over free cupcakes, the DJ spinning, the customers milling and clustering hungrily at the super-duper reduced items table. It felt awesome to be able to take the time to really help and explain things to folks with questions, amid the mayhem and joy of a jam-packed store. The curly and talented Amanda Marshall puts it well when she sings "Everything is clear when you're inside the tornado/ everything is stable in the eye of the storm/". In all, a fabulous experience, especially since I was so intensely hopped up on sugar and caffeine.
Today started out well, because when I was on the streetcar - running ahead of schedule, might I add - I happened to run into a lovely friend of a friend whose name I unfortunately ALWAYS get wrong by accident, and today I really focussed and got it RIGHT. I psyched myself out for a couple seconds, you know, like, oh gosh, she's so sweet, and indeed memorable, I'm a horrible beast, her name is NOT LISA! Lisa it is NOT! Neurons, reform! no! it's..."Hello, LINDA!" Yessssss! Rock. On. I think the curse has been broken, and I will never blatantly call her Lisa again. Not that Lisa isn't a great name, but it just ain't hers.
Work was great, did a massive post-sale restock, during which I kind of felt like a basement troll because our fluorescent light tubes were acting up and it was dark and cold down there and my nose was running and I always do the hunch-n-flinch dance when I am in the basement because I fear hitting my head on the pipes. Tropical Storm UTERUS blew in from the South shortly after restocking, but since I have been so conscious of times and dates recently, I was aware of what was to come. Apocolyptic PMS emotions also tend to alert me, as well as Violet-Beauregard-style bloating and disproportionately angsty reactions to my inability to find any one magazine at Shoppers Drugmart or Book City that speaks to me wholistically. I bought myself chocolate ginger nuggets and took some ibuprofen, and plan to get into my bed with a book by 11:30pm.
Note to self: begin writing next hit single, "Menstrual Lady Slumber Party for One".
In closing, I witnessed a most delightful and beguiling hair phenomenon upon the head of a very nice customer today, which was that her hair shimmered at me. Throughout her shining black tresses were what appeared to be a faint scattering of single metallic hairs, in purple and even verigated red, orange and gold! I tried to concentrate on the topic at hand, but my hindbrain was trying to comprehend the pretty pretty hairs. Suddenly my whirring mind skipped a beat and there it was, the obvious answer:
WOW. Maybe she's just MAGIC.
I felt reverent, and this luckily gave me a millisecond to get back on track and help the lady out. Once all questions had been answered I complemented her hair and she told me that the glitteries were teeny semi-permanent extensions she had had done when she was in Bankok a few weeks ago. Just when I thought technology was out to ruin us all, a heartwarming discovery is made in the field of beauty salon research that does not involve lasers, depillation or pinching!
I also believe in magic, just to be clear on that.
As my luck would have it, the first alarm clock that I got at Honest Ed's was a $16 piece of junk that I tried to reason/wrestle with for 15 minutes before giving up and deciding that it would have been less frustrating if the fake clock face sticker over top of the actual clock face had not been "remove[d] before use". At least there would have been actual numbers, not just flickery streaks suggesting numbers that did not fit together in a way that represented actual times. However, as I am becoming more and more wise to the ways of Honest Ed's, I had bought a second alarm clock at the same time, this one being only $0.99 and having no accompanying instructions, and cryptic buttons on the top reading "Here" and "There". I though it was a puzzle alarm clock, but wouldn't you know it, the thing woke me up pleasantly and on time this morning. It looks like binoculars, and the here and there buttons can digitally "shut" one "eye" or the other with black pixels for no apparent reason, but I don't have to totally get it to be very pleased with it, so finally, one point for Team Sequin Brown.
After Honest Ed's yesterday, I spent several hours cleaning my oven and making cupcakes for our annual sale/customer party/time of awesomeness just days before we take inventory. Then I worked for 6 hours at the store, surrounded by giggles of glee over free cupcakes, the DJ spinning, the customers milling and clustering hungrily at the super-duper reduced items table. It felt awesome to be able to take the time to really help and explain things to folks with questions, amid the mayhem and joy of a jam-packed store. The curly and talented Amanda Marshall puts it well when she sings "Everything is clear when you're inside the tornado/ everything is stable in the eye of the storm/". In all, a fabulous experience, especially since I was so intensely hopped up on sugar and caffeine.
Today started out well, because when I was on the streetcar - running ahead of schedule, might I add - I happened to run into a lovely friend of a friend whose name I unfortunately ALWAYS get wrong by accident, and today I really focussed and got it RIGHT. I psyched myself out for a couple seconds, you know, like, oh gosh, she's so sweet, and indeed memorable, I'm a horrible beast, her name is NOT LISA! Lisa it is NOT! Neurons, reform! no! it's..."Hello, LINDA!" Yessssss! Rock. On. I think the curse has been broken, and I will never blatantly call her Lisa again. Not that Lisa isn't a great name, but it just ain't hers.
Work was great, did a massive post-sale restock, during which I kind of felt like a basement troll because our fluorescent light tubes were acting up and it was dark and cold down there and my nose was running and I always do the hunch-n-flinch dance when I am in the basement because I fear hitting my head on the pipes. Tropical Storm UTERUS blew in from the South shortly after restocking, but since I have been so conscious of times and dates recently, I was aware of what was to come. Apocolyptic PMS emotions also tend to alert me, as well as Violet-Beauregard-style bloating and disproportionately angsty reactions to my inability to find any one magazine at Shoppers Drugmart or Book City that speaks to me wholistically. I bought myself chocolate ginger nuggets and took some ibuprofen, and plan to get into my bed with a book by 11:30pm.
Note to self: begin writing next hit single, "Menstrual Lady Slumber Party for One".
In closing, I witnessed a most delightful and beguiling hair phenomenon upon the head of a very nice customer today, which was that her hair shimmered at me. Throughout her shining black tresses were what appeared to be a faint scattering of single metallic hairs, in purple and even verigated red, orange and gold! I tried to concentrate on the topic at hand, but my hindbrain was trying to comprehend the pretty pretty hairs. Suddenly my whirring mind skipped a beat and there it was, the obvious answer:
WOW. Maybe she's just MAGIC.
I felt reverent, and this luckily gave me a millisecond to get back on track and help the lady out. Once all questions had been answered I complemented her hair and she told me that the glitteries were teeny semi-permanent extensions she had had done when she was in Bankok a few weeks ago. Just when I thought technology was out to ruin us all, a heartwarming discovery is made in the field of beauty salon research that does not involve lasers, depillation or pinching!
I also believe in magic, just to be clear on that.
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