Dear Internet,
Apologies if I’ve been silent lately — a lot has been happening on the Lisa-front. TSTBEH came up for a visit, sign his share of the divorce papers, and help me recuperate from my minor surgery that same week. He made me dinners, stocked up my pantry, did the dishes, laundry, and was basically at my beck and call.
Why am I divorcing him again?
The surgery was to marsupialize the Bartholin cyst, which is the gland that helps with lubrication and is conveniently located in the vagina, near the lips. In the last six months, I’ve had to have the gland drained twice and it still keeps coming back. The surgery consists of flipping the gland inside out and sewing it back. The surgery was painful, and I was out of commission for a few days. After that time, it was difficult to sit down for long periods of time in certain positions and when a few days later I went to my first spin class, OH BOY. Was that a good time. (Not.)
This week I’ve signed my share of the divorce papers and in the next few weeks, I go to court to make it official. With the house sold and now this, two of the big three things happening in my life will be complete.
On the case front, which I can’t say much about, things are progressing and hopefully at some point, that too will soon be closed.
So things are finally coming up Lisa! Which, after the last 12 months, is a relief.
My latest tattoo:
Tomorrow, I start my tour of the east coast again. Kristin and I are driving to DC to see Angela Lansbury at the National Theater and then it’s up to CT so I can meet the movers to get my shit shipped to TSTBEH (I’m giving him my furniture and in April I will go down to his place to sort through my shit), then on to Jerz to see Val, then back to Michigan. We’re doing this over five days.
Don’t call me on Monday, for I will be dead.
xoxo,
Lisa
Tag: Kristin
daily mile: art of the table/wealthy street bakery
Dear Internet,
In the same week, I’ve had two house guests snigger at “Wealthy Street” when giving them directional information. They chorused it is a very fancy sounding name for a fancy neighborhood and consequently, I live in a very fancy house.
I won’t disagree too much with their assessment. Wealthy Street was one of the original city streets (as evidence that much of it is still brick) and trolleys used to run down it towards Reeds Lake, which during the turn of the 20th century was a popular amusement park and day tripper spot. Captains of industry lived in my neighborhood and they would journey the few miles to Reeds Lake for their various entertainment, both of the day and nighttime variety.
Now Reeds Lake is ensorceled with homes owned by well to do white families and your self-importance rises by at least 30% when you cross the borders into East Grand Rapids.
This has nothing to do with my walk except that a part of it was on Wealthy Street and one of our favorite bakeries is six blocks from Throbbing Manor.
Wealthy Street Bakery and Art of the Table have snuggled next to each other for nearly a decade, beginning when this side of Wealthy Street was sketchy and a major drug dealer took up residence in the storefront across the street. In the last 3 1/2 years we’ve lived in the neighborhood, the gentrification that had started east of us has spun its magic in this area. Within a few blocks of WSB and AotT is a new brewery, a tequila bar cum taqueria, a coffee shop that roasts its own beans, and more, all that have open within the last couple of years.
What makes WSB so exciting to me is Tuesdays/Thursdays is vegan cookie day and they’ve been known to daily stock vegan chocolate cupcakes and will bring them out if you politely ask for them. TheHusband goes gaga over their danishes and I have a weakness in my loins for their chocolate babka (not vegan, but YOLO).
Distance: 1.29 miles
Walk time: 20:06
Pace: 15’28″/mile
I’ve been bemoaning my left calf for some time now, pain would grip it when I walked, regardless of how fast or slow. Kristin tipped me off to getting a calf sleeve, which I did, and it has made a remarkable difference in my pain, gone from I WANT TO CHOP MY LEG OFF to barely noticeable. And a 15″ walk?What kind of crazy is THIS?
The sleeve I first purchased is enclosed by velcro, to make it fit better but I have big calves! 18″ at the widest point and what fit snug at the top was definitely quite loose near the ankle. I’ve just splurged on a true sleeve and now I’m thinking I want to train for a 5K walk.
I am invincible.
xoxo,
Lisa
This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013
notes for cabinet particulier, part iv: draft of first chapter completed
Dear Internet,
It’s about 8:30PM and I’m sitting on the front deck, still in my jim jams from the night before. This is the second time today I have stepped foot out of the cabin, the first being this morning when after I woke and received a phone call from the Cedar postmaster telling me the post carrier had flagged where we can put our new mailbox and I had walked out to check to verify the location. After that, my butt was parked either at the island in the kitchen or in the chaise (so very chic) writing and researching.
My book takes place in 1907 London that revolves around an aging actress who is not terribly good but she is what matters most and that is she’s one of the most beautiful women of her age. I’m styling her looks after the famed American silent film actress from the same era, Maude Fealy.
As my character is an Edwardian London stage actress, I spent some time today gathering moar research on the theaters of the era and discovered a gem of a site that also had a handy Google map of theaters from the era, including play programs, photos, and loads more.
I also dipped into cosmetics and etiquette of the era, finding a boon of a book entitled Every Woman’s Encyclopedia, from 1910, which ran into a hefty 8 volumes and 6000 page. The book is intense. Here is a gem on how Edwardian lady should keep her eyes more becoming:
Yes, let us not weary our poor optic nerves, shall we ladies?
I had the idea of how I wanted the book to open and numerous first lines had already appeared, so instead of working out a vague outline of where I wanted the book to go, I just sat down and wrote instead. Several hours later, I had 2100 words in a pretty good first chapter under my belt with ideas of where I was going.
Tomorrow I was to go kayaking with Emili, but I just texted her to beg off since I’m in the zone and needed to continue plowing through with my work. Kristin is coming up tomorrow evening for the weekend and we’ll be busy and I’m heading back to Grand Rapids on Sunday (can’t miss my Sunday evening telly). Next week is going to be busy as John is coming into town on Tuesday evening to stay at Throbbing Manor and we are heading to the Code4Lib Midwest conference on Wednesday/Thursday. Since many of my favorite people are going to be at the conference as well, there will be lots of socializing. Friday I head to Mt. P to hang with Kristin for the weekend and we’re meeting up with some of our cmmrb pals and then it’s back to the grind on Monday when I head back to the cabin for MOAR writing for a week and then the cmmrb weekend will be here and then it will be August.
Jesus fucking Christ. In the four days I’ve been up here, between blog posts, writing the chapter, and research I’ve cranked out 10,000 words. I am a mutherfucking machine!
On that note, I’m getting off the laptop and calling it an early night. I’m going to brush the fuzz off my teeth, wash my filthy body, and make a bowl of popcorn. Yes, yes I did indeed bring my beloved hot air popper to the cabin with me. I’m then going to curl up around my ipad and watch Downton Abbey, for you know, research.
xoxo,
Lisa
Sunday Fits and Starts
Dear Internet,
This is how it goes:
Wake up.
Get ready for the day. Read the Internet. Wipe the dog down after her romp outside. While both lounging on the bed, have a discussion with TheHusband about Canterbury Tales vs Inferno vs Decameron vs Arabian Nights. Intrigued, TheHusband brushes up on his medieval authors on his tablet while I finish writing a blog post that was started earlier in the week. TheHusband moves to obtain sustenance for us while I move to my office.
Begin the final prep of the white Macbook (Rakish Cad) I’m selling, I finish installing software on TheHusband’s old Macbook (Brazen Hussy) which I’m turning into desktop. Update The Sims Medieval, start new game, and use iPhone (Wanton Harlot) to find names of a famous/infamous medieval woman to name character. Find an interesting woman to model my Sims charceter on but get discouraged by how the game continues to crash on a machine that is far better equipped to handle said game then on Rakish Cad. Kill the game, turn on Of Courtly Love and Bawdiness Pandora station. Start writing a new blog post, interspersed with beating up Rakish Cad and eating lunch.
Think about earlier seen websites about medieval women, Chaucer, and medievalism in general plants the seed to see A Knights Tale again. Check Netflix to see if it is streaming, IT IS. Add to Instant Queue. Netflix then recommends I should watch Trailer Park Boys. Which means since Kristin is not on gTalk, get on Twitter to let her know about the my Trailer Park Boys discovery (find out later, she’s already known). End up having a great discussion with @hubbit [snippets] on the changing of the Englisc/sh/sch language. Titles are swapped, I end up back at “ye olde shoppe, Amezone” and end up purchasing a few more books, The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology (Oxford World’s Classics)
and The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales for a project I’ve been ruminating about for a few years.
Close out of Twitter, for it is dangerous.
Go back to working on blog post. Ruminating, ruminating. Marvel at how much I bounce from one thought to the next. Open up Twitter to tweet lines of thought and opted to write a blog post on the subject instead. Close out Twitter before I get sucked in yet again.
That was several hours ago.
It is now after 5PM, Rakish Cad is almost ready for its new owner, and my office is no closer to being cleaner or as organized as I had planned. What should have taken me a few hours from start to finish (prep Rakish Cad, move Brazen Hussy, sort out desks, vacuum) is in the process of being an all day affair. Which means the work that I had slated to get done today on my other projects will get pushed out to later this evening or tomorrow.
Plato reputedly said,
The first and the best victory is to conquer self.
But Plato didn’t have access to the Internet.
ttfn,
Lisa
50 Lengths of Cable Ties
For some time now, Kristin has been collecting Sheik romance novels, as a sub-collection for her Arab representation in popular fiction collection at her library. What’s made this particular collection development fun is that she’s crowd sourcing many of her acquisitions, from people such as myself, who pick them up for used/new as we find them to donate.1 Thanks to people like me, she has almost 200 titles in the Sheik romance genre alone.
In the wake of a conversation held the other day between Alice and Kristin, Alice mentions she has some Sheik books for me to mule back to the States for Kristin when I head to England at the end of the month. Not long after, Alice creates the [Dear Reader]$_ Information Technology Romance! generator, that pulls many of the keywords from the titles of Sheik romances (and other romances titles) and pairs them with IT terminology to create an IT romance title generator.
Just refresh the page for potential Harlequin/Mills&Boon romances hits such as:
- Curt Technical Architect, Captive Predicament
- Surly Network Administrator, Furtive Assignation
- The Bespectacled Desktop Support Analyst
I smell a potential book series in the making.
1. Where’s my bookplate?