Month: January 2012

WMMH

I sometimes listen to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, and the panel ends the show each week with a round of What’s Making Us Happy. As you can probably intuit from the title, they go around the table and name a thing or two (usually a TV show or concert tour or something) that’s giving their lives a little bit of joy. I’ve had some anxiety and depression and overwhelm in the last week (ran out of one of my amino acids; also, I prefer not working to working, but my job preferred that I go back to work), so I thought I’d try to psych myself out of it by accentuating the positive. Who knows? This might become a regular feature.

Here’s What’s Making Me Happy:

I’m doing really great on my New Year’s resolutions.

To wit, my friend invited me to go shopping (thanks, Michelle!), and I have worn actual clothes when I wanted to wear actual sweats several times. I even took two pairs of pants to a tailor to get them hemmed. That’s, like, some Carrie Bradshaw stuff.

I’ve flossed a time or two and made my bed daily.

I’ve engaged in no Facebook debates. Indeed, I’ve expressed nary a political leaning nor a religious dubiety, even though I wanted to post this cartoon real bad when I saw it:

I repeated things to myself that I said to the beasts (even though it feels embarrassing to say, “I love you, Violet… I also love myself,” even when alone in my house).

I went on a first date with a man and scheduled another with a different man, though the latter had to be postponed. Due to a sick kid. I’m probably going to be a stepmom.

Most importantly, I very much reduced my intake of refined sugar. I had some chocolate mousse on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and a piece of cake and two cookies on Saturday. I didn’t wait until after 7:00pm that day, though. But considering that I got the piece of cake at noon and waited until 4:53 to eat it, I’m calling it a victory. In addition, Sunday included French toast with syrup, which kind of fits in the dessert category, but, really, what’s a brunch buffet without the French toast course?

(Again, this might sound like a lot of sugar to you, but I assure you, for me, it’s a smidgeon.)

Naturally, the glutenful weekend, together with my job preferring that I get up at the ludicrous hour of 6:00am, has made me one sleepy girl today. But that’s not what we were talking about. We were talking about What’s Making Me Happy.

Now. Let’s talk about What’s Making You Happy.

Bona Fide Southerner

You know, I was born here. In North Cackalacky. I was born here and raised here. My mailing address was a rural route and box number (until high school when they changed it all for 911 purposes…and even then it became Old Highway 421—is there a redder-neck-sounding road?). I went to Carolina. I hated Dook with an appropriate passion.

But I always felt a little like a fraud. My parents were Yankees. I had been to Bulgaria by the time I was six. My family was not Southern Baptist. I’ve still never shot a gun.

So I’m pleased to tell you, I cooked collard greens in pork fat for breakfast this morning.

Where do I go to pick up my ID card?

Meatball

On Saturday, a dog went missing. This wasn’t the dog of a friend of mine. It was the dog of friends of a friend of mine. I had hung out a few times with the owners and with Meatball, their big, sweet, nervous boy.

Meatball wouldn’t let strangers touch him. He was so scared of them. The one time I went to his house—the first time I met him—I fell in love with him, naturally, and spent 45 minutes on the kitchen floor, inching myself closer, not looking him in the eye. Eventually, he let me stroke his chest, and I just stayed there on the tile, petting him, for the rest of the party.

My friend sent me a text saying he was missing on Saturday. I don’t know how it happened. On Sunday night, I posted on Facebook for Durhamites to keep an eye out for him, and a friend that I was IMing with said somebody else had just posted that he was hit by a car.

And I fucking fell apart. I sat down on the couch between Violet and Redford and just sobbed. I thought about how scared he must have been when he was lost and how sad his owners must be, and I cried and cried.

I don’t know if this is normal. I don’t know if normal people get this torn up about other people’s dogs.

I guess that doesn’t matter. He’s dead, and I’m sad.

RIP, Meatball. You were loved.

3-Day WOD: Fire Pit, for Time!

A couple months ago, I got a bee in my bonnet about putting a fire pit in my yard. Whenever I get excited about a project, I have to say I’m going to do it five or six times before I actually do it. So I did that. I’d say, “I’m thinking about building a fire pit,” and my friends would say, “Yeah! Do it!” and a few weeks later, I’d say, “I’m thinking about building a fire pit.”

Ten days ago, I decided I would have some folks over for New Year’s Eve, but my house is really small, and it was going to be too cold for the deck. So I built a fire pit. Impending events are very motivating to me.

I got online and checked out some plans and videos. I thought maybe I’d make it flush with the ground—I just liked that aesthetic—but when I asked for advice, one of my friends said to build a little wall around it so people would have a place to put their feet. That’s what I planned.

I bought a ton of Appalachian river stone from the Rock Shop. (My knight-in-law delivered it to my house in his truck.)

On Thursday

I made a hole.

While I was digging, a guy driving by slowed down.

Him: You diggin a well?

Me: Fire pit.

Him: You doin it yourself?

Me: (flinging dirt into wheelbarrow) Yep.

Him: You all right.

The soil in my yard is hard-as-shit red clay. I didn’t want to end up installing an ersatz vase that would hold rain and become a mosquito hot spot, so for drainage

I dumped in gravel
and sand
and then set in two layers of river stone and sand.

Another neighbor, Albert, who lives across the street with his 98-year-old mother and has about six teeth altogether in his head, came over.

Albert: You plantin a tree?

Me: Nope. Making a fire pit.

Albert: You gon have somebody do it for ya?

Me: …I’m doing it myself.

Albert: How you know to do it?

Me: I just got on the internet and looked at some plans.

Albert: Innernet. I don believe in the innernet.

Me: …

Albert: That innernet datin done me wrong.

I thought about saying, “Me too, Albert. ME TOO.” But I just wanted him to go away so I could get back to work, and I’ve already dealt with one neighbor of an inappropriate age and tooth-count asking me out and sending me Valentines(!), so I didn’t say anything and he wandered away.

The next day, I mixed 80 pounds of concrete in my wheelbarrow and started ringing the pit with stones. Albert came back.

Albert: I wanna be invited to your first barbeque.

Me: It’s not that kind of fire pit. It’s just going to be to sit around.

Albert: Oh. You jus gon sit around it?

Me: Mm-hm.

Albert: Jus to sit around.

Me: Yep.

Albert: Fire pit.

Me: Fire pit.

Albert: I have confidence in you.

Me: Thanks.

My knight-in-law came back with a couple of his trusty squires. One of them spent a lot of time trying to break the rocks by throwing them onto the other rocks and losing Lego pieces in my yard; the other was quite helpful with sorting the rocks by size and shape.

I kept laying in the rocks. When I got to the top of the hole, my aching back and low blood sugar won over and I was like, screw the wall, I’m done. The knight-in-law took off the top layer of grass and soil, and

we puzzled in a patio-lip-kind-of-thing and called it a day.

Third day, I mixed up another bag of concrete, cemented in the lip, and covered it with sand. Hello again, Albert.

Albert: You done a hellified job.

Me: Thanks.

Albert: How you gon cook the meat?

Me: …Not planning to cook on it. Just going to make a fire.

Albert: In your fire pit.

Me: In my fire pit.

And guess what! That night,

I made a fire in my fire pit!
Here's one with the flash on.
Here's one the day after. My fire pit was not being particularly photogenic that day. Believe me, it's beautiful.

Some of the stones around the top are loose because people stepped on them and I probably didn’t use enough concrete and WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? I’M NOT A MASON. And anthropologists in the future will almost certainly look at it and say, “Based on the engineering, we estimate this malaria bowl was made by Homo ergasters.”

But it’s mine. It’s my fire pit. I built it. I done a hellified job.

Also, “hellified”: favorite new word. Thanks, Albert.