Karla May's Philosophy Nugget

This is the first, in what I hope, will be come a series of "nuggets".

One is not BORN a megalomaniac. Instead, one BECOMES a megalomaniac when he a) assumes he is 100% right 100% of the time, b) think that his way is the one and true way, c) refuses to listen to dissent and assumes peope are idiots when they actually question his way, and d) think that he is doing people a favor--nay, saving them--by sharing all of his wisdom.

Feel free to discuss. And to disagree with me. Because you see I am NOT a megalomaniac, and can therefore endure and respond to dissenting opinons.

Martha Stewart in Training.

The Geej spent Saturday night with my mother. One of the things The Geej loves about my mom's house--besides the fact that she has her OWN room with her OWN toys including a huge and fully-furnished dollhouse and a play kitchen and her OWN computer--is the fact that it has stairs. I too was fascinated with stairs when I was little--always wanting to climb any staircase I saw so that I could discover what was "up there". The Geej has requested, in fact, that our next house have not only a swimming pool and a playground, but also a flight of stairs.

So, when you marry her love of stairs with her excitement about Christmas getting ever nearer, I guess I shouldn't be too suprised with the decorating project she undertook while out at my mother's this weekend.

BEHOLD!! The Most Festive Stair Rail of All Time!!

And yes, it goes all the way to the top. (Here, The Most Festive Stair Rail of All Time is pictured with the artist.)

Feel free to adorn any stair rails you might have in YOUR house with multi-colored, sparkly pipe cleaners if you'd like. As you can see, it adds class and a splash of color, just in time for the holidays.

The best salad ever. I promise.

There's a joint here in Austin called House Pizzeria. It's up on Airport Boulevard. If you haven't been there, go. Like, now. The pizzas are imaginative and very, very good. But the thing that made me fall in love with this place is a damn spinach salad they serve. And it's the simplest thing in the world to make, which is good since I'm currently OBSESSED with it and make it at least a couple of times a week.

First, put your baby spinach leaves in a bowl. Get the pre-washed, baby spinach because it makes the prep time so much easier and faster, which means that the salad gets into your mouf mo' faster.

Second, drizzle just a little bit of olive oil on the leaves and put a little bit of sea salt. Gently toss. Don't put too much olive oil or toss to crazily b/c you'll bruise the leaves. Next, squeeze the juice of 1/2 a lemon on the leaves.

Last bit, add some freshly shaved Parmesean.

And you're done*.

Serve (or eat) right away or the leaves will get wilty.

*House Pizzeria puts dried, crumbled salami on it if you order off the menu. But I don't eat salami, so this is the only way I've ever had it. It's the simplicity that makes it so amazing.

You're welcome.

Overheard conversation between BH and The Geej:

BH: You need to finish up your bath, or you're going to turn into a prune.
Geej: What's a prune?
BH: It's a dried plum, and it will give you a diarrhea.
Geej: What's diarrhea.
BH: I'll draw you a picture.

Immediately after this conversation, she went back to signing, "I wanna rock and roll all night, and party ev-uh-ree day" in the bathtub and he went back to watching soccer on t.v. like this was the most normal conversation in the world.

The two of them kill me.

Caution: Extreme Beauty Ahead

This is what most of our drive from Chattanooga, TN to Asheville, NC looked like--curvy roads, gorgeous, tree-covered mountains, and the Ocoee River to our right.

And the posting about the rest of the trip...

...is yet to come.

I promise I'll write about the highlights and post photos and whatnot sometime this week. But right now, I'm seated outside at Opal Divine's on W. Sixth, having a Maker's on the rocks and waiting for Thelma to join me prior to walking over to La Zona Rosa to see The Tragically Hip.

I've been in a FUNKY mood since we got back. I guess it was just flaming re-entry back into real life (mail including bills! laundry! the grocery store! twice!) after spending so many days with no schedules and no real "duties". I will say that I was way happy to see The Geej. Of course she'd grown 7 feet in the 6 days since I'd seen her. Like a weed, that one.

It's gorgeous outside right now. I've never been to Opal's all alone, and it's a bit of a weird feeling. Happily I've got my laptop and several mosquitoes to keep me company.

Oh wait, I think I just spotted a table of obnoxious Canadian Tragically Hip fans. They were just talking about The Maple Leafs and high-fiving, so... I'm not surprised. This is the way it goes with Hip shows: there are always a bunch of Canadian expats (or tourists) who come to the shows here because in Canada, The Tragically Hip sells out stadiums, so getting to see them in a small venue--for these super fans--is pretty fookin' awesome, ay? The thing that pisses me off is that they always just get so into the "HEY LOOK AT ME!! I'm CANADIAN...JUST LIKE YOU GUYS IN THE BAND!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!" There are always several douchebags sporting Maple Leaf hockey jerseys and drinking Molsens at the show, you know, just to drive the point home. I've been going to see this band for 20 years, and it just comes with the territory. But I will put up with it and I will have a great time because DAMN I love these guys. I have no idea why they haven't hit superstardom in the U.S., but it's fine with me b/c it allows me to see them play in little venues and experience the wonder that is Gordon Downie up close and personal-like. I am a superfan as well, let me assure you. I'm just a little less spaztastic about it. I hope.

So my sammich and fries are here, and I'm going to sign off so I can mack down on this shiz. I will finish up my anniversary-trip-posting tomorrow. But for now, here's some good, old Tragically Hip for you, from one of my favorite albums.



Smooches, fools.

Happy Anniversary to Me!

Today, October 18th, is my 5 year blogiversary. It's also my 10 year anniversary of working where I work. And I just happen to be writing this entry during the first full day of my (early) anniversary road trip through the southeast with BH. In other words, life is good.

We started out yesterday by leaving Austin and flying to my old stomping grounds of Birmingham, Alabama. Yes, I accidentally planned our trip to take place during the Texas/O.U. football game, but luckily I had asked rabid Longhorn Fan Lee to text me at the end of every quarter with the score, and he politely obliged. And we also managed to watch the latter half of the 2nd quarter at the sports bar in the Nashville airport. Luckily, by the time we landed in Alabama, Texas had won it. Barely.

We got our rent car and then turned around and returned it almost immediately because before we'd even left the airport, the "check engine" light was coming on. So after we'd switched from a Toyota Matrix (yay!) to a red Dodge Avenger (boo!), we headed into town and checked into our hotel.

It was cloudy, cool and breezy. After we got checked in, I drove BH and I around, checking out my old city. I was amazed by how melacholy the whole thing made me. I only lived there for a few years, but I really, really loved Birmingham. It's a surprising jewel of a city--sort of like Austin, believe it or not--and this time of year is simply spectacular there. The leaves haven't started to change yet because of the unusual amount of rain they got late this summer, but they're right on the cusp.

Saturday evening, we hooked up with a friend of mine from my days working at Southern Progress. We had drinks and dinner and lots of good conversation.

This morning, we woke up to glorious blue skies and crisp fall temperatures. We drove through my old Southside neighborhood (beautiful!), visited Vulcan Park, of course went here, and then went and hooked up in Crestline with another old friend of mine (who I hadn't seen in ten years) and her husband for brunch. After chowing down and catching up, I drove BH through the winding, hilly streets of Mountain Brook to look at the amazing homes. Finally we visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute before leaving town. It is a powerful and humbling reminder of how fragile and important human rights can be. I highly recommend it.

This is the 16th Street Baptist Church as seen from the Civil Rights Museum.

For only being in Birmingham for 24 hours, we did a lot. But still, I was sad to leave and hope it's not another 10 years before I return.

We drove north and east on the backroads, heading through small towns like Oneonta, Geraldine, and Fyffe, Alabama. We went throught the northwest corner of Georgia, and then reached our current location: Chattanooga, TN around supper time. Tomorrow we'll spend the day exploring this adorable little city on the banks of the Tennessee river before we head out toward the Appalachians and Great Smoky Mountains.

More to come.

This explains a lot.

This is a picture of my favorite doll from childhood.

No, she's not wicked baked; she's sleepy. Her name was Drowsy, and when you pulled her string, and she said things like, "I'm so sleepy," and "Night, night," and "Can I have a glass of water?" I hauled her around with me through most of my toddler- and young childhood. I'm not sure what happened to her, but no matter really. Even though the doll went away, her impression she made on me certainly did not.

I fucking LOVE to sleep. I mean, I can drop and give you a nap at the snap of a finger. And for as long as I can remember, I've been this way. It was really bad in junior high and high school when sleeping 14-16 hour stretches on the weekends was pretty average, and my friends all knew that I was a sleep glutton. Hell, I even had a poster of a kitten sleeping under a pink blanket that read, "Wake me up in time for the weekend!" in my room. So not only was I a sleep-lover, I was also an enormous dork. It's a wonder I had any friends at all...

In my dorm my freshman year, the room that my roommate Bonnie (thankfully, a fellow superfan of sleep) and I shared was known as "The Cave." We tacked black bath towels up over the window to block out daylight and cranked the A/C down to like 40 degrees--optimal for under cover snoozing.

I realized later that a great deal of my desire for more sleep than was probably necessary was due, in no small part, to the fact that I was a very depressed person. Not depressed as in "man, I'm bummed about that," but clinically depressed. I finally got on some meds (yay drugs!) and it helped, but I am still madly in love with the act of sleeping. And for this? I blame Drowsy coupled with the fact that I'm old and lazy and sleep has become increasingly precious as my life has gotten more complicated and filled with distractions like work, and kids, and stress, and housework, and pets and husbands and whatnot.

So as I finish this post, at 9:32pm, I will proudly go to bed about three hours earlier than I used to when I could sleep in in the mornings, and will enjoy every moment of whatever sleep I'm luck enough to snag tonight.

Night Night!

Just another wildly exciting night at Casa Karla May.