Tag Archives: sketch blog

Monday, Monday, Can’t Trust That Day

Woman sitting in a chair with her head in her hands, lamenting Monday.

Oh, Monday, she’s such a bitch. She comes around and ruins everything once a week.

I hate her.

But, well… without her there would be no real beginning to the week. I do like a little bit of structure.

And it’s good to have a nemesis. It gives you something to rise up against. To push back on. To say, “You’ll never destroy me!” to.

How to get through a Monday? Sit down and collect your thoughts. Then proceed very slowly. Pace yourself – there is an entire week sprawling out before you. No need to be hasty or get too much done at one time. Check e-mail. Check your favorite websites. Do little tasks – pay a bill, dust off a shelf, return that pair of shoes you don’t really like.

Oh, look, it’s lunchtime.

In the afternoon, do one thing that you’ve been avoiding in your life or in your work. One task that you put off for all of the previous week, even on Friday when you actually had time but didn’t do it because it was Friday, practically the weekend, and why should you do something icky when it’s practically the weekend?

Then you’re done for the day. Coast on through. Go home. Don’t watch too much TV, or any at all.

Without you even realizing it, (because if you’re lucky you are fast asleep), the best part of Monday will arrive: 11:59 pm.

Hello, Tuesday.

Bringing Sexy Back (Yet Again) This Halloween

woman wearing a sexy debit card costume and asking for Jell-O shots

You’ve seen them. We’ve ALL seen them. They bring forth in us, depending upon our outlook and motives, either outrage or appreciation. Sometimes we put them down but we all know that, no matter what, they aren’t going home alone on Halloween night.

It’s the Sexy Ladies of Halloween. Women who can turn any costume into a wonder of titillation.

Not all of us have that ability, you know. We don’t have the body or the will or the drive. Some of us would maintain that we don’t have the cheapness, the sluttiness, required to take part in such a thing.

My days of slutty Halloween-ness are long gone. Let me amend that – my day of slutty Halloween. For I only attempted sexy once, as a freshman in college, when I went as a hooker and my then-boyfriend went as a pimp. I know. They took away my Take Back the Night card for that one. I never, ever mentioned it in any of my Women’s Studies classes. Don’t ask, don’t tell, was the sexy Halloween policy back then.

But now it’s rampant. “When did sexy Halloween costumes become a thing?” Keith asked me the other day. “It seems like there was a time when that wasn’t the case.”

I’ll tell you the very first time I realized that Halloween costumes could be sexy. It was while watching E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In the Halloween scenes the mom, played by Dee Wallace, dresses up as a sexy cat. And when I say “sexy” by today’s standards it was actually very demure. She’d be shunned at the club for dressing “all Amish and shit.” But, yeah, I thought she looked kinda hot.

My friend JoEllen has a tumblr called Miss Guised that pays “homage” to sexy Halloween costumes. Each day  this month, she’s posted yet another ridiculous sexy costume, from Sexy Sriracha Sauce to a sexy highlighter pen – she’s truly found the best of the worst. Go take a look if you need some sexy inspiration – I think you’ll find that if you can’t think of a sexy costume, you’re just not trying hard enough.

As for me, I’m struggling (yet again) to come up with any costume, let alone a sexy one. But whatever I come up with I’m pretty sure I’ll be fully clothed. Just call my Sexy Otter.

Me dressed in a head-to-toe otter costume.

 

 

In Our World, There Lives a Little Mountain

I’ve shared my portrait of Bob Ross before but I want to revisit him today.

I’ve been in a weird sleeping pattern lately. I go to sleep easily only to wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, wide awake and thinking. It’s the low-quality thinking, repetitive, that accomplishes nothing. I’m certainly not solving anything.

But it’s hard to break the thought cycle on your own, especially at that time of night.

So I’ve been trying to think of things to help me get back to sleep. Suddenly I remembered Bob Ross because of his voice. He had one of the calmest voices I’ve ever heard. I thought, “If I could listen to Bob Ross in the dark, I could fall back asleep.”

I finally got around to Googling “Bob Ross mp3” tonight.

BINGO.

Someone in the world is super awesome. Because they put up free mp3s of a full season of Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting TV show right here. I’m listening to an episode called “Blue Winter” now.

So if you’re ever having one of those nights, embrace Bob. Put on the headphones and lie back. He’s no longer physically with us but he’s so with us.

Happy little clouds this Friday.

I Got Your Whimsy Right Here

An elephant driving a Mini Cooper convertible.

 

I’ve noticed that many successful blogs are built upon whimsy.

If you know me, or even if you’ve read some of these posts, I’m not very whimsical.

I would not, for example, bite the pattern of a heart into an apple and then cup it in my hands and take a photo of it to post here.

I don’t have any cute kids I can press into blogging service.

I could take photos of delicious food, or show you how I delicately dab butter onto my pastry dough with a pastry brush. If only I had a brush. And some dough.

I’m not obsessed with the color turquoise or white (which, when I was in school, was not even a color.)

I don’t even enjoy coffee, so I can’t whip up a late and draw a picture in the foam (another heart?) for you to enjoy with the caption “I love love”.

Hell, I don’t even live each day in the moment. Like a lot of humans, I’m usually living in the past or contemplating a fantastic, fanciful future.

So. Here. Here is the whimsy I can give – a drawing of an elephant driving a car that may or may not be a Mini Cooper convertible.

Ta da!

Thanks, C. Ramirez

The best thing I got on our recent trip to NYC was a belt purchased at the Brooklyn Flea.

Leather and brass belt, made in Italy, purchased at the Brooklyn Flea.

I saw it sitting on a table and grabbed it in one of those “this is totally mine” moments.  The buckle and the decorative front piece are made of brass and the belt part is worn brown leather. Someone wore the hell out of this belt already.

Actually, I know who had this belt, at least for awhile. On the inside, in marker, it says “C. Ramirez.”

I could have stayed at the Brooklyn Flea for an entire day, looking at all the clothes (I also got a skirt). The prices were “meh” – you’re not going to find great deals here – but duh.

What I didn’t enjoy so much were the overflowing Port-O-Pots. An old man opened the door to one, looked inside and walked away shaking his head. I really had to pee so I went in holding my breath and keeping my eyes level with the door.

Still, my cool belt is worth a minute of crouching over a pile of shit.

My belt raised security concerns on the way home. It was in my suitcase but the pointed and crossed brass horns raised the alert and my suitcase had to be searched, the belt extracted and run through the x-ray on it’s own, to make sure the horns weren’t really poison daggers or knives or tiny guns.

Which needs to be in a Bond movie.

 

The Disrespectful Centipede

Yesterday morning I went into our basement and saw a big centipede but I didn’t kill it because I couldn’t deal.

Yesterday afternoon I went back down there and the same centipede was hanging out on a ledge. He did not run away when I turned on the light and came down. He moved his legs (antennae? who can tell) like he was waving hello. Then he watched me feed the cat and clean out the cat’s box. Like we’re friends or something.

A drawing of a centipede.

Centipede’s are disgusting. Grosser than millipedes. Plus, I read once that centipede’s can bite. It won’t hurt very much but imagining something like that chomping on me makes me uncomfortable.

When centipede’s reach a certain size, they get a swagger. They think they’re Big Bug on Campus and don’t have to worry. About anything. I wonder if centipedes and spiders ever get into epic battles, like giant squids and sperm whales.

One time I was working at the computer in the basement of our last place. I was alone down there but I suddenly had the feeling that I was being watched. It was the weirdest thing. There were those little basement half-windows and I kept looking up at the one over my desk, thinking I’d catch someone peering in.

Then I looked down at my feet and saw a big centipede  along with a beetle friend.

A centipede and a beetle at my feet, watching me.

They were both watching me. It nervous-making. I don’t think bugs should take up so much space that you can sense their presence without them making a sound.