Sick and Tired

I'm sick. Grumble grumble. I haven't been sick since I moved last July so that's something, I'm guessing that my vitamin/immune boosting daily rituals are working in that sense (I also made it through the gruelling Sept. - Dec. season which is my most awful - The Boss got really sick with pneumonia and somehow I made it out with nary a sniffle. So I suppose one very seasonal minor cold is acceptable, except that it comes - as always - at a bad time. I'm going to a sleepover on Friday - GIRLS ONLY! - and I do not want to be the first one to fall asleep because someone will put my hand in hot water so that I wet my sleeping bag. Or will put my bra in the freezer (that actually happened to me, but not at a slumber party - Snow White did it to me, probably to get back at me for something that I did that was equally snotty). So I'm trying my best to think myself well but on top of the cold I seem to have Bad Sleeping Karma again. I had it last summer, where I would fall asleep around 11:30 or so, just fine, and then wake up, wide eyed and full of energy at somewhere between 4 and 5 am. And unable to go back to sleep. This Stinks. So I'm tired from the cold and I'm tired from not getting enough sleep and let's just say I'm a wee bit tipped over and loopy because of the combination.

Oh. Well.

Found! A new poem to love, spotted on the 6 train going to work:

Wilderness
You are the man
You are my other country
and I find it hard going

You are the prickly pear
You are the sudden violent storm

the torrent to raise the river
to float the wounded doe
-Lorine Niedecker

Redirection: Iran

Highly suggested reading: Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker this week about the Bush Administration's "redirection" in the Middle East, clandestine operations, and the likely possibility of an upcoming war with Iran:

"In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims... "

Scary and pure evil.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070305fa_fact_hersh

Snow by Anne Sexton

Want to know why it makes me so happy when it snows (like it did last night)? I read this poem by Anne Sexton this weekend and this says perfectly how it makes me feel:

Snow,
blessed snow,
comes out of the sky
like bleached flies.
The ground is no longer naked.
The ground has on its clothes.
The trees poke out of sheets
and each branch wears the sock of God.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
I bite it.
Someone once said:
Don’t bite till you know
if it’s bread or stone.
What I bit is all bread,
rising, yeasty as a cloud.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail.

Les Plans du Weekend

I shall start it off tonight with a French meal - OUI! Le nourriture du Francais AGAIN! Zut alors! But je l'aime, so there. A glass of something alcoholic would be bien too. Then tomorrow I meet Vudolicious and Floating Head at the New York Historical Society for the New York Divided Exhibit -Slavery and the Civil War.After that, who knows what I'll be up to...I'll tell you this though, I'm feeling Tired with a capital T. Some rest is in order, I think. Because I do know that next week will include a Blockhead's reunion (complete with news about a Mini Vox!) and all you can eat mussels at the Belgian place. YUM.

Au revoir til we meet again!,
Nicole Renee

Busy, but Flawless!

Lady Peel

Lady Skipwith

Most busy this weekend...I started out having ZERO plans and I hate having nothing to do on a long weekend. I usually like to do something on one day and then save the other for resting...even God rested one day out of the week. But this weekend? No rest for the weary. Well I didn't do anything on Friday night, I just headed home but then Saturday, I met my cousin, Lady Peel (she refers to me as Lady Skipwith, of course) and we checked out the Whitney and were NOT impressed. I'm not the biggest modern art fan, I think a lot of it is pretentious bullshit, so there's going to have to be something super cool that I want to check out before I'll be back...then we walked over to the Frick, which is one of my favorite NYC spots because its a museum but it was a home once upon a time and you just feel like you are walking around someone's beautiful mansion full of beautiful things, not a gallery or a museum. Needless to say, we were quite jealous, our own abodes not being as fancy. Then we headed down to Jean Claude on Sullivan Street for an awesome meal of escargot, roasted codfish, and basil mashed potatoes and shared a bottle of Cote du Rhone. The taste of wine made us realize that a stop at Trader Joe's Wine Shop might be in order to pick up some supplies. A chardonnay, a sherry, and an Amarone were purchased, happily.

On Sunday, I met Floating Head for a Day Meant to Make Us Get Juggy With It - we have not been juggy lately. We had brunch at Mon Petit Cafe - lovely omelet, lovely kir royale, lovely frites...bonjour! To the crosstown bus, where I ogled a handsome doorman on Central Park West, Floating Head counselling me regarding a Person Who Wears a Very Specific Hat and obsessively plays his PSP and she will kick my ass if I don't do that which I need to do and we walked up to the planetarium at the Natural History Museum where we saw the Hall of Many Peoples - Asian, African, etc. - and a film, Cosmic Collisions - super cool! I even had a super cool dream that night full of space travel that was inspired by this film - there was also an icky red snake which I had to let bite me in order to travel through space but then Jim from the Office came and gave me snake bite antidote and then I woke up and so I don't know if I got to travel or not. Anyway. Next up was Sephora, where Floating Head and I attained Smooth Skin via the Bare Minerals line. OMG. We are now flawless (on the outside - inside, we are working on). After purchasing the starter kit, we decided to treat ourselves to a Cinnamon Dolce latte at Starbucks where we had a conversation for over an hour that was punctuated frequently by one of us exclaiming, "oh my god, I can't believe how good you look, you are just glowing! your skin looks so fresh!" - and it's true, I highly recommend these products!!

Monday, I trekked out to Brooklyn for a 3 hour Thai lunch at Sea and then bought Asian food supplies, incense, and soap at Pearl River Mart - udon, soba, miso, and best of all? Red Bean Buns, my favorite...

Needless to say, I'm a little tired. Tonight, I shall try my hardest to go to sleep early...I have to keep my guard up and my game face on and energy level high so that I am ready to...do what it is that I have to do. And to stay juggy with it which is all connected to Doing This Thing That I Have To Do.

Goodnight then!

Snow Day!

Looks like my little doggie was right, we got snow...more like a blizzard, with little hard bits of ice smacking me in the face as I walked to the train this morning...but lots of lovely sugary type snow on the ground. And as luck would have it (if I had two legs, I could believe it), when I moved last summer, I threw out my old snow boots, thinking I'd buy a new pair this winter. But it hasn't snowed all season and so I never bothered. Ah, oh well, I just put on my jack boots as Daddy refers to them and stomped through the lovely snow on my merry way. And now I sit, typing this post, quite smiley, in my office, with the blinds pulled all the way open so I can see the winter scene perfectly and sip my coffee. La la la, Happy Valentine's Day to me, lots of love, The Weather Gods...just one more thing needs to happen to make this a nice nice day...

I'll finish this off with some new favorite quotes:

Come to the edge.
We can't. We're afraid.
We can't. We will fall!
Come to the edge.
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.
- Guillaume Apollinaire


When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years."
- Mark Twain

"I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work" - Thomas Edison

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Arf, Arf!

What's that boy?

ARF! ARF!

A nor'easter you say? It's going to snow? Are you sure boy?

ARF! (wags tail)

How many inches?

(holds up paw)

3-6 inches? Amazing! You know how happy the snow makes me, don't you boy?

(nods head and then leaps on top of me and licks my face until I giggle)

ARF!

Aw, I love you too, boy. We'll go out to play in the stuff as soon as it starts to fall.

Its the most wonderful time of the year...

Nope, it's not Xmas...the 10th of Feb. is Chuckie Poo's birthday!! Happy Birthday to the best daddy a girl could ask for... I'll be toasting to you tonight...and I'll call you tomorrow!! I love you more than a blog could ever say!

Hugs and Kisses from Daughter #1!

Here comes the sun...and I say, it's alright...

whenever I was feeling bad/blue, I used to play this song to make me feel better - or listen to it upon waking in the morning, right away, to ensure somewhat of a good start that would hopefully spill over onto the rest of the day...I haven't listened to it in awhile, a long while, but I think I need to ASAP...Beatles songs are perfect for that sort of thing, they just kind of make you feel better all around...anyway, I bring it up because I have been a terrible person this week, full of ANGER. Rage. Wrath. Envy. Self-pity. Blah blah blah. It's so boring to be negative, isn't it? So typical. Today, I reached my limit. I was all ready to throw in the towel and go home at noon, saying I didn't feel well. I just wanted to run and hide and lay in bed, pull the covers over my head for the rest of the day, maybe only popping out to watch The Office and ER tonight. This didn't happen though because I kept thinking: "You can run but you can't hide...because then the issue still remains - why in the hell have I been such a moody mess this week"?

But I'm here to announce:

THE MOOD HAS BROKEN. I AM NOW RECOVERED.

Thank you to all who have been bearing with me through these difficult and challenging times.

I was just given a new "challenge" work-wise and I think that helped. A new project right now, possible new and bigger projects looming in the future with different people than I normally interact with, all ingredients for a new perspective. It broke the spell of doom that was hanging over my head and I just couldn't shake it.

So, with that in mind, I have a few steps to take:

1) Stop acting like such a bitch
2) If something is making me feel bad or sad or mad, do something about it, don't just sit there and whine "oh poor me"!
3) Have a drink with some friends, laugh a little, and lighten up.

I'll end with my new favorite quote:

A light in the darkness
A candle is a protest at midnight.
It is a non-conformist.
It says to the darkness,
I beg to differ.
- Indian Proverb

Bad bad bad bad mood

Typical Monday, I suppose, although I don't really dislike coming to work so it's not a "I hate my job, can't I stay in bed?" sort of bad mood, but it's REALLY cold, like Artic cold so maybe that started me off. The guy on 1010 WINS this morning was interviewing some Russian guy at a bus stop about how cold it is and he said "you look like Krushev in that hat!" and the Russian guy says "aw, its not that cold, this is like a Russian summer". HA! And people think Russians have no sense of humor! So maybe the cold, the bundling (which makes you feel fat, all those layers), the coming into the office and feeling the major heat which I hate, the lack of coffee and having to rebundle to go out and get the coffee, the dumb, lazy people in the world, the bad hair day (due to hat head, mostly) all contribute to BAD BAD MOOD.

It's dissipating now though, so that's good. Stay tuned to see how this all turns out...will she smile once this week without it hurting her face? Will she stop grunting at co-workers? Will her boss stop avoiding her because he reads her body language really well and reads the sign above her head that screams: "KEEP AWAY FROM THE ANGRY LADY"? Well, we are all on pins and needles waiting to see how this mood resolves itself...

Nada to report

Not much going on, hence - no postings in awhile. The only event of note is that I went to see Pan's Labyrinth (check out the official site http://www.panslabyrinth.com/ there is a sketchbook section by the director/writer that's super cool) and it was AWESOME and made me wish that it was a book so that I could go home and read it...somewhat grotesque and dreamlike images, but that's right up my alley and that's really what fairy tales were, not the cleaned-up, prettied-up Disney versions (which I still love but they are much "nicer") ... afterwards, there was some really good Thai food and wine on 2nd Avenue...and this weekend? Ikea on Saturday and a Ghost Hunters marathon on Sunday... Floating Head and I will be enjoying it on separate couches, cell phones at the ready so that we can text each other when we are scared and in need of comfort.

Tomorrow is Groudhog's Day and he better see his shadow (but only if that means there are 6 more weeks of winter - if not I want the opposite)! It's been so cold here and I love that, but I want some snow. I NEED snow. It's been so cold, you should see how I wrap up just to go to bed. It snowed a bit the other night; I was genuinely thrilled as I went into the kitchen and glanced out the window and saw white everywhere. I had that nice little moment of surprise that you get sometimes - you look out a window just out of habit and you expect to see the normal scenery. But this time, it was all white and quiet and little snowflakes falling and everything looks slower and seems hushed when it snows. But it didn't stick around long and it may snow tonight but it's supposed to turn to rainy slush and that doesn't count. So hear my cries, Oh Weather Gods! A Snow of Substance please :-)