intentions

tuesday after school rodney made dinner and asked if i wanted to go to the pub for a while and play some pool. of course i did. we had fun and even one really good game, where i only had one ball left on the table when he beat me. i've never won, except when he somehow fouls hitting the 8 ball and i win by default, which does not count. i took my camera along to "make" a photograph. it's been a while since i fooled around with the manual settings and i thought i might get some interesting slow shutter speed shots. i'm not in love with them, but it was fun and i did get this nifty image with rodney's ghosty form playing billiards. i didn't notice until i dragged it into photoshop to put the B&W adjustment on it that my sweetheart wrote "megan rulz" on the scoreboard. rad. it was nice to bust out the camera and the tripod and photograph stuff with intention, rather than the ill-lit, tungstony, snap-shots i've been taking of late.

today i did all kinds of making stuff. i spent a good three hours finishing the format job on dad's book. one of those classic "this should take 30 mins tops" kind of scenes, where you're, you know, WRONG about that. it was a breathtaking experience, being responsible for it. he's printing through lulu and needed me to upload it for him for some reason i never understood, so when it came time to deliver the files i was confronted with this page of questions to navigate that seemed so very final and important and BIG. i called him and we sorted it out to the best of our abilities, but i must say, i don't think i would publish a book with them. their website is really hard to navigate if you need information, and their response time is sluggish. i'd much rather be face-to-face with a printer who can answer my questions just then and personally address my needs. regardless of my opinion of lulu, it was a really exciting experience for me. i'm so proud of dad. after i did all the formatting i just kept scrolling through the pages looking at how beautifully it looked like A REAL BOOK!!! and getting all butterfly-ey. we still need to upload the cover art, so i get to go through it all again in a few days. when i answered all the questions and uploaded my file and finally pushed "submit" the result was this little, silent, anticlimactic message.

if i ever run an online printhouse i hereby vow that when you submit your first-ever, beautifully formatted, blood and sweat covered manuscript some rad flash of steve martin playing the banjo at the head of the awesomest marching band EVER will scroll across the screen and george carlin will appear knocking at your door, delivering a celebratory cake.

i also made chili today with all the various chili-appropriate left overs in the fridge ( i think i am becoming famous for this ability to turn any kind of left over into some form of soup product ). i used the chilies from our friends bryan and kym's garden that have been drying in a bunch from the kitchen ceiling, accusing me of neglect. we are just about to eat it and i am so ready.

also, hazel and jubal wanted to make oatmeal raisin cookies and we needed brown sugar, so i made that too. you just drizzle some molasses into a running food processor full of sugar until the color suits you. i'd love to go into a whole thing about how much i love raw sugar over white sugar, and dazzle you with my nutritional and humanitarian rights factoids, but lately all i ever have on hand is white sugar, thanks to my southern-born hubface and his sweet-tea addiction. i just let it go. when i'm a rich and famous yippie designer, i promise to only buy organic fair trade raw sugar that was sustainably harvested and transported on the backs of lovingly tended burros. or something.

and speaking of intentions. smoking. so we had the january 1st inferno of cigarettes and cigarette packaging. and then rodney slipped. so i slipped. then we might have been on again and he slipped again. and then we were back on track and he got sick and was in bed for days and i had to do everything myself from morning til night and i cannot adequately express how lovely it was to smoke just a tiny bit while he was sleeping for days on end. and then he was smoking again and breaking a couple other resolutions, and i got fed up with the on again off again crap and delivered an eloquent speech that involved the notion of shitting or getting off the pot, except more refined and passionate sounding and he actually took it to heart and quit for reals. he did this while i was mid-pack, so i stretched it out, smoking a couple times a day, finishing my smokes early monday morning. today i bought another pack. he's been quit for reals for a week today and i'm the horrible one who bought another damn pack. the irony is killing me, since he's the one who was smoking like a pack a day and i'm the one who has painlessly quit smoking at the drop of a hat several times, easily and without fanfare. and now, NOW?! it becomes some stupid challenge that i'm sucking at? frustrating.

i am grateful for:

oranges. i haven't eaten one in, possibly, years, but my friend andrew eats them at school all the time and it inspired me to try one again. yum.

quiet. i'm sure i'll get some sometime and i know it will be lovely.

the new decemberists album, which is very mellow and americana. i'm partial to rox in the box. january hymn is sweet, too.

date night. we'll be seeing the fighter this weekend!

enduring love which sees past irritations, frustrations, disappointment, failures, mistakes, and all the other crap.