lasts

Since I can’t seem to work up enough energy to actually write a real entry, how about a survey swiped from Schwulerin? It’s not like nothing has happened – we went to Charleston last weekend, I went down to Asheville to see my dad this weekend, Baker B and I are both taking Monday and Tuesday off just because it’s June and our Birthday Month and we can. Lots of stuff is going on, but I am laaaaazy. Or something. But I do love a survey. 

Last car ride: Baker B and I rode over to Blowing Rock tonight and walked around town. I’ve been crazily tired today and it was supposedly going to start storming again (it’s rained/stormed all day long but cleared up in the evening) and I wasn’t that thrilled about going out, but it was very nice. I needed a walk. 
 
Last kiss: Goodnight smooch from Baker B before he went to bed hours ago. He is not the night owl I am. Well, actually, he has craaaazy sleeping habits and gets up in the middle of the night and stays up for hours. I just stay up as late as possible and get up as late as possible. Which tonight is quite late- no work tomorrow! 
 
Last good cry: Oddly enough, I can not remember the last time I had a really good cry. Which is not to say that I have not cried. I’ve found myself in tears pretty often lately, although it generally passes quickly. I have cried a lot about my mom, out of the clear blue at the most unexpected of times. Short cries, over fast. But as far as serious weeping, I have not done that in quite awhile. I tend to cry more when I’m stressed out, which I really have not been lately. 
 
This does make me think of years ago, when I went back to school to get my teaching certificate. I was completely stressed out over school and work (waiting tables) and being broke and relationships and blah blah blah, and I was driving to an elementary school where I was having to do an observation for one of my classes. Down By The River came on, and it made me think of my brother and his wife who got married when they were barely seventeen because she got pregnant and …WAAAAHHHH!!!!
 
No matter that my brother and his wife and their kids were doing just fine and they didn’t have terrible oppressive depressing lives living in dire poverty and my brother had not just been laid off by Mr. Johnson’s Construction Company, and in reality they were probably doing a whole lot better that I was at the moment. I cried and cried and cried until I started being seriously afraid that if I did not stop crying, I was going to have a wreck and then I’d really have something to cry about. And then it got funny and I laughed awhile. 

But anyhow. Lately I have not had any serious coming-unglued-careening-over-the-edge crying jags. Yay me. 
 
But hey, here’s Bruce for you – now all of you can have a crying jag too!
 

 
 
Last movie seen: Well, apparently that is a REALLY good question. I just looked at my Netlix queue, and we have not gotten a movie since A Town Called Panic, nearly A YEAR AGO. Well, I did get Revolutionary Road and sent it back and put it in the queue again because we were in the middle of a Doctor Who Extravaganza when we got it (I forgot to move it down in the queue) and Baker B didn’t want to see it and I didn’t have time. But I know we’ve seen a couple of movies. Okay, we did watch Cloverfield (got it from Blockbusters), which was a lot better than I expected. JJ Abrams from Lost Fame directed it, and it was about these young cool people who are living in New York when it gets attacked by a monster. It’s told via a videotape which was supposed to be the going-away-party video of one of the characters. In an interesting twist, the going -away tape is being taped over another tape made previously by the guy who is leaving (being sent overseas for a job) and a girl he is in looove with, who also ends up as one of the little group of escapees. Parts of that original tape come through occasionally. It was surprisingly well done, although it seemed to take forEVER to get to the disaster part, and the original party part got a little old. I  also wondered how in the hell the video tape and battery lasted as long as it would have had to last to make this movie. 
 
We’ve mostly been watching TV shows via Netflix, as usual. We’re currently on Season Five of Doctor Who. I am warming up to the new Doctor  (Matt Smith) although I really miss the last Doctor (David Tennant). Sadly I  don’t like his latest companion, Amy. I did like the very first episode, which starts out with her a little kid, but I am finding her way too bossy and know-it-all and annoying,  and I miss Rose and Donna and Martha Jones. And naturally, even though I really really thought we might actually see Season Five IN ORDER, we tried to watch the third disc tonight and….. it was cracked. This is at LEAST the third cracked Doctor Who disc we’ve gotten from Netflix, and it may be the fourth. I am sure we are being punished because we just watched all the episodes with Captain Jack from Torchwood at first. Then we decided we really like Doctor Who and went back to catch up and watch them all. But since we are being punished, we have yet to see them in the correct order. Luckily, it doesn’t matter that much.  
 
 
 
Last cuss word uttered: I swear like a sailor, but I guess the last one was some version of FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK as I burned my thumb getting a Blueberry Crisp out of the oven. I am convinced our oven is possessed, since every single time I try to get anything out of it, I burn myself. Okay, this time I WAS being stupid and using the dishtowel right in front of me instead of the nice potholders Cousin E made me, and the dishtowel was not substantial enough to withstand heat. But generally I DO use potholders, and I still manage to burn myself. I am happy to note that it hardly hurts at all now, though. 
 
Last beverage drank: Wine, which I am still drinking. A shiraz called Tracker’s Crossing which is apparently a Whole Foods brand, and I am sipping on it because… Asheville has a Whole Foods now. This came as quite a shock – Friday I was checking Facebook and one of my FB Friends, Downtown Asheville, had a post saying something like "The Asheville Whole Foods has blueberries on sale!" And I was all, "….. the Asheville WHAT?!?!?!?! When in the hell did Asheville get a Whole Foods??!!!!???"

Well, sadly I  was a little disappointed in it – apparently they very recently bought an independent store called Green Grocery (and it’s still called Green Grocery, which is why I did not know Asheville has a Whole Foods) and it’s not nearly as nice as the Charleston Whole Foods (the only one I’ve been to enough to have an opinion about) and is not as nice as Asheville’s long time Earth Fare and Fresh Market stores, which are both a lot like Whole Foods anyhow. And now I’m thinking, "Whole Foods better not hurt Earth Fare and Fresh Market!!! But whatever, I still bought this wine for like $6 and it’s pretty darned good, and I also bought another bottle for THREE DOLLARS  that I haven’t tried yet. I think Whole Foods is copycatting Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck. I wish Asheville would get a Trader Joe’s. 
 
Last phone call: Kim tried to call but I did not answer because we were watching Doctor Who.  
 
Last TV show watched: See above. We’ve been watching Doctor Who for ages. We will soon be done with Season Five, and who knows when Season Six will be out on DVD. Next in the line up is… True Blood!!!! Third season is due out June 28 and it’s at the top of my queue. Baker B is wanting to watch some Father Ted so we may squeeze that in between Doctor Who and True Blood. We’ve always got something lined up. 
 
Last time showered: This morning.
 
Last book read: I just finished Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls. (okay, I do  not know what in the hell is going on with OD/my computer, but I can’t do links- either the link buttons are greyed out, or nothing happens when I press "enter" so if you really want to see the book/movie/whatevers, you will have to google them). I read Glass Houses by her a few years ago- it was the summer reading book for the university/county,  and she gave the convocation speech that year (which I didn’t go to) as well as a reading/talk at the county library (which I did go to). Glass Houses was a memoir about her life. Her parents were bizarre and borderline abusive (her father was an alcoholic and her mother was an artist and was apparently mentally ill), in that they pretty much left her and her siblings to raise themselves (her first memory was trying to cook a hotdog and setting her dress on fire when she was three years old), and most of Glass Houses was set in Welch, West Virginia, where she lived during her teenage years. In complete and total squalor. And Welch is not that far from here, and we’ve been through there many times. And I have pictures on another entry that I’d link if that was actually working tonight, but oh well. ANYHOW, Half Broke Horses is listed as fiction, but is the story of Jeannette Walls grandmother, told in first person. She was amazing (at fifteen she rode her horse 500 miles through Texas and New Mexico alone to take a job as a teacher in a remote New Mexico town, for starters) but it just seemed too… something. I wanted to know more, and it was like she just skimmed the surface. Told us about all this incredible stuff – the 500 mile rides, the life in Chicago as a maid, the remote western teaching jobs, running a ranch, flying a plane, breaking horses, etc etc etc) but none of the emotions behind it. But, you did kind of understand how Jeannette Walls own mother could have been so neglectful and, well, NUTS. It would have probably been better to read this first and then read Glass Houses. 
 
Last key used: Control/B as I bolded that bit.
 
Last video game played: Hahahahhahahaha! Ummm…. Farmville. Yes, I am addicted. I kind of tore myself away, and now they have an English farm. It sucked me right back in. 
 
Last food consumed: A bowl of Blueberry Crisp a little while ago. I looooove Blueberry Crisp. It’s easy to make and not too bad for you. I use half the sugar, and it calls for oats as part of the topping.
 
Last item bought: A cup of coffee at Espresso News this morning which I never did finish drinking since I’d already made coffee and their coffee is, well, kind of overly strong and burnt tasting. And I wasn’t in the mood for a latte. But Baker B just loves going to Espresso New 
 
Last thing written: Ummmmmm…… that last sentence?? Or, well, THIS sentence.  
 
Last word spoken: ….. I think it would be "cat". As in, "Yes, she is a VERY BAD CAT." Spoken to Baker B (who has gotten back up now) about Cayce, who ran outside earlier while I was holding the door open trying to get Stella to come inside. Stella is the only cat who goes out, and she doesn’t go far. Cayce and Eddie do NOT go out and never have, and I thought Cayce was over that little spell of dashing out the door like she used to do. Apparently not. Luckily she just froze in fear – or amazement, I don’t think she’s afraid of anything- so I was able to dash out and grab her. Our neighbor posted on my FB wall earlier today asking if we’d seen one of their cats, who has been gone since Thursday. They have always let those cats stay outside, and I’ve long feared something would happen to them. They’ve shown up on my deck at three in the morning. They are gorgeous friendly long-haired cats and I really hope nothing has happened to this one, but I’m afraid he’s a goner. And I’m even more paranoid about cats being outside.   
 
Last sleep: I had a very nice nap with the cats this afternoon. 
 
Last text:  I hardly text at all. Cousin E texts me sometimes, and I text her back. I guess the last time I initiated a text was a week or two ago, when my phone rang and it was a call from Kim, but all I could hear was her talking to someone else. I quickly realized she was at work and had called me by accident, since not long ago she scared the fuck out of me by calling me and then all I could hear was someone obviously in distress – but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, just the general tone of distress- and I kept saying, "KIM!!! KIM!!! What IS it, what’s WRONG?!??!?" then finally I realized I could actually hear Kim too, talking in a normal calm voice to someone else — the person in distress– and finally realized that she was at work. At the surgery center. Where she assists people who are coming out of anesthesia, and somehow her phone had dialed me. There was also a lot of medical machinery beeping going on which clued me in too. ANYHOW, this time it didn’t take me long (and didn’t give me heart failure) figuring out she’d hit something on her phone and called me by accident, so I texted her a "hahahhahahaha!!!" message. Which she actually got – you never know with Kim. 
 
Last weird encounter: I’ve had a lot of weird email encounters lately as we’re trying to sell our poor transmission-dead Outback on Craig’s List, and everyone within 800 miles is emailing me about it, despite my saying it isn’t running at the moment (broken battery cable) and it needs a new transmission. I’ve had several people tell me they were coming to look at it (one from Radford VIRGINIA, 4 hours away) but not show up. Right now there’s a guy in Spruce Pine who REALLY wants it and willgive us cash and is bringing his mechanic to look at it (I want to find out where you get a mechanic that will travel around with you and help you with car decisions, since I really need one of those) and we’re kind of holding it for him since for some reason we like him and he seems very sincere and is hopefully not insane. But the point is I am a little weirded out by Craig’s List. I’d never listed anything before and wasn’t prepared to be deluged by weirdos. Okay, okay, maybe they aren’t weirdos. But I’ve felt very much like Bernard in Black Books, shrieking "Mother of GOD, what do they WANT from me??!!!???" while Manny replies, "They just want to buy your books!" 
 
I wish I could find that clip, but all I can find is entire episodes, and I don’t know which one that’s from. Mother of GOD!!! What do they WANT from me!!! 
 
And with that, I am getting off the computer now. And, MOTHER OF GOD, it’s nearly two in the MORNING, I’m going to BED.