becky haycox

Tag: postaday2011

  • another internet friendship made “real”

    Polly y yo!

    I had the utter delight of meeting Polly of the inimitable Pollyanna Cowgirl in July, then basking in her presence a second time in San Francisco. Lucky me! We’ve been internet buddies for ages, so the face-to-face was ABOUT TIME.

    I first cornered her at her booth at last month’s Renegade Craft Fair, where I sweated all over her and stole a ring. She covers that meeting (and maybe some other stuff) in her recap. You might want to peruse her delights on her Etsy shop. I know, cute, right?

    Then I won a book on a giveaway on her blog (which was not fixed, how dare you) which was a good excuse to meet up with her in San Francisco.

    She also blogs about that experience, which was a lovely, delicious and drinky time. I love that she brings up the phenomena of vacation vibe transference — absorbing and experiencing the fun and relaxation of someone else’s vacation. I also subscribe to this notion; in fact, my friend Tamar and I fully believe that our friendship is so strong because whenever we see each other (we live on opposite coasts), one or the other of us is in full, fun-having relaxation mode. We call each other our honeymoon friend.

    So there you go. Another reason to give the internet a squeeze of its chubby little cheeks. Beef cheeks!

  • boombox in the courtyard

    me in 1983

    me in 1983

    Amy Rigby nails my middle-aged, angst-ridden soul today. If you’re anywhere near her age or mine, something might resonate to you (buy her album here). Everything she says pretty much is me, except I did not pursue playing music in any way. Also, I fell in love the first time a little later in the decade. But yep. Photo booths. No job. Thrift clothes. Even pushing large fake animals down the street.

    Summertime in ’83
    The year that we made history
    But didn’t have the energy
    To tell a soul ‘cept you and you and me

    Selling off Fiesta plates
    Ate loaves of bread but gained no weight
    From pecan waffles on the roof
    The summer of my wasted youth

    Summertime in ’83
    The last time I took LSD
    But listening to Patsy Cline
    And Skeeter David really blew my mind

    Played the boombox in the courtyard
    Never used a credit card
    Still took a trip by Greyhound bus
    The summer I believed in us

    Pushed plaster cows down city streets
    Wore thrift store skirts with little pleats
    Smoked pot and sat around all day
    Bought a guitar but didn’t try to play

    Summertime in ’83
    I didn’t need a j-o-b
    Cause unemployment kept me free
    To study country harmony

    And find somebody with a car
    Drink cheap beer in the Polish bar
    Take photos in the photo booth
    The summer of my wasted youth

  • can’t put it off any longer

    I’m off to the Department of Motor Vehicles! Hooray! There’s a whole lot of paperwork for the two us to get done!

    After I try to sort out two separate snarled tangles of bureaucracy for two cars, then I get to take the new (to me) car to see how much I can pay the mechanic to make it stop making a low-hooting/squeaking noise. Oh, and what it will take to make it start, since last time I checked, it didn’t start.

    This is on the heels of an agonizing day of car repair (ruptured brake line!) yesterday.

    I am liberally peppering this post with exclamation points! Because otherwise I’m gonna start using bullets! Bullet points!

    What!? Did I just make an awesome or horrible joke? I don’t care!

  • consider this popsicle stand blown

    I have about fourteen thousand things to do between now and when my lovely man gives me a ride to the airport, so I can get out of town for a couple days.

    Most annoying task on the list: driving 40 minutes round trip just to retrieve my forgotten cell phone. I fantasize about whistling for it, and it sprouting wings and (somehow escaping my locked office) and flying its way into my hands. Although then the phone would be more like a pet than a phone, which is weird. Oh my god! Remember Tamagotchi? That is so totally going to be the hipster retro accessory, when we start revisiting the late 90s as fashion cue.

    None of this is getting my chores done. I think I’m going to go back to bed for a minute.

  • wistful

    End of the line

    I often take the surface streets to work, and often take a road that goes parallel with the beach in Ventura, and then goes past the fairgrounds.

    Yesterday I got stuck on this road, behind a convoy of trucks waiting to get on the freeway.

    Looking closer at the trucks, I realized they were the rides from the fair, all broken down and ready to move on. This is on the first sunny day we’ve had in weeks.

    Nothing like a moment like that to kickstart the mourning of the end of summer, a few weeks early.

    Sigh.

  • rich looks to peaches to be by his side

    [direct link]

    I still can’t really look at the 80s without getting a headache. This clip, however, is mesmerizing.

    For the record, I would like to state that: although this was the era of my youth, I had absolutely nothing in common with these morons. I was an entirely different breed of moron with a lot more black lipstick.

  • love the one you’re with, kinda

    Pixelated quilt by Peggy Kroener

    Yesterday’s morose post brought up an interesting comment from my dear friend Jefffro:

    We create our own families sometimes. I know that having living relatives does not always equal having the support of those people.

    He goes on to say some lovely things about me and about the friendship between us, which I value as much as he.

    The post itself was a little half-baked; it was started a couple weeks ago when I was feeling overwhelmed by all the minutiae and majoriae seeming to dominate my life. I rolled it out yesterday without really editing it or going into the detail I liked.

    The reason I invoked my “traditional” family (some of whom I actually love and would seek out even without the blood link), is that a lot of stuff on my mind involved family issues. The care of, and decisions about, my Elderly Relative is the huge one. The home in which I live is owned by my family, so anything wrong with the house feels like a family issue, too. I also suffer when my sister Ann is out of cell range and gallivanting around on a fantastic six-week summer road trip, ahem.

    The rest? Garden-variety mental-aches and pains. the crap that comes with the adulthood thing.

    Not that I don’t feel like an Orphan in the Storm sometimes; but I also fully, firmly, totally believe that one is capable of (and should) create a network of non-traditional family. I don’t know what I would’ve done without my (caution: 1990s alert!) tribe. I love my tribe!

    By the way, run don’t walk to Jefffro’s blog and check out his project, in which he is reminiscing about his entire life, year by year!

  • fine lines between “free” and “alone” and “lonely”

    I have no parents and only sporadic contact with the rest of my family. Exceptions: my Elderly Relative, my locally-living nephew, and my sister Ann.

    This makes me feel very free, and very lonely, in equal measure. Sometimes, when responsibilities pile up (as they are doing now) that family-free-falling-feeling makes me feel a tiny touch burdened.

    I am tired of caregiving, and don’t know what to do about that. I miss my stuff that is now 14 months in storage, and a place of my own to put it. I need to hire a handyman and a carpet cleaner and need to go to a dentist and need to buy health insurance. And what about preparing for retirement?

    Not that, if I had family, that any of this would necessarily be easier/solved, but at least there’d be more people to whine to.

     

  • juvenile and surreal fair moments

    That sticker on my t-shirt says “squeeze me.”

    Ventura County Fair 2011

    Troy, Turquoise, Jeff.

    Ventura County Fair 2011

    Myopic avocado.

    And it only gets stupider here.

    Thanks, Ventura County Fair. You know how much I love you.

  • sweet-ass ride

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    Yikes! I bought a car! One of the many to-dos on my bulky to-do list was removed today, thank you very much.

    My elderly Saturn was quietly but firmly telling me that its life was coming to an end, what with every indicator light flashing every time I turned the key in the ignition. Not to mention the horn honking randomly by itself. Not to mention the cracked and crumbling windshield.

    This one, a Toyota Camry, is even more old than the Saturn, chronologically, but is in much better shape. It also has one of those power V-whatever engines. I found myself driving 80 in a 45-mph zone at one point.

    It’s amazing how quickly and efficiently people will take your money when you say “I’ll take it.” I reckon it was less than 1.5 hours between the Boyfriend idly saying “hey howsabout we browse some used cars” and me driving triumphantly homeward, playing with the A/C and electric windows and, yeah, driving 80 in a 45 zone.

    I was very close to test driving a 1985 Jaguar XJ6 (also in the poor person’s low-four-digit price range), it was so cute and interesting and I have never owned a cute and interesting car, and, oh my, what fun it could’ve been. But no, Sensible Brain won, again, and so it is. Plain and sturdy. Except for the speedometer going all the way to 150. There is that.