becky haycox

Tag: postaday2011

  • sometimes impurities sneak in

    In December I went to a yoga class that was taught by one of the handsomest men I’ve ever seen. Definitely hands-down winner of cutest yoga teacher — even cuter than the tattooed (and straight!) Jivamukti instructor in San Francisco. And that, let me assure you, is saying a lot.

    This guy, apart from possessing an adorable alliterative name, is the very best of what Southern California has offer to the rest of the world — a sun-kissed surfer with a gentle, unselfconscious demeanor and jaw-dropping physique. Seriously, you just look at him and a balmy breeze ruffles your hair as the gentle harmonies of The Warmth of the Sun play softly in the distance.

    Oh, no, I could not keep it together in his class, sorry. Oh, yes, it was me that snorted* when he calmly talked about streeeeeeetching the groin. I’m a walking “that’s what she said.”

    That’s what I said! Oh dear.

    *I pretended it was a sneeze.

  • a brief overheard monologue

    I am going to make a drawing once a month and post it here. I feel rusty, especially because I can’t play iSketch (online Pictionary) since yet another graphic tablet died.

    I am allowing myself to draw a couple drafts in advance, but I am not allowed to overdo it and, when I scan the drawing, I am not allowed to Photoshop anything. Prepare yourself for weird-looking human limbs until I can get the hang of it all again.

    – – – – –

    Sunday before last was a narcotically perfect springlike day. I felt like I floated a few inches above the sidewalk as I meandered along the beach promenade in my town. I passed this trio (a young woman with something on her mind, her friend on a skateboard being pulled along by the presumed boyfriend) and it made me yearn for the ease/complexity of summertime.

    a day at the beach, 1/16/11

  • vintage video – groovy news edition

    The WITI team gets me going! I isolated the audio, turned it into an MP3 file and brought it on my road trip with Molly. We played it when we needed a boost in the mornings as we hit the road.

    [direct link]

    And now, meet the groovy staff of WOUB, 1977 team:

    [direct link]

    There’s something scandalous about these 70s BBC bloopers. All these stuffy people with these plummy accents, swearing like sailors:

  • black lung and brain rot

    Got an on-ramp comin' through my bedroom

    After a whirlwind, week-long courtship, I have finally said YES to an utterly cruddy cold. Since I seem to have inherited lungs from a chronically tubercularesque ancestor, the cold has settled in my chest. As is my norm. Cough, wheeze.

    I gave in to becoming one with my bed and sucking on the pipes that are Netflix Streaming and Hulu. Here’s a selection of what I have watched since yesterday. You may or may not sense a thread or theme:

    • The Van Halen Story: The Early Years
    • Handle with Care (Jonathan Demme’s 1977 film about CB radio culture)
    • The Big Lebowski
    • American Pimp
    • American Teen
    • Several episodes of The Biggest Loser (the irony is not lost upon my fevered mind)
    • Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America’s Greatest Threat (ditto)

    Started but abandoned: A documentary about the Haiti quake and one about mentally ill prisoners, and Intervention.

    Oh! I just remembered I have three books I can read.

    Damn.

  • that’ll show ‘em

    doctor's office

    I took my Elderly Relative to the urologist. I will not share with you the uncomfortable details, including the getting to hear the latest in Urology Humor.

    I will share my frustration with how thoughtlessly the doctor and the other medical personnel treated my relative over two appointments, leading to anger and embarrassment and total confusion. The doctor breezed through the exam, barely able to spare a moment to ask or answer questions for my slow-to-comprehend and very frightened relative. At one point, as I was helping my relative change back into his clothes, something unexpected and very distressing happened, something we were not warned about. When I rushed out of the exam room to get aid, one of the medical assistants shrugged at me and intimated that we were overreacting.

    Well, that did it. On our way out, through the waiting room, I stole the office’s copy of Better Homes & Gardens.

  • metropolitan sepulchre

    Alexey Titarenko’s “City of Shadows” series gives me the chills every time I look at it. It’s like all the ghosts that inhabit a city, all at once.

  • making connection

    I was featured yesterday on Han’s Bloggers Wednesday post. Preen, preen! I get to shout out my favorite blogs, give a little history about my old self, and be a typical curmudgeon as I answer Han’s question:

    Han: Piece of advice for bloggers out there?

    Becky: Please don’t drop off the face of the (blogging) earth, especially without explanation. You owe it to your readers to warn them if you’re not going to post for a year. We’d much rather have you be realistic and post once a month (or less) regularly than to have you write lots, get us hooked, then disappear.

    Let this be a non-gentle reminder to my dormant blogging friends that I miss you and how about posting something soon? This does not help my festering abandonment complex.

    I think Hannah and I found each other through the Vast Internet Clearinghouse of Awesomeness, the Cardiogirl blog. I love having friends I would not have been able to meet otherwise, if not for this crazy cloud of e-madness.

    Thanks, Han!

  • let’s watch lanterns in the sky for a while

    Make a wish.

    [direct link]

    [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN7jhXlYEc8]

    [direct link]

  • fortress of solace/solitude

    geranium

    My family’s old beach house boasted some lovely gardens and landscaping, thanks to the green thumbs of my grandmother, my mother, and my cousin N. The rest of us just appreciated their efforts. My love of sweetpeas, in particular, is hardwired into my lineage; my mother could remember her grandmother planting them. Who knows how far back the sweetpea love gene goes?

    But when I think of the beach house, I think of geraniums most of all. Grandma planted them in the 1970s, mom kept them going, and cousin N kept them going past that.

    When we sold the beach house in 2005, cousin N took some geranium clippings, replanted them, and gave me a pot of them. The very same geraniums!

    This picture is from 2005. Lacking the green thumb gene, I could not sustain them.

    – – – – – – – – – –

    I lost my mom 8 years ago on this date. Still feel lost without her, sometimes. Lots of times.

    – – – – – – – – – –

    This is an interesting story. In 1922, after the death of his mother, Carl Jung said

    I had to achieve a kind of representation in stone of my innermost thoughts and of the knowledge I had acquired. Or, to put it another way, I had to make a confession of faith in stone. [read the whole story]

    So he built a house. Jung added

    …only afterward did I see how all the parts fitted together and that a meaningful form had resulted: a symbol of psychic wholeness.

    I hope that I’m building an interior structure of psychic wholeness because of, and in tribute to, my mother.

    Brick by brick. Day by day.

  • jumped through hoop and got dog treat; also: fashion!

    I bought a bizarre-looking tunic (not pictured above) from the thrift store the other night. There were two identical ones, one labeled a size 3, one a 4. They both looked enormous so I was confused by the sizing. I went for the 4. This is a chain thrift store with a policy of not having dressing rooms.

    So, I tried it on at home and this tunic thing was E-normous. I took it back to the store with the receipt. I located the other, slightly smaller tunic and grabbed it.

    I had a choice at the checkout. On my left was a nice-looking young lady who seemed to live cleanly and have a semblance of intelligence.

    On my left was a young, skinny, hyperactive male, the sort that my town seems to breed. He was loudly complaining about how it was his lunchtime and Janice wasn’t there to take over.

    Obvious choice, no? Ah, but nice-looking young lady was helping someone at the jewelry counter and our heroine (me) was just too anxious to exchange one tunic for one slightly-less-sacklike tunic.

    So I go up to the dude.

    Me: Hi, I bought this last night; here’s my receipt. All the tags are still one. Can I please exchange it for this one?

    Him: [tersely and a little threateningly] No.

    Me: Oh. But they’re identical and both never worn, they’re just different —

    Him. No!

    Me: Are you sure? Is there someone I can …

    Him: Sorry.

    At this point, I sigh, and try to determine whether I can leave with grace, or if I feel I must say something mean and petty.

    Me: This is so stupid.

    Him: [without a hint of humor] Just kidding, of course you can exchange it.

    Me: Ha ha ha.

    Hostility disguised as humor, my favorite flavor.

    The jury’s still out on this tunic. At angles, there’s a cool Issey Miyake circa 1984 vibe about it; at other angles, it’s just the dumbest, hardest-won garment I own.

    Thanks to the Nueve Musas blog (which is now Garmento), from which I appropriated the image. I’m glad to have stumbled upon these blogs; Garmento describes itself thusly:

    Garmento is an online blog and soon-to-be printed fanzine with the intention of engaging fashion’s visual, cultural, and historical currency as a relevant discourse. While contemporary fashion has given way to the hype of a derelict popular culture, as the apparel industry gives way to wanton consumerism, and as our own identities give way to a fluid yet artificial collagulation of 21st century dress, Garmento ponders, beyond it all, what else there could be to clothes.

    Oof, with smartypants with smart pants like that out there in the world, I think that I shall be able to rock this weird tunic thing.