My new shoes with toes

Got my new vibram five fingers today. It took a lot of looking to find the size and color I wanted. Straight black, not those goofy ones with yellow between the toes. Those make your feet look like a bird flashing his feathers every time you take a step.

I wore them for 4 hours today. The fit easily (the website says they won't fit feet if your second toe is longer than your big toe, and I can see why), and didn't make my feet sore or rub in spots like All running shoes do for the first couple days. The only thing that is sore is some unused muscles in my feet and toes, since they are not use to being part of the process of getting from here to there. They are waking up.

It's not the same was walking around the house barefoot. Walking in the driveway, down to Fish King, around the block, I feel like I shouldn't be out there. After 5 years old, your mom always made you put on shoes before leaving the house (when young I suppose you would venture no further than the grass in the yard). I feel like I'm missing something around my feet. No socks, no stiff sole.

I'm walking with a shorter stride, if I use my normal long stride I find I'm banging my heel into the cement. Shorter steps allow my feet to move in a natural way, and I love the feeling of my toes being separate and functional.

I'm hoping they fix my hammer toes, all mashed and bent from years in shoes. I'm going to the gym tomorrow to see how they feel on the treadmill.

Photos of my little feet in black are forthcoming.

First time Golfing

Took Rimas out for his birthday last week to play golf at:
4141 Whitsett Ave
Studio City, CA 91604

I'd never played anything but miniature golf in my life. My grandfather had a house in Pebble Beach and was an avid golfer. I always saw it as a pretentious game played by doctors and lawyers who needed to rub shoulders and play the proper status games. The community course is short, nothing over 200 yards (they call it 'pitch and putt'), it was a gorgeous day, it was inexpensive (2.50 for set of clubs, $9 for the course, $7 for a bucket of balls to warm up on the driving range), and there were singles playing the course so it wasn't much crowded at all.

It was fun, I enjoyed it, I said fuck a lot, and now I need to find some lefty clubs if I want to play more than a couple times this year. I re-injured my shoulder by not warming up first, so I've spend the last few days in great discomfort.

Places I've lived and visited

Places I've been


visited 15 states (6.66%)
Create your own visited map of The World





visited 28 states (56%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or determine the next president

Super Fast Passport

I got my new passport today. I filled out my passport renewal and got my photos at the Glendale Clerk's office, and it was less than 2 weeks before it showed up. Cool, now I'm set for anything. I paid $92 total for the photos, renewal fee and the $5 fee for the Clerk to send it in for me. I know people that have waited 3 months, so I was really surprised to see it so fast. Must be a slow time of year, or renewals are much easier to do. It originally expired in Oct, and now I have until 2018 before I have to think about it again. That sounds like such a long way off.

Got my MOO Cards

First batch of MOO cards came today! I love the little dispensers. The cards are high quality and downright cute. Though they came out looking dull. And that is after I upped the contrast and saturation quiet a bit, based on recommendations from other MOO users.


They also came 15 after I was told that they'd shipped. I even held off on sending a few Etsy orders cause I wanted to included cards. And promptly pissed off my customers. ouch.

I don't blame MOO for the lateness, they sent out a 'they've shipped' notice on June 24th. They specifically said that it would take 5-7 working days to arrive, and to not contact them until 10 working days. I waited 15. And of course the day I tell them about it, they arrive on my doorstep.

I think it's the glendale post offices. I've had more loses and damages from the glendale post office than any other postal service or area in the US. It doesn't matter whether I'm shipping to London, or 5 miles away to the westside, I cross my fingers every time I have to send something and hope it arrives. I've spent many long minutes on the phone with unhelpful clerks trying to track packages sent anywhere and everywhere.

The only thing that seems to help is if I print up and pay online for the shipping labels with deliver confirmation. Which keeps me from having to stand in line for 30 minutes while the clerks help numerous belligerent non-english speaking customers, but also costs a bit more. I guess I have to spend either time or money to get what I need done. Maybe they put more care into making sure it arrives at it's destination knowing that an official email was sent to the waiting party who is now expecting it's arrival.

Yard Sale

Spend 6 hours on Saturday selling at Carol's multi-person yard sale.

I sold 4 boxes of bulky stufff, and donated another 10 bags to goodwill on the way home. It wasn't worth getting up at 6am to stand in the heat and get burned for less than $10 an hour. Carol's food was excellent as usual, but I much prefer enjoying the food during a party, than bargaining with a latina or philipina over a $5 item that they want for 50 cents. I get to a point where I'd rather donate it for nothing than to sell it to someone who wants to rip me off. Oh, and when they finally bargain the shit out of something, they hand me a 20 dollar bill.

Instead I'll stick to saving money (instead of trying to make it back) by buying stuff at a deep discount at thrift stores. It's way more fun to buy just the right shirt for 2 bucks after diving into the racks at a thriftstore, than buying the same shirt for $30 and trying to make 2 bucks off of at the end of it's life.

All the big ticket items like furniture and good quality art supplies are better sold on craigslist anyway. You only deal with people online, and when they come for it, they pay and leave. No bargaining or arguing. At least not the majority of the time.

A literate man cannot clean his attic

I have an entire file box of Food&Wine and Martha Stewart Living. Every one of them has at Least 2 articles in it that I want to keep. Which makes it hard to get rid of them, because I have to find and tear out and file each article. Then what do I do with them? Leave them for someone who will inevitably go, "oh cool, it's got a whole article on cupcak.. aw man, it's missing". Or do I just throw them in recycling?

Course, the last time I did that, they ended up being scavenged by our idiotic and wretched landlady, and placed (in revolving piles) in the laundry room. So even though I didn't cause it directly, I'm sure there are a few frustrated tenants anyway. Which really, I don't care about because I despise all but 3 of them to varying degrees. Mostly because they are snappish and unneighborly. How unneighborly of me.

I guess I should just recycle, since all of them are available at any library in the US. Not as if they are precious Gutenburg copies.

How hot is it?

It's so hot today that my lipstick melted in my pocket. Blech.

It's wonderful once the sun isnt' hitting the place directly, but because there is no insulation in these 1940's walls and roof, the heat actually radiates from the walls. I'm not looking forward to another brutal summer here. We're trying to decide if we want to go for another year or month to month, or just move to a place w/ central air. I love it the rest of the year, the cross breeze, the quiet (usually), the huge sinks, gas stove, hardwood floors. But this heat makes me want to crawl into the fridge and nap.

Public Health Home Kitchen Grade

I got a letter today that made my heart skip a beat. A letter from the County of Los Angeles, Environmental Health, Consultation and Technical Services. What on earth would they want with me? I made scones for the wrong person?

I opened the letter to find this!



A postcard sized laminated grade A. With a magnetized back, so I could hang it on my fridge, well, if my fridge front was metal anyway. I was surprised because I had taken the 'home inspection survey over 2 months ago. When I completed it, the grade was available to print, so I made a copy, framed it, and hung it in my kitchen. It makes me smile and makes others wonder. It never said anything about sending me an official looking one.

Want to take the survey? Find it here
http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/ehquizlt.htm

dreams and memories

I woke this morning to sweaty sheets and the corners of a dream cutting into me. I threw off the covers and while I evaporated I recovered pieces of it. And realized it was a memory, not a dream.

One of my earliest memories was being in a white dress (must have been 4 or younger) and new white sandals with metal buckles. I guess mom was talking to friends out by the recreation center, cause she let me go explore. There was a scrubby dry marsh behind the apartment complex, so I carefully took off my new shoes and went wandering in to explore. I have no idea how long I was out there, but I remember the colors and textures of the bushes around me.

When she called me back, I went looking for the shoes, and only found 1 of them. I don't know why, why would I have taken them off in different places? She was furious, dragging me around the area where I thought I'd left them, to no avail. Then she spanked me. That was the part I remember most, being yanked up by my arm and smacked repeatedly for losing an expensive new pair of shoes.

To this day, my mom says she has never spanked me. But she did many many times, the last one I was 12. I remember many of them. How can she blot out every one of them? I remember that I learned to cry and scream as soon as she started hitting me so she'd think she was inflicting enough pain and stop sooner.

And now that I think about it, I've never owned a pair of white sandals in my life.