Bedwetters unite!

I'm ever so sorry for the misleading title if you are an adult bedwetter who thought they finally found someone who can relate to their shame.  Alas, my secret shame is not bedwetting, but remains to this day that I eat food off the floor, showing little to no regard for the possibly fictitious 10 second rule (I fell asleep in the mythbusters where they investigated this, most boring episode ever.)  I have also noticed that if left to my own devices, I can and will subsist solely on canned beans for up to 5 days before bean disdain sets in.  I don't know if that's shameful or awesome.

Are you thinking now that I'm just trying to trick you with an exciting title and I'm just gonna prattle on about beans for an entire post?  I just don't understand why not everyone is as enthusiastic about beans as I am, but fine, I will get to the heart of the matter.

In my quest for outdoor furniture that looks like this:

But doesn't cost me my firstborn child, I turned to trusty craigslist.  I found a giant twin bed-sized ottoman type thing that looked loungey and was my in my price range of $35.  It was all covered in indoor fabric, however, and in case you weren't aware, it can actually get pretty rainy up here in the Pacific Northwest. As I pondered a way to outdoorize it cheaply, I came upon the realization that the entire sky is like a giant bedwetter from the heavens.  (Hallmark, feel free to pay me to use this on a card.  I take cash.)

Actually, that didn't happen.  I googled waterproof mattress covers and happened upon a gem of a site, http://bedwettingstore.com/.  So I decided to buy a plain white vinyl mattress cover and then I could cover it in fancypants outdoor fabric once I got my next paycheck.

It looked like this it was very pretty 

 I place my order, then contentedly occupy my time with my traditional self-destructive habit of looking on craigslist for a better deal on something I had just purchased.  Lo and behold, I found it.  It was a wicker set that was ALREADY sky piss-proofed and I wanted it really bad.  Alas, I had just spent $20 on a stupid useless vinyl mattress cover.  Panic set in and seeing as patience is not a virtue of mine, I couldn't handle waiting to e-mail them asking them to cancel my order.  I called them frantically, my thoughts consumed by how much Top Ramen could be purchased with the $20 I may have just thrown out the window.  I got someone on the phone and after hastily explaining that I really needed to cancel my order, she said, "well ma'am, what site are you ordering from?  I take service calls from three different sites."  So I of course blurted out "Bed-wetting.com!" She calmly promised to cancel my order, and I hang up with a sign of relief until I notice all the familiar markings of doom -- an eerie silence, the clicking of fellow keyboards --did I forget to mention something?  I was at work.

That is ridiculous, you might say.  That is really stupid and how could you possibly forget you were at work?  Well, it's not that I forgot, it's that when I'm at work focusing on things that are way more exciting to me than my actual job, I have a tendency to zone out and I'm in my happy place that doesn't include anything work-related, including my co-workers that surround my desk.  It's like I have a gift: people are constantly hovering around my desk, as it is in the center of the office, talking to each other about work-related matters and I will just be happily googling the shit out of how to make beeswax candles or something like that, completely oblivious to anyone else who is not currently wasting company time.  So needless to say my co-workers heard me cancel my order from a bed-wetting website.

And that is the story of how my co-workers think I'm an impulse-purchasing bed-wetter.

PS:  While I was writing this post, I was clearly scouring the internet for images of bed-wetters, and no less than 3 co-workers have walked by during this process.  They may have an intervention for me.

PPS: The wicker chairs were taken by some other asshole who had the audacity to respond to the ad before me.  I still have the original ottoman and have weatherproofed it by staple-gunning it with $1.29 plastic sheeting. It is the utmost image of class.

Growing moss on shit

This is my cat, who doesn't give a fuck about moss

So, being a green fairy and all, I like moss. With the exception of food type substances and most clothing, I would pretty much be ok with moss being on everything I own.  Portland happens to be the ultimate moss-growing environment and also happend to have been an actual motivator for the move up here, so I tried whipping up a handy dandy recipe that will grown moss on whatever you want that I have concocted from various websites.  Here it is:

-1 part buttermilk

-2 parts moss spores

-1 part beer

-few teaspoons of sugar

blend all together.

I got this off inhabit.com, apparently you can even make awful bunnies from moss paint.  I'm sorry, I like the intent, but that is one crappy bunny.

Once you are all done, it should resemble something that looks like vomit and smells truly awful.  Brush this on stuff you want moss on and mist with water if it gets dry.

I put this on a bunch of stuff:

you can't really see it but it is there, and after a few weeks, drumroll please...it has done nothing.  I will keep you updated if it suddenly bursts out with moss, but I'm not holding my breath.  Bet you thought this post would have been a bit more exciting, didn't ya?  Thats what you get for making assumptions.

Moving to the city of roses, bridges, and 80's nights.

Our backyard bonfire in Venice at Halloween.  I lit myself on fire that year.

I recently moved from Venice, CA to Portland OR, due to a whole mess of things that don't need to be elaborated on.  Still transitioning, as it is June and last week it was in the mother f^&*ing 50's.  Degrees, that is.  Having been raised in California, I tried to limit my bitching during the winter months, mostly because I am getting pretty sick of people asking "how I'm adjusting."  "Oh, I'm thrilled, I just adore wearing two snuggies to bed." Also, I'm reading a book about Africa, and I feel pretty shitty whining about being chilly when people in the Congo have to worry about the worst parasites in the universe.

Despite paying over $1600 for a tiny apartment and narrowly escaping the traincrash known as Lindsey Lohan moving on my street (we moved out the month she moved in), I still get pangs of sadness for the old haunts of Venice. We lived about a block from Abbott Kinney, which, if you haven't been, you absolutely MUST.  It alleges itself as the hippie mecca of LA, and you can pretty much find a good mix of rich people with expensively distressed clothing, a handful of celebrities, and druggies.  There was one shop, a vintage shop, and one day me and the boy decided to go in.  He picked up a chipped coffee mug and asked the price.   The lady eyeballed his t-shirt with legitimate holes in it and said it was $600. (author's note: I don't remember the exact price, but it was definitely in the realm of $600-900).  As we snorted with laughter, she gave us the most supreme bitchface I have ever witnessed.  It was truly spectacular. She was like the Gwyneth Paltrow of boutique owners, and I would feel pretty confident in assuming that she sanitized everything we touched after we left the store. Anyway, you just can't get experiences like that here, and it is one of the many reasons Venice will be missed.

It looked like this but with french writing and like it had been dropped

Anyways, now that the weather is clearing up, I actually get to enjoy Portland, even though it doesn't have the snobs to entertain me.  For someone interested in green living, it is certainly one of the best places to be in, and you can't help but love a place whose motto is "keep Portland weird."  (Fun fact: we almost moved into a place next door to a previous mayor of Portland who was a BIG proponent of the "keep Portland weird" movement, and he had a homeless man that lived on his balcony and acted as the neighborhood watch. )  One thing that I have discovered that rules the shit out of Portland is 80's nights.  Now don't get me wrong, I love me a costume party and any chance to dance to The Go-Gos, but I also have to be a big fan of some other decades, and I know I'm new to town but I am fully in favor of expanding our decade-themed party horizons.  Maybe a sock-hop?  A Flapper Festival? Am I just out of the loop and these are actually happening and I don't know about them?

I'm sure I could go on about other topics that people will care more about, but I'm going to choose to perseverate on this 80's obsession.  I'm starting to think that maybe its a matter of decoration investment, and as a designer, I can assuage your fears.  Lets take a 60's theme:
-Go to dolllar store, buy lots of white sheets and colored markers.
-Google tie dying.
-Tie dye sheets.
-Hang on walls.
-Done.

This is what the sheets will look like if you don't suck at tie-dyeing.

 I can assure you that the amount of money it will take to accomplish this will be less than what I personally spend at the bar, and if all partiers are not completely transfixed by all the colors then they have missed a crucial step in the pre-partying process for a hippie dance.   So can we get on this please?  Mcmenamin's, I'm looking at you, as you seem to be the leading abuser of the 80's night.

Theater chairs - Now infestation free!

I found these gems on Craigslist and it was love at first sight.  What I failed to understand, as many do under "love at first sight" circumstances, is that turning these into something I could deal with on a daily basis would be a giant pain in the asshole. To this day, I still glare at them occasionally for all the sawdust I swallowed and the number of times they fell on me. Ah, l'amour, you fickle beast.

Here are some more "before" pictures.  While I cannot show proof that they were actually infested, I will say that I have no earthly clue how the fabric on the backs got so scratched up.  If that is not the work of a wild animal that is some serious voodoo my friend:

Anyhow, this was my first real wood refinishing project and I guess I didn't realize that picking things without a lot of curves/tight spots would be optimal, but a few hours and some angry biceps later and they were ready for staining.  I stained them a super dark color and finished them with 100% pure tung oil from this like this: The Hope Company 32TO12 1 Quart 100% Tung Oil or you can get some from this website: http://www.realmilkpaint.com/oil.html.  I saw some other tung oil at home depot, but it had all the nasty chemicals that this website was bashing, and not wanting to grow a third eye after sitting in my soon to be finished chairs, I went with the natural stuff.  The bonus was that it smells like peanut butter.  I seriously wanted to eat it, but settled for reeses peanut butter cups.  The negative was that it took fucking forever to dry.  The website said 1 - 2 days but mine was more like 4.  I don't think this should deter anyone from buying this though, because it looks great after it dried, and I feel much more comfortable knowing that if I unknowingly licked the theater chairs I wouldn't be poisoned.

Now came for my least favorite part, the reupholstery.  I picked a creamy white microsuede type fabric despite boyfriend's protests and my empty promises of curing our black cat of his scratching and shedding problem. I'm not gonna go into all the details, but I can assure you that the process blew.  I always pick projects that need new upholstery and only think about the fact that I hate upholstery and am bad at it later.  However, I did get to use my favorite tool the staple gun so all's well that ends well.  Long boring story later, here are the finished chairs:

I'm pretty happy with them, and cat has yet to soil them with his feline hair and nails, mostly because I keep them stored up.  However, I'm broke and need new boots because my vegan boots are the worst and the sole broke in two.  So this beautiful set of theater chairs are now for sale!!!  Let me know if you want to buy them and live in Portland.

The Ultimate Granola Move: Hennaing my Hair

As someone who prefers to take matters into her own hands when it comes to hair, I tend to shy away from the hair salon. Nothing against it, but I like to change things up so often that it would make it a very expensive habit, and I also have a passionate hatred for small talk. None of my friends seem to share the fear I have of being chained to a salon chair for an hour, inventing travel plans I will never make in order to avoid the awkward silence that will eventually come with a stylist who likes to chat it up, so I might be in the minority here.

Anyways, the point of the matter is that I have been dyeing my own hair for the past 9 years, ever since I discovered my sophomore year of college the joys of changing your entire look with $7 and 30 minutes. Since then, I have had numerous shades of blonde, red, and brown, and I can honestly say that I have been pretty lucky that I even still have hair, as there have been times when I hated it immediately, ran to the rite-aid and dyed it again that same night. I got into a chemical-free obsession a few years ago and started reading up on Henna, which would still let me change up my hair color without having to deal with the feeling of dissolving scalp that one gets with typical hair colors. Every few months or so, I would go through a pro-henna phase where I would read every article I could on it, then read some horror story about a woman with bright orange hair that had to grow it out and immediately talk myself out of it. Fast forward to a year ago, when I decided to get drunk and order a henna kit.

If you're not familiar with henna, you might be wondering why this is a big deal, and in the grand scheme of things, it really isn't. There are a lot more pressing issues to be thinking about than hair color, but here you are, reading this blog that has so far been pretty much useless in terms of world-changing content. So I assume that if you are still reading, you are saying "OK" to hearing about the logistics of spreading dirty goop on your hair and the resulting tantrum I threw when I saw the result.

Back to the matter, henna is a bigger deal than store bought because it is extremely permanent. Those "permanent" haircolors you can buy at walgreens? Not permanent. If you truly eff it up, it will fade or you can redye, but with henna, this shit ain't coming out. Hence why I had to resort to liquid courage to even place an order. Once it is in your hair, you can't use normal hair colors anymore (I have heard either your hair will fall out or it just won't work, but the worst case scenario is bad enough to scare me into making it a no-no.) So if you hate it, your option is either to grow it out or shave your head, or dye it black(with henna) to cover it up. Needless to say, I was well-informed of these warnings before hennaing my hair, but I think that information went back to hang out in the happy part of my brain that likes to pretend that what I'm about to do isn't a terrible decision. Instead, it focused on the pros, which is that I was embracing nature and my hair would be super soft and natural.

Another warning is that you have to buy body art quality henna instead of henna that has been mixed with metallic compounds. Why? Oh, because your hair might literally melt off your head. Seriously. So after this oh so inspiring post don't just run to Whole Foods and grab the first henna kit you see. I got mine from this site http://www.mehandi.com/ and found out a lot of information from http://www.hennaforhair.com/. Anyways, this post is getting to be way longer than I expected, so I'm going to try to speed it up to the good freak out part, but if anyone really wants me to expand on the whole process of mixing the henna and whatnot, let me know and I will add it in.

What the mixture looks like

So, I mix up the batch of henna, and you have to wait for a day to make it all good and ready to make things orange, and then you have to test it on something to see if the dye will release or something like that. So I waited a day, and I tested it, and said tester did not come out orange. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I'm impatient and decided to go for it anyways. On the poor advice of a blogger, I thought I needed to leave it in for at least an hour to make sure the color sets. Since I did not see any color on the tester thing (a piece of paper) I was like, oh, well I'll just leave it in for 2 hours, just to make sure, which I would determine later to be the worst idea ever.

During said two hours, I had random panic attacks that I was making a serious mistake which I decided to quiet down with wine, which turned out to be bad idea as wine tends to make people klutzy, which isn't the best when you have white furniture and a head full of drippy, bad-smelling crap that will dye anything it touches. I managed to make it out of the shower with only minor offenses to the apartment that were henceforth covered up with whiteout, and took off the towel to reveal sideshow-bob colored hair.

Hair before Henna

This picture does not even do it justice

This was a costume party, I don't normally dress like a 
gothic renaissance hooker.  
Unless its a Saturday.

After screaming at my boyfriend for laughing, then screaming at him for not stopping my destructive, impetuous decision, I rekindled my love for hats. I tried to find some pictures that show the atrocity that was my hair, but I didn't let a camera near me for about a month. Luckily, henna fades verrrrry slowly so the two pictures above show it almost at its glory, so just picture this but with jazz hands.  Picture below is after almost a year of fading.

A bit less cartoonish

In the end, it has since faded to a nice normalish color that I have actually gotten a lot of compliments on, so I guess I'm happy except that it would be nice to be able to change it. It is also ridiculously soft and healthy and I rarely get split ends. However, I can already feel myself itching for a change from red hair but seeing as I am unlikely to shave my head, I'm not quite sure when that will happen. Would I recommend henna? I think very few people would be able to deal with the inconsistency, time, and radioactive hair, but seriously, this is some soft hair people. I would imagine it's what unicorn hair feels like.

My first post -- and it's about cannibals.

Jesus, I thought it was hard to motivate myself to write a book, but it literally took me a month just to figure out what background I want to go with for this thing, and I'm pretty sure thats getting changed soon. Needless to say, it is really hard to pick what I want to write about for the first post. On one hand, it sets the tune for the rest of the blog, and you can't really ever just get rid of your first post, but on the other hand, considering I have zero followers right now, not very many people will probably ever scroll all the way through my posts to read the first one, except maybe my mom, so hi Mom.

Anyways, to take the pressure off and just post something because the blankness is driving me nuts, I have decided to just post this email I wrote to my boyfriend that I randomly ran across today while searching for something in my gmail and I can't help but laugh about it now. Warning: some of you may find some of this offensive. I truly do not mean anyone offense, but speaking as a very pale person who doesn't eat people who can look genuinely frightening in bad lighting, maybe this is a personal opinion but I would not like to come across a very pale person who actually DOES eat people.  FYI -- Megan =sister-in-law.

"Subject: DILEMMA -- need help

ok, I have a very serious dilemma here:

so I wrote megan today to rsvp for the rehearsal dinner, and she tells me that they found a house and is really excited about it. She sent me the link to it and the pictures look great, the backyard is amazing and the inside is ok but not as amazing.

So I decide to google the address to see if i could find out how many beds/bath there are and lo and behold, what pops up? Guess. Seriously guess. Ok you will never guess. That cannibal albinos live on that road and they attack people. Now, it is on some urban legend sites, but it is referred to quite a lot and on a yahoo questions page there is this:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080302100805AA1ZfvF

WHAT THE FUCK ARE ALBINO SOUNDS?!?

So here is my dilemma: Do I tell her about this and :

1) this ruins the house for her and they pass and regret it

2) she passes this off as ridiculous and they buy the house and live happily ever after with an awesome backyard

3) She passes this off as ridiculous, but then one day when Jeff is gone she hears a weird sound and thinks its an albino sound and spends the rest of her years with an insomnia problem and carrying around a shiv, much like my year of terror after I read that 1 in 3 people have been abducted by aliens and had their memories erased.

Or do i not tell her bc this is slightly crazy and:

1) they all get eaten by albinos and i go mad with remorse.

For your reading pleasure, here are some more links, and you can google it: hicks rd. san jose: cannibal albinos. Apparently they like to surround cars.

http://www.horror-movies.ca/horror_10859.html

http://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/entries/alum_rock_park_albino_menace/"

Blog Update: They now live in the house and are still not eaten, but apparently they have some pretty wicked giant turkeys causing all kinds of havoc over there.