Thursday, August 24, 2006

i heart 15 hour days

i suck at updating my blog, and the reason is that i have hardly had time to blink this week. when you take a full-ish time job and combine it with a full-ish time course load, and you multiply it by a house to clean and FOUR animals to take care of (if you are clever, you will have deduced that we kept the kitten), you get a schedule packed so tight i have to be mindful that i schedule time to potty and blow my nose. which i have been doing a LOT (nose blowing) since they started pouring chemicals all over the church parking lot next door. did it need to be blacker than it was? because it looked fine to me. but obviously there must have been a really good reason to fill the air with noxious fumes.

i just finished writing my first div school paper! with the help of only ONE glass of wine.

and don't expect any updates this weekend because i'm going to indianapolis.

the kitten's name is "billie." but she also answers to "little."

Friday, August 18, 2006

oh hell

well there are a lot of things i could write about, as it has been an eventful week. the most PRESSING topic, however, is this:



julie brought her home today after picking her up on the side of lebanon road.



what are we going to do with her? is she actually really that small? are we crazy cat ladies if we have THREE cats? will mercy succeed in consuming her face, as she has been trying to do since the kitten crossed the threshold? will kitty stop hissing at bean and moochie? (not that i want her to, because when she hisses it is pretty much more cute than i can even tolerate.) stay tuned for the answers to these questions, and more!

really, we cannot have another pet. really. SERIOUSLY.

but, but, but.....look at her. seriously. no, really.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

stop, drop, and roll bitch!

i have to say that i am kind of surprised this has not happened until now. i mentioned this to julie, and she said "well morgan, you just started cooking on gas. you didn't have an open flame before." she does have a point.

nevertheless.

i started a fire in the kitchen today. at first i thought it was just a little flare up from the burner. it turned out to be a kitchen towel ON FIRE. my first thought was "oh shit! i need to go get julie!" so i turned around, as if i am going to run outside to tell julie, who is mowing the yard, that she needs to come extinguish the FLAMES COMING FROM THE STOVE. then my inner dialogue said "jesus morgan! you can't go get julie! THERE IS A FIRE IN HERE!" i was trying to think real fast about all the things you are and are not supposed to do with a fire....all i could think was that you aren't supposed to use water, and then i remembered something about baking soda, or baking powder or something, but while i'm doing all this thinking the flames are growing and are about to engulf my HEAD.....so i took the lid off one of the pots on the stove and beat at the fire until it went out. all the while saying to myself, "jesus christ morgan! there is a mother fucking fire in the mother fucking kitchen! christ!"

anyways, not that much damage was done, except to the kitchen towel. and to my poor psyche.

oh, and the smoke alarm? it does work. it works really loudly.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

hotlanta

when i come back from visiting big cities (most recently london, paris, and atlanta), nashville makes me feel a little forlorn. for a few reasons. not necessarily in this order.

1. big cities have more vegan food. there are whole restuarants devoted to vegan and vegetarian cuisine. even normal restaurants usually have something to offer. i can go to restaurants and have *multiple* choices on the menu -- choices not confined to salads, steamed vegetables, and rice. i can have things like cream sauces. i can eat CAKE. that i didn't bake myself. i can also ask if something is vegan, and the server will know what i am talking about.

2. there are more gay things to do in big cities. nashville, god bless her, has a pretty limited glbtq scene. if you don't like really loud dance clubs that play techno, well i hope that you weren't counting on going to some other kind of gay establishment in nashville. this weekend in atlanta we went to a gay country bar that was PACKED, and SO many people were on the dance floor except it actually looked fun because they were two stepping and line dancing. all kinds of people...all ages....it was the kind of bar where you could actually have a good time without getting shit faced. and there WASN'T A COVER. i **begged** julie to dance with me, because really i think that two stepping can't be THAT hard, but she insisted that we must take dance lessons first. which i am pretty much more excited about than i have been about most things, including getting my new refrigerator and learning to knit. big. stuff.

3. you can walk places. and if you can't walk places, you can take public transportation.

4. there are good places to SHOP. had my first experience at ikea this weekend. wowie.

i could continue, but it is making me more forlorn. i love nashville, i think great things are happening in nashville, i especially love east nashville...but sometimes the draw of big cities starts to get to me....

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

grandpa

over the past several months, my grandpa has been in the process of dying. his health has declined over the last years, and his quality of life now is really not good. he has moved from assisted living, to the hospital, to 24 hour nursing care...meanwhile my mom has largely been responsible for being his caregiver...it has been hard to watch, and i think the time has come when it really is time for him to go, but he is still hanging on, and it is a struggle for everyone involved. sometime i will have to get around to telling some grandpa stories, because there is plenty of hilariousness to be had, but i wanted to post some things that i have been reading...in this book called "conversations with god" by neale donald walsch...that have been really useful and have changed my perspective. they have changed my perspective about death in general, about grandpa's death, largely about the death of my biological mother. it has offered a lot of comfort and healing. this passage is written as though "god" is speaking to the author...

"the person who has the 'faith to move mountains,' and dies six weeks later, has moved mountains for six weeks. that may have been enough for him. he may have decided, on the last hour of the last day, 'okay,, i've had enough. i'm ready to go on now to another adventure.' you may not have known of that decision, because he may not have told you. the truth is, he may have made that decision quite a bit earlier--and not have told you; not have told anyone.

you have created a society in which it is very not okay to want to die--very not okay to be very okay with death. because you don't want to die, you can't imagine anyone wanting to die--no matter what their circumstances or condition.

but there are many situations in which death is preferable to life--which i know you can imagine if you think about it for even a little bit. yet, these truths don't occur to you--they are not that self-evident--when you are looking in the face of someone else who is choosing to die. and the dying person knows this. she can feel the level of acceptance in the room regarding her decision.

have you ever noticed how many people wait until the room is empty before they die? some even have to tell their loved ones--'no, really, go. get a bit to eat.' or 'go, get some sleep. i'm fine. i'll see you in the morning.' and then, when the loyal guard leaves, so does the soul from the body of the guarded.

if they told their assembled relatives and friends, 'i just want to die,' they would really hear it. 'oh, you don't mean that,' or 'now, don't talk that way,' or 'hang in there,' or 'please don't leave me.'

the entire medical profession is trained to keep people alive, rather than keeping people comfortable so that they can die with dignity.

you see, to a doctor or nurse, death is failure. to a friend or relative, death is disaster. only to the soul is death a relief--a release.

the greatest gift you can give the dying is to let them die in peace--not thinking that they must 'hang on,' or continue to suffer, or worry about you at this most crucial passage in their life...

...now at this point everything depends on how badly the soul wants to leave. if there is no great urgency here, the soul may say, 'alright, you win. i'll stick around with you a little longer.' but if the soul is very clear that staying does not serve its higher agenda--that there is no further way it can evolve through this body--the soul is going to leave, and nothing will stop it--nor should anything try to.

the soul is very clear that its purpose is evolution. that is its sole purpose--and its soul purpose. it is not concerned with the achievements of the body or the development of the mind. these are all meaningless to the soul.

the soul is also clear that there is no great tragedy involved in leaving the body. in many ways, the tragedy is being in the body. so you have to understand, the soul sees this whole death thing differently. it, of course, sees the whole 'life thing' differently, too--and that is the source of much of the frustration and anxiety one feels in one's own life. the frustration and anxiety comes from not listening to one's soul."

shew. so i'll leave that for you to digest.

Friday, August 04, 2006

the results are in...

...and the lightbulbs are changed, and i HATE them. i feel like i'm in an institution. or worse, my old high school. WHERE IS MY SOFT WHITE LIGHT? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COZY ATMOSPHERE??? but see the thing is, now that i know that high energy swirly whatever lightbulbs are so much more efficient, then i feel like i can't change back to the old PRETTY ones because they are killing the earth. and plus, because we spent almost $100 at lowe's replacing all our lightbulbs. this really redneck woman was our cashier, and she was so snooty about the fact that we were replacing all our lightbulbs with energy efficient ones, like that was the most IGNORANT thing she had ever heard. i wanted to tell her that SHE is the reason that all the polar bears are falling off into the ocean because they don't have any ice caps to sit on anymore.

julie says that i will get used to the new light quality, but i think she is out of her mind.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

good gawd

just found this website: beeraw.com

naturally, an obsession with honey accompanies my obsession with tea. i was flabbergasted at all the varieties of honey in europe, several of which i brought back home with me, which are DWINDLING more quickly than i care to acknowledge. up to this point, right now, today, i have not found any honey in 'merica that i am even half as excited about as the honey in europa. i CAN'T WAIT to order honey from this website. it makes me so happy i could burst. and all my gooey sweet insides would make a big mess.

and i know that some really strict vegans do not eat honey, so do not even start barking up that tree, because it is already barked. and yeah, honey is bee throw up, but who CARES? especially if you are supporting small bee keepers. who are nice to their little buzzy friends.

haha, buzzy friend -- first time i've ever used that phrase to refer to anything other than my vibrator.

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i have previously spoken of my intense love for portland brew, and i wanted to revisit that.

see, i was kind of devastated because the portland brew on 12th used to be about 5 minutes away, but then after moving to the east sieeeeeede it was not so easy to just pop over there.

THANKFULLY, there is a new portland brew open in east nashville now! it is on eastland, next to rosepepper. they are open from 7 - 6:30, but once business starts to pick up they will be staying open later. i couldn't be more excited that there is a portland brew within WALKING distance of my house. not that i walked here today, because it is hotter than nuts and i was lugging around work stuff and i probably would have had a stroke on the way over.

so, if you are an east side bunny like me -- rejoice!