cookoorikoo blog

the knife of never letting go by patrick ness

bettie enthusiastically recommend this to me and i'm glad i listened. if you like dystopian thrillers, you'll love it. 

the sky is everywhere by jandy nelson

i'm sorry. (not really.) its another book about a grieving teenager. apparently sad young adult books were a big part of my coping mechanism this spring. lennie's sister passes away suddenly and she's left rudderless, trying navigate the world without her. she lives with her eccentric grandmother and pot smoking horticulturalist uncle. they're all a little lost but they have each other and they eventually figure it all out. i cried. a lot. still not really sorry.

the other typist by suzanne rindell

i sort of hated this book. i've put it here to solicit your opinions if you've read it. its gotten a ton of good reviews and i can't figure out if i'm missing something.

and here's the current library pile:

our friend polly took this picture. shawn & i have both posted it everywhere we can post it. we both really love this picture. really, really. really. no, really.

we were sad when our friend johnny died and then stunned when monkey died when shawn was in chicago for johnny's funeral. that sucked. add to that some professional floundering on both our parts and its been a really rough spring. i absolutely love making things but i also want more time to write. shawn liked the company he was consulting for but wasn't liking the work anymore. we both were feeling busy and overwhelmed. we needed the weekend away.  we needed a freakin' break. 

we've both recently started to come out of the fog of this spring. a new gig recently fell into his lap and he's really happy with it. work isn't seeming so torturous for him right now and that's nice to see. i also realized (after he told me so about a dozen times) that i just need to make time to write; i'm in control. that's a scary but good realization to have.

by the time this picture was taken sunday morning, we'd fully relaxed into vacation mode. we were both feeling happy and good. i think that's pretty obvious from this picture. well, for me it is. i'm not real sure what exactly is happening with shawn but its giving me the giggles.

we went to SFMOMA last friday. there was an barry winogrand retrospective. they were playing a video of an old bill moyers special about him. while being interviewed, barry winogrand says something about pointing his camera at texture and light and hoping for the best; that sometimes its about luck. i don't know. i'm feeling pretty lucky to be me, to have this life with all its choices and to have had a moment of that captured. although i'm pretty sure polly knew exactly what she was doing and that it wasn't just luck.

i've been listening to the song pretty much constantly since it was released a few weeks ago. i've been choreographing tap dances to it in my head. we heard it a few times out in the world in san francisco this weekend and shawn embraced it on repeat. i know its going to be everywhere this summer and i'm delighted. additionally, i love me some soul train dancers. so, this video is pretty much the best thing ever. 

things have been busy. we had crafty wonderland last weekend and donovan was in town. there was a great deal of eating, drinking and being merry. tomorrow, we go on vacation. we're heading to san francisco for a long weekend. no actual work; possibly even no phone or computer. we haven't had a break from everything in a very long time. so, if you don't hear from me anywhere on the internet for the next few days, you know why.

see you later, alligators!

velleity. a mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it.

love you and miss you, mom! xo

We have a mouse. Or rather, we had a mouse. This is the first time we've been petless in 18 years so of course we had a mouse. Of course. Springmaus.

We discovered the mouse two days ago. Shawn was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, talking to me in the living room. Mid-sentence he stopped speaking and got this look that I'd never seen but let me tell you I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd followed it up with man screams. He looked FREAKED. A mouse had run from the bedroom into the kitchen and disappeared. So we did some poking around and some cleaning. We set traps. We were jumpy. I was extra jumpy.

When I was in high school, I rolled my eyes at my stepfather who was terrified at the sight of his first mouse. "he's more afraid of you than you are of him," I said. Where was that girl? I wondered. I was opening the pantry door and thought, really, what are you really afraid of?

Then I thought of possibly the silliest thing ever. A silly thing that kept rattling around in my head until after we heard the trap snap.

He had to go but he left me with a really great idea for a short story. I haven't written one in about 12 years. I'm excited. Thanks, Springmaus Deadmaus. I'm sorry it had to end the way it had to end. We won't miss you.