De File

Tags: everyday, holiday, home, photography, tucson, weather
Current Location: 85704

Tags: autobiography, everyday, home, photography
Current Location: 85704

Tags: everyday, home, photography, tucson
Current Location: 85704

For better and worse, I'm the sort of person who feels the need to try something new even when the situation seems to call for mindless repetition of the same old formula. Take the cleaning of the kitchen floor, which I just finished. No matter how many times I complete this task, which I typically undertake every other week, I always seem to give it a new twist. Today I used a much wetter mop than I usually do, in part because I was trying to ward off the Definition of Trouble, also known as our kitten Punkabella, who is prone to attack anything that moves. But my decision took shape in a less practical impulse. I wanted to break with convention, even if what passes for convention in this case is merely the distillate of my own precedent. While such tinkering keeps my mind focused on the job, it also leaves me with a feeling of unease. Why can't I just mechanically reproduce the approach that works best?

Tags: analysis, autobiography, everyday, home
Current Location: 85704

I'm back in Arizona, after nearly a week in Idaho. I can't say I was happy to see the swimming pool-studded expanse of the Phoenix metropolitan area from the plane, but I felt better about my return once I passed the Tangerine off-ramp on I-10. It's strange to be back, though. I feel like I've made some important discoveries over the summer, which were amply reinforced by my time away. Unfortunately, they aren't discoveries that I can turn into productive action anytime soon. I'd use an aquatic metaphor, describing myself as being caught in a rip current, except that my need to see the ocean is too strong to indulge such a trope. Suffice to say that I not only feel displaced, but in a way that accentuates my inability to make forward progress towards any place I wish to be. Sometimes, when I'm away on a trip, I am able to trick myself into thinking that the reality I've been living is one that I will wake up from upon my return home. Invariably, though, the riot of green I see in these fantasies turns out to be the same desiccated landscape from which I long to be liberated. Bleach the color out of things and you're left, not with white, but an abundance of brown.

Tags: analysis, autobiography, everyday, home
Current Location: 85704
Muse: I Will Haunt You - Oneida - Rated O

Tags: daughter, everyday, family, home, photography
Current Location: 85704

The past week has been filled with upheaval, again, only this time for good reasons. Due to a manic, but much-needed spurt of home improvement, including extensive painting, I either haven't had access to my office or have had to navigate through clutter imported from elsewhere in the house on top of the clutter that was already there to begin with. While there's a lot left to do, however, I'm fairly confident that this stage of the renovation process is past the halfway point. If I'm scarce over the next several days, as I have been this week, it's not -- or at least not necessarily -- because more bad things have been happening. Also, I'm still reading my friends, on Live Journal and Facebook, when I get a chance.

Tags: blogging, everyday, home
Current Location: 85704