hannahbee thots

A while ago I read an article in the New Yorker online about how shoes are hurting our feet.

Shoes = bad

I had been experiencing a lot of heel pain in my right foot; I can't point to one particular reason, I mean, I had been wearing crocs and chacos almost exclusively, shoes that are not supposed to hurt your feet!

So, as an experiment, I started wearing my cheapest, thinnest, $6 flipflops from Target. Because they most closely replicate being barefoot (very thin and flimsy) I decided to try using them as my only foot protection.

I don't know what to say: it's ironic, considering that until very recently, I worked for a company that was built on convincing people that shoes are vital to their lives. Because now I don't believe in shoes. There, I said it. My heel pain is gone.

That article convinced me completely. I hope to get some barefoot shoes by wintertime.

I started needle felting. I got a kit:

Needle felting kit

Wool roving

Needle felting proj #1

But then it was time to go in the office and work, so I carefully put all my stuff away, in multiple plastic bags and up out of the reach of cats.....OR SO I THOUGHT. I started to hear some nonstop crinkly noise like someone in plastic bags. Mind you, this is maybe 5 minutes after I came in the office. As the noise's wrongness started to enter my consciousness, I said, "that doesn't sound good...." and, indeed, it wasn't:

Hm.

Here they are, unrepentant:

Cat terrorists

Today is May Day. May Day is celebratable for a number of reasons, the first being that it's 2 months that we're here in Albuquerque and we haven't had to get "reglar" jobs yet!!!

Since I get most* of my info from Wiki and anyone reading this knows how to click, I will only mention a couple hi-lites:

Beltane is the exact opposite of samhain on the calendar. In Ireland in the middle ages it was referred to as Céad Shamhain. It seems to have been about a communal coming together after the winter and spring. It is the first of summer, and the herds are driven into the hills to graze for the season. There were large bonfires lit on hillsides from which individual hearth fires could be lit. The herds may have been driven between two fires to purify them and to gain the blessing of whatever god was responsible for the harvest at the end of the summer, samhain. Just in case you've never heard anyone say that, it's most usually pronounced "sow-in."

Oddly, the Wiki article on beltane doesn't say anything about fertility and fertility rites, which, as far as I know, is what most spring/summer sabbats are about in pagan and neopagan traditions. But the May Pole is obviously linked to this day; the celebrants often "erected" May Bushes, which usually consisted either of a branch of rowan or whitethorn (hawthorn) which is in bloom at the time. There was also a  practice of decorating the May Bush or Dos Bealtaine with flowers, ribbons, garlands and colored egg shells, which survives in some Easter celebrations, and on the May Pole we know of today, especially ribbons and garlands, in the UK.

The other celebrating today, around the world, is for Int'l Worker's Day. The article is more straightforward and less manipulated, in my opinion, so I won't reproduce it here. I will say, however, that it's very interesting to me that the reason we don't celebrate "Labor Day" with the rest of the world is because of a rivalry for power and supremacy between one labor organization and a bunch of others. Hmm.... a lefty who wants things a certain way (by implication, for their own glory) and the rest of the left saying no, can we unify and heal to become a part of something bigger (i.e., the rest of the known world)? Who woulda thunk?

*Finally, the asterisk: I get most of my info from Wiki, and the rest from here.

OK, now I joined twitter so I need a lot of people to be interested in EVERY SINGLE THING I DO every minute of the day. I was about to write what I'ma do, but I'ma tweet it instead. 

I want to know if Twitter is for me. It seems like it's for people who don't have the time/attention span to blog? I really don't know enough about it and so my speculation is moo.

I am just back from a trip to Trader Joes with my mom and her friend Diane. When I asked my mom if she was going to TJ any time soon, she said she didn't plan to, but she could. And she could "get my cart" which means she would pay for my stuff. Which is what I wanted, and why I asked if she was going in the first place. So I had my little list, and we went there and then we were looking at the stevia. There was a kind with lactose in it, a kind with rice maltodextrin in it, and a kind that was pure stevia. The last being the most expensive. She said, "get this kind, I'll get it for you..." and I said, "you have to get all this for me, I didn't even bring a wallet!" Which was true, B has the car and my wallet was in it.  So she did "get my cart" (it was a small basket). She is a very good mom!

Before TJs, we went to Santa Fe Peppers which is very similar to Chipotle. I got a veggie burrito with brown rice and black beans and corn salsa and some other hot salsa. I cut the whole thing in half and immediately wrapped half for B. Anyone who has had Chipotle knows that freaking burrito the size of your own head is too big to eat. Seriously. The veggie mix they use instead of meat is like grilled onions and peppers and sweet potatoes in a chipotle pepper sauce. It was pretty tasty.

B and I are trying to get more stuff done by not doing everything together. So he went and ran some different errands, but now I want him to come back because I miss him. It's a good thing we enjoy each other's company because we spend pretty much every moment together. But we were finding we could not do the work and chores we need to and still have time for anything else! Doing everything together was halving our time instead of doubling it. Boo.

Now I shall get back to work.

I told B that I would blog in the mornings if he would blog at night. But last night we were watching the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and he did not blog because we stayed up too late watching that. This morning I woke up with these two questions: name 10 movies in which the principal actors (can be hetero or non) are involved with each other in real life. They have to be 20 different actors, i.e., no madonna + sean penn in Shanghai Surprise as one, and then trying Dick Tracy (madonna + warren beatty). Everyone can be used once.

Q 2. Can you figure out the thickness (diameter) of an entire roll of toilet paper if you know the following data: the diameter of the cardboard roll, the dimensions of one square, and the number of squares. I think no, I think there's some piece of info that's missing, but I will leave it to math geniuses.

I keep avoiding blogging because I think the same thing when I was a little kid trying to keep a diary. I thought that since months or years went by between entries, it was no use to write since I could never catch up what happened in that lost time. But maybe that's a stupid reason not to write.

I'm rusty, though. My wit is dull and my mind can't think of anything interesting. We left Las Vegas. Not like Nic Cage, thank goodness, but more like Sheryl Crow. Wait, I looked at the lyrics for that song, so no, not like her either, but more alive than he was, for sure. I quit my job, B quit his job, I came out to NM to find a place to live, he packed up all our stuff, I went back and helped pack the truck, we drove out here, my family helped us move into a 30 year old trailer complete with the most serious faux wood paneling, and now we live here. 

We've been here a month. I am attempting to shake the cobwebs out of my mental cupboard, to flex and strengthen my atrophied ha-ha muscles so I can entertain you one or two persons who like to read what I type. (Full disclosure: I love to read my own stuff. There, I said it, I am disgustingly self-impressed. I think I am the most hilarious person I know. So, maybe I'll start writing for my own well-being, because why am I denying myself the deelight of reading the wise and pithy notes that flow like liquid gold from my fingers through my too-small apple keyboard? Why, indeed.)

Well, that's all I've got for now.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Freakonomics

It's raining, hard, and the cats and dog that remain inside are not particularly concerned, though I would be scared if I were a little animal because, crap, that thunder is freakin loud. The only effect we can see it having on them is Merlin politely refused to pee. He needed to have his morning out, but when it came down to it, he's all, "i'll just hold it, thanks." The wretched kittens are completely oblivious. They're already hard at work. Kubla's a cat detective, chasing down leads and catching bad bugs and putting them in Belly Prison. Genghis is a cat scientist. He is currently experimenting in the shower with B, testing his hypothesis on the variable levels of aggression in shower spray. Sometimes they work cases together.

I didn't sleep well and in fact do not want to be up. I had a dream that I woke up for the first time today and it was 5:45. That sucked because I'm supposed to be at work by 5:30. Then, when I called in to the recording line, there was a complex explanation on the recording of the changes to the attendance policy. I could not understand it.

Well, the weekend was, as usual, too short. But we got to play our new Wii, and so far my favorite game (by a lot, actually) is Wario Ware. What. The. Crap.