brinnann’s Neighborhood

Frequently, I will fall madly in love with a piece of furniture that leaves even my closest friends & allies scratching their heads in confusion. Such was the case with my new desk. When I first showed it to my husband, I could tell he was skeptical, but knew better than to say so...When the glimmer is in my eye, just back away.

It was love at first glance on Craigslist for me: 

As you can see from the original photo, the desk & chair look a bit rough around the edges; the image itself was taken from inside a cramped storage locker of some sort. I knew, however, from first sight, we were destined to do great things together.

So I contacted the owner to arrange a viewing. We had several conversations over the course of a few days while attempting to fit our schedules together and I learned that the desk had belonged to his mother and he had the pity-able task of sorting out her belongings. I told him that I was a furniture maker and would take really good care of it...that I wasn't sure if I would refinish it, or leave it alone, but either way it would be loved. In a small way, I think these exchanges may have been a bit therapeutic for him, as I sensed he was perhaps a bit choked up on the other line.

I should mention, in addition to being incredibly kind, he was also extremely fair with the price ($45 for desk, chair, & mirror) and generously offered to deliver it to me for free.

So yesterday, when he showed up, it was an easy no brainer. I saw it on the truck, knew it was love, handed him the money, and brought it in the house. It was a little dirty from being in storage, but a little simple green & elbow grease was all it took to clean up nicely: 

While pulling out one of the drawers, my husband discovered hidden treasures had fallen into the back of it. I couldn't believe it - a beautiful desk AND hidden treasure! I had hit the jackpot. The best things we found: an antique bottle opener, stolen from a San Francisco hotel called The Raphael; a porcelain lid to a tiny box (this must have made her CRAZY trying to find it); an old silver swiss army knife? or nail cutter?; and best of all - a tiny gold skeleton key with a #2 on it.

Doesn't that just pique your sense of wonder & adventure like crazy???!!!! WHAT on earth does that key open and HOW will I find it?

Well, those questions may have to go unanswered. I plan to call the man today and offer him what I found...but I'm REALLY hoping he doesn't want them back, because I love them so much! I would like to keep them with the desk, either displayed behind my computer or in a shadow box on the wall. Each item has so much history and so many secrets to tell...If I am allowed to keep them, I know they will provide endless inspiration and possibly good luck while spending long hours feverishly writing at this desk.

 

I am simply floating right now.

I got the call from my surgeon JUST NOW that the pathology reports on my lump and skin biopsy came back totally clear. I did not have any cancer cells anywhere in the samples they took. The lump was composed of fibrous tissue and totally benign and consistent with fibrocystic breast disease(not cancerous), and they found NOTHING in the skin biopsy to suggest I had IBC.

It's still a mystery what is causing the rash and swelling of the breast but I am scheduled for a consult with a dermatologist to have the rash looked at again.

This is seriously the BEST news I have gotten in like FOREVER and I am simply just ON TOP OF THE FUCKING WORLD!! I feel like this is the BEST Christmas ever, even though we are broke we have each other and our HEALTH.

I'm going to hug my kids, and bake cookies, and dance with my husband...

I love you ALL.
Seriously.

<3
Cat

When I was a desk jockey in San Francisco, I frequently changed my desktop image to something happy and tropical because I was, well - unhappy & cold. Now that I'm back in Hawaii, I wanted to put some images out into the internets, in case anyone out there is searching for warm, flowery, happy, tropical, Hawaii wallpaper:

As the pipe clamp blisters began to pop and heal on my hands, I knew I was in a race against myself to find my next gig in woodworking. I had just quit my job after I was put on a mandatory 72-hour work week schedule, which was neither safe nor necessary in the warehouse where I was a full time furniture maker. From my first taste of sawdust, I was hooked. I loved everything about it, especially the aches & pains associated with putting in a hard day of manual labor.

I had moved thousands of miles from my industrial Michigan factory roots, only to go to college and decide the blue collar life is what I wanted. I quit my job, only when it was obvious that it would either kill or permanently injure me...but it was still one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. Besides the fact that I love it, I realize now how wrapped up I was in the identity of being just one thing...In my working life, I have always had to have at least three side hustles going on and I've done everything from nude modeling, to being a maid, a well-paid executive assistant, an extra in movies, a make-up artist, to an apprentice sander in a woodshop.

When I call home to update my family, typically, whatever it is I describe is met with unconditional love & acceptance, even if there is a tinge of it not necessarily being understood. As a woodworker, I was finally able to align myself with an identity - one thing that I loved being and doing...and it was so much easier to explain that!

Predictably, when the job fell apart, I scrambled for any paying gig I could find on craigslist. As it turns out, it was a good time to be involved with film making and I even signed up for acting classes. Being involved in the process is as exciting as it seems like it would be - even the long hours of waiting, while being completely dressed to the nines for a 6:00 a.m. call time, shouldn't be exciting, but it still is.

Around this time I also found work as a fit model, working for a local design house. It's a job that pays very well but the work is inconsistent. Still, I am extremely thankful to have it, even if it is a bit weird for me to use it as an identifier at the dentist's office and have the receptionist squeal and ask me a bunch of questions about the job. That's a rock star moment, I'm not going to lie, but it's completely foreign to me to identify myself as "model" in any capacity...especially when "factory rat" was a closer signifier just weeks ago.

I'm not sure if all the discomfort in lacking a fixed occupation or identity squarely rests on my shoulders, or if I am reacting to other people's confusion when I try to explain, "Well, I'm actually a furniture maker, but I'm out of work, so I'm doing the acting and modeling thing, while looking for another woodworking gig." Who does that? I'm not sure if I even understand myself anymore.

In the long run, it's probably a good thing that I am so versatile & adaptable - I always have something relevent for any type of resume I'm creating for myself (and I have at least 3); but I long for the day when I have a short answer to the question, "So what do you do?" 

 

 

Dear Grim Reaper: This past year you took away the following: My favorite Comedian (George Carlin), my favorite sidekick (Ed McMahon), my favorite dancer (Michael Jackson), my favorite actress (Farrah Fawcett) and my favorite pitch-man (Billy Mays). I just wanted to write a quick note and let you know that my favorite politician is SARAH PALIN! Thank you.

As I sit here with my coffee, I'm thinking ahead to the upcoming Christmas season.  It brings about a certain feeling of both frustration and makes me feel just a little bit crazy.  It seems that for the past several years I've struggled a lot with finding my Christmas Spirit.

I remember clearly last year when we finally arrived home Christmas evening after all of the family gatherings and gift exchanging thinking..."Wow it's finally over." Then I was suddenly filled with a slight feeling of joy inside that I had come through yet another Christmas alive.  I actually joked with Bart all Christmas Season last year that all I wanted for Christmas was January 1st. For that year to just be over, fast forward through the holidays straight to the new year.

I wonder when it happened....

I wonder when I stopped getting excited about Christmas and instead started feeling a sense of dread and drudgery about the whole season.

Don't get me wrong, I love the whole food aspect of the holiday season,(Just take one look at my ass and you can TELL that.), but what I despise is the whole sense of consumerism in it. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, whatever you call it....people trampling each other for cheap plastic crap from china...I just don't get it!

You know when I do my Chritsmas Shopping? Generally between December 18th and Christmas Day. Payday is the 1st and the 20th for me so that's when I have money.

I always tell myself every year, "I'm going to get it all done before Thanksgiving.." and it never happens that way..EVER.

I don't use credit cards, I hate them, I think they are evil and get you into trouble. We're pretty much a cash only family, if you can't pay cash for it then you don't need it.  The exception to the rule on this is cars and really big items like our house. 

I know some people who spend literally THOUSANDS of dollars on Christmas on credit cards, and  struggle all year to pay it back. Sorry but that kind of takes all the joy out of it.  We buy what we can afford to buy and move on. It's Christmas, it's not worth going into debt or going hungry for.

I love giving gifts, but hate feeling like I didn't spend quite enough on people, and maybe they didn't like what I got them.  It's almost as if some people feel like the dollar amount you spent is equal to how much you care about them.

I generally make up HUGE batches of homemade fudge and other treats and package them up for gift giving. I'll give those to friends and family either alone as a gift or with something else as an add-on gift.

Getting gifts is great, but still makes me feel a little uncomfortable, especially if what I get from someone obviously cost more than what I spent on them. It's a vicious cycle.

A couple of years ago I said to hell with it all and just started buying Master Card Gift Cards from my bank for all of the people on my list 12 and over. It took a lot of stress out of my holiday shopping and I felt it was a great gift because then the recipient could go and pick out whatever they needed or wanted. (Our local bank offers Master Card Gift Cards with no hidden fees and no expiration dates. They make great gifts and you get them directly from the teller and they take the money directly out of your bank account when you purchase them. I think they make GREAT gifts, and it's a really great service.)

If you needed a tank of gas, or a haircut, or a lunch out, or a new sweater you could make the choice yourself what to spend the money on. I personally LOVE gift cards for anything.

As a matter of fact I have let it be known to all that might be shopping for me this year that I want gift cards for Lowes for Christmas. Why? Because for the past year I have been without a working dishwasher, and it would thrill my heart to no end to be able to put all of my Christmas Gift Cards together and purchase one.

Hand washing dishes for 5 people has become a nightmare chore for me, and my hands, and my nails. I can't even imagine how joyful it would be to be able to just load all the dirty dishes into a machine and close the door and walk away.  I think it would be downright heavenly.

Of course if I don't wind up getting a dishwasher for Christmas it won't be the end of the world. We'll just save our pennies and other change for awhile and get one ourselves.

And on that note I'm going to hit publish on this post and go and try to find something productive to do....there's plenty of dishes in the sink that need washin'!

My first job was working as a make-up artist in my mom's cosmetic shop, which was located in "the dead mall" across the street from the mega-mall, where everyone respectable went to shop. The only folks who ventured into the dead mall were those with bizarre fetishes they wanted to try out in "public" without actually being too far out into the public sphere. My four hour shift was often punctuated with high school principals and construction workers in drag, trying out the new high heels they just scored at Payless; a 60 yr. old woman dressed as a naughty school girl being led around on a leash by her husband; your occasional flasher; foot fetish guy who would creepily make me show him the colors of "toenail" polish we carried and on & on...

Anyway, it appears that Vox is now the dead mall. Of course, I'm sure there are still many "respectable" folks on here...but more so, there are a lot just letting their freak flag fly. And I love it. You are my people and I'm happy to be back. But don't send me pictures of your penis. Thanks.

Hello Members of Girl Germs,

I am very sorry that I went MIA for so long and spammers have been allowed to contaminate this space. I'm back now and ready to lay the smack down. I nuked as many spam posts as I could find and members that are clearly robots...but I'm sure I didn't catch everything. If you see something that should be destroyed, please let me know so that I can take care of it.

Thank you so much for adding all this wonderful content to the group - I have enjoyed catching up with everything I missed and have learned a lot. Also, you have inspired me so much! I can't wait to start writing again!

xoxo,

Miss Scotch

Like most of the country, I have sat by horrified and deeply saddened by the incident that took place at Ft. Hood last week.  I have been further saddened by how Major Hasan has been portrayed as some fundamentalist Muslim on a religious mission of some sorts and the ensuing death threats against Muslims in the Ft. Hood area.  Whatever the reasons motivating Maj. Hasan, of which I am sure there were many, none of them justify further killing or threats of any kind.  Hate begets hate.  If we all, or even a few of us, respond to this incident by targeting Muslims because one of them made a horrendous decision not in line with their faith, the chasm will grow and more horrible incidents will ensue.  As Ghandi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

So, I am writing to propose a way to refocus those energies and to respond to the situation with love.  Show our troops some love and get yourself educated on S.1963 - the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009.  The goal of the bill is to increase mental health services to veterans.  Our veterans are suffering tremendously and the VA, and the rest of the country for that matter, are woefully ill-equipped to manage the severity of the problem.  We are sending these people out on multiple deployments in a war zone unlike any other before.  Whatever your political take on the wars, I think we can all agree that we need to take care of our veterans.  I support this bill, but encourage everyone to do their own homework on it.

If you discover you support it, please call Senator Coburn's office and ask him to remove the hold from the bill.  He alone is preventing the bill from leaving committee and reaching the Senate floor for a vote.  The Committee on Veterans' Affairs has a statement about it here.  Senator Coburn has his rebuttal  here.  If you believe the bill should be supported, please call your senators and ask them to support it.  If you don't know how to contact your senators, go here.

I have hesitated for some time to post this because too often well-intentioned posts about how to offer support to our troops get thread-jacked by those wanting to debate the validity of the wars.  I am the daughter of a veteran who served in two wars and I am proud of my dad's service.  I am also a flaming liberal who vehemently opposes the wars.  If I can separate the soldier from the action, then you can, too, and I respectfully ask you to do so here.  If you want to say anything hateful, discriminatory, or negative, please make your own post.  I don't post publicly very often because it's easier to deal with my small community.  But, our troops are part of the larger community and we ALL need to come together to support them.  It isn't enough to put a ribbon on the back of your car and wear an American flag pin.  The heart of our country is action and I am asking you to take some positive action today to help support our troops and turn the events at Ft. Hood into a forceful, positive response from the country in support of our combat veterans.  Many thanks.