halloween treats

ahhh, my favorite time of year! this is me & jon at a halloween party in sacramento on saturday night. more pics from the weekend here!

what's going on with me? thanks for asking. for easy reading, i'll present it to you in simple, at-a-glance view:

• had two gigs on saturday night. jon & i headed up to vacaville for a voodoo-themed 21st birthday party, then to sacramento for a halloween party at a club called the townhouse. the voodoo party was fun, they loved us, etc.... the halloween party was CRAZY. jam-packed with super-drunk, young, very good-looking people: cute guys in half-assed "costumes," and hot girls in teeny-tiny stripper-style "costumes" - if it was san francisco, i would have sworn we were at a play party, but it was sacto, and i think these kids were just getting their rocks off for the night. good for them.
  
• it is very, very dangerous to attempt performing on stilts at a packed club with plastic floors, onto which every type of ingestible beverage has been spilled. i thought i learned my lesson at the exotic erotic ball in 2003, but apparently i did not! jon & i nearly killed ourselves several times at the party, and not because we were drunk! ... well, at least at that point, we were not :-)
• we have yet ANOTHER gig in sacramento tomorrow (monday) night, of all things - who has parties on mondays? apparently, radio stations do. supposedly, MTV and the NBA will be there filming, so i'll be sure to let you know if i'm getting on TV! no fire, but me & jon on stilts (again). this may be a trend. stay tuned.
  
• spent friday night hanging out at the bottom of the hill with dave & several of his old-timey, SF rock-scene friends. what a trip! we hadn't been there in about four years. i think the last time was to see the rock*a*teens, but jeez - that that seems like a long time ago. good times, late nights. nice to know we can still do it.
• i'm working on a HUGE project at work right now, which is taking up *all* of my daytime, worktime, paycheck-earning time. waiting to hear on some possible work-related news that i will share as soon as i can. that said - please, cross your fingers.
• speaking of which, dave & i watched a great show on the history channel this morning about superstitions. i didn't know this, but apparently, you cross your fingers to "trap" the good luck in between them. i guess you have to keep them crossed until you're ready to set the good luck free, then, huh? that could be awkward.
  
• sunday baking! i made carrot cake cupcakes this afternoon, and YES, kids, i made the sugar skulls! that will have to be a different post, though, because i have much more to say about them.
  
• the crock pot rules. with a 4-lb. chicken, a 3-lb. beef roast, half a bag of potatoes, half a bag of onions, 3 heads of garlic, 4 carrots, 3 celery stalks, and about 10 green beans, we have now made SEVEN meals, totaling roughly 25 bucks. roast chicken, beef brisket, leftover cold chicken sandwiches, machaca in the mornings with leftover brisket, and dave made THE BEST chicken & rice soup ever tonight. i can't wait to bring it up to the ski haus this season! toss the food in, ride all day, and come home to hot, steamy food. cantwaitcantwaitcantwait.
  
• did not have a chance to paint this weekend, boo hoo. oh well! hopefully, this toybox will get finished in time to ship to emmett in time for his birthday, nov. 22. i can't wait to see the kids at thanksgiving!!!
  
• i swear there's more, but i guess it will have to come later. 'night for now!
  

and along similar lines...

popular science deconstructs a pole dance

and conservatives in the UK are up in arms about a pole dancing kit for kids...

do we not exist in a brave new world? (read chapter 3, or the whole book, really, if you don't know what i'm talking about.)

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.

A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it.

as a side note, has anyone noticed that i have picked up a habit of posting once... then posting a follow-up a couple of hours later? i need to break the habit and get it all out at once. unless you, too, are scatterbrained and can only think in itty-bitty chunks, especially at lunchtime and late at night. i think i am a bit overworked right now. let's take a vacation soon, shall we?

bay area-ites, protect yourself!

we interrupt this program for a rare, political announcement.

scheduled to start this sunday, october 29, government-backed protection from pornography week is about to attempt reigning republican havoc on your heathen desires. just in time for election day!

protect yourself and honor your peers by attending the good vibrations amateur erotic film competition this friday at the parkway in oakland!

(i'm a day late & you may have already missed tonight's showing in SF, but hey ~ i hear O-town is a great place for amateur porn).

sharing the good vibes and no, i'm not in any of them,
~spacegirl xox

and now back to our regularly scheduled, fire, art, food, yoga, musings, etc. programming.

p.s. - and i now realize...

that now i'll HAVE to make the damn sugar skulls and post pictures for everyone to see.

don't believe everything you read!

that's all i have to say today.

oh, yeah. also - shafted!

ok, i'm over it. back to bigger things and happier topics, like lunch :-) thanks for stopping by.

white chocolate sugar skulls

Diary of a Crafty Chica: White Chocolate Sugar Skulls

i love these! it seems so obvious - replace the sugar with something you'd actually eat - but yet, what a surprise.

if i get around to it, i am totally making these for dia de los muertos this year.

it's not like i have any other projects right now - hahahahaha! along with finishing the toy box for my nephew by thanksgiving, and taking part in nanowrimo this year, which i promised a friend i'd do (and actually finish my novel? that would be shocking!) so yeah, there's not too much else going on ;-)

good thing i subscribed to CRAFT. in case, y'know, i get bored. hahahaha! man, i crack myself up.

back to work now. that was a nice crafty respite in a typically un-crafty day.

so, that wasn't the most flattering picture

the one with me and my fire hoop that i posted yesterday. (i have some weird double-chin thing going on, and my posture is all wonky because i'm, well, hooping!)

anyway, it's all my ego, but that said, here's a much cuter one from saturday night. enjoy!

my fire hoop!

finally! i've been fire hooping for a couple of years now, but until this weekend, only had a couple of very blurry pictures. i'm so happy i finally have some *real* pictures of me with my hoop! this was taken at a 40th birthday party on saturday night. more great pics from the performance here. yippee!

five years

... my brain hurts a lot...

R.I.P., Dad.

i miss and love you every day.

i never thought i'd need so many people.

thanks for visiting in my dreams!

on to the next five...

listen to me! + getting old rocks

i spent yesterday afternoon at the cancer treatment center with my friend paola, who was having her first chemo treatment for breast cancer. she had a double mastectomy about a month ago, and now she's on a 15-day cycle of chemo treatments for the next four months. she's going to lose all of her hair, possibly including her eyebrows, eyelashes, and body hair. plus, potentially getting really nauseated and generally feeling, oh, not so great.

needless to say, she was a little freaked out. but she was in generally good spirits, and she chatted the whole time - her usual, chatty self. it reminded me very much of going to the treatment centers with my dad, when he was undergoing chemo and radiation, and how he would sometimes talk about practically every interesting-but-not-too-deep subject on the planet as a means of distraction. we had some great talks then. sometimes our distractions can be highly entertaining. even if they force us to put off the real subject matter till later, it's the immediate things we turn to to amuse ourselves in uncomfortable situations that can actually be signposts or signals to much more intimate needs.

for example, paola and i talked a lot about cooking and triathlons (she's an athlete; i'm just a fan), and eventually drifted towards moms and grandmas and the way the women in her family were raised. these were all interesting topics themselves, but, given paola's animated interest when we were talking about them, i think they really highlighted the things she may be missing right now - the things her subconscious or her soul needed to talk about. her mom just left to go home back east, she's on a severely restricted diet, and she certainly can't train for a triathlon right now. but yet, those were the topics that she stayed on. even though we were talking in a pretty lighthearted way, the meaning came through to me - to listen.

that's the thing. it's really what people need most, i think - to be listened to, or to feel like they ARE being listened to.

i've been working with my team at work to create an employee satisfaction survey, and one of the main feelings that spurred this idea is that people don't feel like they are being heard. we want to give everyone a chance to say what they really want to say - to let them know that we are really listening to them - whether they love their job to death or are ready to quit any day now. it's the opportunity to be heard that really matters most.

while i was at the treatment center, i got up to go to the restroom, and passed an old woman sitting in the hallway, waiting for her husband, who was undergoing treatment. she stopped me on my way out, held my arm and said, "you have a beautiful figure - you are really a beautiful young woman." now, i've always liked to flirt with grandmas when they flatter me, because i'm going to be crinkled and creaky someday, too, so i laughed and told her, "well, nowhere near as beautiful as you." she smiled, like she knew i was flirting with her, and then said, "i'm eighty-five." WOW! way to go!! i thought that was really cool and amazing, and then she said the craziest thing. "it's so good to be young," she said, "getting old - it's no good."

now, anyone who knows me knows that i love getting old. i plan on living to be 100, and i'm going to be a beautiful, wise, old woman. i will be a crone, crinkly and creaky and full of great wisdom, stories, spirit, soul, and a whole lifetime of recipes for living. i don't really like the fact that my metabolism is slower, but even that is a change i can take in stride - i just work out more and pay more attention to what i eat. funny enough, being forced to watch my metabolism if i want to stay slim and healthy has caused me to discover some of the yummiest low-fat, low-calorie, veggie dishes that i probably never would have even tried in my early 20s, simply because i didn't NEED to, hahaha!

so, i was kind of annoyed that this lovely, beautiful, old lady, who had a whole lifetime of wisdom and LIFE behind her, would say that getting old stinks. she went on, "the pain here," pointing to her hip, "the pain here," pointing to her leg. i stopped her right there - shaking my head "no." i tapped my index finger against my temple and said, "the WISDOM here!" she smiled, but i couldn't really read her thoughts. did i just bum her out? or did i make her realize, oh yeah, old age isn't all that bad...?

i'm not sure i'll ever know. she just shook my hand again and said, "very beautiful, very beautiful." so i waved her goodbye and went back to sit with paola. it was a strange encounter, and i wish she had said something encouraging about growing old. it's so weird sometimes, thinking i'm the only one who really digs getting older. the last thing i want is to reach 85 and hate it! i just want to continue to live my life to the fullest, deepest, and healthiest as i can - and to keep a happy perspective on the world and on wisdom. so that when i'm 85, and i see some nice young woman in the cancer treatment center, and my legs and hips hurt but i have a whole lifetime of experience behind me (and another 15 or more years to live it up!), i will NOT say how horrible it is, but i will say how grateful i am to still be alive and able to feel pain and able to talk and use my eyeballs, and, especially, to still be recognizing hot chicks when i see 'em ;-)