Yesterday, I pulled out everything from my studio and piled it around the house. Boxes, baskets, piles. Fabric, quilt tops, unfinished projects by the pound. Roving, Knitting supplies, spinning supplies, quilting supplies. And papers. I spent a few hours culling the paper. Then I went to the Container Store and dumped a grand on shelving/organizing tools. Was up till midnight building the new shelf/basket system. Now the big question: did it help? That remains to be seen. But I am amazed at how much STUFF I was able to cram into my studio. I was also amazed at the amount of dust and dirt a baseball bat, judiciously applied, can loosen and remove from a rug. No wonder our fore-mothers beat them every spring. Holy hell.

On another note: the human spammers who are infecting my comments with drivel and ads for limo services and mailing lists? Go die in a fire. And quickly. Thank you.

To the media: Anesthesia is not a sleep aid. Michael Jackson was not administered a powerful anesthesia to “help him sleep”. That’s like saying someone shoots heroin to “take the edge off”. A junkie is a junkie is a junkie. Looking for a high or a low. MJ just had enough money to pay those with dubious morals to acquire his drugs for him. The doctors, nurses, pharmacists who were complicit should all have their licenses revoked. For that matter, the drug company that sold the Propofol to a doctor and not to a hospital? They are culpable, too, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t give a rat’s patootie about Michael Jackson or his addictions. But the hooha following his death has just gotten me sick. Dude was a high-functioning junkie. Pure and simple. Just like Anna Nicole Smith. And junkies tend to die of ODs. End of story. Sad, but hardly the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy.

Yesterday the RLA, the Number Two Surrogate Daughter and her squeeze and I all went to see the new Harry Potter movie. It was great. But that’s not what I’m writing about. In the interminable run-up to the interminable previews, there were any number of locally-produced commercials. They were for nutrition supplement vendors, cosmetic dentistry, cosmetic surgeons and a fundie church (the #2 and I debated who goes to this theater, if these ads are targeted to a demographic). The last one was for… a car dealership maybe? It featured a blue-eyed blonde little boy who was supposed to be a super secret agent, taking super important documents to the POTUS. And that, my friends, is when my brain imploded. Because there was a very believable Barack Obama impersonator in the ad. Believable, that is, until he opened his mouth, and then he spoke with a ludicrously perfect and stereotypical Cuban accent. And nobody in the theater seemed to notice this disconnect except the four of us. And then it was just jaw-droppingly horrendous.

Ah, Miami. My tropical home. But the movie was fun. Sad, and almost a Cliff-notes version of the book, but splendidly done. I can’t wait for the last two. The RLA and I want to re-read the whole series…again.

Tickets purchased for the September 13 show. It took many tries to get the seats in the section I wanted, which, of course, all failed. Despite my old age and bad knees, I gave up and bought general admission floor space. Whatever. I’m going to see BRUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! and the legendary, incendiary, incomparable E STREET BAND!

This could be a photo of my old hefty-boy. It is certainly the philosophy of the animal companions at the Casita des Zapatos.

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The Divine Miz M (thanks to RJ for the new nickname for my SisterGirlFriendGirl) tipped me off to this. Those shiny, rad shoes belong to the son of one of her friends, and, according to President Obama hisownself, they are the flyest shoes ever to grace the White House.

The silver shoes of a guest stand out as President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama pose for a photo before the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender reception in the East Room of the White House, June 29, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Back in January, RJ came over and helped me make a bird sanctuary in my back yard. I put in feeders, and a bird bath, and a squirrel feeder to try to keep the furry little bastards out of the bird feeders. I learned early that South Florida squirrels turn their cute whiskered noses up at dried corn. They prefer sunflower seeds, and most particularly, raw peanuts. It keeps them happy, fat and out of the mango trees, so I’m happy to feed them what ever they want.

But now it’s July, and my lawn (such as it is) is overrun by these plants.

What are they? Those, my dear gentle readers, are peanut plants. I have a veritable peanut plantation sprouting at random throughout my yard. Not only do the squirrels squirrel away nuts for later, the blasted blue jays do too. Next year I won’t have to buy peanuts, I’ll just harvest the yard. But I may boil these little guys up for myself, and start feeding the critters roasted nuts.

Get Your Cyborg Name

Today is the last day of my vacation. Time to sober up. I have completed 4 skeins of yarn, 3 batts and 10 sets of stitch markers. Mild Burning Symptoms (the virtual garage sale) is set to launch tonight. I have gotten a sorta tan, taken a lot of naps and joined twitter (follow me as MizShoes—no space). I read two novels. I translated a knitting chart to words (twice because the first time was a failure of epic proportions). I am set to do some heavy photography today, and some major updates to my Ravelry projects, populate MBS with stuff to sell and update the Etsy shop. I also need to visit my mother. Sigh.

I guess now is as good a time as any to turn off the laptop and get to work. I also need to figure out twitpix.

Tomorrow, it’s back to the chain gang.

How have I missed the Hitler meme on You Tube? The one where he finds out the subtitle guy has been having fun is a classic. But nothing can compare to Hitler’s first Springsteen show.

OK. I’ve grudgingly joined the 21st century. I now twitter. I own more domain names than I need. I have an i-phone…with video, so I could, if I chose, make a video of the Noble Dog Nails on his raft in the pool, or of him assaulting the pool noodles. I could then post it on YouTube. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m planning on getting a webcam so that I can Skype.

Today, I am going to chain myself to the dining room table and I’m not leaving until I have the PayPal cart integrated with the Fox-ee cart and all the pieces are working to make Mild Burning Symptoms go live. That’s my challenge to myself. I have a fresh pot of coffee, the i-phone is jacked into the laptop, and I am going to twitter the whole damn thing.

Feel free to follow along, kibbitz, advise, laugh or what ever. Gah.

Somewhere in my negative files, there is a photo of a pair of well-worn boots. I shot them because, even empty, they stood like the man who wore them: one foot out, slightly cocked to one side. He was my last college boyfriend, and he was a junkie. Oh, he was clean, more or less, the time we were together, but he taught me that once a junkie, always a junkie. You might be clean and sober, but you are still a junkie. It was he who took me to that first Springsteen show at the Miami Jai Alai fronton. Somewhere I still have the photo he gave me from that night: Bruce from the back, a heart-shaped sweat stain on the ass of his jeans, blurry with the motion of Bruce whipping his knit hat from his head as he danced.

Why the melancholy reminiscence, you may ask? Because his death notice was in the alumni newsletter this week. It took all of my google-fu to find his obituary, and discover that he’d died in October of last year. I wrote our mutual friend: Why didn’t you tell me? Because he didn’t know, either. None of us knew. And that makes me sad, and a little angry. His on-line guest book is full of love and thanks from his patients and friends, because when he finally did get clean, he became an addiction therapist. Teach what you know, I guess. And he had a gift, apparently.

Reading the guest book made me sad for the man I didn’t know: the one who was generous and kind, something that we only saw glimpses of in school. He was filthy rich, but never let anyone know. He was always bumming a buck for a beer, never had anything less than a fifty, and couldn’t break it. It was a shock to me when I finally found out about the family money. I went down from Boston to meet him in New York City, and he took me to meet his grandfather. There’s something you need to know before we get there, he said. I’m rich. No. Really rich. Granddad owns the building we’re going to on Central Park West. He moved to the penthouse after Grandmother died and he didn’t need twelve rooms anymore. Now he only has seven. In the penthouse. It was his grandfather who convinced me that I shouldn’t waste my time on Boston, but move to NYC. It’s all happening out there he said, with a sweeping gesture, out his window overlooking the park. And it was. And I did.

When we left, Eric shook a paper bag at me. It clanged. The rest of the set I was born with, he grinned, showing me a silver service for eight. He hocked it. He went back to shooting dope, and begged me to come back to Miami for him. He pleaded with me. He wanted to marry me. I had to come back from New York. So I did. And found him living in filth in the Grove, where he apologized for dragging me away from the city, because in the month it took me to get my affairs in order and leave, he had met an eighteen year old girl, fallen in love, bought her a five carat canary diamond, and was over me. I never spoke to him again, although I knew what went on through mutual friends.

He ran through his inheritance. He was disowned. He moved to Arizona. He got clean. He was welcomed back into his family. He had families of his own. He became respected, loved and the man whose potential we had only seen in passing. And now he has passed. I’m sad that those of us who knew him when and loved him anyway weren’t told. But I don’t know. Had he disowned his past? I’ll never know. But I will find that photo of the boots.

Yesterday the Gulf was as rough and pounding as the Atlantic. The waves were relentless, and the tide, not quite a rip, but we went in the water to try and body surf and before we could catch the first wave, we were 50 feet south of where we’d gone in. There was no swimming back, you had to wade in the shallows, and even then, it was a battering. Shelling was, as Star put it, like shooting fish in a barrel. You just plucked them from the cut-away dune, or waited for the dunes to calve like ice bergs, revealing a fresh strata of shells. I have conches and olives, augers and scallops, tulips and whelks. I even found a couple of cones, but they aren’t in the best shape.

It’s all good. Last night the storms came in from the Gulf, lightning and thunder through the night. This morning, the gulf is mostly flat, the drifts of shells that were there at dusk have been covered by sand, and the beach is soft and flat. To live by the sea is a charmed and charming life, I think.

On Saturday, the RLA and I set off for the Gulf Coast. Star was caravanning with us, and the SisterGirlFriendGirl and her partner were heading south from Tennessee, to meet up at the beach. We headed across the state on Alligator Alley, known in my youth as Death Alley, for reasons that should be obvious. Nowadays, it’s two lanes in each direction, and plans are afoot for a third lane. This year, there seemed to be tons of delaminated tires, to the point that I started referring to the drive as the Trail of Tires. (Say that with a Southern accent for the full humor.) At some point, we hit a chunk of tire, shortly thereafter someone’s rim sailed past. Shortly after that, we hit a 10-mile long dead stop traffic jam. And shortly after that, smoke started pouring from under the hood of the PT Cruiser, and we pulled to the side of the road. I debated the odds of the car bursting into flame, and whether or not I needed to begin an emergency evacuation of our week’s worth of luggage, food, pillows, noodles and odds and ends. While I was doing that, the RLA opened the hood of the car, and I began to panic, thinking that fire responds to air by getting much larger. In the event, it wasn’t an engine fire, it was just that we had lost all of our engine coolant.

Star doubled back and sat with us until AAA arrived. The tow driver discovered that the AAA mechanic in Sarasota was a mere 97 miles from the point of our breakdown, and with AAA plus, we were eligible for a free 100 mile tow. So. We got towed all the way to Sarasota, where Star came and rescued us and brought us and our tons of crap back to the beach house. We settled in, walked the beach to the burger bar down the way, and by the time we got back, SisterGirlFriendGirl and SisterSqueeze were waiting for us on our lanai.

Tomorrow MJ, RJ and their cat JJ arrive for the remainder of the week. Photos will be posted later. Time for me to hit the beach and soak these aging bones.

EDITED TO ADD PHOTOS