darkitysnark

Yup yup. I've been recording CE Doctor eps off of the SciFi channel and he is most definitely teh .

Oooh... famous people dreams! I don't think I've ever had them... But I dream about famous buildings. Wonder if that's a fetish... archiphilia? I had the requisite flying dreams as a child (more like impossibly high leaps followed by gliding). I remember having a last one in my teens where I was trying to fly, but couldn't do more than a sort of floating, gliding thing about six inches off the ground. I kept yearning for the tree tops, but I just couldn't get up there. When I woke up I realized I had had my last flying dream. The mind (and the heart) is a wonderful puzzle. I love how it works to right itself in our sleep. Sometimes I enjoy the "junk" dreams because it's interesting to see what has lodged up in there that needs shaking loose.

What a beautiful combination! Lovely!

Ooooooh. Shiiiiiny! And... please don't take this the wrong way... but kinda Star Trekkie! Very nice. Can't wait to see pics!

Snarky's feeling very torn today. The house inspection was mostly good, with a few somewhat glaring Need-to-Fix-Before-Moving-In issues (leaky faucets, bad wiring). She and The Mister have been left to marinate in the juices of an extremely thorough inspection report and whatever else that $1000 got them until Thursday evening, when they will meet with their agent to discuss any addendums to their offer. Since another offer for $20,000 more is waiting in the wings, odds are the sellers will simply back out of the deal and move on to the next fish. Snarky is working hard to be OK with this, even though she's spent the last week mentally placing furniture and having Special Moments in every nook and cranny of this house. She took over seventy pictures of the place during the inspection, for goodness sakes. On the upside, her boobies have been deemed perfectly healthy (if maybe just a wee bit lopsided) and she is fairly confident that her lovely "modesty mole"'s (by which she used to determine the level of raciness of various necklines) biopsy will also come back clean. Snarky was going to extoll the benefits of an anxiety based weight loss plan... but she just succumbed to the siren call of chocolate chip cookies, so apparently that point is not only moot, but revoked.

Snarky is surrounded by the carcasses of various snack crackers now, but she is feeling better. Mister Snark is coming by after work for a drive-by of a Plan B house. Tomorrow night they meet with the buyer agent to write up addendums and hope for the best. Snarky is still torn as to whether "the best" means "offer still accepted" or "walk away and keep looking".

Ah, but how truly gay can he be without being aware of the truly iconic Anne Bancroft? Or... perhaps he really is that young. Yipes! My body type is more "Russian Swimmer That Got Put Through the Hot Wash By Accident". Broad of shoulder, narrow(ish) of hip, large of rib cage, but stumpy as well. Mini-amazonian? The only time my bosoms resembled the prow of a ship was when I attempted to wear my mother's old circa 1950's bras.

Snarky is nodding in agreement. Still, her tummy's sort of wonky now. She's trying to Zen out this morning.

Some of her distractions are also things from which she wanted to be distracted in the first place, though they tend to fall solidly on the "stess" side of the stress/eustress delineation. Still, she feels better knowing that her days are filled with deadlines and potential outcomes. Thanks to the forum, she's got Spring Switch Witch, Year-Long Deco books, and a brewing craft-for-smellies swappathon to distract her from the ongoing house saga (a frothy mix of one part stress to one part eustress mixed together with the swizzle stick of sticker shock) and upcoming followup mammogram. Mister Snark has been wondefully calm and supportive on both all-consuming, thought and time-stealing topics. She's a bit frightened to find that she is losing her memory of a time without him. Her vaunted (and often cursed) independence harumphs and settles down on the sidelines. She's layered LUSH's Skinny Dip buttercreme with Faustus to give herself a violet-tinged boost of assertiveness. They will get that house. And she will be healthy, whole, uncorrupted.

Snarky appreciates this, as well as valentina's indirect warning to all against wearing loosely elastic-waisted panties around uniformed men. Murphy's Law, and all that. Snarky suspects that Mister Snarky is also getting his hero complex stroked a bit during this trying time. Sometimes the independent wimmen types have to allow for some vulnerability to keep some sort of balance with the partner types. (Even if it was that very same independence that attracted said mates in the first place.) Perhaps Snarky is just indulging her (way deep down inner) pretty pretty princess as well. :dons tiara, stomps bejeweled slipper:

At the risk of incurring the Wrath of the Gods, Snarky wants y'all to have a peek: The Possibly Maybe Future Chez Snark She's already scheming where the yarn, BPAL, and LUSH stashes will go. She's going to have her own bathroom, finally! No more comingling of her "lotions and potions" (The Mister's term) with his manly toilette. Snarky hastens to add that she decided to wear Clio today. This is another surprise imp in her ammo case that is sorta-kinda spring like (in a deep dark pathouli-ish sort of way). Also, the lavendar is helping her to remain a little more calm and clear-headed given the circumstances.

Oooh. I like that much better than "commando". Possibly because it has the word "mental" in it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! The Snarks are trying to schedule the house inspection today. The earnest money check (gulp!) went in this morning. "The 'Fumes'"! That's classic! Like... "the vapors" or something. Yes, Mister Snark has been made fully aware of the hierarchy of unpacking: kitchen, yarn stash, toilettries, then underwear. (Don't tell Valentina!)

Snarky is currently (mentally) scouring all vintage clothing and housegoods stores for a-line housecoats, ankle strapped t-back heels, wrist-length gloves, little ceramic canisters that say "FLOUR", "SUGAR", "TEA", etc. etc. etc. Where she will have the money for this is still up for debate. But these things will be had! (Also the chrome and mirrored glass bar set.)

Thank you! The Snarks need all the good juju they can get.

Spring is finally making footholds in the landscape. The sun lingers until well after dinnertime. That she is making a showing at all is a cause for verdant frolicking. Snarky reached for Nefertiti this morning. To her logical mind this is because the imp happens by trick of alphabetical organization to fall smack in the middle-front of her ammo box. But her superstitious hindbrain suspects that her hand was guided there to bring her delicate flowers and sweet-skin confidence in order to make it through this day of waiting. She, in some small way, wanted to smell like spring. And Nefertiti is one of the few scents that approximates this effect. The rest of her collection speaks of winter's dead hibernations, autumn's angsty decay. But this? This is hope and joy and faith that life is returning. The air is thick with love making. Sap rises, tender buds unfurl. She waits.

It is fascinating to suddenly notice what has fallen dormant only when it starts to wake up again. And it's HONGRY!

Happy Birthday! Sounds like you're gonna enjoy the heck out of your day! I say spend a little, save a little... that way've you've satisified both needs!

He trusts her. He continues to work silently over blueprints scattered across the living room rug as she presses her lotion-chilled fingers into the welts, all the angry red patches on his back. She works to cover all the places his skin has betrayed him. His body seems, in all its solidity, horribly frail. He is an unbalanced chemical equation tipping forward on his haunches, always threatening to tumble away from her. Away and down into the dark valleys where she can't find a path to follow. She tries to hold on with her slippery hands. Her palms linger on his shoulders, much longer than needed to set the medicine into his skin. She resists the urge to shake him roughly, shake him back into the man he was. He trusts her not to do this, not to stomp and wail and disrupt the little bit of foothold he has left. He trusts her to hold on, keep an anchor, keep him steady. He trusts her to trust that he will come back.

The Snarks went house shopping this weekend. And it was good. No, no future home came out of it, but they've made a connection with a realtor who seems honest enough. He might have laughed a little too hard at some of Snarky's jokes, but they were pretty damn funny. They went to eight houses in about four hours. It was good to feel them all out, interact with them. But it was also very tiring. Walking through the empty spaces, voices echoing off of outdated tiles and fugly cabinetry. Each room demanded five alternative placements for beds, sofas, coffee tables (Yes, the Snarks own two. No, they don't exactly know how that happened.) Each house was the setting for a new part of their lives together. Each house was the beginning of a different path. Their minds bloomed, unfurled into these eight different paths. Lifetimes bubbled forth like kudzu, trying to cover every inch of possibility. But none of the stories were quite right. The corners were too sudden, the proportions grating against some invisible outline. They reeled back in all the strands of possiblity. Wrapped them into loose hanks to hang at the ready for the next throw. Later that night, Snarky stood naked in front of the half-mirror in their tiny apartment "walk in" (more like, "side-step in and pivot") closet. She looked at herself, tried to prognosticate. Perhaps it was the morning's house-hunting exercises that gave her flickering future-visions. She saw herself whole, hearty, healthy. She saw herself shriveled, diminished, in pieces. She touched her chest and tried to find a clue to what the next chapter would bring.

On the VPL: I'll have to check with my "test group", but I personally do not feel sexy while sporting one m'self, and when checking out other women, I don't care to see it on them either. I sometimes wonder if I would've been a male chauvinist pig if things had gone a different way. As for dabbling in dommedom... I'm just slightly more than just curious about the lifestyle too. But when I was given an opportunity to interact, I totally chickened out.

Snarky was just going to throw out a light, humorous, purple-prose-free post about the miracle of covering things in chocolate (obviously, the good), but she just got a call from the imaging center asking her to come back in for additional views (alarmingly, extremely, horrifically bad). Based on her mother's occurences of breast cancer (2-3 times, depending on how you look at it), Snarky went in for an early baseline mammogram two days ago. The woman who called was very reassuring about the fact that several women get these "call backs", and that the reasons that are bringing Snarky back in (that have absolutely nothing to do with the glaring C WORD that neither mentioned over the phone) could be overlapped tissue and the fact that the radiologist wants the baseline mammogram to be as accurate as possible. Still. Snarky can't help feeling the tears crawling up the back of her throat... nor the sense of absolute, blind, shrieking panic just barely restrained by her too-tight, too-cold skin. Perhaps she should have saved the last chocolate covered Nutter Butter for later.

Working toward Zen for now. Thank you all for your thoughts. Indian food has helped. So has the brief appearance of sunshine and walking weather.

Maintaining the status quo. Treading water. Keeping a holding pattern. Snarky has long suspected that she suffers from a slight case of whatever that dude in "Memento" had... her early life consisted of two year stretches between changes in scenery, and with each change she dropped most of her points of reference -- her friends, her hobbies, her life. Pick up a new string, turn 180 degrees, start wandering the labyrinth again. Sure, the "reset button" draws her back into a slightly different place each time, but it feels like two steps forward, one step back. It's a stilted, wonky march to the beat of time's inevitability. There are a handful of touchstones. Powerful moments that break through the thorny hedgerows. Most of them are triggered by scent. Today she's wearing Jacob's Ladder. The high, bright amber is bringing back memories of her maternal grandfather. Memories of his passing which was sudden, unexpected, and tinged by family lore about karma. He's been dead longer than he's been alive in her life, and that death still ripples through everyone in her family like a silent aftershock. For years, his death froze her in a substrate of fear. Fear of nothingness and of simply not being anymore. It has taken time, but she is finally starting to see that being still and impacting little is an insult to this brief moment of somethingness she's been granted. The amber is comforting, familiar. But it needs to be broken. She needs to climb those thorny hedges and see the labyrinth for what it is. She's making a move. Swimming for shore. Touching down.

Snarky never claimed to be "goth", but she apparently ended up that way. Black just suited her better, and while her musical tastes have always been on a diet, she enjoys what little genre music does happen to wander past her plate. Oh and there's the poetry. The breadth and depth of which must surely qualify her for some sort of angsty, navel-gazey, inky black award. It was on Glampyre's suggestion that BPAL would appeal to more "gothic" tastes that brought Snarky into the fold in the first place. But instead of finding a more delicious brew in which to wallow Snarky has found mostly happiness and resonance through BPAL. Better living through (esoteric, alchemical) chemistry, as it were. This morning's judicious application of Danse Macabre has eased Snarky out of her Existential Funk. She's now contemplating dinner with The Mister (another date-date!), a minor sandwich cookie binge (probably not, though, because of aforementioned date-date), and (hopefully) impending landed gentry-dom. It feels good to be grounded in the here-and-now again, rather than the shoulda-woulda-couldas. However, Snarky will endeavour to honor her inky black roots and try mightily to contemplate something deepy dark and morbid. Possibly the wretched demise of this damned intranet site she's been trying to build for the last two months. Surely therein lies a tale of woe.