Crazy Aunt Purl

May 15, 2008

Vacations I would enjoy

I had to drive into work because of forces not of my own making. I like to amuse myself while in traffic by daydreaming about vacation.

My very favorite thing to do (aside from rolling around naked in money, which I have not yet done but sincerely hope I am one day able to do on a regular basis) is daydream. I daydream a lot. I do it in my car, on the bus, before falling asleep at night, in the shower, and pretty much everytime I am not required to be present and focusing on a task at hand. I know we are supposed to live in the NOW and be PRESENT and all that stuff, but some things in my own life are not really divine and delightful and soul-enriching, such as dentist visits and traffic. Daydreaming is like a little vacation for the mind.

Perhaps I am more like Walter Mitty than I care to admit. On Saturday night a few weeks ago, Faith and I were at the bookstore/coffee shop and I was thinking about my Mittyesque moments so I asked Faith if she knew that Kafka used to work at an insurance agency. We were in the middle of talking about a trip to Palm Springs so I'm not sure the question made sense... to her.

"I am like Kafka," I said. "Except without the talent. And it's a bank not insurance. Tomato, tomahtoe. But I might still turn into a cockroach one day."

Surprisingly, making weird bug-related comments is not the strangest thing about me. That same night I brought my own little tiny tupperware container of heavy cream to the coffee shop because they only have whole or skim milk there and half-and-half but no heavy cream. And if I am paying two bucks for a lousy cup of coffee I want it to have the creamy goodness.

Faith just laughed good-naturedly at my Tupperware. She kindly ignored my Kafka cockroach soliloquy.

ANYWAY. Daydreaming about vacation is my favorite, I love to imagine vacations of the future and what I may be wearing in these vacations, which is always something fabulous and I am always thinner in my mind, and also probably taller. And I must have had laser hair removal or something in my daydreams because I'm never covering unsightly stubble with long pants in hot weather as I am known to do in real life.

My top five favorite daydream destinations:

1) Spain. I think the next trip I take will be to Spain because I have thoroughly enjoyed every past visit to Spain (I once spent three days in San Sebastian once, just remarking at how much one can eat and drink on vacation and just feel BETTER instead of worse.) I love the people and the language and the food and since I was never single at the time of past travel experiences to Spain, I never had the opportunity to make some amigos.

2) Croatia. In this fantasy not only am I the aforementioned "skinnier" and "taller" but I am also a delicious buttery tan all over and I drink cocktails with fruit floating on top. (On top of the cocktail, not me.) (Although on vacation I might just try that one day.)

3) Surfing the coast of Peru. In my fantasies, I am not just the skinny, taller, tanner version of me but also am practically out-Gidgeting Gidget with my rogue surfing skills. Hang ten, dude.

4) Greenland. I am probably still skinnier and taller and tanner but none of it is troublesome as I am covered up under layers of fabulous handknits.

5) Maui. There's an actual real possibility that this place will move from fantasy to reality but again in the daydream I am skinnier, taller, tanner and suddenly look good in floral prints. There is probably a greater possibility that I will indeed sprout and grow taller than the chance of me ever looking good in something floral. It clashes with my personality.

But Lord I love to daydream. Especially when someone stinky is too near on the bus and you're stuck in traffic and you do the math and realize that by the time you get home you will need to turn around and head back to work in just a few mere hours. It's also good to have a little daydream in your pocket for the long wait at the DMV. Or when you're in the dentist's chair. (Although what really helps when you in the dentist's chair comes with a prescription.) I've been to the dentist four times this year already. Not once have I had a prescription... but the daydreams help a lot.

The best thing about daydreaming vacation is that it's totally free and you can do it even while in the shower. How's that for multi-tasking?

I was in traffic and daydreaming this morning when I saw this:

You can't tell from the picture because I was shooting into the sun (and driving for hours into the sun which is REALLY AWESOME) but the truck in front of me has the tailgate down and inside the truck's bed are all sorts of goodies that are not tied down ... including one big ol' microwave oven. Untethered. On a truck with no tailgate to hold it in... ON THE FREEWAY.

Our freeways are a series of stops and very jagged stops, so I can't imagine that microwave made it to its intended destination, unless said destination was "roadkill." People wonder why the freeways of Southern California are always littered with sofas, ladders and houses. People maybe need therapy in this town.

I took the photo then expediently changed lanes. And got right back to daydreaming.

Posted by laurie at 09:10 AM | Comments (56)

Thursday winner!

CONGRATULATIONS Justin from Pennsylvania! You are officially the first guy to win anything on this website, I hope that makes your mama proud. It makes me proud :) Also, I happen to know (because I snoop on ya'lls links) that he is a Virgo, and Virgos love Envirosax.

That is my story and I am sticking to it. CONGRATS!!!

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Also, new winner tomorrow! Read about the sweepstakes if you haven't already, and enter to win right here.

Posted by laurie at 08:38 AM | Comments (13)

May 14, 2008

Wednesday Winner!

Congrats to Lucia in Boston -- you know I believe Lucia has been reading this here website since 2004 and never won a single thing and I am so happy to say, YOU WON! Also, go buy a lotto ticket tonight, lady. You're on a winning streak :)

ALSO -- did ya'll know Lucia has FREE knitting patterns on the innernets? Go see!

That is about all I can write today because OH MY GOD. Work is hard. Apparently I can not just sit here and daydream about Zappos all day while multitasking with coffee-drinking, I have to get proverbial butt in non-metaphorical high gear. Sad, I tell you what.

But yay Lucia! Also, new winner tomorrow! Read about the sweepstakes if you haven't already, and enter to win right here.

If you have already entered your name is still good to go for the next drawing. Except Suzi, who already won. And Lucia. And Zappos.

Posted by laurie at 11:38 AM | Comments (34)

May 13, 2008

Nature has a sense of humor.

Is zucchini a weed? In the past I have only had this level of gardening success with weeds -- I have grown weeds that would make you cry with joy (or pain.) But I have never successfully grown many useful things -- case in point: all of my watermelon plants have died. AGAIN.

You may be wondering how they could die AGAIN, but this is just another year in the long sad cycle of me and dead watermelon seedlings. I try every year and still they die. Every year.

Look how dead they are, there is not even a sign that something green used to be planted here:

Obviously... I am growing dirt.

So I had two big empty patches of dirt where the watermelon plants were supposed to be happily growing and waiting for their squareness to begin. But no luck. I decided to go out back to the Back 40 and look at my raised bed garden to see how the one lone zucchini outrider -- that I did not plant -- and my two pumpkin plants were faring. I expected the zuke to be alive and the pumpkins to be dead.

The good news: The pumpkin vines are still hanging on! The bad news: There are five more seedlings just sprouting from the barren ground and they are suspiciously zucchini-like. One can safely assume that nature thinks this is hilariously funny and wants me to be afraid of my backyard.

Just to recap:

1) Sometime last fall the gardeners got tired of looking at the scary huge-ass zucchini plants that were taking over the back backyard and while I was away they cleaned the whole thing out including about two inches of my organic dirt.

2) There was nothing in the raised bed garden all winter.

3) Just dirt and probably bug poop.

4) Then one day I noticed a green thing growing in there. It was a zucchini plant.

5) I did not plant this zucchini. I did not plant any zucchini seeds. I did not water, fertilize or even look at the back backyard.

6) Now there are MORE mystery seedings!! Popping up from the dustbowl of barrenness and despair!!

I am a little afraid, because I have never in my life had wild zucchini sprouting up here and there, it is not normal for plantlike things to flourish in my presence. I have already lost a thyme plant and a whole marjoram that was eaten in one night by a fat neon green worm. Later I thought it was kind of sad that I don't live in a worm-eating culture because he was probably really tasty, having been seasoned from the inside out with pure organic marjoram.

ANYWAY, this coming weekend I will move the two zucchini seedlings (or at least I suspect that is what they are, they could be body-snatching plants WHO KNOWS, time will tell) into the watermelon patch on the sunny side of the yard and another seedling over to the shadier side of the yard. What I am saying here is that I am going to have a houseful of zucchini again, I have just resigned myself to the idea that I will have to learn how to cook. Or better yet, I should learn how to make biodiesel out of squash and then learn how to single-handedly convert my Jeep to run off zukediesel insted of gas and then I could have a neverending zuke-based economy!!! Or, you know, I could learn to cook.

OR, maybe they make good wine!! That would be a self-sustaining economy right there. Zucchini wine!!!

Posted by laurie at 11:14 AM | Comments (96)

Tuesday winner!

Congratulations to Suzi in Fullerton, your package is in the mail ... tomorrow because I totally forgot to bring a book in today. I need an assistant! Named Julio, who is 18 and very tan....

New winner tomorrow! Read about the sweepstakes if you haven't already, and enter to win right here.

If you have already entered your name is still good to go for the next drawing. Except Suzi, who already won. And Julio.

Posted by laurie at 10:53 AM | Comments (18)

May 12, 2008

Put that in your bag and smoke it!

The cool people at Envirosax contacted me a few weeks ago (just after I extolled their mighty nylon virtues right here in a fit of earth-friendly happiness) and they offered to provide me with five sets of rockstar Envirosax to give away to my readers. Each set contains five bags from the Green Grocer collection:

And it was smart of them to offer up the Green Grocer bags, they're colorful but not printed with a pattern so that if you aren't a floral fan or mad about mod, you're still winning a great bag. The only nit is that the handy carrying cases for the set are backordered so the winners of this here sweepstakes will be carrycase-less. But still, winners will be five Envirosax richer!

So go over and enter the give-away today at crazyauntpurl.com/sweepstakes. There will be five winners and each winner will get a set of five cool Envirosax plus a signed copy of my book just because. The book has nothing to do with Envirosax but I like to give, and I only have three cats so ... books it is!

The rules are pretty simple:
• You get one entry per email address (the duplicates will be filtered out.)

• Any person from anywhere on planet earth is eligible to win.

• I will draw one winner at random starting tomorrow morning and do so for five days (math challenged? that means the final winner will be announced on Saturday morning.)

• All email entries from any day of the week are eligible for each drawing, meaning that if you enter today you will be eligible for all five drawings!

• As usual, I never re-purpose, re-sell or re-distribute your email address. I have enough issues with spam, I certainly wouldn't spam you!

So that's the big Monday goings on here at Chez Bagpipes, and each day this week I will draw a new winner's name from the pile and announce it here in between the normal goings on which tomorrow involve zucchini. Or at least I think they're zucchini. God only knows what is happening in my yard.

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Go enter to win! >>>

Posted by laurie at 08:43 AM | Comments (82)