I also rescued my dearest friend from his prison at the bottom of a stack of plastic storage bins. He’s on the left, in green.:

His name is Freddy. As you can see we go way back. Yes, it rhymes with teddy — but he’s named after my uncle who sent him to me from Germany before I was born; the very first Lizmas present! I know a lot of Freds and all (but one) are the coolest. But especially this one. (I have to say that because he knows all my secrets.)

Before I forget: here’s a mix to get you in the Lizmas spirit. I hope you listen to it while drinking a cup of unaltered coffee and drumming on your desk with pencils, Liz-style.

23 til 32 mix

1. 1978, Liliput, Kleenex/Liliput, 1993
2. Off Morning, Sort Sol, Dagger & Guitar, 1983
3. This Perfect Day, The Saints, Eternally Yours, 1978
4. That’s When I Reach For My Revolver, Mission of Burma, Signals, Calls, and Marches, 1981
5. Undone, Rowland S. Howard, Teenage Snuff Film, 1999
6. Dark Entries, Bauhaus, 1979-1983: Volume One, 1986
7. Disorder, Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures, 1979
8. Speak My Language, The Cure, Join The Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978-2001 [Disc 1], 2004
9. The Strange Boutique, The Monochrome Set, The Strange Boutique, 1980
10. Double Standards, Action Pact, Mercury Theatre: On The Air!, 1983
11. Dark Park Creeping, Mo-Dettes, The Story So Far, 1980
12. Gehry, Babyland, The Finger, 2004
13. Night, Zola Jesus, Stridulum II, 2010
14. Stars, Warpaint, Exquisite Corpse EP, 2009

22 more days of Lizmas shopping and my obnoxious birthday zeal! Here’s my unreasonable wishlist:

• electronic drum kit
• 55 gallon aquarium w/1 fancy goldfish named La Contessa.
• a houseplant that doesn’t require much direct sunlight
• a cup that never runs out of fresh delicious iced tea
• that nail polish gadget the receptionist in Total Recall was using

That’s all. Really.

Hello, Internet! Fancy meeting you here.

I’m in a weird mood, and also back in Vermont, uh, recharging. Yeah. The weirdness isn’t bummed-outness. It’s more like, now my feelings about returning to my hometown have been confirmed (yesssss!), and my expectation of it not being, like, immediate gratification have been validated. I’m kind of relieved that it’s going to take more time and effort because if it hadn’t I’d be huddled under a (thin) blanket or possibly a sheet, with my jaw clenched waiting for everything to fall apart and land on me. The weird mood is about me being correct and trying to decide if it is worse to be correct about this or just always correct in general and, so, rarely pleasantly surprised? Maybe a “bit of luck” would’ve been nice? But again, also terrifying. Well good for me! I’ve got something to work toward, and I’m much happier when I’m focused on something.

So, I was too busy enjoying my time to document it. I’m terrible at taking photos while things are happening, so I pretty much have nothing in that department. I drank a ton of good beer and enjoyed a lot of good hangs. My friends are all charming and adorable and hilarious. (Probably more so than your charming, adorable, hilarious friends but I can’t prove it, and you can’t disprove it.) I fell in love with my friend’s baby, and a St. Bernard another friend is dog-sitting. (GUYS! I got to walk a ST. BERNARD. Not a euphemism.)

I’ve been doing a lot of writing! Well, obviously not here. I’m also drawing again which is good because two years ago I spent way too much money on a fancy set of pens and have felt guilty about it ever since. However! I’ve convinced myself that things would turn out better if I was using my table and not balancing things on my knees in bed, which led to my new tightly held conviction that I can’t accomplish anything decent or worthwhile until I move my table over next to the window. This requires rearranging my room –the room I don’t want to be in, in the state I’m trying to get out of. Waste of time! But if I don’t work through the extreme procrastination I will keep blaming the table’s distance from the window for my inability to ink these sketches, instead of admitting I’m a lazy baby.

Oh babies. I think I’m reaching some middle age milestone where my emotional outbursts are no longer limited to a regularly scheduled portion of the month? I’ve decided that I’m unsubscribing from the Zooborns feed because the sight of baby elephants and orangs and newly hatched turtles is too much for me. I see them and my heart aches. Growing pains, like the Grinch? I don’t know. I do know that the devil is truly just a metaphorical construct because if he were a real thing, the blood of one of you, my nearest and dearest, would be on my hands while I was enjoying a new life with my new baby elephant roommate. Sorry, but I’m not going to lie. Maybe I should get a turtle once I’m settled somewhere.

Oh look, another internet mixtape: (Fifteen tracks including music by Swell Maps, Maximum Joy and Colin Newman.)

No joke, really. Small town New England –maple flavored everything, ski reports on the news, people leaving their cars unlocked and running in the grocery store parking lot. There’s been snow or freezing drizzle every day since I got here and I suspect that will be the case until sometime in August maybe, when a moose sees her shadow or something? And yet somehow there’s still enough green to make it postcard perfect and clearly better than Pennsylvania. Also? The grocery store sells beer and wine. No contest.

Plus, six of my top seven favorite relatives live here. AND! And! and! I’m right down the street from a library and not stuck in an office during its hours of operation. In fact I’m not stuck in an office AT ALL. Well, I have a fake office that is also known as my bedroom. (It’s got a window –a thrilling dream come true.)  I knew my job was making me miserable but I didn’t realize the extent to which it kept me immobilized by depression. Four and a half years of wasted time.

Well that’s old business. I’ve got some new things in the works; getting serious about freelance writing, opening an online store, and a fun project with Jen of deliberatepixel is about to begin. More details on that later!

Here’s that January mix I promised last post: (Maybe NSFW, unless you work in a cuss-friendly environment like me.)

A tad more upbeat, eh?