Category: pondering

Grown Up Decisions, Made by Comparison

The scene: The Good Man and me, at the furniture store. He’s on one end of a really nice couch. I’m at the other.

We both have our feet up on a fabulously cool ottoman/bench.

He digs the couch. A lot. I like it, but I am a little hesitant. It’s absolutely unlike anything we’ve looked at all day. The color and the fabric are exactly what he said he didn’t want.

Also, the style is very modern and I’m generally a more traditional sort of gal.

I’m wavering. It’s cool. Very cool. But it’s out of my zone.

Here’s where we pick up the conversation.

The Good Man: “So. Let me ask you this question: Would your dad buy this couch?”

Me: “Oh hell no. He’d say it’s impractical.”

The Good Man: “Right! Now let me ask you this question. Would *my* dad buy this couch?”

Me: “Oh hell no. Same reason.”

The Good Man: “There you have it.”

And there he had me. Snared me in his blend of logic and emotion. Mixed to perfection like a spousal apothecary.

Damn the man who knows which levers to pull in my brain. Damn him, I say!!

And I mumbled something similar under my breath as I got out a credit card and handed it over to the salesguy.

It is a pretty chula couch with two matching chairs and the bench/ottoman for resting toesies.

I just hope I’m cool enough to own it.





Damn it! I can’t believe I bought a couch without knowing THIS masterpiece was on the market! GAH!






Photo from I Can Haz Cheeseburger.



Well I’ll Be Darned

Over the many years of our association, The Good Man and I have run into quite a few “well I’ll be darned” moments. New York boy and New Mexico girl are sometimes worlds apart in our life experiences.

The latest came around when we moved into our new apartment home. I’ve lived in huge apartment complexes, six unit buildings, and the last place I lived was a duplex.

And at each of those places, they way you got rid of your trash was to schlep it downstairs to the big metal trash bins in the parking lot.

But our new place has a curiosity….a trash chute! This blows my tiny little mind. I’ve never even seen one much less lived somewhere with one.

This is the coolest thing EVER.



So beautifully unobtrusive





Ok, that hole is a little scary, but rather effective


It’s a pretty, shiny bit of steel. Open the convenient door, drop in my trash, close the door, dust off my hands and whistle a happy tune.

It’s just down the hall and around a corner from my place. I can even slip out there in the morning in my nightgown and bare feet. Fabulous!

The other day, The Good Man put some boxes down the chute and said he was pretty sure they were stuck. I suggested he send a bowling ball down after it. He wasn’t amused.

See, he’s used to the Super getting really mad when the trash chute gets blocked. Me, I don’t know from a Super or a trash chute, so I have the luxury of just being a wise ass.

So The Good Man is all “yeah, whatever” and I’m all “whooooooo!” about this feature of our home.
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Next time, on Intercontinental relations, we’ll discuss “Why are the traffic lights in New Mexico horizontal, that’s just weird” (him) counterbalanced against “Why doesn’t California use mile markers? No wonder you people drive like crap.” (me)



They Call It Stormy Monday*

Tuesday’s just as bad.

Wednesday’s worse.

And Thursday’s also sad.


Photos from the parking lot at my apartments this morning, after a very rainy night. These muddy waters are silt washing down from the building just above us on the hill. The dirt is washing out and down a wall and down our drain.

This worries me.

And yet…it’s kind of pretty.



From the earth to the sewer



It’s like my own little Milky Way



The building’s not falling down the hill tomorrow. Or next week. But slowly and surely, the land is washing away.

Many years in the Bay Area and this still baffles me.




Photos Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth and subject to the Creative Commons in the right column of this page. Photos taken with an iPhone4s and the Camera+ app.


*Post inspired by a rainy day and the bluesman named Muddy Waters.



Vaya Con Bye-Bye

Whew. Yeah. Okay. Unh huh.

My tireless boss has been in town for the past three weeks. I swear the guy doesn’t drink coffee, soda or energy drinks and he can outlast everyone. The man is relentless.

He’s been in a bunch of meetings. I’ve been in most of those same meetings. In that slight half hour before the next meeting, he’s in my office wanting to plot and plan and strategize. There’s a lot going on. Marker boards were used. Action items were assigned.

It has been non-stop. I’m punch drunk and overwhelmed.

Today, at noon, he put on his battered leather jacket, picked up his computer bag, and left town.

It is wrong that I offered to drive him to the airport?

I mean, I dig the guy. He’s brilliant and funny. He hates my iPhone case, told me “you’ll never make it to the boardroom with that case” which makes me want to send him one. Every day. For a month.

He knows his stuff and has a lot of respect from everyone, including me.

I am fortunate to have him for a boss.

I’m also fortunate that he on an airplane until tomorrow sometime.

Wheeeeeew. This is the first 30 minutes I’ve had to just sit at my desk in weeks. I like it.






Image from CentreFlow.


On The Double

So I’m entirely too late to do a Theme Thursday, but I don’t care. I’m doing it because here, on Sunday, I finally came up with a good idea.

This week’s Theme Thursday word is: Double.

Here we go, a short short story with an ode to the word double.


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So I was feeling kind of hungry and there was nothing good to eat in the house. Trying to calm down the beast of hunger, I chomped through a pack of DoubleMint, but that didn’t help. Exasperated, I put on my doublet and filled my pockets with dubloons and left the house on the double.

I did a double step down the boulevard, looking for a nosh.

Spotting my destination, I fell in to the In-n-Out burger where I satisfied my urge, doing double duty with a Double-Double and a large side of fries.

Well that was pretty darn good, but I was not quite full, and I left that burger joint looking for a little something more.

Right across the street was a Double Rainbow ice cream store where I doubled down on a double scoop of ice creamy goodness and ate it all down.

With all that burger and ice cream in my belly, I was truly in double jeopardy and had to undo the top button on my double knit polyester pants.

Now I wasn’t just full, I was double full, so I decided to keep walking so I could work off a couple calories.

As luck would have it, I rounded a corner and saw a bunch of kids doing double dutch. I hopped right in, jumping to the double rhythm long enough so I got double indemnity from the calories by having both fun and exercise.

To reward my hard work and to finish the day, I popped in a piece of Double Bubble and chewed it hard. I tried to blow good bubbles, but it didn’t work. The gum was stale. I took that pack back to the store and demanded a double my money back guarantee on my purchase.

With my refund, I bought a disposable camera to document my day. But I must have used it wrong, because all the prints came back as double exposures. And I ordered double prints!

Ugh. I don’t got no digital camera (<- double negative) so I guess I'm out of luck. Maybe I oughta go to Vegas where I can drop double nickels and try to hit double diamonds and win the double jackpot. Then I can buy a double lens camera and capture my double good days. Instead, I went home and got into my double bed and had beautiful dreams of riding a double decker bus and drinking double espresso. And that's all I have to say about that.






Image from Harvey Park District.