Random tidbits

1 hard boiled egg
1 slice of slightly moldy yogurt cheese
1 orange
2 dates

That's all I was able to scrounge out of the fridge for dinner tonight.
Ah, the life of a single woman... No need to put dinner on the table for anyone but me. It's a small freedom that I try not to take for granted.
So, yes, it's time to go grocery shopping; however, I leave for ILLINois on Thursday, so grocery shopping will have to wait. "What?!" you say, "ILLINois?!" Yes. I'm heading off to Peoria, of all places, for a family reunion. I haven't seen some of my relatives since before my dad died 13 years ago. This ought to be interesting... Look out, here comes the wacky West Coast branch of the family! I figure it really doesn't matter where you have a family reunion, since it's pretty much all about sitting around swapping old stories, sharing a few new ones, and eating and drinking a lot. Oh boy, that reminds me of a story... Here we go...

I rarely drink alcohol anymore, but when I was younger I certainly didn't shy away from it. I remember the last family reunion my immediate family attended together (before my parents' divorce). I have 2 brothers and 6 male cousins, all of whom are bigger, if not older than me, and I, for some crazy reason, had decided to keep up with them, drink for drink. We were drinking whiskey with beer chasers. We started at the home of my Aunt & Uncle, who still live in the small Midwest mining town where my dad and his siblings grew up. We then moved "downtown," where there's a bar on every corner, and drank our way through, bar by bar. I wouldn't re-live the following morning for ANYthing. I couldn't move, but the bed felt like it was moving plenty, if you know what I mean. My father had kept up with us pretty well the night before and was in almost as much pain the morning after as I was. Ah, family reunions... I can hardly wait!

Did you know that today was Bob Dylan's birthday? Dave Morey at KFOG keeps me informed of such things. I think he said it was his 64th today. He played an all-Dylan "10 @10" set. I quite enjoyed it. "Tangled Up in Blue" is definitely one of my all-time faves... Such fond memories of my college days... We listened to a lot of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Grateful Dead, Elvis Costello, Harry Belafonte, Harry Nilsson... I love how music can just take you right back to a certain time and place. How it can evoke emotions... lift you up when you're feeling down... bring you to tears when you're feeling melancholy. There's just nothing that moves me like music does. It is my favorite drug, my best friend, and my greatest expense. I'm fairly certain I spent more money on music than clothes last year. That would be true for this year too, if I hadn't just gone on a bit of a shopping spree last week, for my upcoming trip. C'est la vie!

Well, that's all I've got for now. My trusty laptop won't be going with me to Peoria, so you probably won't be hearing from me until I return.

Miss me...

A Rather Good Rant

I feel like this is cheating, but, oh well... While I haven't been sharing anything new here at Timely Manor, I have been busy reading, and occasionally commenting on my dear friends' blogs. Ms Camille has been particularly prolific lately and I posted the following rant as a comment on her blog earlier this week. I decided to share it here for those of you who may have missed it. To read the original post I was commenting on, click on the link to Ms Camille's blog and scroll down to Sunday, May 15. Enjoy...

A Rather Good Rant

Why ARE we still single?! I think of the four of us [speaking of myself, Camille, Miss S and the Celestial One] and I wonder... We are all smart, beautiful, fun, talented, devoted to the Lord... What more could a man want in a woman? Is it because He has some higher purpose for our lives?... Something He has yet to reveal to us?... Or are we simply destined to lives of spinsterhood for no particular reason?... I try to focus on the positive... Think of all the freedom I have that I wouldn't have if I were un-single... The freedom to change my plans on a whim... The freedom to... Hmm, I'm certain there were others, but I can't seem to recall any of them at the moment. C'est la vie.

Oh, and I must say, I wholeheartedly agree with Miss S regarding the irritation felt when others (especially MARRIED others) offer "helpful" or "encouraging" words. They tend to be neither helpful nor encouraging. Here's a recent example: A well-meaning friend (a woman who hasn't experienced "single life" since her early twenties) tried to encourage me by pointing out that an ex-best friend of mine, nearly ten years my junior, is still single. HOW is that supposed to encourage me?!

Uh-oh, Camille, we seem to have hit a rather sensitive nerve here. Perhaps I should close and get back to work before I vent any more spleen of my own. I apologize for the diatribe. I'll stop now.
Contessa | 05.16.05

Nothing new

It's funny... as I'm checking in on my various friends in the World of Blog, I occasionally click on the link to Timely Manor, as if to check if I've posted anything new. And then I'm mildly disappointed when I realize that I haven't.

Optimistic Voices

I think this should be my new theme song. It's also from "The Wizard of Oz," although I don't actually remember hearing this one.

You're out of the woods
You're out of the dark
You're out of the night
Step into the sun, step into the light
Keep straight ahead
For the most glorious place
On the Face of the Earth
Or the sky

Hold onto your breath
Hold onto your heart
Hold onto your hope
March up to the gate
And bid it open

Ding-dong, the witch is dead

Does anyone remember that scene from "The Wizard of Oz" where the house has just landed on the wicked witch and the Munchkins come out and start singing joyfully,

Ding-dong the witch is dead
Which old witch? The wicked witch
Ding-dong the wicked witch is dead
Wake up you sleepyhead
Rub your eyes, get out of bed
Wake up the wicked witch is dead
She's gone where the goblins go
Below - below - below...

OK, I got a little carried away there. Anyhow, that's how I felt when, at the end of our dreaded house meeting tonight, my least favorite housemate announced that she's given notice and will be moving out at the end of this month! To be nice, I tried not to let it show on the outside that I was dancing a little jig on the inside (but, believe me, I was dancing and singing "Hallelujah!" on the inside). Now, some of you may think, after reading this, that I am a mean person. I assure you, I am not. There were simply irreconcilable differences between the two of us. This just wasn't a good match. (To say the least.) So, praise the Lord, I am now in an unusually good mood. Wait, it didn't used to be unusual for me to be in a good mood. Sad but true, my good moods have been few & far between for the duration of the present housemate situation. Well, baby, things are gonna change! I can hardly wait for June!...

Emotionally constipated

OK, for better or for worse, this is unedited, uncensored me. Sorry it's kind of a downer. I wasn't in a very good mood when I wrote it. (Obviously.)

Emotional constipation... It’s that feeling of being so full of emotion--pain, sadness, emptiness… (full of emptiness??)—that you feel like you’ve got to let it out… have a good hard cry… let the tears flow… ball your eyes out… But you can’t. You just can’t seem to do it.

This has been going on for what seems like months now. I’ll be alone, driving in my car, listening to music, and that feeling will come over me, and my eyes will tear up and then… nothing. I wonder if it’s from keeping things bottled up for too long?…

Question of the day

(Contributed by Dan)

If you had to elect one rock star (either dead or alive) to serve one term as president of the united states, who would it be?

(For my answer, read the comments on the previous post.)

When I posed this question to J, his immediate answer (with no knowledge of mine) was, "Not Bono." I found this mildly amusing since he seems to enjoy being contrary where I'm concerned, and here he'd managed to do that without even trying. When I asked him who he _would_ choose, he said, "Springsteen." (And, yes, he is going to the show tonight. Maybe he and Dan will end up sitting next to each other
at the concert and it will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship... Yeah, that'd be cool.)

OK, who would you choose?

Readers' Choice

I've had a few ideas floating around in my head for the past few days (weeks), of topics I might want to address here at Timely Manor. Being somewhat indecisive (and, perhaps a bit lazy) about the whole matter, I thought I'd let you, my readers, have a say in what I post next.

Here are the candidates:

A) I love technology...
B) Emotionally constipated
C) My most intimate relationship
D) ? (Suggest a topic and we'll see if I have anything interesting to write about it.)

More backstory…

OK, dear readers, just a little more backstory on "Timely Manor" and then I shall move forward...


From: e
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 8:31:26 AM US/Pacific
To: contessa

thought you'd appreciate this - is a "timely manor" a hip, big house that captures the cultural zeitgeist of an era? or maybe you know...

:) e

. . .

Hi again everyone!

Just a reminder: The trip is this coming Saturday. <…>

Please write back to me to confirm your reservation(s). If the number of
spots you've reserved has changed, please let me know ASAP so that folks
on the waiting list can be notified in a timely manor.

---------------------------------------------------------------

From: The Contessa
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 12:52:12 PM US/Pacific
To: e
Subject: Re: Timely Manor

I like it! I' think I'd like to live in a "timely manor." Perhaps that's the new century equivalent of a commune. Actually this relates to some things I was thinking about last night...

So the new gal moved in yesterday, and she's totally keeping to herself--keeps her bedroom door shut, seems to have no interest whatsoever in interacting with me--and I thought to myself, "I have strangers living in my house." Things have gone from bad to worse with my downstairs housemate. We have nothing in common, and the more I get to know her, the less I want to know her. So, here I am in the house that has been my home for the past 14+ years, and I feel more alone than if I were actually living alone--it suddenly doesn't feel like "home" anymore. One of the reasons I haven't moved out and gotten my own place, is that I like having the _community_ of a shared household. The problem is, neither one of the new people in my house seems to want to share _any_thing. So it's just me and my stuff. And I'm left longing for COMMUNITY. And I was thinking about the VFC meeting Saturday night, and the gal who talked about sharing meals with her community group, and I thought, "Yeah, that's what it's about... breaking bread together and sharing our lives--not just coming together once a week for a brief Bible study and sharing a prayer request or two w/o ever really sharing what's going on in our hearts and our lives." And now I'm lacking that in my home as well as in my community group, and it sucks. I would love to have a once a week (or even twice a month) dinner with friends, where we all come together and prepare a meal together or do a potluck, or take turns hosting the dinner; but everyone is so busy that we (including me) are reluctant to add yet one more thing to our already jam-packed schedules. So what's the solution?... I don't know. I keep asking myself if God put me in the community group I'm in to use me in some way... Perhaps to encourage the group towards a deeper level of intimacy (which is what I crave). But I feel so guarded with those people. I don't know them and I don't feel ready to open myself up, to be vulnerable with them. I think, as humans, one of our greatest desires it to be known... For people to know us for who we really are and to love us anyway. But we have to get past the fear of rejection--the fear of "If they _really_ knew me, they wouldn't like me." And so we put on facades, we pretend to be something or someone other than who we really are, because then, "if they don't like me, it's not really me they're rejecting--it's the facade I've manufactured." Or maybe that's just me.

Whew! I feel like I just had a mini therapy session. And I could go on, I'm sure, about living communally and our need for community, and so on, but I need to get some work done. <…>

I have a vision... A funky, yet beautiful old Victorian, bought and lovingly restored by a community of friends. Friends who live together, cook together, share their meals, their burdens and their joys, their lives... We'll call it TIMELY MANOR. : ]

* * * * * * *

So you see, the name came from a typo, and the typo inspired a lengthy email discourse on COMMUNITY, and now you have a little glimpse into who I am.

Thank you for visiting TIMELY MANOR.

How it all started…

Greetings, dear friends and others,
Welcome to Timely Manor. This being my first entry, I would like to share with you, my readers (whoever you may be) the origins of my inspiration for "Timely Manor." It all started with "327 Market," the blog of my dear friend, Miss Camille.

On March 24th, after I had referrred a mutual friend to her blog, Camille posted this entry :
(For the original posting go to: http://327market.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_327market_archive.html )

I am always excited when I find out that new, cool people are reading my blog. Like a party, there can never be too many people. So welcome! And thanks, Contessa for making it all happen.
Posted by: Camille / 10:39 AM

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My pleasure, as always, my dear Marquesa. Networking, networking, networking... It's what I do... It's what I love.
At this rate, eventually, every person I know will know every single other person I know. And then... We will take over the world! WHA-HA-HA...
(That was my attempt at an evil laugh, in case you couldn't tell. ;] )
Contessa | 03.24.05 - 4:02 pm |

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The Contessa needs to start a salon where all the interesting people she knows can get together and have a little conversazione.

That is my deep thought.
Posted by: Camille / 1:58 PM

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The Contessa LOVES this idea! However, unfortunate as it is, the Contessa lacks the actual room, or salon, in which to hold these fabulous gatherings. Perhaps a "virtual salon" is the best solution at this time... No one would have to travel... People could drop in at literally any hour of the day or night...
Hmmm... Food for thought.

salon:
A periodic gathering of people of social or intellectual distinction.

A large room, such as a drawing room, used for receiving and entertaining guests.

Elegant sitting room where guests are received.
Contessa | 03.25.05 - 5:17 pm |

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And so, the seed for "Timely Manor" was planted.